“Not only am I a pacifist, I’m a militant pacifist.” (Einstein)
A person I know says he’s a pacifist. He, the grandson of a man who fought in World War 2, and of another who fought in the navy, says that if someone were to threaten his family, he would not defend them.
He says this and then he buys Modern Warfare 2. He says this and then he blows people’s heads off, virtually.
I don’t like guns. The physical or virtual kind. And in an ideal world, I’m a pacifist too. A lion-sleeps-with-the-lamb kind of girl. But in this world, the lion eats the lamb. So when that happens, do we just sit back? Or do we defend the lamb?
These are the hard questions. Some things are a spiritual battle, yes, and some things are mental. But then there are those that are very, very physical.
Communism is apparently a very good system in a perfect world. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world that experienced the Holocaust. And in a perfect world, I believe pacifism would work, too. But how can one be a Pacifist while life is being damaged by Nazis and the Taliban? By cruel dictators like Hussein? By men like Stalin? How? Is it possible to just pray peace into the situation?
Corrie Ten Boom didn’t, in The Hiding Place. She went against much of what she believed in to fight against the evil of her day. She hid Jews, and she lied about it. She stole. She did wrong, in the name of love, and this is what I’m wondering: do we let sin happen (like the Holocaust) simply for the sake of upholding a principle?
Honestly, I am searching. I want to live peace with every inch of me, but I also know this: I know that if someone were to attack my children, I wouldn’t think twice about hurting them. I wouldn’t think at all. Because my children are defenseless, and love protects and preserves.
I also know that peace fights on my behalf. “May the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, GUARD your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.”
Peace guards our hearts, and our minds. It doesn’t just sit idly by. It fights the bad guys.
I was telling Joey one night that I didn’t like guns. He asked me why, and I said, because they hurt people.
And he stopped for a minute and then he said, “But Auntie Emily, how can I be like God if I don’t fight off the bad guys?”
And he stumped me there.
I want to be a Pacifist, I do.
I just don’t know if I can be, in a World of War.
Wonderful post. I’ve always been a little bemused by the common notion that love is a gentle, passive thing. I see love as a fire, a sword of defence, a great roaring courage, as well as the soft encompassing of a heart. And to me, we act with love towards an ideal of peace. And so a pacifist might go to war as an act of love, even while killing others, for the sake of peace. Because you’re right, it needs defending sometimes. So maybe my answer would be that peace isn’t something we do, it’s something we have. I don’t know if I’m right, though. It’s a very interesting question.
This is something I’ve been thinking about lately as well. I recently read Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne, and he discussing his thoughts on matters such as these. His thoughts on non-violence and how he acts that out in his life in inner-city Philadelphia were extremely mind opening for me. If you’re interested in hearing more, there’s a video he’s done here:
http://vimeo.com/45988376#
It’s definitely something to take back to the Bible and work through with God.
Typically, in a communistic community – faith is God is eradicated. We just went to Shakertown in Pleasant Hill Ky to celebrate our anniversary. They had a different view of a Utopian Society – a pacifist view – but it was a living, working giving all praise to God society, trying to live like we would live in heaven – their glitch was a no-cohabitation rule though, which helped do them in after 100 years.
Studying the code of Knights, to serve their Lord (think Christ) and protect the weak and helpless – that is a noble thing.
Someone on Facebook shouted (that’s what all caps would be) that “God hates murder; therefore he hates fighting, and soldiers” – yet, Jesus said that in all of Jerusalem he had not meet anyone with the faith of one particular Roman soldier. God called David to battle, for Moses to lead battle.
I think all moms inside don’t like fighting. It is our nature – but it is the nature of boys to protect.
Of course, I’m trying to persuade my sons that the urge to punch is really a hijacked call to prayer. After prayer, maybe God will encourage a good punch – but the other person needs prayer first:)
I’m just going to whisper, “Amen, amen, amen,” all week, all month, all year as I think back on this.
Exactly. Spot-on. And beautiful.
You write beautifully every time etching heart things with words onto paper and screen. Thank you.
As a mother of three boys and a husband who active duty military and has done 5 tours to the Middle East, it is a tough thing to rationalize. I often find myself saying things like “we don’t hit our brother, do we?”, knowing full well that my husband is on the other side of the world with a gun in his hand. Its tough to want to live peacefully with love and harmony and all that jazz when you are married to a soldier. I struggle with it everyday, but good to know Im not the only one who questions this one. Thank you for words today.
very nice…i agree on the stance…i hope for peace but i know there are reasons to fight…i just dont think we always think them through before we go for military action….
