Kevin, thanks for sharing your thoughts. My next post will be on defending one's family through the use of deadly force. I may quote your comment to illustrate how strongly some feel about this issue.
I will say, on the top of "equity," before you write that off as "racist," you might want to consider Paul's use of the word, "ἰσότης" in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15. This is the word translated, "fairness," which means, according to every lexicon I have, "equity" or "equality." Christians who have an abundance are commanded to care for those who do not have enough, so that there is "fairness" or "equity" or "equality" in the church. The goal is that no one has too much and no one has too little.
2 Corinthians 8:13–15 (ESV)
13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness 14 your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. 15 As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.”
I have come to this same conclusion over the last several years. It’s disturbing to me how prevalent the gun culture is among Christians. I expect you’re going to get a lot of pushback on this one. I appreciate your willingness to take this on!
I'm teaching Matthew 5:33-48 tonight, so this is very timely! I was bringing up non-violence as a Christian principle but I do not have time to fully break it down. I like to include supplementary material at the end of my slides so I'll definitely be including this!
Just finish reading “Sophie Scholl and the White Rose”. Sophie, her brother, Hans, and others were young Christian resistors to Nazism in Germany during WWII. Sophie, Hans, and others were caught and executed for their Christian witness.
“There many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Jesus was the originator of aggressive nonviolent resistance. Where traditional wisdom urges us to react in kind, the upside down gospel reveals how we can achieve better outcomes through shaming our oppressors with love.
Thank you Kevin for your service, love, and work that makes our world safe and better. In no way do I judge you or anyone else - this is reserved for God and certainly not knuckleheads like myself.
I do accept the criticism that many of us live in peace because a few choose not to. My sheltered existence makes me naive and is one of many reasons my view is flawed.
While I have never been put into a situation where violence was a consideration, my family life is full of times where I’ve practiced deescalation. While our nature is to escalate, I’ve found radically pursuing peace continuously in the chain of choices produces better outcomes.
I’ve made many (!) mistakes and don’t have all the answers for myself little alone others. I do trust Jesus. I trust the Kingdom will be peace and that we are its facilitators here on earth. I also trust Wes and am eager for him to speak wisdom into my life. I hope both of you will show me how to better love like Jesus.
“a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3:8 ESV
It’s true.
When we bombed Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin the free world demanded unconditional surrender. 140,000 people died in four days of Agust 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The demand was unconditional surrender. Why? Nations led by evil leaders cannot bomb others like Pearl Harbor or torpedo cruise ships or tankers carrying people
Today Japan and Germany are free and are our allies and do not have armies.
Reread the scripture above. It’s true. The Third Reich and Emperor of Japan and his defense minister own guilt of the innocent, not the people who fought and bombed for freedom.
The same can be said of the IDF and Gaza and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah today.
God never said do not kill. The commandment is do not murder. All murdering is taking an innocent life. Killing to stop murdering is what the Scripture is talking about.
God said to kill all when taking the Promised land, because the children and infants were innocent. They did not carry the guilt of sin. I fully expect to meet those innocent in heaven.
Nothing is more frustrating than explaining 9/11 to the nieve.
Haven't read Huratos book...but similar can be found on The Patient Fermant of the Early Church or most books about the church...and similar arguments were used back then against NT ethics.."It's not practical"..and so the church became more "liberal"
Hey Wes, thank you for this post and for much of the other content you create. I’m looking forward to the other posts in this series. This is an issue I’ve wrestled with for years now and have not yet felt fully settled. My current position is essentially one of nonviolence, but some tensions remain that I would like to share for any feedback you have to offer:
Jesus’ teachings on love for enemies do not, for me, necessarily lead to a nonviolent position. I do not find it very difficult to affirm his teachings while understanding, at least in the abstract, how using force to defend the innocent and helpless may at times bring glory to God. Love for enemies has roots in the Old Testament (Proverbs 25:21-22), and yet there were numerous moments where Israel killed their enemies. This would suggest to me that nonviolence is not inherent to the nature of love, and therefore not inherent to the nature of God.
