Chapter 8. Excuses. As I contemplated the direction that these new ideas were taking, I felt that my own personal needs, my own fears, and my own general welfare had been enough to worry about. However, all of my big ideas became tougher when I considered how these things would affect my wife and family. When it was all said and done, taking the words of Christ at face value was a real challenge for me; it still is.
It's a lot easier for me to decide about right or wrong, good or bad, by the way I feel about something, or by how it affects my immediate little world. If certain teachings of Jesus don't fit into my world, I find it all too easy simply to ignore them or to attempt to explain them away theologically. But that's exactly what makes the Bible confusing. I had to be honest: many of the things I was trying to hold on to or explain away took quite a lot of exegetical gymnastics.
I finally came to see that if Jesus could say something as straightforward as "love your enemies" and I could turn it into support for atomic warfare, then who could blame people for saying that the Bible was confusing? Talking with others. I found that when I started discussing controversial subjects such as war and non-resistance with others, most people wanted to get away from the Scriptures as quickly as possible.
It's hard to argue with words such as, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him." Usually, in such a debate, the attention went to a list of several hypothetical scenarios or consequences. Arguments such as, "Do you realize what would happen if everybody did that?" or "What do you think would happen if every Christian left the army?" Critics were not concerned with what the Scriptures said but rather attempted to make a case to show why the Scriptures simply can't be saying what they obviously say.
This type of rationalizing is not new. Even in Jesus' day, when Jesus called people to His way of life, the result was similar, and they all with one consent began to make excuses (Luke 14:18). I tried to ignore these arguments, but I couldn't. I actually was amazed to find that these hypothetical stories and scenarios actually had a stronger effect on people's theology than anything else. If I wanted to get my point across, then I had to face up to these hypothetical scenarios, whether I liked it or not.
What if someone is attacking your family? One of the most common scenario questions had to do with protecting my family. This one strikes a deep chord in all of us. We all love our families, and most would do just about anything to protect them. The critics argue that all of this turning-the-other-cheek stuff is okay if it involves only me, but if a loved one is being hurt, then we should be willing to commit a lesser evil to protect the innocent.
They typically cite the common misunderstanding, "I cannot just sit there and do nothing." The question. The standard argument, although it may differ somewhat in the details, usually goes something like this: What would you do if someone came into your house and was trying to attack your wife or children? Would you shoot the attacker to protect your family, or would you just sit there and do nothing and watch them die? In trying to answer, I found that these questions came with a few built-in traps.
Besides the obvious play on emotion, one of the main problems with this type of question is the narrow set of choices offered. In real life, Christians have found several possibilities other than the limited ones offered in these hypothetical scenarios, such as putting themselves in harm's way, fleeing the scene, or even prayer. Another trap is the setting itself. Often the setting is unrealistic or places the Christian in a situation that he probably could have or should have avoided in the first place.
One of the books I found in Germany that really helped me with these questions was a book by John H. Yoder entitled "What Would You Do?" In his discussion, Yoder hits this line of thinking head-on. Addressing how to answer these types of questions, Yoder writes: How do we answer the question? We must note, first of all, that the questioner wants us to answer simply either yes or no.
For most questioners, the only choices which the question offers are defense, which must necessarily be lethal, and non-defense, which is sure to permit the worst to happen. But this is a wildly illogical way to pose the problem. Yoder exposes that the questioner in these hypothetical scenarios usually tries to force a response of kill or not kill. He argues that there certainly are several more possible outcomes than these two.
Highlighting the inconsistencies that saturate these types of questions, Yoder offers a somewhat comical dialogue written by Joan Baez entitled "Three Cheers for Grandma." Three Cheers for Grandma. Okay, you're a pacifist. What would you do if someone were, say, attacking your grandmother? Attacking my poor old grandmother? Yeah, you're in a room with your grandmother, and there's this guy about to attack her, and you're standing there. What would you do? I'd yell, Three cheers for grandma. And leave the room.
No, seriously. Say he had a gun and he was about to shoot her. Would you shoot him first? Do I have a gun? Yes. No, I'm a pacifist. I don't have a gun. Well, say you do. All right. Am I a good shot? Yes. I'd shoot the gun out of his hand. No, then you're not a good shot. I'd be afraid to shoot. Might kill grandma. Come on. Okay, look, we'll take another example. Say you're driving a truck. You're on a narrow road with a sheer cliff on your side. There's a little girl standing in the middle of the road.