“I also know this: I know that if someone were to attack my children, I wouldn’t think twice about hurting them. I wouldn’t think at all. Because my children are defenseless, and love protects and preserves.”
This is what it comes down to for me. I wouldn’t even think. And I would hope I wouldn’t even think to help others like Corrie Ten Boom. Peace in a world of war sounds nice but I just can’t make it match the reality of what I would do.
That Joey.
I’m not a mom, but there is much I would not hesitate to defend. And I have to admit, it’s not a stance/position I question, but I am older than you and have had more time to learn who I am. I think if I DIDN’T try to stop the “bad guys”, I would have more to answer to God for. I always say you amass more bad karma (whatever you may think karma is) by doing nothing and allowing bad things to continue than you do for stopping them.
That said, I live my life in peace. I have a hard time killing spiders and try to save every lizard the cat catches. Life is precious. It is up to me to protect as much of it as I can.
I love this piece and the thinking here. And I love Sarah’s comment about the nature of love. We see it in Jesus, don’t we? As children we learn of His sweetness, His feeding of the masses, His “Let the children come to me.” Then we grow up and find out He was overturning tables in the courts of the temples and calling folks vipers.
And He is love.
What about revenge? That’s a very different notion, isn’t it, from protection?
What does it mean for you to be a pacifist?
I’m not a pacifist. I have chased down a man who broke into our house twice and tried a third time; I chased him down because I was sick of him taking what was not his and endangering my family.
I’m not a pacifist. I have broken up fights in a bad neighborhood because children were present and the parents (too young to be parents) hadn’t matured enough to learn when to just step back and turn the other cheek.
I’m not a pacifist. My father, my uncle, and my best friend’s father are all teaching me how to use a gun safely in order to protect my home and my family.
I can’t be a pacifist because I have always felt charged, duty bound to stand up when someone else is getting beat down. Corrie Ten Boom did the same, and Ghandi, and Mother Theresa. Every person who stands up against a bully sheds the idea of pacifism without losing the core of pacifism.
I think you can redefine “pacifism”. You needn’t swing a bat or shoot at people or punch someone to be a non-pacifist. Violence is in oppression, in mental and verbal abuse. Pacifism can be the shield between those that hurt and those being hurt.
To be honest, I don’t think we as Christians can be pacifists. We have too many people in this world who need us, and I’m not talking about wars, I’m talking about every day stuff, like teaching your children that being a bully is not okay, picking on someone who is different is not okay, but it is okay to not accept someone being bullied and how you go about doing that. I’m talking the big things like migrant farmers who just want a better life for their children; we don’t have to buy that produce, we can spend a week immersed in their life to understand and call for better living conditions and legalization of the people who put our produce on the shelves.
Man this is good, Emily.
“I want to be a Pacifist, I do.
I just don’t know if I can be, in a World of War.”
I think I’ll be pondering these two sentences for awhile. So rich. So true.
Emily I love how you are struggling through this topic. It should never be taken lightly.
Two things: I consider Corrie Ten Boom to be a pacifist–she didn’t use violence, but was creative in her commitment to peace, dependent on God to be the ultimate bringer of justice and using her at the same time. I also believe true pacifism is not passive, where we sit by and let the bad guys win (although, sometimes they do in our broken world). The rub for this type of pacifism is that we need to realize we are OK with sending our soldiers to the broken places of the world, but we won’t send missionaries. What if all of us were committed to bringing God’s peace and justice where there was none?
As we are preparing to move into a much more dangerous neighborhood, these thoughts have been heavy on my heart. If I truly believe in the power of Jesus’ kingdom (and not force), then I must be a physical presence of love where God calls me to be, to places where violence reigns.
I agree with Danielle, being part of the Kingdom of God doesn’t mean doing nothing, nor does it mean resorting to violence — it means to find a third way, with a Christian political imagination (thanks to Claiborne for that term). I, as any of us would, would put myself in danger for the sake of my child, but I wouldn’t hurt someone over it; there is a difference between protecting an innocent and hurting an attacker. (Here’s a great essay on the logic of protecting someone necessarily meaning hurting the attacker http://salsa.net/peace/conv/8weekconv7-4.html)
But what I really wanted to respond to was the idea of “bad guys.” You quote the apostle Paul, and I think his story is a great example of Jesus’ refusal to use violence; Paul (then Saul) was KILLING people in the church, definitely one of the bad guys. But instead of taking him out with a lightening bolt, Jesus temporarily blinds him (maybe license for using mace?) and asks a pointed question, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” If Jesus had gone the way of the world, believing violence is the only way to respond to violence, Paul never would’ve gotten a chance to write that passage. Instead, God’s redemptive power is demonstrated in Paul’s story- a power that I believe, through Christian’s courageous engagement of evil people (like these here: http://thecatphotographer.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/inspired-by-memorial-day), can change and redeem even folks like Hitler or Joseph Kony. To suggest their only possible fate is death, is to lack a Christian imagination and doubt the transformative power of the gospel (although I am okay with policing, imprisonment and civic accountability).
