In the first part of this two part series, I looked at what the New Testament of the Holy Bible, what the words of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, teach us about what it means to be a Christian. In that article, we saw that the Apostle Paul taught that all people, Christian or not, are the literal spiritual Children of God and joint-heirs with Christ set to inherit the Kingdom of God. Therefore, all people are, in the words of Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, “possible gods and goddesses” and we should treat them as such and live as such ourselves. The basis by which we do this are by adhering to the Two Great Commandments, to love God, demonstrated by our keeping of His commandments, and loving others as ourselves, demonstrated in how we treat them. These truths combined to utterly transform the Christian worldview. A Christian cannot do harm to other people, whether they be in his country or far away, because we are all the same people – brothers and sisters in the family of God.
We also discussed how Jesus Christ taught us to love our enemies and the Apostle Paul explained that our love for our enemies is manifested in the way that we respond to their evils done to us by doing good to them, by loving and serving them. Just as Jesus Christ loves all and His love is a free gift of redemption to all who will follow Him, so our love of others should be a free gift to them, based on who we are and what we believe and not conditional on who they are and what they do. Therefore, His command to others and Apostolic teaching on how to obey that command precludes us ever doing anything to others that would hurt them and absolutely forbids anything that would kill them. Christians respond to evil with good, not with more evil. We also touched upon how this in turn impacts a Christian’s relationship to the government, a deeper discussion of which is found here.
Where the last article explored and confirmed the Christian commandment to serve your enemies out of love and an effort to redeem them from evil – to do good to those doing evil to you – this article gets into exactly how you do that. Taking the Sermon on the Mount as the core of Christian ethical practice, I here explore the role of nonviolence and civil disobedience in Christ’s teachings in the Sermon and how they form a basis for the ways in which we can actively confront evil in a manner that is both loving and redemptive.
How To Love Your Enemies
In ministering to and loving our enemy and doing good to him even as he does evil to us as Christ taught we should, we overcome evil with good as the Apostle Paul taught, both by refusing to mimic the actions and evils we reject in others and thereby become the very evils we oppose and by showing forth the power of Christian love to transform others by showing how it has transformed us. We can show forth the possibilities of peace in Christ by showing how it has brought peace to us. And in our unwillingness to act violently, hatefully, and vengefully toward others we reveal the injustice of their own actions toward us and thereby call the to repentance and redemption. This process is something Christ understood clearly as He taught it in the Sermon on the Mount as can be seen in Matthew 5:
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic,h let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 & 45 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 5
These verses in the Sermon are some of the most powerful and instructive in all of scripture. They are our guidebook for confronting evil in a powerfully loving and redemptive manner. But it is very eays to misunderstanding or miss completely what Christ is teaching here because there is a ton of cultural context that was immediately obvious and relevant to the lives of first century Jews that isn’t obvious to us today. Dr. Walter Wink, did fantastic work in recovering these lost cultural contexts and helping us to understand Christ’s message here.
Turning The Other Cheek
First of all, in verse 39 the word translated as resist is the Greek word antistēnai. Trying to understand what this word means is difficult because it has both a violent context – as when one army resists another through combat – and a more general meaning of “not oppose.” Dr. Wink asserts that Jesus meant the violent context, translating Jesus’s words as, ” Do not violently resist the one who is evil.” Dr. Wink’s critics argue that it is impossible to assert this interpretation for sure based on the way the word is used in that verse. Therefore, they argue, it is just as likely that Jesus is commanding that Christians not resist evil people in any way. That is possible, but in context seems extremely unlikely. The word antistēnai is used overwhelmingly as a military term in the Septuagint (the oldest translation of the Old Testament). Dr. Wink theorizes that the translation of antistēnai as a term demands people be totally passive in the face of evil results from the desire of kings to eliminate language from the New Testament that would sound like it authorizes resistance to kings.
