home | board | compass | prayer | eCard

[Main Index]

07/31/2003 Entry: "Fanatics and Fanaticism"

Since Benediction raised the issue of fanaticism - I think I'll share in the area that I am most fanatical about - Christian Pacifism.

I am one of those strange persons who feel strongly that if you call yourself a Christian - then you should live a life of peace - and never use force against another human being. My reading of the Gospel writers show that Jesus called his followers to a way of life in which violence and division are overcome by sacrificial love. We must not return evil for evil, Jesus taught, but must return good for evil; we must not hate those who wrong us but must love our enemies and give freely to those who hate us. These themes in Jesus’ ministry were deeply rooted in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, and Jesus’ ministry an his sacrificial death were a continuation and a fulfillment of that tradition. Christian Pacifism is the response to a world of violence.

Eventually - when I share this aspect of my faith and life - someone without fail - will ask the fateful question that is supposed to stop all pacifists in their tracks. "What would you do if a criminal, say, pulled a gun and threatened to kill your wife? (or loved one - daughter, aunt, mother -- a female relative normally.) They normally stack the deck and add conditions like -- and if you also had a gun with one bullet, and you were assured of killing the attacker with no harm to your loved one. Sometimes they dump emotional baggage into the question as well and say the attacker is threatening to rape your loved one and you are there on the scene just in time to save her.

And without fail - they always expect pacifists to crumble under the weight of the assumptions. They expect us to understand that a measured amount of cleansing violence will make the world peaceful and beautiful. But they violate an important principle -- "Never do an evil so that a good might come."

So - how do I answer the question? I like John Howard Yoder's Answer in the essay, "What would you do?"

His short answer --

Common sense says that any person is limited in the capacity to observe and evaluate the facts by a particular point of view and the limits of vision; but Christian faith tells me, in addition, that my selfish mind, my impatient and retaliatition spirit, and my adrenalin positively warp the way I perceive the facts to make them reflect my self‑esteem and my desire to be independent of my Creator at the cost of my neighbor. Thus while common sense argues for modesty about my capacity to make valid decisions by myself, the Christian understanding of sin goes well beyond that to call me to repent of the very idea that I might make a decision completely on my own.

The real temptation of good people like us is not the crude the crass, and the carnal. The really refined temptation, with which Jesus himself was tried, is that of egocentric altruism. It is being oneself the incarnation of a good and righteous cause for which others may rightly be made to suffer. It is stating one's self‑justification in the form of a duty to others.

I do not know what I would do if some insane or criminal person were to attack my wife or child, sister or mother. But I know that what I should do would be illuminated by what God my Father did when his "only begotten Son" was being threatened. Or by what Abraham, my father in the faith, was ready to sacrifice out of obedience; Abraham could ready himself to give up his son because he believed in the resurrection. It was "for the sake of the joy that was set before him" that Christ himself could "endure the cross."

My readiness‑not in the contemplation of my moral strength but in the nature of the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ‑to accept that kind of love as my duty and privilege is founded in no craving for self‑confidence, no pious enthusiasm, no heroism, no masochism. It is founded in the confession that he who gave his life at our hands was at one and the same time the revelation of that true humanity which is God's instrument in the world.

Thanks John for the reminder.