And when it comes down to it, aren’t we all bad guys needing God to respond to us in love instead of punishment?
I don’t think I’ve ever thought of pacifism outside of the context of war. I cannot imagine not protecting those given to us to care for, though I also cannot imagine ever owning a gun ( In my graduating class alone, there were three accidental shootings, one fatal).
I really love your honesty here. I think your thoughts are sweet and genuine and it is something I too have wrestled with in the past. I would never consider myself a pacifist and I’ve never felt as though God wanted me to be one. Ultimately, He is our defender and we are not to resort to violence or revenge but I do believe in righteous anger, not sinning in anger. I would defend my family, maybe not so much my things, but most definitely my children, those who are weaker than me, those who cannot defend themselves. I don’t think guns hurt people, in an ideal world only the right people would have them but we live in a world of sin where people hurt people and they use things to hurt them with. My husband loves the Lord with all his heart, he loves his family and he loves people. He owns guns and if it came down to it he would use them to defend his family, to defend those who couldn’t. I’m really proud of him and I feel safe with him, mostly because he has this huge heart for the Lord and this desire to live in peace and love but a courage to stand up for what he knows is right from reading scripture. I don’t think Jesus was a pacifist, He lived in peace but you can be sure He is a warrior:)
There are different kinds of pacifism, Emily. And by all rights, Corrie ten Boom was a pacifist – as a commenter noted above, she did not resort to violence. I think what you’re describing and wondering about is non-resistor pacifism – when under attack, do not resist in any way. However, you can be against guns, but still fight back when someone comes after your children. I think that’s where I fall on the spectrum. I don’t like guns – and I realize that statement alone would take me off a lot of ‘like’ lists. But I do believe in justice. So, I would resist at some level, if I or those I loved came under attack. At least I think I would. I cannot truly know how much of a pacifist I am until I’m shoved up against that wall and forced to choose. I hope I would stand up for the right. But shoot somebody over it? No. That I would not do. And I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t do it either. Stanley Hauerwas has written about this a lot – and Shane Claiborne is a good resource, too. Turning tables is a FAR cry from whipping out a gun and ending a life.
I just typed a big long comment but I’ll delete it now because this summed up so much better what I wanted to say. Thank you, Diana! I’m an uneasy pacifist myself, too. I see and struggle with the same things, but I don’t see pacifism as “letting bad guys go.” To be it’s an active peacemaking and you wrote it how I see it. Thank you.
love me some Stanley Hauerwas
He has some great writing on truthfulness (not ignoring or denying the existence of injustice or evil) and be a people that believe in peace.
“And he stopped for a minute and then he said, “But Auntie Emily, how can I be like God if I don’t fight off the bad guys?”
And he stumped me there.
I want to be a Pacifist, I do.
I just don’t know if I can be, in a World of War.”
We need pacifism precisely because we are in a world of war. Pacifism, by definition seeks to pacify the violence around us. It is an *active* action to nullify the violence and harm of war. We wouldn’t need pacifism if the world were at peace. We would just be. There would be nothing TO pacify.
How can we be like God if we don’t fight off the bad guys? How did God treat the bad guys. Who were the bad guys, didn’t they nail him onto a cross? hmm..
I don’t claim that its clean-cut and easy. But I do think pacifism definitely includes protecting the weak. Standing up for the powerless, the orphan, the widow. Because there is bad in the world, we need pacifism. In the same way when a child falls down and cries, we pacify them. In a broken world violence happens and we can choose to make our reaction one that seeks to balance the scale, get revenge, fight fire with fire. We can choose an attitude where our goal is to beat the opposition, to lord over an opponent. Or we can chose to position our hearts in ways to quench the fires of violence. To see and know that the battle isn’t against human beings, and those other people, but is bigger than that. How that is actioned out is something we all have to struggle with.