Jesus of course proclaims a kingdom that is not of this world, and it is engaged in a different kind of warfare. But if it is true that Jesus’ teachings do not necessarily lead to nonviolence, then I am not sure that being a member of Jesus’ kingdom precludes the possibility of using force under certain circumstances.
All of this thinking gets strongly challenged by the testimony of the early church, which is unanimous in its non-violent position for centuries after Jesus (as you mention here). Furthermore, they often anchor their position in these very teachings of Jesus. I find it difficult to believe they got this issue wrong across the broad from the generation after the apostles onwards. I’m certainly open to the early church sometimes being wrong and sometimes on a large scale, but such unanimity on such a central issue of the faith is hard to explain apart from its connection to the apostles and to Jesus himself.
This thinking gets further challenged by stories I hear, read, and watch from veterans who have served in some of our nations greatest conflicts. Loving someone while gunning them down seems immensely difficult. Perhaps not impossible, but difficult. I pray I never have to learn this for myself. Hatred for the enemy truly seems the most effective way forward for soldiers in such circumstances, but of course that is not an option for followers of Christ.
So, these are the tensions I have and where my unease lies. I hope I’m making sense. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated. Again, I look forward to the rest of the series.
Thank you for sharing, Kevin. Thank you also for your service. I think it is very appropriate for Christians advocating or leaning towards nonviolence to recognize the great sacrifices others have made for their countries and communities. No disrespect to them should ever be communicated in these conversations, only a different understanding of what it means to live out Jesus’ teachings.
Lee, thank you for sharing your thoughts and the tension you feel around this issue. I think there are a lot of us in exactly that same predicament. I think you expressed it very well.
For me, and it seems for many of the early Christians, it is not necessarily just the teachings of Jesus in isolation that bring about this conclusion, but his teachings in fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. The idea that the age of the Messiah's reign would be one in which God's people would no longer need to engage in warfare is fulfilled by Jesus, because he has freed us from fear of death. Because death is no longer a threat to us, we no longer have to kill in order to defend against it; just as Jesus did not kill in order to defend himself from death. Just as Jesus was raised, so we will be raised. If we know this is true, we can now turn our weapons into farming tools.
I truly believe the Resurrection changes everything. There was a time for war, certainly, but now is the time for peace, because the King is reigning on his throne and has freed us from the reign of sin and death. Though, as you said, there was instruction for loving enemies in the Hebrew Scriptures, we don't see it's ultimate fulfillment until Jesus goes to the cross for us, who were enemies of God, and instructs us to take up our crosses and follow him.
Again, thanks for your thoughts. I definitely feel that tension as well. God bless!
Thanks for your reply, Wes. The resurrection certainly changes everything, and I appreciate the reminder to situate Jesus’ teachings within the messianic prophecies. I’m not yet sure complete nonviolence is the only conclusion that can be reached in light of these things, but it is definitely a formidable one, and again the one the early church reached. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series…perhaps it can ease some of my tension!
Much of the Biblical teaching about peace has been misinterpreted, especially in prophecy. Isaiah foretold the unprecedented peace within the church between Jews and Gentiles. Most often, Biblical peace is spiritual - reconciliation between sinners and God. This is the sense in which Jesus is the Prince of Peace. From this reconciliation with God stems the inward peace mentioned in a few texts.
"Traditional" views of Christian writers in the centuries following the NT are often given more credit than they deserve. The do not tip the scales toward one side or the other in doctrinal issue. Their contribution is to simply provide a glimpse into the views and controversies of their day and the history of certain practices, which must always be interpreted within the dramatically different cultural setting of their time.
I understand why you've made this choice personally. I don't agree with trying to compel others to adopt the same view by proof-texting it into a doctrinal matter.
Scott, thanks so much for reading and for sharing your feedback. I will try to work your objection into my future posts. The hermeneutical lens through which your reading the prophets is definitely a perspective I had not considered for this series, but it's definitely something that should be included.
