Facing Racism

The Trump era has caused us to face the ugly specter of racism. No one wants to think of themselves as racist. When someone says "that's racist" let alone "you're being racist" or worst of all "you're a racist" our natural reaction is to deny and defend ourselves against the accusation. It's more than an accusation, it's a condemnation. Our response is to want to distance ourselves from people or groups that we see as racist, as if by doing that we could claim to be immune and untouched and pure. 

I recently came across a talk by David Gushee called "In the Ruins of White Evangelicalism" which he gave as the presidential address to the AAR. In the talk he said that the connection between Trump's base being racist and white evangelicals being the demographic most likely to support Trump made it an inescapable conclusion for him that racism was a major problem within evangelicalism. He says he is driven to the conclusion that evangelicals support Trump not in spite of his racism and cruelty, but because of it.

But the part that really impacted me was where he went from there. Although he had distanced himself from evangelicalism, he did not distance himself from its sin of racism. Instead he wondered how he, as a major voice within evangelicalism focusing on ethics, could have been blind to racism for all those years. His talk therefore was one of him confessing and repenting for what he called the sin of racism.

Calling racism a sin is interesting because it opens up a way to see racism that leads to self-reflection and growth. Let me unpack this. As Christians we should be familiar with the concept of confessing that we are sinners. We see this in the catechisms, but also in the Gospels, in the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector,

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector."

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. (Luke 18:11-14)

If we come at sin like the Pharisee, saying "I was a sinner before, but now I've repented and go to church and am saved and chosen. I thank God that I am not like those sinners outside of my church" then Jesus says we don't go away justified, even though we are trying to justify ourselves.  Growing up evangelical I heard statements like that made from the pulpit constantly. "Thank God we are not like those liberals, gays, woman's lib-ers, welfare queens, Muslims out there!" In other words, I heard messages of homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and racism constantly growing up evangelical.

Of course as an ex-vangelical it's just as easy for me to say "Thank God that I am not like those racist Trump supporting evangelicals over there." It's easy to write of racism as a problem "over there" in evangelicalsm, or in the South. In fact, it's really common for progressives and liberals in an attempt to "out-woke" each other to condemn others for the sins of racism and white privilege. People will be shamed and ostracized on social media, calls will go out for people to be fired and shunned for some insensitive comment or act. In that atmosphere of self-righteous progressivism, it's really no wonder people react defensively. They act like they are being attacked and condemned because... well, they are. Progressives see themselves as champions of compassion, but boy can they be merciless.

Jesus said we should remove the log from our eye before we take the splinter from our brother's eye. What if I looked at my own life before I became the progressive moral police of social media? Maybe if I did, I could approach others with the same mercy I know I need. Maybe if I did I could have conversations rather than accusations. Maybe I as a progressive Christian need to take the stance of the tax collector in Jesus' parable and say, "God, have mercy on me, a racist!" What if instead of seeking to prove myself innocent of racism, I assume that just as I am a sinner, just as I know that I can do things that hurt others, I am open to the idea that I have blind spots in me, I have racial bias, and am therefore open to seeing this and becoming sensitized to it so I can do better.

I also feel pulled to look back at my evangelical past and try to make sense of why it is that evangelicals today so overwhelmingly support Trump, as Gushee says, not in spite of his racist cruelty, but because of it. At the same time, evangelicals would all deny that they are racist. I think that's due to a misconception of what racism is. We think of racism as the stereotypical Southern plantation owner in the Hollywood film. We think that if we don't have malicious intent in our hearts, that we are not racist. But the thing is, people who do evil and hurtful things, even horrific things, never think they are doing evil. They think they are doing good. That's why the whole focus of "but I don't have any racism in my heart!" misses the point, and blinds us to the racial blinders that lead to do cruel and hurtful things.

What's behind racism is a reaction to fear that causes us to be tribal, to protect our tribe, and if "they" suffer as a result, well that's just too bad. It comes from perceiving some other group as being a threat, and reacting in fear to that threat. Fear is the opposite of empathy and compassion. As Gushee says in his address, American white evangelicalism today has really become "U.S. white tribalist religion" characterized by "aggrieved white conservatives." That stance of "aggrieved whites" of course is the constant mantra of  Fox News, and it very much echoes what I heard from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday, a message of fear and resentment towards "those sinners out there" who were a threat to our family, our way of life.

That tribalist fear stance is very much tied to the tendency in evangelicalism to justify violence as good and righteous. Evangelicals are more likely than just about any other demographic to support violence as a means to good, whether that's supporting torture, war, capital punishment. When you tie that propensity to justifying violence and cruelty together with demonizing other groups, fearing them, seeing them as a threat, it seems inevitable that when little black boys are shot by cops, evangelicals stress that "blue lives matter" and when hispanic children are traumatically ripped from their parents and held in concentration camps, white evangelicals feel the need to justify and support this.

If you feel threatened, it's a natural human reaction (Paul would call it a fleshly reaction) to justify a harsh, merciless response. 

The two poisons of racism and violence go hand in hand, specifically violence understood as a means to good, and racism as a fearful otherizing and thus dehumanizing of a person or group. Of the two of these, I want to argue the most important one to address is racism. I do not want, therefore, to propose a Christian solution of total abstinence from violence. That is, I am not arguing that the police should not be armed, we should not have an army, or even that a person cannot defend themselves in their home. I say this, primarily because it is utterly impracticable. If we want to take steps towards reducing violence, towards less cruelty, towards more compassionate way I living together, I don't think abstinence from violence is the key.

Rather, I want to argue that the core problem here has to do with the otherizing or dehumanizing of a person or group. When we see a person or group as a threat, as "other" it is easy to justify cruel or inhuman treatment. We see them as a monster, an animal. If we instead saw them as our brother, our sister, our child, as part of us, we would seek to deal with them in more humane ways. This would lead to a reduction in violence, a reduction in cruelty and hurt. We would find other ways because we value the other as we value our own. That's something that Jesus was constantly preaching, widening our circle to include loving the sinner, loving the enemy.

Conservatives need to not see liberals and people of color as the evil other, and progressives similarly need to not see white evangelicals as the evil other. Isn't that what "love your enemy" means? That is, it does not mean they are not your enemy, but that you should act lovingly towards them nevertheless. We should see them as a part of us. Again, that does not mean we tolerate people doing or saying hurtful things, but it does mean dealing with them as we would deal with someone beloved, which would lead us to seeking ways to deal with things restoratively and humanely.

The End of the World As We Know It - Part 2: The Time of Crisis

In part 1 of this series I discussed how we can deal with the reality of an imperfect Bible, and even more how we can find God in that imperfect book. It's about moving away from feeling like we always need to find an explanation to justify things (which even left-leaning evangelical intellectuals have a penchant for), and how it's so hard for us to accept that the Bible -- just like us -- is an imperfect vessel where Christ indwells. So rather than always seeking to explain why that vessel is not flawed, I propose we learn how to find Christ in the middle of imperfection. Isn't that the whole idea of the incarnation?

The specific topic that was the springboard for that discussion was eschatology, and let's face it... eschatology can get really weird with all of its dragons and demons, really yucky with all of its talk of blood and torment, and really flaky with all the doomsday cults. It's not surprising that lots of Christians just politely ignore the whole thing.

While we might wish that eschatology could just be "left behind," (ba-dum-bum), I think if we look hard enough and deep enough, we will find that Matthew's Gospel, with its apocalyptic focus, has something to say about the end times that, far from being irrelevant, contains a profoundly good, life-changing message that we desperately need to hear in our time, right now. 

