Our Weapons

"For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds." - 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

WATCH: PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL

Watch Pray the Devil Back To Hell on PBS. See more from Women War and Peace.

Jesus and the Church Triumphant by Greg Boyd

In my opinion, the most tragic event in history took place on October 28, 312AD, in ancient Rome. On this date the emperor Constantine defeated a rival to become sole ruler of the Roman Empire.

This would have been just another example of the sort of bloodletting that has typified human history were it not for one fact: Constantine attributed this victory to his new found deity, Jesus Christ. He allegedly received a vision just prior to the battle that promised him victory if his soldiers marched into it with the sign of Christ on their shields.

 It was the first time in history that the name of Jesus was associated with nationalistic violence. Having set this precedent, however, it would hardly be the last.

 While Jesus and the Gospel authors identified the quest for political and nationalistic power to be a temptation of Satan (Lk 4:7-7), Eusebius, Augustine and other Church leaders interpreted Constantine’s vision and the consolidation of power under him that his victory brought about to be from God.

A cornerstone of pagan religion throughout history has been the assumption that military victories are granted by the victor’s god. With this diabolic christening of Constantine’s vision, Christianity became, to a large degree, just another violence-prone pagan religion, and Jesus just another nationalistic warrior god. Whereas the New Testament makes it clear that the Church is called to be a community of humble peacemakers who follow the example of Jesus by sacrificially serving the world and loving their enemies, the Church now became “the Church Triumphant.” The Church that was called to look like a corporate Jesus – carrying the cross out of love for the world – now began to look like a corporate Caesar, carrying the sword to conquer the world “in Jesus name.”

The sovereign God of course continued to work through the Constantinian Church Triumphant, and the good that the Church has accomplished throughout history shouldn’t be minimized. Yet, because of this tragic Constantinian transformation, the Church Triumphant (for the most part) failed to bear witness to the self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, character of Jesus that lies at the heart of the Gospel.

While there have thankfully always been Jesus-followers who opted out of the Church Triumphant by refusing to pick up the sword, the Church as a whole has consistently shown itself to be all-too-willing to employ it. In the name of Jesus the Church has at various times carried out barbarically violent crusades against Muslims, Jews, heretics, witches, and even other Christians.

In the name of Jesus the Conquistadors conquered the Americas, slaughtering the natives whenever it was expedient to do so. And in the name of Jesus, Catholics, Protestants and the Orthodox Church frequently engaged in religious, political and nationalistically motivated torturing and killing, often against one other. This macabre bloodshed in Jesus name was significantly curbed throughout Europe with the signing of the “Peace of Westphalia” (1648), a series of politically motivated truces that were imposed by governmental rulers to put an end to the relentless Christian-on-Christian bloodletting that had been going on for centuries. But the violent legacy of the Church Triumphant nevertheless continued in other areas and in other ways.

We should discern this tragic legacy in the American revolution as well as the American civil war, for in both wars the warriors were Christians fighting “for God and country” under the banner of Jesus Christ. And we should discern this violent legacy today in the fact that the vast majority of professing Christians continue to support the use of violence when it’s in their personal or national self-interest to do so.

We should also discern this violent legacy in the fact that most professing Christians in the west, especially in America, continue to believe that the material wealth they enjoy is evidence of divine favor, despite the fact that it is in large part the result of violent exploitation in the past as well as the present. And we should discern this violent legacy in the fact that many American Christians continue to embrace the age-old pagan conviction that our soldiers fight “for God and country” and that our military victories are given us by God. 

When the late Jerry Falwell was asked on national Television several years ago what he believed America should do in response to the 9/11 attack, he responded with a calm smile, “we need to blow them [terrorists] all away in the name of the Lord.” He was simply expressing, and perpetuating, the violent legacy of the Church Triumphant.

What makes the legacy of violence in Jesus name demonically ironic is that Jesus – whom all Christians claim to follow – was utterly opposed to all violence!

To appreciate how radical Jesus’ stance on non-violence was, we need to remember that Jesus was a first century Jew. Jews were at this time under the rule of Rome, and they hated it. Most saw submission to pagan rulers as not only oppressive (which it was) but also as an assault on their faith. Since they worshipped the true God, they reasoned, heathens who worship idols shouldn’t rule them.

