I’ve written before about the difficulty of positing a constructive pacifism in contemporary America. I’ve also described my own inner discord between the instinctual drive for retribution and the Jesus ethic. The problem, as I see it, is not that we reject out of hand Christ’s mandate to turn the other cheek, but that we see it as applying mainly to personal relationships rather than larger social or national interactions. (What are we supposed to do with the Hitlers and Saddams of the world?) In these big venues it appears that justice or self-preservation often demands the use of brute force. Sure, I’ll take a punch in the name of Jesus—but just try to mess with my family or country.
Perhaps Jesus’s call to turn the other cheek was never meant to be applied politically at all. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s. But my question has been, How many individuals gathered together does it take to make a group where the Jesus ethic is not applicable? How many individuals does it take to make a Caesar scenario? Two? Twenty? 2,000? 2 million? At what point does a community outgrow Christ’s mandate not to resist an evil person?
Or does it depend upon the purpose of the group? The Jesus ethic may apply to a group of folks whose purpose is to identify with God but may not apply to a secular group that has no religious aims. We may be obligated to turn the other cheek if someone provokes us as Christians, but if that same someone provokes us as Americans we may not be obligated to the Jesus ethic at all. We can freely answer provocation with provocation. Perhaps the call to imitate Christ is wholly dependent upon the context.
Maybe the problem is that we think of turning the other cheek as a capitulation to evil. If this were so, then turning the other cheek would indeed be immoral because it would mean granting evil the victory. This, however, is a crucial misunderstanding of the Jesus ethic. Turning the other cheek is not a surrender of the good, but rather the triumph of the good over evil. The cross of Christ is the prime and transcendent example. Yet even with such theological certainty, we have a difficult time seeing the way of the cross as a practical force, especially a force relevant to the larger world of social and national conflict.
Two men in modern history, however, did discover the power of nonviolence, a power so real that it could be called, not capitulation, but resistance. Through his practical commitment to the way of nonviolence, Gandhi changed a nation and demonstrated that “turning the other cheek” could have profound social repercussions on national scale.
This lesson was not lost on another man, a black American who saw in Gandhi’s way the means to win social justice for his own people. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw in Gandhi’s example the Jesus ethic writ large. Taken seriously and absolutely, turning the other cheek could evoke not only social change but even national reform. In his autobiography Stride Toward Freedom (1958), King writes of his first encounters with Gandhi’s philosophy and practice, and tells of the dramatic impact it had on him. It is worth quoting:
Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. I was particularly moved by the Salt March to the Sea and his numerous fasts. The whole concept of “Satyagraha” (Satya is truth which equals love, and agraha is force; “Satyagraha,” therefore, means truth-force or love force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform. Prior to reading Gandhi, I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationship. The “turn the other cheek” philosophy and the “love your enemies” philosophy were only valid, I felt, when individuals were in conflict with other individuals; when racial groups and nations were in conflict a more realistic approach seemed necessary. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was.
King continues:
Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.
This is heady stuff, and would be dismissible as pollyanna tripe if weren’t for the fact that both Gandhi and King succeeded. Their adherence to nonviolence as the moral instrument of change in a decidedly secular situation accomplished what guns and intimidation could never have accomplished—real change.
Of course, both men paid the ultimate price for their conviction. And now that we come down to it, maybe that’s the real reason we resist the Jesus ethic on anything but the smallest possible scale. Sacrifice of what we love is really not an option, even if it would bring about a greater good in the long run. At all costs we must preserve our way of life, even if it means destroying somebody else’s. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise—or try to hide it behind rational or religion-drenched rhetoric, our highest priority is not the Kingdom of God at all costs, but self-preservation. Our ethic is an eye for an eye.
Yet in the midst of our galvanized, Biblically-explicated patriotism, another voice is heard. It is the voice of men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. who testify that the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, is still the only way to triumph over evil and injustice. The security of the Western world is not maintained by political solutions or ready armies, but by those precious few who dare to turn the other cheek.
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
