Identifying the problem

There is a story about a young soldier in Italy during WWII who jumped into a foxhole just in time to avoid bullets screaming overhead. As he frantically dug to deepen the hole, he came across something metal, and brought up a crucifix, left by a former resident of the foxhole. A moment later, another leaping figure landed beside him as the shells exploded overhead. When the soldier got a chance to look, he saw that his companion was an Army chaplain. Holding out the crucifix, the soldier gasped, “Am I glad to see you! How do you work this thing?” Sometimes I feel like that soldier when I try to understand Jesus’ teachings. I want to ask an expert, “How do you work this thing?” Or, more appropriately in this situation, “How can I use this teaching of Jesus?”

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that those who are peacemakers will be happy. And He made it clear that we are not to resist an evil person, but turn the other cheek when struck, and give the person even more than he has taken forcibly. Taken literally, this teaching presents a real conundrum. It goes against all my natural self-preservation instincts, all that I have been taught since childhood, against common sense and against the whole nationalistic idea of fighting for freedom that has been so much a part of my public education and church experience. Is it any wonder that so many Christians ignore or spiritualize the message?

For me, the solution was a little of each. Spiritualize the sermon, making it talk about minor grievances instead of actual physical abuse. Emphasize the “eye for an eye” part of the instruction rather than the “turn the other cheek” part. But basically, I have just ignored it altogether. I have been taught to defend my home, family and country at all costs. I have believed those who have told me that to die for one’s country on the field of battle is the highest honor one can achieve in death. I have served in the armed forces and would have killed without regret if ordered to do so. I have many times said that if a person violates the sanctity of my home or the safety of my family and I have the means available, the violator will be carried away in a bag. And I meant every word of it.

But something has begun to change in my thinking. As I have reconsidered the SM, I find myself thinking that those were not biblical responses, but instead fleshly, worldly responses to fleshly, worldly threats. And it is not just the words of Christ that I find unnerving. As I look at Jesus’ life and death, I see Him modeling how we are to react when we are treated unjustly, unmercifully, viciously and inhumanely. We say that He lived a life that we are to emulate. Can we say less about how He reacted to those who wanted to (and eventually did) take His life?

In my last post, I mentioned a conversation with a Mennonite after our tour of Behalt in Berlin, Ohio. As we talked, I asked him if he was a pacifist. He said he would not call his position pacifism, but Christian nonviolence. That wasn’t good enough for me. I asked him point blank: If someone broke into your house and threatened your family with bodily harm, what would you do? His response not only gave me insight into his own journey with the SM, but also gives me some hope for continuing this quest I am on for a faith worthy of the name “kingdom citizen.” He said: “I’ll give you two answers: the first is what I would probably do; the second what I would want to do. The person who threatens my family, not my home, would have to reach them by killing me first. But I would want to be able to trust God, even in that situation, and not respond to violence with violence.”

So what would happen if I decided to live out this understanding of Jesus’ SM? What are the implications for my daily life? I’ll visit that set of problems in the next post.

Lord Jesus, show me how to live as a disciple of the Prince of Peace. Amen.

Next installment: What would happen if I really…?