I was committed to total nonviolence early on, but I've since gone the other direction. My biggest reason for this is that if I took other sermon on the mount statements as literally as pacifists take "turn the other cheek," then I wouldn't have a bank account, I could literally not take an oath in court of law, I would have had to gouge out my eyes and cut off my hands a long time ago, I would never ever judge anyone, and I would hate my father and mother, and I would literally have to give money to every internet scam that tells me to give. Just as those conclusions miss the point of those teachings of Jesus and would represent the gospel as needlessly disturbing, so I now hold that Jesus' comment on dealing with a (back handed?) slap to the right cheek is more about vengeance (the lex talionis) and being a peacemaker than it is about the violence necessary to stop a rapist from assualting a woman in a dark alley or a Christian policeman stopping a school shooter from murdering a classroom of five year olds. I now believe to take "turn the other
cheek" in an ultra literal way in those types of situations is an unfortunate misapplication of Jesus' teachings and just not what He was talking about. In the same way, Jesus' command to "love your enemies" does not supersede love for the innocent and those who are under our protection. Jesus wasn't covering what to do in every difficult dilemma; He was mainly just saying that we need to go beyond loving the people we like if we are to be like God.
On the one hand I am against the 'god and guns' mindset prevalent in the church within the USA, but on the other hand I just do not believe the New Testament forbids judicious violence in all cases.
Thanks for this reframing. You may have interest in my own musings on war and nonviolence from personal experiences in Vietnam and Laos at tituspeachey.substack.com
Thanks...While I come from a strong pacifist religious base (Mennonite), I've discovered through counseling on the GI Rights Hotline that there are many paths to pacifism, and some of them originate in the horror of war itself. But I like the insistence that Christians need only look to their roots to find it.
Thanks. I have definitely seen their work and will definitely be addressing some of those arguments in future posts.
Kevin, thanks for sharing your thoughts. My next post will be on defending one's family through the use of deadly force. I may quote your comment to illustrate how strongly some feel about this issue.
I will say, on the top of "equity," before you write that off as "racist," you might want to consider Paul's use of the word, "ἰσότης" in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15. This is the word translated, "fairness," which means, according to every lexicon I have, "equity" or "equality." Christians who have an abundance are commanded to care for those who do not have enough, so that there is "fairness" or "equity" or "equality" in the church. The goal is that no one has too much and no one has too little.
2 Corinthians 8:13–15 (ESV)
13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness 14 your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. 15 As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.”
Looking forward to your thoughts. I read Sprinkle's Non-violence because you have previously referenced it.
I have come to this same conclusion over the last several years. It’s disturbing to me how prevalent the gun culture is among Christians. I expect you’re going to get a lot of pushback on this one. I appreciate your willingness to take this on!
I'm teaching Matthew 5:33-48 tonight, so this is very timely! I was bringing up non-violence as a Christian principle but I do not have time to fully break it down. I like to include supplementary material at the end of my slides so I'll definitely be including this!
Just finish reading “Sophie Scholl and the White Rose”. Sophie, her brother, Hans, and others were young Christian resistors to Nazism in Germany during WWII. Sophie, Hans, and others were caught and executed for their Christian witness.
This quote has stuck with me for years …
“There many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Jesus was the originator of aggressive nonviolent resistance. Where traditional wisdom urges us to react in kind, the upside down gospel reveals how we can achieve better outcomes through shaming our oppressors with love.
Thank you Kevin for your service, love, and work that makes our world safe and better. In no way do I judge you or anyone else - this is reserved for God and certainly not knuckleheads like myself.
I do accept the criticism that many of us live in peace because a few choose not to. My sheltered existence makes me naive and is one of many reasons my view is flawed.
While I have never been put into a situation where violence was a consideration, my family life is full of times where I’ve practiced deescalation. While our nature is to escalate, I’ve found radically pursuing peace continuously in the chain of choices produces better outcomes.