Someone once said: It’s not guns that hurt people…. people hurt people.
i LOVE this discussion, guys. you have taught me so much, already.
i also wanted to share what my brother wrote in the comments section on my personal blog in response to this post:
Anyone unwilling to sacrifice their own life protecting their family does not deserve to be called a pacifist – they deserve to be called a coward. Gandhi’s ambulance corps in the Boer War were awarded the war medal for their dedication and bravery, not despite of but because of their commitment to nonviolence.
Reading the Sermon on the Mount, I believe moments of anger are closer to murder than playing violent video games or watching violent movies. The real seed of murder is anger, whether it rears its ugly head in a reaction to disobedience from children or in confrontation with an enemy, whom we are called to love.
When you look into the eyes of your oppressor, you will find the reason he is holding a gun is because he has never known the love of one who was willing to stand up for him, to lay down their life for him. Perhaps Christians are called to be the mothers and fathers for the gunmen who have never known the love of their own.
I suppose the issue is that there’s no point dying for your family if they’re just going to get killed straight afterwards anyway. If a mad man is determined to murder my entire family, and non-violent resistance isn’t able to stop him or persuade him otherwise – or if there’s just no time to even try out those kind of options – what are you supposed to do? Let them kill you in the name of love, only so they kill your family afterwards? Non-violence is generally the right Christian response I feel, but there are some situations where at least some violence seems necessary: it’s one thing taking a bullet for another, it’s another taking a bullet knowing full well that your death is just the ticket to everyone else taking a bullet too. As Christians we should have the courage to put people above principles – even nice ones like pacifisms! Christ became flesh for us, Christ became *sin* for us – if this is so, we should not be more concerned about our own ritualistic purity than we are with the lives of fellow human beings.
LOVE this john. well said.
nicely written post. if you haven’t read The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy… make sure you put it at the top of your list. i too was walking the path that you are now walking…and when i read that book… it sealed the deal. read it and let me know what you think. peace… brandon
i will, thank you so much brandon!
just found this site which will allow me to read it (for all of you who are interested, since i couldn’t find it in my library): http://www.thoughtaudio.com/titlelist/TA0072-KingdomofGod/index.html.
Emily… here also is a piece I wrote last year on the issue: http://outsidethewalls.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/breaking-silence/
This is a very tough issue. I consider myself a pacifist. When they were little the kids were not allowed guns, except for hunting (they would put stuffed animals in the trees and shoot them down). Now, as adults, I have had kids in the Navy, the Army, the Natl Guard, the Coast Guard, and police type work. A son spent a year in Iraq, another six months in Kuwait. One son was shot in a shoot-out battle at gun point in an attempted bank robbery (he was fine, mercifully just a surface wound). We need people with authority to carry out protection services. Politics aside, we must have a way to protect ourselves. The Lord does put people in positions of authority to carry out His laws. But it is not all clear-cut. I respect that my children have chosen to protect and serve others. My mother heart – that’s a different story.
maureen, you so beautifully capture the whole dilemma. thank you for sharing this vignette into your soul. e.
God is also a powerful, fearsome warrior and his honour guard rides on chariots of fire.
I love how you wrestle with this issue, Emily. I am dealing with these issues not in a big wide world kind of a way these days, but in a small, personal way – protecting my kids from the pain I experienced growing up – and others do not understand why I don’t just make peace. They don’t understand that sometimes the bigger sin would be to make peace instead of protect.
so well said amanda. “the bigger sin would be to make peace instead of protect.” love this.
This is beautiful.
It is easy to have philosophical discussions about pacifism and the ‘different types’ when we live in a country that is as safe as ours. Where we do not fear four our lives or our children’s lives every night. And the reason we don’t is that in history, men have taken up arms against those tha would harm us. They still do, both abroad and at hme. If the threat was betwen your child’s life or that of an assailant, would you fault the police officer who shoots? Would Christ? The bible condemns murder, but in a broken world killing is not the same as murder. If the threat is between one mnd thas he would see dead in a bombing, would you fault the soldier for stepping in? It’s easy to make the call when we are not the ones put in the position, but we have to be careful that our spiritual thoughts don’t aliantate those who we are counting on to keep the thoughts off our front door.
I know many soldiers who felt so judged, many police officer who felt condemned. Sometimes love doesn’t extend both ways and that could be why we see fewer front line protectors in our churches than we should. We readily accept their protection than condemn their violence.
I love how you wrote out the dilemma here.