Matthew is writing at a time of crisis, a time where the people all felt that things had reached a critical mass and something had to give. Many feel that we are in a time of crisis today. Trump's campaign capitalizes on those feelings and fears. At the RNC Trump began his acceptance speech by saying "Our Convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation" before launching into a long dark litany of signs of the end that he promised to rescue us all from.

In these times of crisis, it is common for people to say that the morality and values we would ordinarily hold to should justifiably be abandoned. We can see that throughout history, and we can see it now as well. This has been the argument of those evangelicals who support Trump. They are aware that he is morally the polar opposite of a family values guy, and further aware that he is not someone who will promote peace or work to resolve conflict. Quite the contrary, he is someone who they hope will use extreme strongman tactics to "make America great," such as banning all Muslims from the country, killing and torturing the families of suspected terrorists, breaking off our NATO treaty agreements unless we "get paid" by other countries, using more nukes, revoking the freedom of the press to say anything critical of him, and a host of other things one commonly associates with the behavior of a demagogue or tyrannical dictator. Those are considered a necessary evil that is warranted in the present crisis. Indeed these evangelicals do not see these as a problem to be tolerated, but as strength and virtue. They see violence as good and trust in it as the means to being "saved" in the crisis.

This all echoes the messianic hopes people held at the time of Jesus.  Then as now, in a time of crisis people look for a strongman, a savior who will rescue us with his mighty sword. That was the messianic hope, too. They were expecting for the messiah to be a warrior-king who would kill the enemy Gentiles. They did not expect a servant-Lord who would die for sinners and offer salvation to both Jews and enemy Gentiles. The religious leaders did not expect Jesus, and it seems that many evangelical leaders are looking for a different kind of messiah today as well.

In times of crisis, the common response is to feel the need for extreme actions in response to the crisis. As Jerry Falwell Jr. put it in his speech at the RNC, "We are at a crossroads where our first priority must be saving our nation."  Consequently, as he clarified in an interview, social issues, personal morality (not to mention basic human decency) all fall to "the last ones on the list - very bottom." The basic logic here is that these things that we would normally see as immoral and hurtful are all okay in the crisis.

What is unique about Matthew's Gospel is that he proposes that our response to crisis should be the opposite -- we should not seek to justify extreme and violent responses, we should not seek to justify throwing decency and morality out the door in the state of emergency. Instead, Matthew stresses, over and over again, that the way we will save ourselves from the coming crisis is by exemplifying the way of radical love and forgiveness in the face of evil and oppression. We need to overcome evil, not by returning harm for harm, but by loving our enemies. That's the message we find repeated over and over in Matthew's Gospel. In the crisis we should not justify being less good, rather we must rise to become more good. Michelle Obama summed this up well when she shared the advice she gives to her children, "When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high."

Viktor Frankl had the opportunity to observe people from a place of profound crisis -- as a prisoner  inside of a Nazi concentration camp. There the psychologist observed that a time of crisis has the potential to bring out the best in people, and the absolute worst. He witnessed people become both angels and demons, ordinary people who in the time of crisis would either show incredible acts of selfless love and kindness or exhibit the most inhuman cruelty. We kid ourselves when we think these were monsters who do these evil things. A mother can show heroic love and "go high," but a mother can also justify unspeakable cruelty in the name of protecting her family. Frankl observed both in Auschwitz. The nature of evil is almost always one where the person committing the atrocity feels justified in their actions.

We do truly stand at a crossroads, a crossroad of the soul. In the time of crisis we have a choice to make. Will we sink to justifying hurt to protect our self interest, or will we rise to show grace, mercy, and goodness in the middle of all the ugliness and fear? In that sense the gospel is deeply personal, but it is not only personal, but also social and political. The central message Jesus preached was the "kingdom of God" -- a term whose meaning is perhaps better conveyed today as "God's politics" that is, God's way of organizing life together. The values and way Jesus showed us do not stop when we get to the political or public sphere. They are not intended to be tossed aside when things get tough. As Jesus says on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel, 

"You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.

This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Mt 5:43-48, MSG)

Speaking from a time of crisis himself, Matthew has an important message that we need to hear today in our time of crisis. He calls us to respond in the way of Jesus, a way characterized by grace, forgiveness, and enemy love. When they go low, you go high.

Christ vs the Constitution: Why Christians Do Not Have the Right to Bear Arms

The U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms. The basic assumption is that you have a right to defend yourself and your loved ones from attackers. It is essentially a right to kill in self-defense. From a legal perspective this interpretation was held up by the recent 2008 Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller which held that “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm... and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

My purpose here is not to get into the legal particulars, but instead to speak of the felt values that people have associated with this. That is, Americans have a strongly held belief that they have a right to defend themselves with a gun, that it is good and right to do so. What I want to question is, is that “right” compatible with Christ?

As I’m sure you are aware, Jesus is pretty famous for saying just the opposite, that people should not defend themselves when attacked, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Mt 5:38).

What’s important to understand here is the context into which Jesus is making this statement. He is speaking to a people who, like us today, assumed that it was good and right to defend themselves. Jesus refers to the Torah, which played a similar role for people that our Constitution does today, and with his words, “but I tell you...” directly contradicts its affirmation of violent retaliation for a wrong. That is, Jesus is not simply saying this out of the blue, he is addressing the deeply held moral values that people have and challenging them. Specifically he is addressing the deeply held moral value of the right to retaliate when attacked.

We can see this in the fact that his own disciples were armed (Lk 22), and that they used these weapons when they were attacked (Mt 26). Like their contemporaries, their assumption was that it was good and right to defend oneself against an attack. This was the beginning religious/moral assumption of the time that Jesus spoke into and challenged. It is the same religious/moral assumption held by Americans today. The words of Jesus step on our toes, just like they stepped on the toes of the people he originally preached to. If Jesus were speaking today he might say “You have heard it said ‘you have the right to bear arms’ but I say to you...”

What does it mean to take the words of Jesus seriously here? One place where we need to begin is by recognizing that there clearly is a conflict. Jesus is directly challenging our moral assumption that we have a right to kill in self-defense. If we pretend otherwise, we are seriously kidding ourselves. We need to face that challenge head-on. There is a conflict between Christ and the Constitution. Jesus knew this was not a popular message, and that it was hard to take. That’s probably why he said the road was narrow that leads to life, and broad that leads to destruction. The question for us as American Christians is, will we continue to take that broad road? Are you willing to take the narrow road of Christ? How will you and I respond to Jesus here?

One approach that will not do is to find some proof-text verse that allow us to ignore the teachings of Jesus here. This cheap approach is also used to justify people ignoring the challenging things Jesus says about riches, and frankly to ignore pretty much everything Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount. People will find some text, like Jesus’ statement “if you don’t have a sword, sell our cloak and buy one” (Lk 22:36), pull it out of context and take it to justify what they already want to do, ignoring everything else Jesus says on the subject. As SNL’s “church lady” used to say “Well, isn’t that convenient?” It’s an especially lame way of reading the Bible that allows one to keep doing whatever they want, rather than letting the way of Jesus actually shape their lives. 

The approach of the early church here is telling. They interpreted the teaching of Jesus quite literally, and when they were attacked and killed they refused to defend themselves. Instead they were martyred. The word martyr means “witness.” and these martyrs saw their death as bearing witness to the Lordship of Jesus in their lives. They saw their refusal to take up arms as an expression of faithfulness to Jesus and his way. Again, it’s important to keep in mind that this was not something everyone did. The assumption then was the same as it is today, that people should defend themselves. The early church broke with religious and cultural tradition here. Their answer to the question “What would you do if someone attacked you?” is simply “I would die.” If that is not a hard pill to swallow, I don’t know what is.