I’ve made many (!) mistakes and don’t have all the answers for myself little alone others. I do trust Jesus. I trust the Kingdom will be peace and that we are its facilitators here on earth. I also trust Wes and am eager for him to speak wisdom into my life. I hope both of you will show me how to better love like Jesus.
Amen!
“a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3:8 ESV
It’s true.
When we bombed Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin the free world demanded unconditional surrender. 140,000 people died in four days of Agust 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The demand was unconditional surrender. Why? Nations led by evil leaders cannot bomb others like Pearl Harbor or torpedo cruise ships or tankers carrying people
Today Japan and Germany are free and are our allies and do not have armies.
Reread the scripture above. It’s true. The Third Reich and Emperor of Japan and his defense minister own guilt of the innocent, not the people who fought and bombed for freedom.
The same can be said of the IDF and Gaza and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah today.
God never said do not kill. The commandment is do not murder. All murdering is taking an innocent life. Killing to stop murdering is what the Scripture is talking about.
God said to kill all when taking the Promised land, because the children and infants were innocent. They did not carry the guilt of sin. I fully expect to meet those innocent in heaven.
Nothing is more frustrating than explaining 9/11 to the nieve.
Haven't read Huratos book...but similar can be found on The Patient Fermant of the Early Church or most books about the church...and similar arguments were used back then against NT ethics.."It's not practical"..and so the church became more "liberal"
Hey Wes, thank you for this post and for much of the other content you create. I’m looking forward to the other posts in this series. This is an issue I’ve wrestled with for years now and have not yet felt fully settled. My current position is essentially one of nonviolence, but some tensions remain that I would like to share for any feedback you have to offer:
Jesus’ teachings on love for enemies do not, for me, necessarily lead to a nonviolent position. I do not find it very difficult to affirm his teachings while understanding, at least in the abstract, how using force to defend the innocent and helpless may at times bring glory to God. Love for enemies has roots in the Old Testament (Proverbs 25:21-22), and yet there were numerous moments where Israel killed their enemies. This would suggest to me that nonviolence is not inherent to the nature of love, and therefore not inherent to the nature of God.
Jesus of course proclaims a kingdom that is not of this world, and it is engaged in a different kind of warfare. But if it is true that Jesus’ teachings do not necessarily lead to nonviolence, then I am not sure that being a member of Jesus’ kingdom precludes the possibility of using force under certain circumstances.
All of this thinking gets strongly challenged by the testimony of the early church, which is unanimous in its non-violent position for centuries after Jesus (as you mention here). Furthermore, they often anchor their position in these very teachings of Jesus. I find it difficult to believe they got this issue wrong across the broad from the generation after the apostles onwards. I’m certainly open to the early church sometimes being wrong and sometimes on a large scale, but such unanimity on such a central issue of the faith is hard to explain apart from its connection to the apostles and to Jesus himself.
This thinking gets further challenged by stories I hear, read, and watch from veterans who have served in some of our nations greatest conflicts. Loving someone while gunning them down seems immensely difficult. Perhaps not impossible, but difficult. I pray I never have to learn this for myself. Hatred for the enemy truly seems the most effective way forward for soldiers in such circumstances, but of course that is not an option for followers of Christ.
So, these are the tensions I have and where my unease lies. I hope I’m making sense. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated. Again, I look forward to the rest of the series.
Thank you for sharing, Kevin. Thank you also for your service. I think it is very appropriate for Christians advocating or leaning towards nonviolence to recognize the great sacrifices others have made for their countries and communities. No disrespect to them should ever be communicated in these conversations, only a different understanding of what it means to live out Jesus’ teachings.
Lee, thank you for sharing your thoughts and the tension you feel around this issue. I think there are a lot of us in exactly that same predicament. I think you expressed it very well.
