Martin Luther King, Jr., will be honored tomorrow with a federal holiday that celebrates his birthday. This has inspired a few thoughts:
This morning I read this excellent short blog post titled “Weapons and Jesus” from the blog Rudimentary Bible. The author reminds readers that passages like Matthew 26:52 (“For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”) give us good reason to attribute some sort of philosophy of non-violence to Jesus while passages like Luke 22:36 (“And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one…”) temper our anabaptist ideals. He writes:
“The Jesus movement was small. He warned against a futile effort of resisting imperial rule with violence, not unlike Isaiah who warned against futile alliances with Egypt. That’s the most we can say in terms of Jesus and weapons.”
When we discuss Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., we must acknowledge though Jesus as remembered in the Gospels may have inspired these men, Jesus existed in a different context. As the aforementioned blogger notes, Jesus’ movement was small and he was aware that there was no defeating Rome. Gandhi and King benefitted from living in evil societies whose consciences could be pricked by appeals to Christian teachings (the British Empire and the United States). Gandhi and King could appeal to the Jesus of the Gospels to shame British and American “Christians” who were not following their religion’s ideals. If Jesus would have challenged Rome to live according to the ideals displayed by pagan deities then I think events would have unfolded the same way. Roman deities were murderers, fornicators, and cheaters. While Israel’s God was remembered as a warrior in various contexts there were traditions like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah or the sacrificial deaths of the Maccabean martyrs upon which Jesus could draw from the culture’s memory, but as the Jewish War of 66-70 indicates, approaches like that of Jesus were far less enticing to many than those that advocated violent uprising.
There is something that Jesus shared with King that is more important than what these men taught though: their actions. While we may have a hard time reconstructing Jesus’ teachings on non-violence because we don’t have enough material to establish whether Jesus was being more or less pragmatic (why fight Rome if defeat is assured?), or principled (killing other humans is wrong) or somewhere in-between these two poles, we do know that Jesus is remembered as choosing not to fight and that he suffered a horrible death passively.
Likewise, the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ willingness to die as (1) the will of God for a greater purpose; (2) something he could have prevented, even arguing that he said he could have asked his Father to send warrior angels to his defense; and (3) that (for most Christians) violence does not appear to be an option if one is to be a true disciple (until the rise of Emperor Constantine). We have narratives that depict the early Christians as willing to suffer violence and death as a way of modeling their crucified messiah to the world. If it is impossible to reconfigure Jesus’ exact words on non-violence it is much easier to reconfigure how most early Christians interpreted Jesus’ death.
King’s non-violence is obvious. We have articles and books he wrote. We have interviews he gave to magazines and radio stations. We have audio, video, and transcripts of speeches he gave. Yet, like Jesus, we honor King because he died non-violently, not because he taught non-violence, per se. If King would have fought back, or killed another person in defense of his well-being, we would not remember King as we do. We might forgive him for failing to live up to his ideals. We may have debased him as a hypocrite. We wouldn’t celebrate his birthday every year. It was King’s death that was his ultimate message.
As a Christian who is an American citizen this is where I find my inspiration. I don’t call myself a “pacifist” because, well, I don’t like how it implies being “passive”. I do advocate non-violence though. I do affirm that as a disciple of the teachings of Jesus his actions speak as loud or louder than his words, and I do not think I am alone in interpreting Jesus’ death as a message greater than any of his sermons, since the earliest Christians, as far as we know, interpreted Jesus’ death as advocating for their own cruciform posture in the world.
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We could discuss hypothetical situations where my idealism would be challenged: would I defend my wife from an attacker in the home (yes, but not with the aim to kill)? would I have killed Hitler if I had a time machine that put me in the position to do so, saving millions of lives (we don’t know if it would have saved millions of lives since any venture in multiverse must include the reality that one change creates many others, which means it is possible that an outcome worse that World War II could have occurred)? Yet hypothetical extremes do a terrible job of addressing present concerns. When our world and nation are captivated by violent solutions to our problems–whether war against terrorist all over the globe or “Gun Appreciation Day” to advocate for our right to own weapons a few weeks after many of our children were slaughtered by weapons–we don’t need to worry about extreme hypotheticals. We need to worry about taking steps toward peace, especially if we claim to be Christians. As a Christian who is an American citizen let me say to fellow American citizens that our obsession with weapons is more than concerning. We don’t want to own something to shoot a deer only. We want something that can destroy dozens of people at one time. We want weapons made for extreme warfare to be available in our homes. I hope that this causes some to pause for a moment. Even if you are not an advocate of non-violence, surely, common sense indicates that our edginess and our culture of fear is going to increase violence.
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In his book Strength to Love King knew that his advocacy of non-violence would be deemed “impractical”, to which he retorted:
“My friends, we have followed the so-called practical way for too long a time now, and it has led inexorably to deeper confusion and chaos. Time is cluttered with the wreckage of communities which surrendered to hatred and violence. For the salvation of our nation and the salvation of mankind, we must follow another way.”[1]
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 56.
the archives near Emmaus 
I agree that peace should infact be sought on an individual or even a community level. Yet, what troubles me is on a larger scale; for instance, a national level? As we know, there are many nations that express forms of hostility for many different reasons. Many have argued that we cannot sit around and allow other nations to invade our lands, while others argue for some form of third-way ethics. What are your thoughts on this?
Let us assume the right of sovereign nations to defend their boarders, even if that means using violence. As a Christian who is a United States citizen my concern is not that someone will enter my homeland to invade; my concern is that my nation’s military has done this to a few other nations in recent years and we threaten to do it again. We are in Afghanistan and Iraq, we threaten Iran, and we patrol other countries as if their boarders are irrelevant.
As much as I would respect a non-aggressive response by other nations, I know that in our world without the visible presence of messiah, nations will wage war against nation. The goal isn’t to create a utopia, but to be a voice of conscience, who asks my fellow citizens and nation’s leaders whether we have moved from the unfortunate position of “self-defense” to the evil place of oppressor and aggressor.
This life is an apprenticeship. The Holy Spirit does the calling and the instruction yet the choices are exercised by each person. There would be nothing gained by the exercise that is human life without this freedom of choice. The entirety of our existence is not the span of this flesh; it is a momentary exercise to prove who we are. We are made in the image of God. God is a spirit. We unite with His Spirit or we rebel. This is who we are that is more than the flesh in which we personally first became aware. This is why bigotry and racism are so tragic since the child of God is not that flesh. The crippled or diseased body is a different test of spirit. The child of God in these instances still chooses to unite with God or is unrighteous. We did not choose our flesh, or where we were born into this existence.
Who we are is more than the flesh in which we personally first became aware. This is why bigotry and racism are so tragic since the child of God is not that flesh. The crippled or diseased body is a different test of spirit. The child of God in these instances still chooses to unite with God or is unrighteous. We did not choose our flesh, or where we were born into this existence. Choice is the meaning of human life. Choice is the most precious ability for individuals. Choice is the person; it confirms, expresses their presence, their existence. There is no purpose for judgment without choice.
There would be nothing gained by the exercise that is human life without freedom of choice. The entirety of our existence is not the span of this flesh; it is a momentary exercise to prove who we are. We are made in the image of God. God is a spirit. We unite with His Spirit or we rebel.
Here is an interesting assessment for this day of his recognition. “Over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. Letter from a Birmingham City Jail (1963).