And, of course, the Apostles themselves repeatedly broke the law in the Acts of the Apostles, engaging in open civil disobedience by preaching Jesus as Christ (see Acts 5:17-42). The Apostles certainly understood Christ’s teaching and it didn’t preclude them from resisting evil through nonviolent means. Dr. N.T. Wright, a prominent Oxford theologian, also translated Matthew 5:39 as saying, “But I say to you: don’t use violence to resist evil!” And as we will see below, in the cultural context of the era, turning the other cheek was, in itself, an act of defiance and challenge. All of these evidences suggest that Christ was not forbidding all forms of resistance to evil here, only violent resistance. Even the context in verse 39 seems clear as it is about responding to someone who has just slapped you on the face. Do not respond to that act of violence with violence. Respond by turning the other cheek.
Why turn the other cheek? Dr. Wink explains that the right-hand was used in ancient Judea to backhandedly slap people on the right cheek as a way to demean them and demonstrate their inferiority to the one doing the striking. When this happened, Christ taught His disciples to respond by turning the left cheek towards the person hitting them. This act demonstrated the courage of the person being struck and his refusal to be cowed by violence. It also challenged the striker to the person again, but this time with his left hand, something he would be loath to do. This is because the left hand was considered unclean because it was used for such things as wiping your arse after eliminating fecal matter. And it had been for nearly two-thousand years old with prohibitions against using the left hand being found, as Dr. N.T. Wright explained (pgs. 220-221), as far back as the Code of Hammurabi. By Jewish law, using the left hand could lead to the striker being taken to court and sued for double damages and being made ritually unclean.
As Wink put it, “[T]he backhand is not for injuring people, it’s for humiliating people, degrading. Masters backhand their slaves, husbands [their] wives, parents [their] children, Romans [the] Jews. It’s always one down isn’t it? So it’s inserting a person back in the social role he plays as an inferior. The whole point was to force someone who was out of line to get back in line.” In this situation the social inferior cannot respond with legally justified violence. Slaves could be killed, wives and children beaten, Jews imprisoned or worse. So, how do they respond?
They turn the other cheek.
In doing so the struck person challenges the person striking them by turning the unstruck cheek towards the striker. This demonstrates defiance and a spirit that refuses to be cowed, to “know his place” and dares the striker to fight him as an equal. Wink’s critics will often say that this doesn’t change anything – the inferior is still the legal inferior. But they miss the point. It isn’t about changing the law (not yet anyway); it is about changing the way the struck person thinks of him or her self. As Dr. Wink explains:
This act of defiance renders the master incapable of asserting his dominance in this relationship. He can have this little slave beaten, but he can intimidate him no longer. By turning the cheek then, the inferior party is saying “I’m not inferior to you. I’m a human being. I refuse to be humiliated any longer. I am your equal. I’m a child of God. I won’t take it anymore.”
Such defiance is no way to avoid trouble. Meek acquiescence is what the master wants. …Such cheeky behavior could result in a flogging or worse, even killing, but the point has been made. The powers that be have lost their power to make people submit. And when large numbers begin behaving thus, Jesus was already depicted as addressing a crowd, you have a social revolution on your hands.
Transcript of Walter Wink’s Nonviolence for the Violent
When people no longer accept things as they are or their rulers for who they are then things will change. You start revolutions by changing the minds of the people and how they think of themselves. You start rejecting things as they are and living things as they should be. You start by turning the other cheek.
Exposing The State
Jesus’s words also tell us how to respond to unjust laws. The word translated as tunic in Matthew 5:40 as tunic is the Greek word chiton, a ” long garment worn under the cloak next to the skin.” (Footnote H.) So when Jesus tells us that if we are sued and our cloaks are taken we should also take off our tunics, He is saying we should strip down right there in the courtroom until we are completely naked. Why? Because in ancient Judean culture, if you saw someone naked you were shamed by the scene not the naked person. Someone who sued you for everything, including you cloak, was taking everything from you and by stripping down and exposing yourself you were likewise exposing the corruption, greed, and evil not just in the person suing you but in the so-called justice system that allowed such exploitation to occur. As Dr. Wink explains:
This is guerilla theater folks. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution. This unmasking is not simply punitive however. Since it offers the creditor a chance to see perhaps what his practices cause and to repent.
The powers that be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing deflates them more effectively than death lampooning. By refusing to be awed by their power, the powerless are emboldened to seek the initiative. Even when structural change is not immediately possible. This message, far from counseling an unattainable otherworldly perfection is a practical strategic measure for empowering the oppressed.
…Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence provides a hint of how to take on the entire system by unmasking it’s essential cruelty and burlesquing gets pretentious to justice. Those who listen will no longer be treated as sponges to be squeezed dry by the rich. They can accept the laws as they stand, push them to absurdity, and reveal them for what they are. They can strip naked, walk out before their fellows and leave the creditors and the whole economic edifice that they represent, stark naked.
Transcript of Walter Wink’s Nonviolence for the Violent
His point about the way that government powers stand on their dignity is an essential one to understand. Dignity, social ritual, the appearance of respectability and honor are all essential to the faith of people in their government and the ability of those in political positions to effectively rule. So much so that in his discussion of the dangers of the American national-security state, Dr. Michael J Glennon divided the government into two parts: the dignified institutions (Congress, President, courts) and the efficient institutions (the FBI, CIA, military, etc.) Dignity is essential to government being able to function and it is the way that politicians appear dignified and comply with the culture’s political social rituals (getting a fancy hat placed on your head, winning a popularity contest, etc.) that gives them the aura of command and manufactures the consent (and submission) of the masses.
Therefore, one of the best ways to undermine unjust people, unjust rulers, unjust governments, and unjust systems is to reveal them for how silly and foolish all of them are. This, in turn, undermines their hold on the minds of people and empowers and emboldens people to act against those in power and entrenched political power structures. When enough of the masses refuse to obey because they don’t think you have authority to command then you lose your power to demand obedience because the power of allow politicians is based on the compliance of the masses. Your government collapses when that compliance disappears.
It isn’t enough to expose politicians of wrong doing. Time and again emperors, kings, and presidents have all been revealed to be liars, cheaters, warmongers, violators of citizen rights, rapists, and even mass murderers without ever acing any repercussions. Again, the very point of the State is to socialize costs, both monetarily and politically. There is always someone “more dangerous,” and “more evil,” which necessitates you supporting the “lesser evil.” The sprawling beaurcacy of the state makes it near impossible to pin down any single individual as being the source of wrong doing, making it near impossible to hold anyone accountable. And the religious nature of the government and the cult-like devotion people have to its political parties and systems give people powerful emotional reasons for absolute loyalty to their political parties and governments even when they are obviously wrong and openly evil.
If you want to make any headway against these kinds of systems of mass manipulation you have to expose them for the lies and the propaganda that they are, not just intellectually but emotionally and dramatically. You have to do it in a way that moves the hearts of others so that they will then move their minds. Whether that means literally exposing yourself, stripping down to publicly and blatantly drive into the minds of others by our actions just how shameful and unjust they and the system they support is as Christ discusses here or some other equally powerful way, the point is the same.
Do whatever righteous thing it takes to expose the cruelties and evils of the system to those around you not just as a means of mass protest but as a way to do something that will really get people to talking about what you did and why you did it. As your example spreads so will your message and more sympathetic hearts and minds will be exposed to the truth and be won to your cause. Don’t allow their systems of overt and covert political and social control to control you. Instead use those systems against them as a means to expose their injustice and to win supports to your just cause. This way you can expose evil and end it, not by beating or killing others by stripping from them their power to hurt others. And who knows, maybe their hearts will in turn be touched by your actions and your message and they will repent and be saved.
Going The Extra Mile
Christ’s admonition to go two miles with anyone who forces you to go one mile with him or her is very confusing at first. Yet, it seems clear that Jesus knew His audience would understand, which is why He felt no need to explain it. Explaining the historical context, Dr. Wink says:
Such compulsory service was a constant feature in Palestine from Persian to late Roman times. Whoever was found on the street could be coerced into service as was Simon of Cyrene who was forced to carry Jesus’s cross. That was the angaria. Armies had to be moved with dispatch. Ranking [unintelligible] bought slaves or donkeys to carry their packs of sixty to eighty-five pounds, not including weapons. The majority of the rank and file however had to depend on impressed civilians. Entire villages sometimes fled in order to avoid being forced to carry soldier’s baggage.
Link added.
