Eight years ago, September 11, 2001, America was attacked by Islamic terrorists. Shortly after, our nation went to war against those who perpetrated this evil. It has been a long and costly struggle. And today, as then, those of us who follow Jesus continually weigh that cost and wonder, “What is the Godly response to violence and injustice?” For 2,000 Christians have debated this question and different streams of our faith have answered it differently. For some, a violent response to violence is never justified. For others, war, while never desirable is sometimes, and under some conditions the better of several bad options.
On, Sunday, September 16, 2001 I addressed the congregation of North Heights Lutheran Church, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Below is manuscript of that message. We’re eight years removed from those terrible days, yet the questions still present themselves. While there are other Biblical perspectives, here is one “Christian” answer to the question, “Is war ever justified?”
Jesus’ words are inconvenient today. As the days pass and the horror of the New York and Washington attacks settle into the cracks in our souls, one bitter question still resounds: how do we love these enemies? In the first days we stumbled through cycles of crushing emotion. That first Tuesday was sat around kitchen tables, or in office cubicles in stunned disbelief. On Wednesday we stood awkwardly over our children’s beds trying to comfort their fears. On Thursday we lay awake into the night, haunting images of falling towers and weeping widows playing in our brains. On Friday we prayed, a nation so awkward on her knees. On Saturday we woke with the bile of rage fuming in our bellies: war, at once everywhere and no-where with each one of us a citizen soldier alongside the tireless firemen in Manhattan and the heroic hostages who stormed the cockpit over Pennsylvania. On Sunday, we walked into familiar worship spaces looking for some stitch to seam up the tatters. And what did we find? Jesus’ words agitating rather than comforting our souls. “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.”
The war, we are told is progressing into new theaters. But our rage is still very real. And it is good rage. Anger like ours is a sign of health, for our morally lethargic society is finally calling something absolutely evil. Some wonder, “is this God’s judgment; has our sin removed God’s protective hand?” Perhaps. But God never begets chaos. He is, even now using it to bring about his better purposes, but such carnage is nothing but the spawn of Hell. These deeds were evil and we are right to respond with anger.
But right anger is a dangerous companion. It can so easily turn and pollute our souls. Animals lash back against assault in a chemical, defensive instinct. We know this impulse, for we are, on one level, animals. But we are not mere animals. We are spirit creatures made in God’s image, called by God to rule our instincts with spirit. So we must distinguish righteous anger from vengeful wrath.
And we draw this line with love. Yes, love – the startling marriage of anger and love. Which leads then to a first question: How can I love my enemies when there is not a flicker of natural tenderness within me? In one sense this is the essence of being Christian: we can never do any command of Jesus. In fact the entire Christian life is impossible. Only Jesus can be a Christian, and only Jesus can live his will and way through me. As Dr. Morris Vaagenes is so fond of saying: “I can’t, you can, please do, thank you…”
But then, a second question: how do I love my enemies… or more accurately, how do I let Jesus love them through me? Here we find some surprises.
We bless them. Paul speaks directly: “Bless those who curse you” (Romans 12:14). Now “to bless” is something far more than to simply “wish the best.” Covenant blessing is a supernatural release of grace from one person to another, an unction that the blessed one might fulfill their supernatural destiny. Jacob (Genesis 49) “blesses” his 12 sons that they might each live out their intended purposes. To bless is to literally impart upon someone the presence of God, which will mean goodness as well as judgment. To bless our enemies is to ask that the weight of God’s fullness would be heavy upon them, and that they would submit under the pressure of His holiness, and realize the full potential of their lives.
Now to bless Muslims has particular significance. For our Muslim cousins (even those few who sanction this kind of holy war against the West) are aching for such favor from God. Their bitter hunger goes back to Genesis 21 when Ishmael the son of Abraham not granted the promise of covenant was sent away to the desert to live by his own wits and strength. And in the desert Ishmael’s children remain – the Arabs of today. The good news we bring to them is that in Jesus the same blessing of Isaac is available to all Gentiles – to Ishmaelites as well the rest of us. What they bitterly fight to gain can be theirs by faith! So we bless our Muslim cousins with the knowledge of the favor of God’s covenant for them.
