“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword!”
—- Matthew 10: 34
Christians do all kinds of biblical and theological gymnastics to justify war and forceful coercion and violence, and never mind that Jesus was clearly a pacifist and that Paul and the early Christians were pacifists. In fact, it wasn’t until 300 years after Christ that Christians and Constantine merged church and state, initiating 2,000 years of some really violent and ugly Christian history.
All too many Christians try to justify violence and force by pointing out that Jesus cleaned out the temple and ran off the moneychangers with a whip. But nowhere in that scripture does Jesus physically hurt anyone. So when that justification for violence collapses, Christians point to Jesus saying he did not come to bring peace. But that scripture doesn’t hold up in trying to justify a butt-kicking Jesus either.
Jesus, as one of my theology profs used to say, was no Tiny Tim tipoeing through the tulips. Or as Dorothy Sayers put it, “Whatever the peace of Jesus, it was not a peace of amiable indifference.” Jesus was an activist, an in-your-face pacifist for sure. But there’s no question but what he was the Prince of Peace and the sensitive soul that we see weeping with compassion in the gospel. But he was a man on a mission for peace and was anything but amiably indifferent to humanity’s inhumanity toward humanity. He never said “do not make enemies,” but rather to love our enemies. He made some terribly nasty enemies who tortured him (don’t get me started on American/Christian justification for torture), and yet asked his Father to forgive them.
Me, I consider myself an almost pacifist. “Almost,” because pure, unadulterated pacifism ultimately collapses under the weight of love of neighbor. Standing by and doing nothing to stop violence would be cold and cruel comfort to someone or some peoples being slaughtered. But as I always say here, I’m for war and violence as an absolute last resort, and haven’t seen many wars lately that were waged as anything like the last resort. Certainly not the invasion of Iraq, which couldn’t begin to be justified by any measure of moral or ethical standards and least of all by any traditional Christian definition of a “just war.”
The kazillion people of the world who claim to be Christians could stamp out evil with the sheer force of their numbers if they but lived by the gospels they purport to trust in. Active non-violence is hardly mushy stuff, as MLK and Gandhi and so many other aggressive peacemakers have demonstrated.
But we love and adore our war heroes. Our peace heroes, not so much.
All that said, click onto this link for more on Matthew 10:34 and the kind of sword of which Jesus spoke.
And visualize world peace, because as the Good Book says, “without a vision the people perish.”
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you should, yes!
thanks
Enjoyed this post!
Regarding the cleansing of the Temple: I’ve read that, to regard this Scripture in its proper historical context, we should understand that, in the 1st century (and many others), a whip was foremost a tool for animal herding. And Jesus would have used the crack of the whip to herd the animals out of the Temple. The whip would have been a noise-maker, not a weapon.
And, of course, no where in the Scripture is there any indication that any people were harmed. If anyone had been harmed, then surely the authorities who executed Jesus would have cited this episode against him.
The person who seeks to justify violence must bring his or her own worst assumptions to this text. Whereas, the overall message and context of the New Testament invites us to accept the Temple scene at face value — as yet another non-violent event in the life of Jesus.
Exactly right about the whip background on this. People forget that these were very primitive, agrarian times; people had animals and whips, not pet dogs and cats. Everything in the bible has to be understood from the context and background of 2,000 years ago yet people still want to use it to justify Jesus whipping people. That, and the scriptures about the sword taken out of context are usually the ones they try to use to justify Jesus as some kind of two-fisted fighter or even a warrior. The sword is a metaphor for people and families dividing all over the bible and especially in the gospels. He was a non-violent pacifist whose words he used as a sharp, sword-like weapon.
I grew up in the Methodist Church. It was a long journey to Christian pacifism. Just started a new resource blog on the topic.
Well your writings are always interesting, Michael, and we do seem to share a theological POV, at least in broad strokes, and certainly in our agreeing that Jesus was a pacifist anyway you slice him or dice him. As for me, however, I just can’t go pacifist all the way. Just seems to me that pacifism always, always collapses under the weight, ultimately, of having to use force to protect the innocents. And there is the whole “love of neighbor” argument to be made for protecting innocents. I suppose I am more comfortable being a pacifist of the genuinely “Just War” vein; but then,I have to admit that all the traditional “Just War” theories have rarely been honored in practice. And as for individual pacifism, I’m like fellow raw Texan Stanley Haurwas–surely the most influential radical pacifist of our times–who says: “I have to be a pacifist because I’m such a violent son of a bitch.” Oh well, I’m still on the endless journey and seeking, and yearning for the light of greater pacifism. Grace & Peace at you and Happy Thanksgiving.