Are We On a Righteous Path to Violent Co-Annihilation?

By: Rich Aronson

Over the past several months, almost every major U.S. Christian denomination has spoken out against a war on Iraq. In general, these statements are grounded in the large body of Jesus' teachings that assert that the Christian revolution will be a battle fought and won using the principles of nonviolence.

However, judging from all the polls that show strong support for an invasion, it's apparent that regardless of what our religious leaders say, for most Christians, Jesus' rejection of the "eye for an eye" ethic is simply viewed as weak and impractical.

And understandably so, says author and theologian Walter Wink. To many Christians, Jesus' call: "Do not resist one who is evil" (Matthew 5:39a) and "turn the other cheek" (Matthew 5:39b) sound more like acts of cowardice than courage. But according to Wink, dubious interpretation and a lack of context have stripped this passage of its intended meaning. In his book Engaging the Powers, Wink argues that modern biblical scholarship more accurately translates Matthew 5:39a to read: "Do not resist violently one who is evil."

Wink goes on to show that, given proper context, Jesus' advice of "turning the other cheek", "giving your coat as well" and "going a second mile" (Matthew 5:39-42) are actually classic lessons in civil disobedience rather than a call to acquiesce to evil.

"The logic of the text requires such a meaning: On the one hand, do not continue to be supine and complicit in your oppression, but on the other hand, do not react to it violently either", Wink writes.

However, even with this obstacle involving translation and context cleared away, a much larger stone remains: Our collective belief that our country's "successful" track record of using military power confirms the legitimacy of redemptive violence.

To have any chance of removing this obstruction, the church must do more than just remind us of what Jesus said concerning nonviolence; it must make the case for why Jesus warned us that "Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword." (Matthew 26:52).

This shouldn't be too difficult given that history is full of instances showing that violence doesn't work as a means for realizing God's vision of a peaceful and secure world. As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. put it: "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy."

Sure, there have been times when missed opportunities for using peaceful methods to stop the spread of evil have left us with no alternative, but how much closer to God's kingdom has resorting to war ever really gotten us?

Take the case of Hitler. Few would debate that by the late 1930's, the Third Reich had grown way past the point of responding to anything but force. But we'll never know what might have happened had the Nazi Party, in its early stages of development, been forced to deal with an army of highly trained nonviolent citizen activists who didn't believe in Hitler's diabolical plans for world domination. In fact, in the few instances during World War II where civil disobedience was used against the Nazis - such as in Bulgaria, Denmark, Holland, and Norway - it was very effective.

And what has become of us since ending Hitler's dream of creating a giant military superpower intent on imposing its will on the rest of the world?

Sadly, according to the Federation of American Scientists' website, we have become the dominant player in the international arms market, supplying just under half of all arms exports and roughly 2½ times more than the second and third largest suppliers. In 1999, we supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts taking place around the globe.

And now we're ready to launch an unprecedented pre-emptive attack against Iraq that, according to some estimates, could kill up to 100,000 civilians. This for fear that Saddam Hussein might use the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons technology that we gave him in the mid-80's to use in his war against Iran.

And this is not the first time this has happened. During the past decade and a half alone, we have had to face troops from Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan. All were previously trained by our own military or supplied with our weaponry.

It's no wonder, then, with all these "genies" we're continually having to put back in the bottle that our political leaders felt compelled to approve a $396 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2003. That's six times larger than that of Russia, the second-largest spender, and 26 times as large as the combined spending of the seven countries identified by the Pentagon as our most likely adversaries (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria).

There can be no getting around it. As a nation, we've rejected the way of Christ and embraced the way of the sword. And this allegiance to violence is threatening the survival of God's creation and all its inhabitants.

In a sermon given on April 4, 1967, King proclaimed that: "We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation... History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation."

It is my strong belief that we disregard these words at our own peril.