Now, I am not proposing that we take the same literalistic approach of the martyrs. I think actually that the early church -- as much as it is romanticized by some – actually got a lot of stuff wrong. In particular, they ended up glorying suffering, rather than providing an alternate means to end it. I believe we need to go beyond simply forbidding retaliation, and to dig deeper to find an alternate means to resolve conflict based on the teachings of Jesus.

The bottom line here is that as a Christian, as someone who calls Jesus Lord, you simply do not get to appeal to your “right” to kill someone with your gun in self-defense. You lose that right when you give your life to Christ. It is really that simple. To hold on to your gun as Charlton Heston says, until it is “pulled from your cold dead hand” is to hold on to your sin, just as much as it would be to hold on to your riches or hold on to your sexual exploits instead of following Jesus. This needs to be said. We should not kid ourselves and think we can hold on to our swords and still follow Jesus. There is a clear and direct conflict here, and to ignore it is to ignore Jesus as Lord.

Now, if you want to take a conservative literalist approach to this, then you get to die like the martyrs. That’s your option if you want to read literally. If instead, like me, you want to take a progressive approach to interpreting Scripture and following Jesus, then we can talk about what it means to follow Jesus in this in a nuanced and complex way. But here also there is simply no room for justifying any “right” to lethal violence. This is precisely what Jesus is challenging.

While I see problems in the approach of the martyrs, the lesson I do want to take from them is this: While it is not where we should end, the prohibition on lethal violence is where we need to begin. Jesus does clearly say that the way of the sword, the way of killing, is not an option for us as his followers. I do not want to follow in the path of the majority of conservative Evangelicals and simply ignore the clear teaching of Jesus here, just because it is hard and goes against my own culture and country’s values. I want to find a way to make Jesus Lord of every area of my life, I want to allow the values of Jesus to shape how I see, what I value, and how I live. I don’t want to find some cheap proof-text way to simply ignore Jesus. I don’t want to just be a cultural Christian whose values are shaped more by my culture and country than they are by Christ.

So I ask myself, “What does it mean to love my enemies?” and I try to be open to the Holy Spirit to show me how I can live this out in my life. What does that look like? It begins with recognizing that Jesus is speaking to my country’s assumption that it’s okay to kill someone who is threatening us, and is challenging that way. On a broad level, Jesus is pointing us to another way to resolve conflict. I’m convinced that this does not simply mean doing nothing (simply forbidding retaliation), but entails an alternate way to resolve conflict and overcome evil without mirroring it. The New Testament repeatedly says, do not return evil for evil, harm for harm (1 Pet 3:9; Rom 12:17). This way is the polar opposite of the NRA’s mantra “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The New Testament would counter “Good guys, don’t become a bad guy by using your gun to retaliate and return evil for evil.”

If we want to follow Jesus here, if we want to truly make Jesus Lord of our lives, then we need to renounce the way of retaliation, and learn the way of Jesus. Rather than responding to Jesus argumentatively with “but what about...” looking for excuses not to follow, I want to instead ask “What are areas of my life where I can seek to go against my tendency to want to retaliate and use force, and instead find ways to reconcile and make peace?”

How would you answer that question? How have you learned to practice this in your every day life – for instance in how you deal with conflict in your marriage, or at work?

How to Turn Bad Guys into Good Guys

Back when she was five, my daughter, who has always been oddly spiritual, composed a song called "God Loves The World"

If you listen closely you can hear my son slurping on a smoothie in the background. Here's the lyrics to her song:

God loves the world

God loves the world

God loves other people in the world 

So he can 
Turn bad guys into good guys

And bad guys wont be mean to God anymore

Cause he knows how to do that

God loves the world

God loves the world

There's some pretty sophisticated theology going on in that cute little song. But if we want to learn how to turn bad guys into good guys ourselves, we are left with the question of how can we do that? The only answer her song provides is that God somehow mysteriously "knows how to do that."

My daughter is now eight, and yesterday we were watching the classic 1962 film version of To Kill a Mocking Bird. There was a scene in which Atticus Finch deals with a hostile old woman named Mrs. Dubose. You can watch the clip below, followed by a transcript from the screenplay,

Her hands dug into the pockets of her overalls, Scout moseys past the house of an old lady sitting on a rocking chair on her front porch, and calls out a greeting,

"Hey, Mrs. Dubose."

Mrs. Dubose snarls back in a shrill voice,

"Don’t you say 'hey' to me, you ugly girl. You say 'good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose'. You come over here when I’m talking to you! Don’t your daddy teach you to respect old people? You come back here!"

Scout meets  her father Atticus coming down the sidewalk and runs to him. Approaching Mrs. Debose, he gracefully removes his hat and addresses her, Scout hiding behind him.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose. You look like a picture this afternoon. My goodness gracious, look at your flowers. Did you ever see anything more beautiful? Mrs. Dubose, the gardens at Bellingrath have nothing to compare with your flowers."

Clearly thrown, Mrs. Dubose replies meekly,

"Oh, I don’t think they’re as nice as they were last year."

Atticus answers,

"I can’t agree with you. I think your yard is going to be the show place of the town. Grand seeing you, Mrs. Dubose"

Atticus then lifts his hat to her, and continues down the street.  Mrs. Debose is left speechless.

 . . . 

I turn to my daughter and say to her,

"Did you see how he turned a bad guy into a good guy just now?... Or at least he turned an angry yelling lady into a quiet one."

My daughter smiled and nodded.

"How did he do that?" I asked.

"With good" she answered.

Jesus and Empire: Two Ways to Read the Bible

Let's consider two approaches to the Bible, both of which are found in the Bible. 

The Old Testament Approach

The Old Testament approach is about being protected and loved and cared for. The message of Moses was that as long as you follow the Law, you will be protected and cared for by the Provider, by any means necessary. There is of course debate within the OT about this. Many of the prophets claim that the reason the people were suffering famine and sickness and the ravages of war was because they were unfaithful. Other books such as Job or the Psalms claim that the system was not working as they were being faithful and were not being protected. Those same Psalms therefore call out for God's violent retribution, saying in essence "Protect me, the righteous victim, and give the bad guys what they deserve!"

Now, I want us to notice that this is not simply a story-line found in the Old Testament. It is one that has endured for centuries across many cultures, and one that we still largely embrace today. You could say that this is our national narrative in America. You will find it rehearsed over and over again in our movies and TV shows, and proclaimed by our politicians both red and blue. The focus is on us and our safety, and if the "bad guys" need to suffer in order for us to be safe and happy, well they must deserve it.

The New Testament Approach

In contrast, instead of a focus on self--a focus on our safety and well-being--the focus of the New Testament is on others, and especially on those who we esteem as the least deserving and the least valuable and the least moral. Especially how we treat our enemies, especially how we treat sinners, especially how we treat the "bad guys" reveals how we treat Jesus. 

To some extent this focus on care for the widow and orphan can be found among the OT prophets, but usually with the idea that God would violently destroy the oppressors, thus protecting the victims, rather than claiming, as Jesus did, that God is our example of enemy love. Here Jesus takes the message of compassion begun by the prophets to a place they never went.

That is, the NT is a response to the OT, acting as an inner-religious critique which Judaism had a long and healthy history of, a call by Jesus to reformation of his Jewish faith, taking it to a deeper level not focused on the welfare of one people or nation vs. others, but a message of redemption for all people.

Paul's expression of this good news for all people in the book of Romans can by summed up like this: His religious audience, seeing themselves as victims,  longs to see the bad guys (the Gentiles) receive God's wrath and retributive punishment. This is the Old Testament narrative, and the focus is on avenging the righteous victims. Paul's argument is that we are all bad guys, and so what we all need is restoration rather than destruction. Destruction is not something you should wish on others, because since we are all equally guilty, we would be wishing that on ourselves. Instead, what we need to wish upon everyone, including ourselves, is God's restoration. That, Paul argues, is the justice of God--not a justice of destroying, but a justice of restoring. That's what God was doing in Christ. That's the way of reconciliation. That's the gospel.

Now, we might be tempted to think at this point we could just read the New Testament and disregard the Old. In some respects this may be true. The NT does take things higher than the OT, in the way 2.0 goes beyond 1.0. 

However, what is far more important than what we read is how we read it. We need to learn how to read with the social focus rooted in compassion that Jesus taught. If you instead read the New Testament with a focus on self, with a focus on you being loved, and you being forgiven, as opposed to you forgiving others and you loving others, you can end up missing the entire point of the New Testament.

Despite how pious it may sound, the focus of Jesus is not on my salvation, my  forgiveness, or on me being accepted.  Yes, all those things matter, but I am loved so that I can in turn love others the same way Jesus has loved me. My forgiveness needs to result in me repenting of my self-focus and learning how to love. It is vital that we learn to love ourselves, but we can't stop there, and if we do, we stop at a place where it is all to easy to justify violence towards others. That was Luther's mistake, and Augustine's. It has been the mistake of many good people.

What's crucial to understand is that this focus on self is not about being a selfish hedonist sinner, it is at its heart a pious focus. It is a focus which sees itself as good. Because of this pious focus on self, Christians can read the New Testament and see it as focused on personal salvation, ignoring its core focus on enemy love and social justice. This pious self-focus leads people to read the New Testament in a way that makes Christianity the impotent chaplain to empire, missing the radical challenge to empire found in Jesus' message of the kingdom of God and in the very act of proclaiming Jesus as Lord (this applies not just to the Roman empire, but also to American empire).

The call of Jesus is a call to turn from a self-focus (including a nationalistic focus of "us" as opposed to "them" which characterizes much of the OT, and characterizes our country's national rhetoric), and to instead embrace a relational social focus that especially cares for those we love the least. It is a focus of compassion.

If we can read the NT with that social focus rooted in compassion, then we will find a feast. However, it is equally possible to read the NT with a focus on self and us/them thinking (which we naturally gravitate towards),  and miss the whole thing. You will end up underlining and highlighting just the parts that are about your comfort and assurance, and skipping over all the hard parts that show us how to walk in grace and forgiveness and love like Jesus did.

When we think the whole point is about us, then it is extremely easy to justify hurtful actions as "collateral damage" on the road to our happiness. I've said that we need to learn to read the Old Testament like Jesus did, focusing on the parts that call us to compassion. But we all the more need to learn to read the New Testament, and the words of Jesus, with the focus of Jesus, which is a relational focus rooted in compassion. We need to learn to view all of life through that lens. It's not so much what you read, but how you read it. Lord, give me the eyes to see myself and others as Jesus did.

Let me end with a song by one of my favorite bands, Switchfoot, which I offer as a prayer,

Until I die I'll sing these songs

On the shores of Babylon

Still looking for a home

In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong

Where the righteous right the wrongs

Still looking for a home

In a world where I belong

Feels like we're just waiting, waiting

While our hearts are just breaking, breaking

Feels like we've been fighting against the tide

I wanna see the earth start shaking

I wanna see a generation

Finally waking up inside

This body's not my own

This world is not my own

But I still can hear the sound

Of my heart beating out

So let's go boys, play it loud

On the final day I die

I want to hold my head up high

I want to tell You that I tried

To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side

I want to look You in the eye

And know that I've arrived

In a world where I belong

In a world where I belong

Realistic Nonviolence in a Violent World

Every 4th of July we nonviolent bloggers feel the need to write an obligatory post on American empire. I didn't, and instead enjoyed watching fireworks with my kids that some guys were lighting illegally on the street in front of our friend's house, and baking an apple pie (Mmmmm).

I get the comparison of the United States to the Roman Empire, but one has to ask, what would the alternative be? Would we rather live in a failed state? If our goal is the reduction of violence, it is clear that a failed state is far more violent and unjust than our country. The fact that we have police and a military does serve to reduce violence. That of course does not mean there is no room for improvement, that there are no problems in our country. But it does mean that the direction we need to move is not towards anarchy. That would be naïve.

A big problem, as I see it, is that there is a tendency for both pacifists and patriots to grandstand -- both taking unrealistically romantic positions on opposite sides of the issue. This may make for good Tweets, but it leads to bad public policy. On the one side we have the patriot/hawks who speak of the necessity of violence as a means of keeping the peace. On the other hand we have the pacifists who say we should abolish the police and military, or that as Christians we should not participate in them. Both take extreme positions in reaction to the other's, employing dramatic rhetoric to appeal to their base. Here there is no possibility for a conversation, just a widening of the divide. That is certainly not peacemaking.

I would instead like to propose something different. I think we should begin by all agreeing that peace and safety are desirable, and that violence is not. The question to ask, therefore, is how can we reduce violence while maintaining peace and safety?

One clear example of this is with the many news stories we have seen of police shootings of unarmed black men and women. There is clearly a problem when there are no legal consequences for police who abuse their authority. We've seen this multiple times where Grand Juries will acquit officers who clearly seemed guilty. 

Here it is clear that there needs to be change. Police who abuse authority and commit criminal acts should be subject to the law. But legal punishment cannot be the only response. The problem runs much deeper. That is, the problem is not just a few bad apples, but a system that fosters them. On a more systemic level there is a fundamental problem with the way policing is done in low income neighborhoods, as well as how police interact with the mentally ill. 

This is something that whites like myself generally do not experience.  I feel safe around police. My interactions with them have generally been respectful. I do not feel unsafe around police. But for people of color, that is not the case.

In general, the approach often taken by police in "bad" neighborhoods is a militaristic one of "zero-tolerance." It's the "no broken windows" approach, and it has certainly only been made worse by the recent militarization of the police by the government. As a result of this, over time members of a community come to be regarded by police as "them" rather than "us," and one is either doing nothing or is a problem. If someone is a problem, then they must comply immediately with all orders or else. With such an approach it is extremely easy for things to escalate, often leading to lethal results. 

The answer is well known by the police and to the US Department of Justice. Part of it involves what is known as "community policing" where police work to build trust in the community, acting as a part of it, rather than as an occupying force. Another critical element is police training in how to deescalate a situation, rather than making it worse with threats, screaming, and a show of force. 

The result of such deescalation training makes things safer for everyone, including safer for police. So it's a win-win. Such training programs are readily available to police departments, but officers often do not participate. Perhaps such training should be a mandatory part of their qualification as police officers. That's a bigger issue, and hopefully as more light comes on to the issue, we will see needed reform here.

Let's take a step back through, and return to the broader picture: What I want to propose is that those of us who advocate for Christian nonviolence should not be calling for people to withdraw from politics or societal engagement. We should not be proposing a utopian Christian society without violence. Rather, we should be the ones training police in how to deescalate potentially dangerous situations. We should be in the middle of our messy world, offering practical and realistic means to reduce violence and actively promote justice. 

A poignant example of this is how Mennonites have worked to introduce principles of restorative justice into our judicial system. I find this remarkable because Mennonites have traditionally been the ones who have sought to separate themselves from society and politics. But now they are in the middle of that system, working to reform it.

That's where I want my nonviolence to take me as well. I am not interested in ideals that are cut off from the realities of our current world. I want instead to have ideals that actually work here and now to help make our broken world a little less broken, and a little more humane.

Sacrifice, Discipline, and Other Things We Don't Understand

Recently I spoke about what forgiveness means and what it doesn't. It's a great example of how Jesus' hermeneutic of looking at the fruits works. We can observe that when people interpret forgiveness as meaning that you must accept being hurt, swallowing the anger you feel when you are wronged and overlooking injury, that this leads to things like bitterness, resentment, depression, passive-aggressive behavior... in general it leads to a really unhealthy place because rather than working to reconcile and mending hurt it allows it to continue, simply burying it under the surface where it festers inside us. 

We may think we are doing something noble. We may think we are being faithful to follow the command of Jesus to forgive. But when we look at the fruits of how this broken understanding of forgiveness effects our lives, when put it into practice, we can see that those fruits are rotten. That's how we know we are getting it wrong, and why it is so vital that we cannot blindly obey. Rather, we must seek to understand. Because if we don't understand, the result will inevitably lead to hurt -- even with the best of intentions. Unquestioning obedience always leads to harm, because when we do not differentiate between a good and and hurtful application, hurt and abuse are simply inevitable.

There is just no way around that fact. That's why we need instead to have "faith seeking understanding," as Anselm said, meaning we begin with trust in Jesus based on our experience of being loved by God in Christ, and out of that trust we seek to understand how the way Jesus calls us to really does lead to love and beauty and goodness in our lives. Our father will not give us a stone when we ask for living bread.

As I outlined in How forgiveness works (and how it doesn't), forgiveness can be understood and applied in a way that leads to wholeness and healing in our lives. It can produce wonderful life-giving fruit. The key is really getting how it works, and the problem is that so often we Christians simply don't get how forgiveness works, we don't get how turning the other cheek works, we don't get how enemy love works. We may proclaim that we should practice these things, but we either proclaim them without understanding -- simply as commands to be unquestioningly followed -- or we may even proclaim them in a way that is hurtful.

For example, it's common to hear it expressed that the state cannot practice enemy love because the state cannot be expected to "sacrifice" and to be wronged. This is a statement commonly made by well-meaning, loving, and smart people who advocate the way of grace and enemy love. But consider what the implication here is: When we as individuals practice this kind of enemy love, what is being promoted is exactly the unhealthy form of allowing ourselves to be wronged, overlooking injury, and swallowing hurt that we saw was so damaging above. What is being proclaimed here is the broken and hurtful understanding of forgiveness. Indeed, states cannot be expected to practice this, but neither should you.  

What we can do however is observe in our lives how forgiveness does work, observe how it does lead to reconciliation and restoration, and then consider how those same principles could work on a larger scale to genuinely address societal problems. We begin with living it out in our own lives, learning by experience how it works in a deep and complex way, and then we bring that knowledge to larger communal relationships.

This is already happening on many levels. For example, as parents recognize that hitting kids hurts them, and does not produce the desired results of kids who are thoughtful, respectful, and empathetic, but instead harms them, this is translating into our public schools which are gradually moving away from corporal punishment. It is now illegal in the majority of States (31 of 50), the large exception being Southern States. This is a positive move, but we are still far behind the rest of the Western world were it is illegal in every country. The good news is that teachers are learning better ways to teach kids respect, self-control, and empathy, and the reason for this is that they have looked at the fruits and observed what works and leads to the good they desire, and what instead leads to harm.

The sad exception to this is private schools in the U.S., primarily those run by conservative Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, where beating kids with a paddle is still practiced. Why? Because they ignore the obvious bad fruits and instead blindly follow "what the Bible teaches" unquestioningly, detached from understanding, thought, and even conscience. That's the rotten fruit of unquestioning obedience, and why it is so important that we instead learn to read Scripture like Jesus did in a way that leads to love, in a way that makes us better people not worse ones.

The Heart of the Gospel: Loving the Unlovable

I have often made the claim that love of enemies was the very heart of the message of Jesus. Understand the way of grace, forgiveness, and enemy love, and you have understood the core message of who God is as revealed in Christ, and how we are to be in the world as his followers. Understand enemy love, and you have understood the message of Jesus, what led him to the cross, and God's plan of salvation in Jesus. Miss it, and you miss everything else with it.

But if "love your enemies" is something Jesus only specifically said once (recorded in the Sermon on the Mount in the 5th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, and in the parallel account in Luke 6), how can it be said to be the very core of his message?

The key here is understanding how everything else Jesus says, every parable, every paradoxical statement, every act of healing or caring for the poor, all culminates in the way of enemy love. So let's step back and take a look at the bigger picture and context of Jesus' message. 

Jesus begins his sermon, both in Luke's and Matthew's accounts, with a list of beatitudes that turn our normal values and expectations of what is desirable, fortunate, and good on their heads. Both our culture and theirs would normally say "blessed are the wealthy," but Jesus instead provocatively declares "blessed are the poor." 

Matthew adds to this "... in spirit" which can make this easier to relate to if you happen to be a middle class American. But the original statement made by Jesus, found in Luke's Gospel, is simply "blessed are the poor."

In the time of Jesus the poor were regarded as cursed. They were seen as sinners who deserved their suffering. Similarly today the "American dream" is to make it and become rich, and all it takes is "hard work." So those who are poor obviously are not working hard and consequently are derided as freeloaders, deadbeats, entitled, and welfare queens. Cursed are the entitled. Cursed are the deadbeats. That's the assumption of our culture, and it leads to our idealizing obscene wealth while despising those in need. That is the opposite of Jesus' message of compassion and care for the poor.

Similarly when Jesus proclaims,

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free" (Luke 4)

We can take this to refer metaphorically to "captivity to sin" or "bondage to destructive patterns of behavior" but the original context of what Jesus is saying is to people who are literally in chains, literally prisoners.

If you have read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, you will know the story of how Jean Valjean is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, and that upon his release after 19 long years he is unable to get food or a place to stay because of a card he must present that identifies him as an ex-con.

That's the story from pre-revolutionary France, but today in America it is little different. People, especially black and brown people, are regularly imprisoned for years for trivial offenses, or even for no offense at all. Upon release, just as Jean Valjean was turned away with his card, they too are required to "check the box" identifying themselves as felons on forms for housing, benefits, and job applications. Systematically denied housing, jobs, education, and public benefits for life -- the very things they need to re-integrate into society --  as a result, many become homeless or return to jail.

If we as a nation despise the poor, this is doubly so with those labeled "criminals." As Michelle Alexander puts it in The New Jim Crow, blacks labeled as criminals "are perhaps the most despised minority in the U.S. population... Criminals, it turns out, are the one social group in America we have permission to hate."

As Alexander documents,  this is not simply a matter of attitudes and mindsets, but takes the form of policies of systematic oppression. It translates into laws that are "tough on crime" and result in rampant discrimination and injustice as well as widespread patterns of "law enforcement practices that violate the law and undermine community trust, especially among African Americans." That quote is from the findings of the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of the Ferguson Police Department.