For this reason, most Jews of Jesus’ day were looking for God to vindicate them by liberating them from Roman rule and reinstating Israel as a sovereign nation. Accordingly, most were looking for a Messiah who would be used by God to accomplish this. Central to their concept of the Messiah was the assumption that he’d be a warrior king like David in the Old Testament. Most expected the Messiah to rise up in the power of God, lead a violent revolt against the Romans, and liberate Israel with the power of the sword.

Into this tense and violent-tending environment comes Jesus. Because of his supernatural power, many started to look to him as the Messiah, and he told his closest confidants that he was, in fact, the Messiah. But instead of talking and acting like a warrior king, Jesus repeatedly, and emphatically, taught his fellow Jews that they shouldn’t seek to violently overthrow their enemies. They should rather seek to love and serve them.

His message couldn’t have possibly been more radically counter-cultural. It’s what ultimately got him crucified. In one passage, for example, Jesus said, “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also” (Luke 6:27-29). And lest anyone missed the point, Jesus came back to it six verses later.

While everyone loves their friends, Jesus continued, the distinctive mark of all who follow him is that we are to love our enemies and do good to them (Luke 6:35-36).

What’s particularly astonishing is that Jesus made loving our enemies the condition for being considered a child of God. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus taught: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45-46, emphasis added). What Jesus is teaching us is that, just as the Father sends rain indiscriminately, his followers are to love indiscriminately -- all people, at all times, no “ifs,” “ands” or “buts.” And we must love like this so that we may be children of the Father! To refuse to love like this, in other words, disqualifies one from being considered a child of God.

How Constantine and Church leaders like Augustine could ever associate the name of this peace-loving Messiah with violence is an utter mystery. One is tempted to appeal to the deceptive power of the devil to explain it.

A little earlier in Matthew Jesus told his followers, “Do no resist an evildoer” (Mt 5:39). Now, the Greek word translated “resist” (antistenai) doesn’t suggest followers of Jesus are to simply sit back and let evil take over. The word rather connotes resisting a forceful action with a similar forceful action. Jesus is thus forbidding his followers to respond to violent action with a similar violent action. But he’s not saying, “Do nothing.”

 Paul made this same point when he instructed Christians to never “repay evil with evil” and to never “take revenge. ” Instead, we are to “overcome evil with good” (Romans.12: 17, 19. See also I Thessalonians 5:15 and I Peter 3:9).

We aren’t to do nothing: we’re to love. If our enemy is hungry, we’re to feed them. And if they’re thirsty, we’re to given them something to drink (Romans 12:20).

This is how we’re to respond to enemies according to Jesus and his earliest followers. This is good for us, because it keeps us from sinking to the level of our enemies. And its good for our enemies, for it opens up the possibility that they’ll see the wrong they’re doing and turn from it. And while it may be costly, it’s ultimately good for the world. For this is the only way of responding to evil that actually prevents propagating it further.

It’s important to notice that Jesus never qualified the “enemies” or “evil doers” we’re supposed to love. Jesus didn’t say, “Love your enemies until they threaten you or your nation; until it seems justified to resort to violence; until they threaten the supremacy of your religion; or until it seems impractical to do so.” Enemies are enemies precisely because they threaten us on some level, and it always seems justified and practically expedient to resist them, if not harm them if necessary. Jesus simply said, “Love your enemies” and “don’t resist evildoers.”

It’s important to also remember that some of the people Jesus was saying this to would before long confront enemies who would feed them and their families to lions for amusement! (The first persecution of Christians broke out under Nero in 64 AD). Jesus wasn’t just talking about being nice to our grumpy neighbors! He was instructing us to love all enemies, regardless of why they’re our enemies, and regardless of how bad an enemy they are.

But Jesus didn’t simply teach about non-violence. He practiced it. When he was being unjustly arrested, his disciple Peter pulled out a sword in self-defense and swung it at one of the hostile guards, cutting of his ear. If ever there was an incident in which “Just War Theory” would conclude that the use of violence was “justified,” this would be it. Yet Jesus rebuked Peter, telling him to put his sword away, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52). The history of the human race is largely a bloody merry-go-round of people thinking their use of violence was “justified” and that the world would get fixed if only we who are moral could eradicate the “evil-doers” – if only we could “blow them up in the name of the Lord.” The assumption is a demonic delusion. The use of violence has always, and will always, eventually lead to more violence. Kill your enemy today and you recruit his children and grandchildren to be your enemy for generations to come. Jesus is trying to show us a way of finally getting off this mindless, bloody merry-go-round and live a different way.

