April 7, 2013
About twelve and a half years ago, I was at a friend’s house and she introduced me to a man from her church who was helping her with household repairs. I still remember the kind and gentle spirit of this man, and I don’t know many people who have made a better first impression on me. When I was leaving, I noticed his pick-up truck and it had a bumper sticker that said something about being for gun ownership. Now although I disagreed with this man’s bumper sticker, I didn’t judge him. I remember thinking to myself that I could see how a nice, gentle soul like this would want to have something strong to back him up.
I think that one of the major reasons that so many of us want to hold on to the option of using guns is that we feel the need to protect that which is precious to us, whether it be our own sense of dignity and self-respect, the physical safety of loved ones and ourselves, or something else precious to us such as the land where we live. A friend of mine in college who was also really into guns referred to a gun as an equalizer. Because with a gun, people can protect themselves no matter how small they are, and no matter how big someone else is who might bully them otherwise. Well, coming back to that kind gentleman with the bumper sticker, I remember wondering if he had been bullied. And I felt compassion for him and to a large degree could relate to him. Although I’ve never owned a gun, I have taken several hard style martial arts, and perhaps for some of the same reasons this man wanted to be able to own a gun. And I feel especially protective with my daughter Sarah born this past June and with stories of tragic violence in places like Newtown and in Blacksburg, where I went to college at Virginia Tech.
So I get it. I’m not naïve. And when the leaders of the NRA say things like, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” and advocate for an armed officer in every school, it can sound very appealing to the safeguarding side of us. And the NRA correctly points out that our country is inconsistent with its gun policy. For example, it is common practice for secret service agents to carry guns to protect our president, and yet it is not common practice to have armed officers in our schools. So when we hear all of this, from a practical standpoint it often may seem to us that guns or other weapons are sometimes necessary in order to protect all that is precious to us. And those of us who hope and dream for a nonviolent world and who want to be nonviolent in the process of helping to create that kind of world may feel like we have don’t have a leg to stand on. Nonviolence may sound like a pipe dream.
Refusing to use guns or other forms of violence becomes even harder when you look at our Christian history. There are great people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who started off pacifist but ended up choosing to participate in violence to oppose what they saw as a greater violence. Most of you know this already, but for those of you who don’t, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany during the time leading up to World War II who ended up participating in a plot to kill Adolph Hitler but was caught and executed himself. I’ve had conversations with people connected to Church of the Saviour who have used Dietrich Bonhoeffer to back up why they aren’t pacifist. And there is no way to deny the horrendous evil in Nazi Germany of which Hitler was the leader. So there are so many reasons that we can feel the desire to depend on violence as a last resort and there are many tempting arguments used to justify the use of guns or other lethal instruments and devices in certain situations.
But then there is Jesus. Jesus, who lived the most beautiful life of unconditional love ever lived. Whenever we who are called to live and spread Jesus’ love and nonviolence feel lonely, we just need to remember how Jesus lived. As great a man as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, we don’t follow Dietrich Bonhoeffer; we follow Jesus. I respect Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but the choice to participate in the assassination plot on Hitler was not what Jesus would have done. If Jesus had ever killed or participated in a plot to kill, or asked others to kill, or carried weapons or instruments of death such as swords, or guns if he lived today, the good news he taught and showed us in the beautiful life that he lived would not be the same. It would be tainted and would not have shown us the true nature of God’s Love.
It comes down to this – Jesus had a different bottom line than most of us do. Jesus’ bottom line is not to be an equalizer, nor is it to guarantee our physical safety. The Romans were persecuting the Jewish people when he was alive and he wasn’t willing to be “a good guy with a gun” (or sword in his day) to protect them. Jesus was not that kind of Messiah. In fact if guaranteeing physical safety were Jesus’ bottom line, he probably would not have even been born, because almost as soon as he was born, Herod had all the children two years old or younger killed in the area in and around Bethlehem because he saw Jesus as a threat. So Jesus’ bottom line had to be different.
The way I see it, Jesus’ bottom line was and still is to show us the true nature of God’s unconditional, nonviolent love and to always be true to that. So, what does that mean for us as followers of Christ in responding to the violence of the world, such as the violence in Newtown, Connecticut? Well, there are no quick easy answers to that. But I do think it is helpful to look at fundamental principles of Jesus that relate to nonviolence, and I’m going to focus on two of those principles today, principles which I believe Jesus saw as indispensably necessary to loving others as God wanted him to.
The first principle is this: Jesus saw all human beings as sacred, and this includes the most wretched criminals, terrorists, and dictators we can think of. Our world tends to categorize people from a very young age as either winners and good guys, or losers and bad guys. The losers and bad guys get treated poorly, sometimes even to the point of seeing them as no longer part of the human family. But to Jesus, everyone was his brother and sister; everyone was someone he deeply loved and would never write off. In the kingdom of God that Jesus showed us, we are all royalty, each an indispensable and precious member of the human family. Now I’d like you to try a little exercise with me. I want you to think of a person you love so much and that is so precious to you that you would never want to see violence done to them no matter what they had done. Just close your eyes and soak that person in for a minute…now, open your eyes. Now suppose that person you just thought of started acting out of their own woundedness to the point where they became a violent criminal. If you take the way you love that person and multiply that by the biggest number you can think of, you’re just beginning to get a sense of how much Jesus loves everyone, including the most violent criminals. Jesus wants us to see and love everyone the same way, and if we see all people as sacred the way Jesus did, it will change the way we respond to violent situations.