You're going too fast to stop. What would you do? I don't know. What would you do? I'm asking you. You're the pacifist. Yes, I know. All right. Am I in control of the truck? Yes. How about if I honk my horn so she can get out of the way? She's too young to walk, and the horn doesn't work. I swerve around to the left of her since she's not going anywhere. No, there's been a landslide. Oh, well then, I would try to drive the truck over the cliff and save the little girl. Silence.
Well, say there's someone else in the truck with you. Then what? What's my decision have to do with my being a pacifist? There's two of you in the truck and only one little girl. Someone once said, "If you have the choice between a real evil and a hypothetical evil, always take the hypothetical one." Huh? I said, "Why are you so anxious to kill off all the pacifists?" I'm not. I just want to know what you do.
If I were with a friend in a truck driving very fast on a one-lane road approaching a dangerous impasse where a 10-month-old girl is sitting in the middle of the road with a landslide on one side of her and a sheer drop-off on the other? That's right. I would probably slam on the brakes, thus sending my friend through the front windshield, skid into the landslide, run over the little girl, sail off the cliff, and plunge to my own death.
No doubt grandma's house would be at the bottom of the ravine, and the truck would crash through her roof and blow up in her living room where she was finally being attacked for the first and last time. You haven't answered my question. You're just trying to get out of it. I'm really trying to say a couple of things. One is that no one knows what he'll do in a moment of crisis, and that hypothetical questions gets hypothetical answers.
I'm also hinting that you have made it impossible for me to come out of the situation without having killed one or more people. Then you say, "Pacifism is a nice idea, but it won't work." Doesn't faith mean anything? From a purely secular mindset, the dichotomy kill or do nothing might have some merit, but not for the man of faith. Those other possible responses are precisely what will distinguish the Christian man from the man who has no hope.
Yoder says it is striking when you read the many biographies of missionaries who weren't even schooled in an explicit theology of non-resistance to see that when they actually were placed in one of these hypothetical situations, they almost instinctively assumed it would be wrong to resort to violence to protect their families. What's more amazing, even in the face of such danger, they testify of a clear expectation of God's deliverance.
Leaving room for God to work miracles in such situations has propagated the faith for centuries. In the end, I found that the question of my family's security actually is a matter of faith. If I really believe Jesus meant it when he said I am to love my enemies, then looking for excuses why I can't obey his word is not an option. Instead, I should be looking to him for the grace I need to live up to something like this.
David Bercot, in his book The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down, touched on the point of Christian faithfulness, saying, "What if a foreign government ordered me to drop a bomb on a United States city or to assassinate the American president, or else they would harm my wife and children? What should I do?" I think most Americans would allow their wives and children to be harmed or even killed before betraying their country. So how is the situation any different when it concerns loyalty to Jesus?
Jesus' teachings on non-resistance are quite clear. It's a matter of either denying him or denying my family. To be sure, that's a very difficult choice, but I already made that choice when I gave my life to Christ. Does that mean I would do nothing to protect my family? Of course not. I've already done the best thing that I could possibly do to ensure their safety. I've entrusted my home and family to the care and protection of Jesus, and that isn't some naive trust.
There are tens of thousands of other kingdom Christians who have similarly beat their swords into plowshares and entrusted the safety of their families into the hands of their king. And although Jesus has not promised that no harm can ever come to our families, I can say this: that except in times of religious persecution, it's very rare for kingdom families to be harmed by ordinary criminals. Collateral damage. One of the most unfair things about this argument is its play on emotions.
Obviously, the idea of my family getting killed is simply unthinkable. But is it not profoundly ironic to compare this with modern warfare? I mean, it's not like innocent families are not getting killed during war. As a matter of fact, the military has a name for these helpless victims. They call these dead men, women, and children collateral damage. The sad reality is that, whether it be premeditated war or loving our enemies, tragedies happen and people die. Emotional plays won't change that.
I may not know how I will respond to every overwhelming situation that I will face in my future, but I know how I want to respond. I know how I am supposed to respond, like Christ. He has promised me that by his grace I can do that. Premeditated disobedience to the teaching of Christ, however, is not an option, and that is exactly what this line of thinking is suggesting. Closing this section in his book, Bercot cites an example of a miraculous deliverance for a couple that he knows personally.