After telling Peter to put away his sword, Jesus proceeded to illustrate the different, non-violent, mindset he wants his followers to cultivate by healing the ear of the aggressor that Peter had just severed (Lk 22:51). The Jesus-way of responding to enemies and of transforming the world, we see, is not through violent force, but by doing good to those who oppose us.

Jesus obviously is recommending a radically different way of doing life. This is why he told Pilate that his “kingdom” was “not from this world.” If his kingdom were a “normal” earthly kingdom, Jesus said, his followers would of course fight the way soldiers in all “normal” earthly kingdoms fight (John 18:36). But the movement Jesus came to establish -- a movement he called “the kingdom of God” -- was not at all “normal” in this respect. For the distinctive mark of the people aligned with his movement was that they would refuse to fight to further their causes. Instead, they would love, bless, serve and heal their enemies.

The way of Jesus is the way of self-sacrificial love, not coercive force. This is why Jesus allowed himself to be crucified when he could have more easily called on thousands of warring angels to fight on his behalf (Matthew 26:53). He died as an expression of love for all people – including Pilate, the hostile guard, and everyone else who was crucifying him. He died to reconcile us to the peace-loving God and free us from our addiction to violence. He voluntarily gave his life because he knew that what the world needed was not one more futile attempt at fixing it with violence. What the world rather needed was someone who would give his life to transform the world through self-sacrificial love.

And Jesus tells all of us to follow his example. In a world characterized by cyclical violence, we are to lay down our swords and love, bless and pray for our enemies. It may seem impractical if not outright insane. Jesus said it would. But I’m convinced he was right in believing that the hope of the world lies in people opting to live this way, rather than the more typical way of the violent warrior.

The tribe that follows Jesus will someday reign as “the Church Triumphant.” But as we are told in the Book of Revelation, the way we triumphant is not by using force, but by “following the lamb” (Rev. 14:4), offering ourselves up in love toward others, just as he did.

-Greg Boyd, author of "The Myth of a Christian Nation".

The Violence of Doing Nothing

“No seas metiche” is a phrase I often hear in my neighborhood.  In English we would say, “Don’t butt in” or “Mind your own business”.

In general these can be helpful ways of interacting with neighbors, however I think we take it too far when we fail to listen and use it as an excuse to ignore the issues our neighbors are facing. 

I have not always cared about Comprehensive Immigration Reform, yet as I “butt in” to the lives and stories of my neighbors, I am moved to action. 

Did the Senate vote on December 18, 2010 impact your life?  When the DREAM Act died on the Congress floor by five votes did you weep and mourn?  Maybe not.  If you were anywhere near my sphere of influence you were asked to call and write several lawmakers last year so that undocumented students brought illegally to the US and raised here could earn their legal residency.  Some people did it because they believe that our immigration system needs to be reformed.  Some people did it because they care about me and trust I will not ask them to do something out of line with their faith.  Many people did nothing. 

I understand doing nothing.  I have done nothing many times. I delete the urgent emails calling for action.  Most often I feel that I do not know enough about an issue and the people who do know and care will take the appropriate action and I will do nothing.  Nothing seems better than contradicting.  My friends who did nothing to push for the DREAM Act a year ago were not out there lobbying against it, so they probably felt they weren’t hurting the cause. 

The problem is that while we are doing nothing, thousands of families are being separated as deportations continue.  Dreamers, young people who would be able to earn status under the DREAM Act, are losing hope. 

Thanksgiving weekend this past year a young dreamer, Joaquin Luna, committed suicide.  In a note he left his parents he indicated his depression and hopelessness since the failure of the DREAM Act. As his high school graduation drew near, Joaquin could not envision a change in the system that would usher in the future he desired.  In his case, our doing nothing led to a violent end. 