The message of Jesus, over and over, is focused on caring for "the least of these." That is, the way we treat the person who is seen as the least deserving, is the way we treat Jesus. This is not about romanticizing a problem. The poor are often poor because of destructive patterns, abusive and hurtful patterns. Jesus was not naive to this, and neither should we be. We are talking about people who are broken, and that is not the pretend picture of Oliver Twist with rosy red cheeks and an innocent heart.

Nevertheless, Jesus calls us, over and over, to love the unlovable. He calls us to compassion for the poor, the sick, and yes, for the sinner and criminal, too. His focus was not on punishment and law, but on restoring people who were broken, on freeing people from bondage, and a huge part of that is about being valued and honored and loved.

This re-humanizes a person, and that leads to their restoration and redemption. Punishment and condemnation -- which is the focus of our broken criminal justice system -- does the opposite, and is the reason for the "revolving doors" of our prison systems.

If we want to learn to love our enemies, the place to start is where Jesus starts. He begins by having us learn to care for the poor, to recognize our own brokenness, and also to develop compassion for others who are less fortunate than we are. This carries over into recognizing that those caught in the cycles of crime should not be hated as enemies, but also need help to reform. Jesus calls us to practice forgiveness and reconciliation in our lives.

Before we can begin to practice love of enemies towards those outside of our borders, those who have declared themselves our "enemies," we need to first begin to practice love of enemies at home in our own communities. We need to develop open hearts of compassion for the poor, seeking realistic and wise ways to help and care for those in need. We need to likewise seek to help rehabilitate those labeled as criminals in our country, being driven again by open-eyed wise compassion rather than by fear.

Jesus' message culminates in the idea of enemy love. But everything he says leads up to this. It begins with having compassion for ourselves, and spills over to having compassion for others. Understanding the larger context of how we are to practice compassion, reconciliation, and restoration of broken people and broken society gives us the larger context to understand that enemy love is not simply about prohibiting violence, but far more substantially is the culmination of  a way of working to make things right in our world that we desperately need today.

How forgiveness works (and how it doesn't)

Those of us who promote Jesus' way of peace and enemy love often speak of things like "self-sacrificing love" or echo Paul's vocabulary of the "foolishness of the cross" and Jesus' radical call to "lose your life to find it." We speak of this way as being "counter-intuitive" and part of an "upside-down kingdom."

This all makes a great sermon. Lots of vocabulary from the Bible. It sounds radical and inspiring and right. But there's little discussion of what this looks like practically. How do I walk this out in my day to day life? How do I tell the difference between the kind of "self-sacrificing love" Jesus wants me to have, and an abusive or hurtful understanding?

If we really want to walk this out, we need to go beyond saying the right stuff, and really get down to what a practical application looks like. Because we simply cannot obey if we don't know how. Faith seeking understanding means saying "Lord I want to follow, show be how to do this well." As a theologian I see part of my task as helping to articulate what that looks like.

Take forgiveness for example. Forgiveness is an idea that almost everyone is familiar with. Much more so than the idea of enemy love. It's common to hear people speaking of the need to forgive for the sake of our own health. If we hold on to unforgiveness, they tell us, this will eat us up inside. So it's not just a Christian value but a value shared by our general culture.

This is all true. However, I'd like to suggest that there is a healthy form of forgiveness and an unhealthy form, and it's critical that we understand the difference. As with anything good, it is possible to do forgiveness wrong. How can we tell the difference? Our culture values forgiveness, just as it values love, but it often has messed up understandings of both, and so do we.

Many times, people simply try to ignore the hurt and “just move on.” They choose not to confront the offending person and continue the relationship as if nothing happened. The problem with the noble-sounding approach of “taking the high road” is that it doesn’t allow a person to legitimize and work through their authentic feelings. 

We've all been there: You'd like to leave the issue in the past, but it keeps coming back—sometimes years later—sometimes hidden in the disguise of feelings of low self-worth or depression, or as anger seemingly “out of nowhere.” 

On top of this, if you never speak up, the other person is likely to continue doing the same things that hurt you. You may also find yourself in a similar situation with another person.

Like Bonhoeffer's "cheep grace" this is cheep forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness needs to start by honestly facing the hurt. Forgiveness is not conflict avoidance. Forgiveness is not saying "that's okay" when it's not okay. Real forgiveness is about getting past real hurt. 

There are basically two ways to do this: reconciliation or acceptance. 

Reconciliation 

Reconciliation involves the other. They need to be open to listen to your perspective and is willing to change their behavior, possibly leading to a full restoration of your relationship with them. For you, it means being willing to release the other from the weight of their offense against you, being open to allow the person to change, being willing to love again.

What makes this different from cheap forgiveness is that this process requires admitting to yourself, as well as to the other, that you have been hurt. It requires that the other asks for your forgiveness (or at the very least acknowledges the hurt they have caused) and takes sincere steps to prevent a repetition.

In the case were you have hurt or wronged someone it's important to remember that asking for forgiveness is something you do for them, not for something for you to feel better. This may seem obvious, but is often difficult for Christians because asking for forgiveness is often synonymous with our seeking assurance of God's love. When "forgive me" means "make me feel less guilty" this does not feel so great to the one who has been hurt. A better approach is to express to the other that you care about them, recognize that you have hurt them, and want to make it right.

Acceptance

Reconciliation is wonderful when it can happen. When you can work through real pain and hurt, and come out on the other side with a stronger and deeper relationship, this is a beautiful thing. But what if the other person is not willing or able to admit any wrongdoing? What if they are completely out of the picture or no longer living? How do you forgive an unrepentant person?

Like reconciliation this includes an acknowledgment of the full extent of what happened, but unlike it acceptance is something you can do without their cooperation. Acceptance does not just mean "letting go" of a wrong. On the contrary, it requires that you validate what happened to yourself and the impact it has had on your life. This is a painful and often lengthy process. Revisiting an injury or loss is very unpleasant, but it is necessary in order to deal with the difficult feelings effectively so it doesn't spill over into other areas of your life. This involves looking at the painful event from every angle possible, including trying to imagine the other party's perspective. Acceptance means developing empathy for both you and for the other, and it means giving up the “hope for a better past” or for what “could have been.” 

None of this is easy. Cheap forgiveness or holding on to anger may seem like easier solutions at first, but the price you pay can be your physical or mental health when hurt is buried or allowed to fester in bitterness. Reconciliation is of course the most desirable option when possible, but you simply have no control over the other party's willingness to share your burden. The concept of acceptance allows one to independently process what happened and therefore to heal. Acceptance is therefore a kind of a reconciliation, too -- one that does not depend on the offender, but is a peace-making with your past. 

Who Would Jesus Bomb?: A Nonviolent Response to ISIS

When speaking of nonviolence, the classic what-if question is "What about Hitler?" In our day that question for many people has become "What about ISIS?" Their brutality and violence have shocked and alarmed people the world over. Is there a nonviolent approach to ISIS, or is this an example of a time when the only viable response is one of violence?

Some Christian pacifists take the stance that Jesus commands us to renounce violence. For them this does not necessarily mean that nonviolence provides a solution to resolving conflict or keeping people safe. Rather it is simply a prohibition: They stress that as followers of Jesus we are not permitted to commit acts of violence, period.

I would like to offer some friendly push-back to this. Rather than merely being a prohibition, I would argue that on a much deeper level Jesus' way of enemy love provides us with a way of bringing about the kingdom of God, of bringing about justice, and caring for people. Our task as his followers of Jesus is to work out how to live that way out in our world. In other words, nonviolence is not primarily about a prohibition -- i.e. something you don't do -- it is much more importantly a way to bring about peace, resolve conflict, and make things right. Jesus points us towards that way and we need to do the hard work of figuring out how to faithfully live that out in our time.

In part the confusion here comes from the name "non-violence" itself, which with it's negative prefix seems to imply a non-action. Similarly the word "pacifist" is often conflated with the term "passive." However, this is not merely a misunderstanding of semantics. For many Christian pacifists -- particularly those from Evangelical backgrounds such as myself -- this is exactly what they stress when they teach nonviolence. Their focus on a prohibition, irrespective of whether they can offer any means of working for peace through nonviolent means.

Now, let me say that I have a ton of respect for these people. I consider them not only to be my brothers and sisters in Christ, but also friends and allies in our common pursuit of following Jesus' way of enemy love. I truly think they are awesome and deeply appreciate the work they do.

However, I disagree with them that the way of enemy love is primarily about what we don't do, and want to lovingly push back here and propose that it is far more about what we do. The aim of my own work on nonviolence and enemy love has therefore been focused on working to flesh that out practically.

One critique that is often voiced against this "non-participation" flavor of pacifism is this: "Well, that's fine for your personal life, but it does not provide a societal solution for dealing with crime or conflict." I think this is in fact a valid criticism. I think we do need to provide real alternatives, and that it is a moral responsibility to do so.

This should apply to every area of our lives. It should affect everything from our personal lives (how we deal with marital conflict, how we teach our children how to behave, etc.) to larger societal issues (how we deal with bullying in schools, how we deal with crime, how we deal with international conflict, etc.).

If we want to learn how to live this out, the best place to start is with ourselves, in learning to walk out the way of enemy love in our daily lives. From that understanding we can work towards the larger, and more complex issues.

I say that to stress that in addressing the problem of ISIS, I am really beginning backwards. I'm beginning with the hardest thing rather than the easiest, and that is not a great way to learn to practice anything. 

The reason I'm doing this is that for many people ISIS represents a logjam in their thinking about nonviolence. I don't here mean people who want to find a "gotcha" reason to discount Jesus' way of enemy love. I don't have much to say to those folks. I'm talking instead about people who recognize that Jesus clearly does call us to the way of enemy love, and who get stuck here, wondering how to faithfully live this out in the face of peril. 

That is, they are not saying "See? I told you that the answer is a gun and not Jesus!" Rather they are saying "I do want to follow Jesus, I see that his way of grace is amazing and life-changing in so many ways, but I just don't get how it would work here. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Show me how to follow you well here."

Those are the people who I am speaking to.

Let's begin with the classic understanding of nonviolence, more properly known as nonviolent resistance or nonviolent direct action, made popular by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. 

This has proven to be a powerful means for changing unjust and oppressive systems and governments. As I discuss in my book Disarming Scripture, beginning in the 1980s — for the first time in human history — nonviolent resistance campaigns successfully toppled multiple oppressive regimes across the globe, often in the face of overwhelming military power and brutality.

However, I am not sure it would work with ISIS.

The reason I say this has to do with the way nonviolent resistance works. Its primary method is to expose injustice. So when it is used, for example by protestors in Ferguson, it can serve as a powerful way to show how those in authority, who claim to represent justice and the good, are in fact acting in an unjust way. This in turn results in public outcry, putting external pressure (often economic pressure) on these authorities to change. This is how those dictatorships mentioned above were toppled nonviolently.

The problem with ISIS is that they are trying to shock and appall the world with their brutality. They are trying to draw a violent response from the United States.

That's why it's important to understand two things: First, we need to understand how nonviolent strategies function so we can use them effectively. Secondly, we need to realize that there are many ways to deal with conflict nonviolently and that nonviolent resistance is just one way among many ways. In the appropriate context it can be a powerful means of bringing about justice, but if used in the wrong context it can be ineffective and morally irresponsible. In my estimation, it would not be an effective response here.

So what can we do?

As I have discussed earlier, an important part of the solution needs to be long-term. We need to work towards addressing the conditions that become the breeding ground for groups like ISIS. At the same time, we do need to act in the short-term too in order to stop the brutality. So what could that look like?

It's important to understand here that the current approach of dropping bombs is probably not only ineffective, but likely will make things much worse. Similar to a hostage situation, ISIS fighters are in the middle of cities filled with innocent people. If bank robbers had taken hostages, it would clearly be a bad approach for the police to just drop a bomb on the First National Bank of Somewhereville. Likewise here, dropping bombs from afar might make us feel like we are "doing something" without entering into an extremely unpopular land war, but in reality it does not in fact restore order; but quite to the contrary, instead destroys infrastructure, results in collateral damage, and ultimately acts to destabilize the region even more. As Wardah Khalid (Peace Fellow in Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation) writes,

"Every single bomb we drop or troop we place in the Middle East is seen as a threat to the country’s sovereignty. This is what fueled violence against U.S. troops in Iraq for decades."

Okay, that's what we shouldn't do -- not only because we want to avoid violence (which, as Ron Sider points out, is a goal shared by Just War adherents), but also because it is in this case actually counter-productive and ineffective in achieving our goal of stopping the violence of ISIS.

This is of course really important. We don't want to make things worse. But it still leaves the question open of what we can do right now. Here again, I found the advice of Wardah Khalid deeply helpful. She proposes that we,

Create a comprehensive, multilateral strategy with our allies, including the Arab League and the U.N., that includes such tools as a regional arms embargo to prevent weapons from going into the wrong hands, penalties for purchasing illicit oil that funds the Islamic State group and more money for diplomacy and humanitarian aid. A political solution to Syria and its President Bashar Assad must also be revisited, as the power vacuum there is what allowed radicals and their foreign backers to first take hold. California Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee and Mike Honda’s recently introduced legislation calling for a comprehensive Islamic State group strategy would be a viable option for Congress to support.

As her colleague at the FCNL, Kate Gould (Legislative Associate for Middle East policy at the FCNL) notes, many reports show that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf nations have actively funneled weapons to the Islamic State which it has depended on for its growth. She therefore proposes that an effective means of stopping ISIS would entail a political solution which acts to starve them of the three things they need to thrive -- money, weapons, and recruits.

This article is of course just a brief peek into what is a larger comprehensive strategy, and for anyone interested in these issues I would highly recommend looking in more detail at the work of these two analysts. 

For myself, as I try to work out what it means to live out Jesus' way of enemy love, I find the work of experts like these to be deeply helpful and instructive. As a theologian I find it so important to be in conversation with experts like these. What they propose are effective and practical steps we can take to work towards peace and justice, rather than the simplistic "Hulk smash!" approach that so many in our government seem to gravitate towards. 

There is a tendency for people to stay within the borders of their own field, and it is easy to stay within the borders of theology and biblical studies. But as I have listened to experts in other fields -- ethicist, therapists, neuroscientists, political analysts, etc. -- not simply in sound bites in the media (which is often profoundly uninsightful, and works instead to sensationalize issues, perpetuating stereotypes and fear) but really digging into the work these experts do, I have found real and practical application of the way of Jesus.

Speaking of which, if you would like to see a really frustrating example of what is wrong with the media, you can watch Kate Gould being "interviewed" by Bill O'Reilly and how he goes out of his way not to listen or learn anything from her. He does this so much in fact that he feels the need to confess at the end "You know I'm obnoxious." I can think of some other ways to describe him, but since I'm trying to promote peace here, I'll just leave that to your imagination as you watch the interview. 