We pray for them. Jesus directs us: “pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Why pray? Prayer is an act of intentional passivity, asking God to act where we can not. Before Nehemiah confronted Artaxerxes, the Persian King who held the Jews in exile he prayed. As a result, God bent the man’s intention (Nehemiah 1:10, 2:4). We might strike an enemy’s physical life, but no human can reach in to alter the heart or intent of another soul. In fact whenever one soul tries to bend the will of another, the effort ends in bitterness. God however can mold motives and attitudes, even the intentions of our enemies. In this, our greatest weapon against their violence is prayer for their souls.
We forgive them. In the prayer Jesus taught us we utter: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass…” Forgiveness is imperative! In fact if we do not forgive, even the worst offenses against us, we ourselves are not forgiven (Matt. 6:14). But what is genuine forgiveness? It is not a warm emotion. It is not mustering the will to “like” our foes, or overlook their offense. Biblical forgiveness is a legal matter, a covenant agreement. When we forgive we release a justified charge against another and in the process turn the prosecution over to God. He will exact the justice. Paul says it this way: “Leave room for God’s wrath.” And so we shall. By forgiving, we step aside and let God lift his leveling hand. And He does and will. For all his ways are just, and unlike our imperfect vindictive forces, His wrath is strategically redemptive.
We overcome them. Evil begets more evil. But when we intervene to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21) we turn evil deeds to an end their perpetrators did not intend. Joseph wept before his brothers saying “you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Paul (Philippians 1:12) claims that the injustice of imprisonment was turned to good because he redeemed the situation and made it an opportunity to share the gospel with Roman soldiers.
But how is this love for our enemies? When we do good in the face of evil we stop some of the affect of wickedness. We cover some of their guilt and lesson their eternal accountability for havoc wrought in God’s order. The heroic deeds of firemen, the blood donated, the financial gifts to families have birthed good in the world that was not here before September 11. And thus heroic love intended for helpless victims turns out, ironically, to be merciful love for the terrorists, for it dims their shame.
We stop them. Love has many faces. And there are times when we must lift a hand and halt the evil. Revenge belongs to God (Romans 12:19). Still, at times we must institute force to stop the chaos of wickedness. Jesus himself was not above using force in his ministry. He did so in the temple when he turned the tables of usury (Luke 19:42). This proves true, even if that force involves death. “Turning the other cheek” is a personal strategy for love. In corporate arena’s love takes on more complicated expressions. In the original language the commandment is “thou shalt not murder” not “thou shalt not kill.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer made a choice to join an assassination plot against Hitler, and he called it love, love for the victims but also for Hitler himself. How? C.S. Lewis, echoing St. Augustine who wrote of “just war” says that love must sometimes act forcefully. If we believe in an eternal judgment then stopping an evil person, even by killing him, can be merciful, for it stops him from further polluting the world and thus incurring darker damnation upon himself and those he influences. Worse things than death can beset a human soul.
Since September 11, 2001, all this dense theology is suddenly starkly relevant for us. We are a nation at war. But we are not the first to face this question of right violent resistance. Every generation of followers of Jesus has wrestled with the reality: some of you in the Second World War, in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Gulf, or as police officers or reservists today. Our purpose, as Christian-Americans is 1) to prayerfully and faithfully support our government and 2) to stand as a prophetic voice reminding our government of the love and mercies of God. Even in the midst of military fury we must insist that militant actions be driven not by vengeful wrath, but by aggressive, persistent, creative love, love in forms that on the surface may not look familiar, but are nonetheless vigilant mercies.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I was with you until “Stop Them.” Noticed you didn’t back that point up with scripture directly related as you did with the other points of action listed. Instead, you turns a descriptive passage into a prescriptive one, and then quoted C.S. Lewis and Bonhoeffer. I love those guys. Smarter than me, those guys. But arguably, their theology changed to support the Great Wars based purely on pragmatism. As did Augustine’s.
Christian non-violence is crazy sounding, counter-intuitive, because it isn’t pragmatic. It won’t work. Jesus was executed. Martin Luther King was assassinated. The bullies don’t stop punching, the bullets don’t stop flying just because we answer terror with kindness, avoidance (a biblical option called “flee”), and prayer. It’s impractical, suicidal even. Who said, again, that right theology is always the theology which benefits and preserves our lives?
Maybe that’s what Jesus meant, in part, when he said “take up your cross and follow me.”
Not because it works. But because by doing so we are “perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.”
I’m not sure if we should or shouldn’t kill Muslims who are seeking to kill us. I don’t know. But I lean toward a non-violent response and, therefore, probably self-destruction because the bible (and early Christian theology) seems to lean that way. Your lack of verses to the contrary kinda betrays that fact doesn’t it? ; )