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The subject of nonviolence and Christianity is something that I was confronted with long ago and still struggle with to this day. I studied Scriptures and read authors like Thomas Merton trying to make sense of this whole issue. I had the discussion of “If someone broke into your house…what would you do?” It is a question which, by the way, will not help in the search for truth in nonviolence. It only serves to cause fear, which I have plenty to fend off as it is. The realities of Jesus and the cross lead me to believe that the only violence that needed be done on behalf of humanity took place on that cross. Jesus’ admonitions of forgiveness and submission could be explained away by banishing them to their first century context, but let’s be honest: that’s an endless and pointless argument. The only way to get to the core of the idea is to take it on directly, and that direct confrontation happened to me somewhat indirectly a few weeks ago.
I drove one of the people in our church to the Veteran’s clinic for a hearing test. I watched the people come in and out of the waiting room with melancholy on some faces, despair on others. I was intrigued at how transparent they were and how the waiting room became a place to share stories and issues, ailments and histories, frustrations and more frustrations. One particular man told me of how he has been waiting for a kidney for nearly three years, and carries a cell phone for that reason alone. “Just in case they need to get a hold of me,” he plainly stated. His skin and eyes spoke of weariness and heavy labor, which are qualities many older American males possess, but there was also a hint of desperation within his words. My heart began trying to work through the argument against war, yet it seemed insignificant against the living representation of its darker side.
His being there, as well as the man who was the reason for my being there, was connected to the fact that a battle had been waged between men that had altered and in damaged actual lives. Nonviolence, in the case of warfare, looks extremely different when you sit across from someone and pray they don’t ask you, “So what do you think of this thing in Eye-Rack?” If I were to reply, that I do not believe in war because the Jesus I follow teaches about forgiveness and the value of human life, I may have very well crushed another soul even more deeply than the very war that had redirected his entire existence. I may be giving myself too much credit, but all that was lost on the battlefields was for American punk kids like me. To say I’m sorry but I don’t believe you should have been there, and I have Jesus to back me up, would be an affront to compassion and perhaps even Christ himself. We could have proceeded, naturally from there, into the fact that God is neither American nor a firm believer in democracy, but that was neither here nor there.
Granted, this may seem melodramatic and a bit over the top, but the reality of our beliefs is that if they are to be true and authentic they must wear a human face. Someone will be affected by what we do or do not believe in. It doesn’t matter if you are a house church leader, an emergent church “contributor”, a carpenter, painter, etc. If there is a cause deep enough to found belief upon, it will affect another living being. The experience triggered in my mind pictures of my grandfather who passed away six years ago. A cook in the Navy and a beautiful man—what would he have thought about my belief and all those friends that he lost
As I left the clinic that day, I walked past several murals bearing the inscription “Remember 9/11” with a giant eagle, an American flag, and the names of former soldiers who had sought treatment at this particular clinic. September 11th was a chief example of what happens when human life intersects with belief. The beliefs of some took the lives of others. As I continue to think on nonviolence, as I would recommend anyone who claims to follow Jesus to do the same, I know that I will not think of war as a faceless act. Now, my friend who waits patiently for his kidney will be the one living for the cause which I cannot support. My fellow human being, my neighbor in Scripture talk, deserves my compassion before my beliefs.
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