From the rule of Babylon all the way to the rule of Rome, the imperial powers that oppressed Palestine could demand that their subjects carry any kind of stuff for them. The Roman rule was that a commoner could only be compelled to carry the goods of a Roman soldier or official for a single mile. In this context, Christ’s reference and meaning becomes clear. When the imperial rulers demand you serve them by conscripting you into carrying their items for a mile, go for them two miles. Why though? What could possibly be gained from such an exercise? Dr. Wink explains that for a Roman soldier to accept this would have been an infraction of the military code that could have called down a punishment as severe as being flogged to as light as a mere reprimand. Some of his critics have seen the fact that a Roman soldier might not face serious punishment as a weakness in Wink’s argument, but they’re missing the point.
This process isn’t about getting the soldier punished. It is about how it empowers the oppressed. Jesus taught HIs followers to serve their enemies and He wasn’t being metaphorical or metaphysical about it. He was being very literal. Serve your enemies. Love them. Defy their rules that abuse you not by growing bitter and angry but by showering an outpouring of love upon them. Don’t do it because they make you, do it because you love your enemy. And don’t just do what they want, but do more. Be like Monseigneur Bienvenu in Les Misérables; when the Jean Valjeans of your life steal your silverware give them your silver candlesticks as well. The goal isn’t to hurt your enemy but to convert them through love and serve into being your friends and, if possible, even into being disciples of Christ. We, like the Monseigneur, do not want to destroy our enemies but, though our actions, help purchase them back from Perdition and to give them to God.
By going that extra mile we reveal the underlying injustice of the system for all to see – Why exactly is it okay to force me to go one mile but not two? And if forcing me to go two is bad then how could forcing me to go one be good? At the same time we expose the whole thing to the ridicule it deserves. Just imagine a Roman soldier having to argue with a Jew about giving the soldier back his own bag so he doesn’t get in trouble. Talk about turning the power situation on its head! And, as Wink suggests, there would be no greater time to preach to the Romans the message of Christ than when you’re walking those two miles with them. (Part 4.)
Living in Enemy Territory
This world is not as it should be. As C.S. Lewis once explained it:
Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king
has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of
sabotage. …God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.
Mere Christianity, pgs. 28, 31,37-38
As Christians we live in Enemy-occupied territory, where the powers of the world love and serve Satan, not God. As Christians we belong to the fellowship of the faithful, the rebel organization set to undermine the powers of our common foe, to breakdown the foundations of his crumbling kingdom, and to rescue as many who will be saved before the eschaton arrives. Like the slaves who once escaped slavery in the American South who then turned around and snuck back in to try and win as many of their brothers and sisters to liberty as possible, so we, having escaped the slavery of the world, must return to the sludge to rescue our brothers and sisters from the filth and wastes. We do not have to wait for all the Caesars of the world and all their petty Romes to fall before we can have peace. This is not some naïve idealism. Jesus has given us the means, the only means, by which we can overthrow their tyrannies and avoid setting up new ones:
The logic of Jesus’ examples in Matthew goes beyond both inaction and overreaction to a new response, fired in the crucible of love, that promises to liberate the oppressed from evil, even as it frees the oppressor from sin. Do not react violently to evil. Do not counter evil in kind. Do not let evil dictate the terms of your opposition. Do not let violence lead you to mirror your opponent. Don’t become the very thing you hate.
This forms the revolutionary principle that Jesus articulates as the basis for nonviolently engaging the powers. Jesus abhors both passivity and violence. He articulates out of the history of his own people’s struggles, a way by which the oppressor can be resisted without being emulated. And the enemy neutralized without being destroyed. Those who live by Jesus’ words point us to a new way of confronting evil. Whose potential for personal and social transformation we are only beginning to grasp today.
Dr. Walter Wink’s Address, Part 5.
This article and its predecessor are, of course, not the be all, end all on the subject of what it means to be a good Christian. But they do explain where we begin to be better Christians and the power that has to challenge the status quo of the world, to defy the injustices and wickedness that run rampant in it, and to transform it into something better. We do not merely need to suffer, living silently within Enemy territory, hoping for a better tomorrow. We can overthrow the world from below by transforming our adversaries into our allies, our foes into our comrades, and our enemies into our friends. We, by living Christ’s program as outlined in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, can begin today to challenged the evil powers of the world, defy their control over us, and actively establish a place of justice, of mercy, of love, of prosperity, of peace, of hope, of faith, of goodness, of righteousness. We can establish the Kingdom of God.
