Christians and non-violence
Mohandas K. Gandhi marveled at the fact that Jesus said "turn the other cheek." This we all know. But we may not all know that Gandhi went on to say that he didn't know of one Christian who ever took those words seriously. Not that, nor Jesus' injunction against capital punishment, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." He also noted that Jesus' words calling all Christians to be peacemakers were largely ignored.
Here is how he put it: "Why is it that only non-Christians take Jesus' words about non-violence seriously?"
Good question. Hmm. Perhaps it's because after a million years of attempting to solve problems with violence we are used to the familiarity of our chosen darkness.
I take the time to write this because it's my sense that we, as a species, are liking that old familiar darkness less and less. I may be dreaming here, but I'm sensing that we are coming to realize more and more the impotence of violence when it comes to solving problems, the kind of problems we hear so much of today as they spread around the globe. Look at Iraq. For that matter, look at Lebanon.
If you've heard the report I heard from Israel concerning the recent war in Lebanon you know what I'm talking about. The Israeli army, the best trained best equipped army in the world, found itself powerless to deal with Hezbolah. They might as well have been tied and gagged as they went out to war.
This was bad news for armies everywhere. We just happen to live in a time when old fashioned conventional armies face rag-tag, but well-armed militias directed by cell phones, who refuse to wear uniforms or march in straight lines. It's a new world but not everyone has gotten the message yet.
That's the down-side. But there's an upside to this, too. We who are sick of violence have recently been given a vision of the winsome power of Jesus's teaching about refusing to return violence for violence. It's the legacy of every one of us who call ourselves Christian, and yet only sects like the Amish take it seriously. And they have shown us it's remarkable power.
Half the mourners at the funeral of the man who took the lives of five little girls in the Lancaster County Amish community were Amish. They expressed forgiveness of the shooter (abhorring the act but not the actor) and viewed the wife of the shooter and her children as victims themselves. They surrounded her with love. They went out of their way to assure her that she would be welcome to stay in the community.
I found myself touched most deeply by an essay of Anne Taylor Fleming aired last week on "The Lehrer News Hour" that my wife brought to my attention. Here is a small portion of that — "In a world gone mad with revenge killings, and sectarian violence, chunks of the globe self-immolating with hatred, this was something to behold, this insistence on forgiveness. It was so strange, so elemental, so other-worldly.
This, the Amish said, showing us the tender face of religion at a time and in a world when we are so often seeing the rageful face — this was Jesus' way and they had Jesus in them, not for a day an hour, not just in good times but even in the very worst"
She pointed out that, ironically, it was the Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who understood best the power of Jesus's teaching about forgiveness. Where so many believe that an act of violence requires another act of violence in return, the genius of Jesus's teaching is that it frees us from this mindless dictum.
Fleming continues:
"We have seldom seen this in action. So many tribes and sects in a froth of revenge from Darfur to Baghdad, and here in this country so many victims and victim's families crying out in our court houses for revenge.
To this the Amish have offered a stunning example of the freedom that comes with forgiveness, a reminder that religion need not turn lethal or combative. I for one, as this week ends, stand in awe of their almost unfathomable grace in grief."
We needn't romanticize the Amish. They still shun one another from time to time. Like the rest of us, they have their own blind-spots. Still, the media coverage of this sad event may have been the best advertisement for Christianity since European Christians rescued thousands and thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in World War II. Heaven knows we are dying for this kind of news.
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland's First Presbyterian Church.