What I will say is that I am thankful there are people like Gould and Khalid who can help us to move towards finding real solutions for building peace and working towards a safe and just world, and I hope that we could learn to listen to their wisdom and expertise, rather than continuing in the path we are now on of reactionary fear-based enemy-hating militarism and violence. There is a better way.

A Harm Reduction Approach for America’s Addiction to Violence

One of the most important projects to me is articulating a practical vision for enemy love. My assumption in doing this is that this needs to be something that can be understood by any thinking and reflective person, based on its merit. That means it needs to address the legitimate concerns that people (including myself) have for the safety of themselves and those they love in a violent world.

It is not about what we don't do (which is why I tend not to use the term "nonviolence" since the term describes a "non" action, rather than describing what we should do instead). It is not about a prohibition where we are not allowed to use violence, but about finding better and more effective ways to solve our problems without violence. I realize that in having this focus I disagree with many of my fellow Christian pacifists who instead stress that we need to renounce violence as Christians regardless of whether or not we can articulate how the way of Jesus actually addresses the problems of violence in our lives and world. I very much think we absolutely do need to address these things, and want to do my part to help articulate what that might look like.

Usually the place where people start when contemplating nonviolence is with the most extreme of cases, questions like "What would you do if Hitler was invading your home?" or "Are you saying we should abolish the military completely?"

What we need to realize is that behind such extreme questions (often presented more as an accusation than an actual question) is a good and very basic human desire to care for the safety of ourselves and those we love in the midst of a violent world. Because this is such a primal human drive (the drive of self-preservation) people often can become quite reactive and triggered, and it's important to realize this in our conversations. Fear is often behind anger, and it's a legitimate fear. I also want to keep my family safe. I think we all do.

The question is, what is the best way to do that?

Let's begin with a reality check: You and I have no power to abolish the military, even if we wanted to. Let's take that up a notch, if President Obama, the most powerful man in the free world, the President of the United States, decided that he wanted to abolish the military, he couldn't either. No President could. That's the reality we need to begin with, and so while abolishing the need for a military might be something we can hope to get to 50 or 100 years from now, if we want to move in that direction, we need to begin by taking a few steps beginning where we are now, and that is as a country completely addicted to and in love with the myth of redemptive violence.

When dealing with addicts, there is a concept known as harm reduction. The idea is that when an addict is not ready to recognize and fight their addiction, the best approach is to reduce harm in their lives as much as possible. This might include things such as providing heroin addicts with clean syringes, etc.

America is similarly addicted to violence. Our media helps us rehearse the popularly held belief that it is the solution to our problems, it's how we fight "bad guys" and what keeps us safe. In violence we trust. Many people cannot imagine any other way. Violence is to them not a last resort, but the only resort, the only solution they know. Either you respond with violence, or you do nothing. That’s the binary they think in.

We live in a country that can't even pass the most reasonable of gun control laws, even in the wake of one mass shooting after another. We live in a country that employs cops who have been assessed by their own police force as psychologically unstable and unfit for duty. When those same cops then go on to kill unarmed civilians at an alarming rate, rather than addressing this problem on a systemic level as needed, the police seek to justify this, villainize anyone who speaks out, and brush the problem under the rug (if that's news to you, Rachel Aviv has an in-depth report you should read).

The sad and sobering reality is we as a country are addicted to violence in a way that surpasses and shocks every other Western country, and like a typical drug addict, one of the characteristics of our addiction to violence is that we are in massive denial about what is so painfully and shockingly obvious to everyone else around us.

One reason I like the idea of "harm reduction" in regards to violence is that it takes the focus away from "just war" arguments that seek to determine when violence is "justified," and instead focuses on asking how we can find ways to reduce violence (including our own).

So what would harm reduction look like when applied to America's addiction to violence, and in particular applied to international conflict? Let me propose the following, and to keep things interesting, let's take the example of ISIS:

One approach is for Christians to refuse to participate in the military. This is a personal choice that we each must make for ourselves as moral adults. I can respect people who make that choice. I made that choice. But it still leaves open the question of how the Kingdom politics of Jesus would be applied here. Is it enough to simply ostracize ourselves from participating in the military without offering any vision of how to address such conflicts in a way that reflects the way of Jesus?

I think we need to do more. A major problem with how the decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have played out is that Americans have, for the most part, been able to distance themselves from the war. It was something that someone else's kids were involved in, over there. When kids come back, we often don't talk about it, yet all too often they come back with permanent wounds, both physical and mental.

So even if I have chosen to be a conscientious objector, I do not want to disassociate myself from those who have been hurt by war. Nor do I want to pretend that excluding myself from participation solves the problem. There is very real evil in the world, and we do need to do something about it. So it's not enough to simply say what we won’t do. We need to articulate what we will do to work towards peace and safety.

So let me propose something that a younger version of myself probably would not have liked. We keep the option of the military on the table, but we also seek other solutions at the same time. Looking at ISIS, as I have outlined previously, we can see rather clearly that a military solution alone will not solve the problem. The fact is, violence has not only failed to create stability, in many ways it has acted to exacerbate the situation of instability and injustice which fuels terrorism. So beyond a solely military response, we also need to do things such as (1) working towards social and economic development, (2) supporting nonviolent civil society resistance movements, (3) ending arms sales to militants and terrorists, (4) employing conflict resolution strategies, and so on. All in all, the point is to work towards long-term solutions that seek to address the deeper issues that lead towards violence.

A corollary problem is that we are so enamored with our military “solution” that our police have become militarized, and are increasingly treating citizens like enemy combatants in an occupation. Now instead of the “enemy” being someone overseas, the “enemy” is us at home if you happen to be a minority, poor, or mentally ill. Here the solutions are clear. (1) Police who have been assessed as dangerous and psychologically unstable should not be on the force, (2) misconduct should have real consequences, and (3) police should be trained how to deescalate volatile situations without immediately resorting to strong-arm tactics and violence – especially when dealing with the mentally ill. To do so would be safer both for police and for those they are sworn to “serve and protect.” The problem is that the corruption apparently runs so deep within some police department cultures that internal affairs, grand juries, and even the DOJ is running into a wall trying to fix it.

Let me stress again that I am not proposing ruling out military action, nor am I proposing disarming the police for that matter. I am however proposing that there are lots of alternatives to gunning down unarmed children with toy guns on a playground or choking people to death. I am saying that there are a host of major problems that military action alone simply cannot address and often makes worse, and finally I am saying that we need to work towards providing means to solve problems without the use of violence – both at home and abroad.

This is, I think, an immensely practical and reasonable proposal. The reason my younger self would not have liked it is because it is a "compromise" to my youthful ideals. I still like that idealistic teen I used to be. He was consequent and committed. But it’s one thing as a teen to make a personal moral choice to wait til marriage to have sex, and quite another to expect all teens to do that. Similarly, I don't think we can expect America to “practice abstinence” when it comes to its deep-seated faith in violence. What I learned as I grew older was that the questions became less “what should be the ideal?” and more “how do you lovingly address people who have fallen short of the ideal?” Harm reduction is about realistically meeting people where they are at, in their brokenness, in their mess. It prioritizes people over ideals. It does not begin with what “should be” but instead seeks to help people where they are at, even if that is imperfect, even if we need to “get dirty” to do so.

So I want to start with practical steps, thinking in terms of harm reduction. I want to start with where we are at, and seek to move forward from there. That entails becoming familiar with the idea that there are ways to effectively address real problems that do not involve killing anyone, and seeking to find practical ways to reduce violence in our world.