This brings us to a second necessary principle of Jesus’ love that follows from the first – a willingness to die for others, but an unwillingness to kill or use any lethal weapons, not even to protect the closest of loved ones. Here’s an excerpt from the book The Christian Revolution written by Henry T. Hodgkin that relates to what I’m saying. Hodgkin was one of the founders of The International Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was talking about a friend of his who had recently been in a war. Hodgkin’s friend said, “Yes, I would wish to use all the spiritual force which I could command, but I should like to have a revolver in my pocket to use if the worst came to the worst.” Hodgkin then goes on to say that he disagrees with his friend and he ends with this: “The last resort in the mind of Jesus seems to have been the supreme appeal of forgiving love. If that failed, nothing else would succeed for the end he had in view. With a revolver in our pocket, so to speak, we miss the power to make the final appeal of good will.”
Gandhi put it this way: “Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence.” He also said that he was prepared to die but that there was no cause for which he was prepared to kill. And although Gandhi wasn’t Christian, he recognized Jesus as the greatest practitioner of nonviolence who ever lived.
So, anyone who follows the nonviolent way of Jesus has to be willing to take a bullet for another but to be unwilling to shoot one. For followers of Christ the last resort is not a gun, but rather to give our life for others. This doesn’t mean for us to be reckless with our lives, or to have a death wish, or a martyr complex, but we do have to be willing to die in Jesus’ way of the cross if we are called to do so.
To sum up what I have said to this point, I believe we are called to go to great lengths to love everyone and to prevent violence in ways consistent with the nonviolent way of Jesus, even being willing to die for others. But if there is a conflict between protecting what is precious to us and following the nonviolent way of Jesus – if it’s one or the other -- we must follow the nonviolent way of Jesus. And I can’t think of a bolder way for us to follow Jesus than to give up our dependence on gun protection. That goes for people who currently own guns, people who are contemplating buying guns since Newtown, people who sell guns, police officers, secret service agents, people in the military, everyone.
Now, although I feel very strongly about not using guns, that’s not the only reason I came here today. I have a broader vision I would like to share with you. To borrow the words of Martin Luther King, I have a dream. I dream that more and more people will commit to the radical nonviolence of Jesus, not just in one area of life but in all areas of life. Often times I have heard from other people, even peacemakers, that the kind of nonviolence I am advocating will never work, that it is unrealistic. When I hear that I am very saddened because they miss the most important point. I am deeply craving to connect with people who believe in living nonviolently in the way that Jesus did, whether or not it works or seems to work in the world’s eyes. Nonviolence can work on this planet. But that’s not the bottom line for why we need to do it. We need to choose nonviolence simply because it is the way of Jesus, simply because it is the way of unconditional love, simply because it is the way God intended us to live, period. We can’t force the world to change, but we can be a nonviolent presence in the midst of a violent world, the way Jesus was. And if enough people get inspired by the nonviolent presence and way of Jesus, if enough people’s hearts are touched, then and only then can God’s kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Several months ago I began to have this strong sense that at some point I need to call together a contemplative group of people centered on the nonviolence of Jesus. So I wrote down this list of principles that I would want a nonviolence group to commit to. I’ve already covered some of them today, but I just going to briefly read them now to give you a sense about this group I feel called to lead. There are 12 of them.
1) Jesus-centered (accepting Jesus as the authority on love and nonviolence)
2) No lethal physical force
3) No use of guns or other instruments of violence or death and no asking others to use them on our behalf
4) Nonviolent communication
5) A commitment to a loving and nonviolent spirit toward everyone which means seeing and treating all people, including those who are committing violence and criminal violence, as sacred brothers and sisters
6) A minimum of one hour in silent prayer daily
7) Intercessory prayer for all God’s creation, including our enemies and ourselves
8) Being mindful and prayerful during our daily activities
9) Doing our part to protect everyone from violence and criminal violence in a way true to the nonviolent principles of Jesus
10) Living a simple life that is people friendly, animal friendly, and environmentally friendly
11) A vegetarian or vegan diet
12) The humble realization that each of our parts in spreading love and nonviolence in the world is very small -- God and the higher power of God’s love does most of the work. We are just called to do our part to show Jesus’ nature in the world and that most of the time our part is simply to be a nonviolent presence of Jesus in whatever situation we are in
So these are the principles that I’m starting from, and I envision a contemplative group committed to these nonviolent principles. We will be primarily a prayer group, at least initially. I see centering prayer as crucial to this group because it gives God an open invitation to transform our hearts, to perform spiritual open-heart surgery on us. When this happens, we become better prepared to be a presence for Jesus’ love and nonviolence in the world.
Diane and I would love to have other like-minded people join us in this group we are starting. As I said earlier, the radical nonviolence of Jesus can be really scary, and it is so scary sometimes that it is nearly impossible to do without community support from people who share commonly held principles. Listen to your heart. Are you being called to live as a nonviolent follower of Jesus in the way I’ve talked about today? If so, let’s talk. And let’s all follow the nonviolent way of Jesus, come what may.
Song: “His Only Weapon Was Love”