As we head into 2012, immigrant advocates are predicting that nothing will happen to move us to immigration reform.  No lawmaker will want to take it on in an election year.  The president will do nothing.  And yet something will happen to my neighbors.  They will continue to live daily with the fear that they or their spouse or their grown children will be deported.  They will continue to serve us far below a living wage and under the radar with no worker protections.  They will continue on in landlord-tenant relationships with very little leverage.  65,000 more undocumented students who were raised in the U.S. will graduate from our high schools with no legal right to work or contribute. 
Doing nothing in 2012 will not be neutral.  Nothing results in something and in this case it will be the ongoing violence of fear, poverty and mistreatment. 

So what do we do?  How do we avoid the violence of nothing?  How do we bring peace in our immigrant neighbor's pain?  First we remember that our something is more powerful than politician’s nothing.  We are the people of God and when it feels like there is nothing to do, we pray.  In my activist mind I sometimes forget how “something” prayer is.  When nothing seems to be moving in the natural, we trust that God is moving and working in the spiritual and at the right moment he will break through in our reality.  We pray for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. 

And we can have the courage to be “metiche”; to believe that our neighbors and their stories matter as much as anything happening to us personally.  To open our eyes and our ears to their situation is to do something.  When we know a person and care about what happens to them, then what action to take becomes more obvious.  And even then the temptation to do nothing is there.  We can pat ourselves on the back for listening to people and never take any action to change their situation. 

Sometimes listening is the something - is what is needed and called for.  Sometimes we need to make a bazillion phone calls and rally our community and speak up for the voiceless until someone pays attention that kids are killing themselves because we have failed to provide a path for their future. 

Whatever we do, we have to do something.  To do nothing is not nothing.  To do nothing is to add to the violence and brokenness that the Kingdom came to abolish.   

-Crissy Brooks

What are we (really) fighting for?

Pacifist Fight Club starts in 9 days.

Join the fight against poverty, apathy, war and violence at Fuller Seminary (Irvine) on Saturday, January 14th at 10am.

This is a free event.

RSVP at Facebook or by leaving your comment here.

Peace.

Passive?

"There is nothing passive about non-violence." - Shane Crash

WHERE ARE THE PEACEMAKERS?

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

Last month most everyone who follows Jesus took the time to remember the birth of the Prince of Peace. We sang songs that announced the incarnation of Christ and we re-read the scriptures that reminded us of the angels who sang of peace on earth and goodwill towards Men.

Jesus was a man of peace. He said that the peace makers would be called the Sons of God. (Matthew 5:9)

To be someone who loves peace and brings peace and makes peace is to be like the Son of God...it's to be like Jesus.

Never mind that the American Church today is alligned with a political machine that is pro-war. Never mind that Christians today are more notorious for their hatred of sinners than they are for their love of people who sin.

If you want to be a follower of Jesus, be one who makes peace - in your community, in your workplace, in your family and in your church. Promote peace. Stand up for peace. Become someone who brings the peace of God into the room with you.

As followers of Jesus we need to be experts on the subject of peace. We need to be known as people of peace.

If we cannot love another human being because they disagree with us on doctrine, or because they are from another race, or because they embrace a different faith, or because they choose a different lifestyle than us, we must seriously question whether or not the love of God is in us at all.

Our calling as followers of Jesus is to love people. Freely we have received His love, and freely we are commanded to give it away. The love He gives us is not for us to bury in the ground. It's not for keeping to ourselves. It's for sharing with a world who has never truly known what His love is all about.

In this world we will have trouble. That's one of the promises that Jesus made to us. Trouble will come. And people who dislike us will bring that trouble to our door. How then should we respond? Should we call down fire on them from heaven to consume them? Should we pray for God's judgment to fall on them? Hardly. Jesus condemned such responses in his own disciples. (Luke 9:54)

Instead, our response to this trouble and to hardship and to persecution and disagreement should be love and we should work for peace if at all possible.

"If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." (Romans 12:18)

"Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing." (1 Peter 3:9)

"Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else." (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

Start today. Let the love of Christ dwell in your heart. Pray for those who persecute you. Ask the Lord Jesus to fill you with His love for people. Learn to walk humbly with your God and to serve others, even (and especially) if they hate you.

How great would it be if a year from now people could see how your life has reflected the love of Christ?

That's my prayer for each of you, and for myself as well.

"Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." (Hebrews 12:14)

Peace,
kg