For me, and it seems for many of the early Christians, it is not necessarily just the teachings of Jesus in isolation that bring about this conclusion, but his teachings in fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. The idea that the age of the Messiah's reign would be one in which God's people would no longer need to engage in warfare is fulfilled by Jesus, because he has freed us from fear of death. Because death is no longer a threat to us, we no longer have to kill in order to defend against it; just as Jesus did not kill in order to defend himself from death. Just as Jesus was raised, so we will be raised. If we know this is true, we can now turn our weapons into farming tools.
I truly believe the Resurrection changes everything. There was a time for war, certainly, but now is the time for peace, because the King is reigning on his throne and has freed us from the reign of sin and death. Though, as you said, there was instruction for loving enemies in the Hebrew Scriptures, we don't see it's ultimate fulfillment until Jesus goes to the cross for us, who were enemies of God, and instructs us to take up our crosses and follow him.
Again, thanks for your thoughts. I definitely feel that tension as well. God bless!
Thanks for your reply, Wes. The resurrection certainly changes everything, and I appreciate the reminder to situate Jesus’ teachings within the messianic prophecies. I’m not yet sure complete nonviolence is the only conclusion that can be reached in light of these things, but it is definitely a formidable one, and again the one the early church reached. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series…perhaps it can ease some of my tension!
Much of the Biblical teaching about peace has been misinterpreted, especially in prophecy. Isaiah foretold the unprecedented peace within the church between Jews and Gentiles. Most often, Biblical peace is spiritual - reconciliation between sinners and God. This is the sense in which Jesus is the Prince of Peace. From this reconciliation with God stems the inward peace mentioned in a few texts.
"Traditional" views of Christian writers in the centuries following the NT are often given more credit than they deserve. The do not tip the scales toward one side or the other in doctrinal issue. Their contribution is to simply provide a glimpse into the views and controversies of their day and the history of certain practices, which must always be interpreted within the dramatically different cultural setting of their time.
I understand why you've made this choice personally. I don't agree with trying to compel others to adopt the same view by proof-texting it into a doctrinal matter.
Scott, thanks so much for reading and for sharing your feedback. I will try to work your objection into my future posts. The hermeneutical lens through which your reading the prophets is definitely a perspective I had not considered for this series, but it's definitely something that should be included.
I was committed to total nonviolence early on, but I've since gone the other direction. My biggest reason for this is that if I took other sermon on the mount statements as literally as pacifists take "turn the other cheek," then I wouldn't have a bank account, I could literally not take an oath in court of law, I would have had to gouge out my eyes and cut off my hands a long time ago, I would never ever judge anyone, and I would hate my father and mother, and I would literally have to give money to every internet scam that tells me to give. Just as those conclusions miss the point of those teachings of Jesus and would represent the gospel as needlessly disturbing, so I now hold that Jesus' comment on dealing with a (back handed?) slap to the right cheek is more about vengeance (the lex talionis) and being a peacemaker than it is about the violence necessary to stop a rapist from assualting a woman in a dark alley or a Christian policeman stopping a school shooter from murdering a classroom of five year olds. I now believe to take "turn the other
cheek" in an ultra literal way in those types of situations is an unfortunate misapplication of Jesus' teachings and just not what He was talking about. In the same way, Jesus' command to "love your enemies" does not supersede love for the innocent and those who are under our protection. Jesus wasn't covering what to do in every difficult dilemma; He was mainly just saying that we need to go beyond loving the people we like if we are to be like God.
On the one hand I am against the 'god and guns' mindset prevalent in the church within the USA, but on the other hand I just do not believe the New Testament forbids judicious violence in all cases.
Thanks for this reframing. You may have interest in my own musings on war and nonviolence from personal experiences in Vietnam and Laos at tituspeachey.substack.com
Thanks so much, Titus! I'll check it out!
Thanks...While I come from a strong pacifist religious base (Mennonite), I've discovered through counseling on the GI Rights Hotline that there are many paths to pacifism, and some of them originate in the horror of war itself. But I like the insistence that Christians need only look to their roots to find it.