A number of years ago, some Christian friends of mine, Decio and Olivia, were staying at a motel in Atlanta. There had been a number of armed robberies and murders in the city. In these robberies, the assailants had ordered their victims to lie face down on the floor and then shot them in the backs of their heads. So Decio was on his guard. It was a mild October evening, and Decio and Olivia had momentarily left their motel door open for a friend. Suddenly, two teenage thugs appeared in the doorway with guns.
They ordered everyone down on the floor. Decio hesitated and then knelt down, praying and trying to think of a way to foil the robbery. His wife, Olivia, thinking it was a Halloween prank, remained seated on the bed. So one of the young robbers waved his gun at her and ordered her to lie on the floor. Instead, she started singing out loud, "Jesus loves me," as she got up from the bed and slowly walked over to the two young men. One of them raised his pistol, pointed it at her face, and cocked it.
But when she continued singing and walking toward him, he suddenly yelled to his partner, "These are a bunch of Jesus nuts. Let's get out of here." And with that, the two young men vanished into the dark. Over the years, I have heard and read many other accounts of how a prayer, a hymn, or a testimony effectively disarmed a would-be burglar or assailant. There's no point singing, "Our God is an awesome God," if we don't really believe that he is. Ouch. Arguments from silence.
Strangely enough, another one of the most common objections to Christian non-resistance I discovered was the argument of silence. In what looked to me like a desperate grasping at straws, many books and Christian friends defend a Christian warfare based almost entirely on a case of silence. The two silent scenes quoted most often from the Bible were the conversion of the centurion in Acts 10 and the command of John the Baptist to the Roman soldiers.
In Acts 10, Peter was prompted by the Holy Spirit to bring the gospel to a devout, searching centurion named Cornelius. The centurion and his entire household were quickly converted. Peter even reports that the Holy Spirit was miraculously poured out on all of them, just as it had been at Pentecost. This was an amazing miracle. But the account nowhere mentions that Cornelius' family received instructions about non-resistance or loving your enemies.
Never mind the fact that there also is no mention that his family or servants received instruction concerning idols, fornication, gladiator shows, or even emperor worship. The account just tells us that the whole household got converted. But because love your enemies was not mentioned, friends and theologians deduce that Christian warfare is okay. John the Baptist. The other most common objection based on silence centers on John the Baptist. According to Luke 3, John was baptizing people in the wilderness.
Many people were coming to him asking, "What shall we do?" The two people mentioned in the scriptural account were a tax collector and a Roman soldier. Modern theologians, grasping for straws, say that John didn't tell them to stop killing people or even to get out of the army. Therefore, they insist that it must be okay to kill people as long as you're doing it as a soldier. Taking it seriously. I tried very hard to accept these silent arguments.
However, I found that between me and these silent arguments were the deafening cries of dead multitudes killed at the hands of those who professed to be followers of Christ. Between me and these silent arguments stood the hindsight of 1,500 years of gruesome mistakes done in the name of just causes.
And most disturbing, between me and these silent arguments stood the unmistakably plain and deafening words of Jesus Christ, "Love your enemies." In addition, as I continued to analyze these arguments, I realized that to accept this defense for warfare, I would basically have to negate Jesus' clear command, "Love your enemies," based on an argument of silence and a couple of incidents involving a pre-Christian prophet. Now, honestly, John the Baptist certainly was no ordinary Old Testament prophet.
Jesus says he was the greatest of them all. "Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." This means that John was better than Moses, better than Elijah, better than Jeremiah, and even better than David. But most curiously, Jesus then tells us that this great prophet, who was the greatest man ever born of women, is not as great as he that is least in the kingdom of heaven. I had to stop and consider these profound words.
"Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Matthew 11:11. I want to be in that kingdom. I don't want to stand on an argument of silence. I want to stand on the words of Christ. Jesus' sobering words at the end of his Sermon on the Mount make it painfully clear that his teachings are not mere suggestions or quaint meditations. He plainly declares that he is ushering in his new kingdom and that many will give excuses on that day. He gives us a frightening warning.
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you.
Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.' Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.
But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall." Matthew 7:20-27. As for me, I realized I could no longer make excuses. I wanted to follow my King and him alone. I wanted to be one of the least of these in the kingdom of heaven. Now I could truly sing.
"On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand."