Several years ago, a good
friend of mine was assaulted. I had an intense emotional response to the
traumatic event; I became paranoid and developed an unhealthy fear of being
assaulted as well. This fear became crippling and I did not know how to move
past it. To help, I
joined a Kenpo Karate dojo, which is a mixed martial art focused exclusively on
stopping as well as preventing any type of unwanted aggressive behavior. After
a few years, I began to feel strong and capable. My sense of paralyzing fear
was replaced with a healthy awareness of being able to avoid and, if needed,
stop most types of assault. However, as
my fear subsided and my training increased, I began to be troubled by how comfortable with violence I had become. I spent numerous hours every week for years learning how
to inflict pain on others in order to save myself or to save others.
Statistics show that one in five women have been raped (or experienced an attempted rape), one
in four women have been beaten, and one in six women have been stalked. The odds are fair that at some point in my
life, I will face an attacker and I will have to decide how to respond. In
fact, I have been in several situations where I have had to deescalate
situations with hostile males through aggressive but non-physical
means (I am defining violence as forcing your will onto another person. This can be anything from a threatening look, yelling
inappropriate remarks, or to actually laying hands on a person with the intention to hurt them. When I used aggressive but non-physical means
to stop an attack, I yelled and threatened the person, which is the same
behavior he had started doing to me. So, we both used aggressive, but
non-physical violence in order to force our own will onto another person – in his
case, he was attempting sexual assault. In my case, I coerced him into stopping
his behavior and giving me time to get to safety. So, I won that confrontation by using similar techniques my "enemy" used on me). The next time I may not be
lucky enough to be in a situation that I can stop through aggressive but non-physical
means.
As a Christian, I believe in the value of
every human life. I also believe that sin has corrupted every person, some more
so than others. I believe the Sermon on
the Mount has the clearest commands about loving one’s neighbor and loving
one’s enemy. The question arises as to how to love others when someone
may mean you harm. Do I have a right to protect myself? Do I have a
responsibility to protect the vulnerable in my care (such as children)? Can
loving one’s enemy include stopping your enemy from committing a terrible sin?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then how much violence can one
inflict (again, this includes everything from non-physical violence to the
other extreme (perhaps, using a weapon to kill?)), while still following the mantra
of loving one’s enemy? Does one have the
responsibility to inflict the minimum amount of damage in order to counter the
attack? My moral dilemma can be boiled
down to this: As a female follower of Christ in a world where violence against
women is common, how should I view/use violence (both physical and non-physical)?
I will be spending my next few posts on this ethical quandary.
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop and help this man, what will happen to me?" But...the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" - Martin Luther King Jr.
**As a side note, most people will think there is no ethical quandary here. Those who see no ethical quandary have already made assumptions about the value of self-preservation being more important than the well-being of another person, even an enemy. I am not necessarily disagreeing with this yet. I am just taking a deep breath and looking at the whole issue of using violence to stop violence. Instead of reacting from a place of fear (which is what I have been doing for years and continue to do), I would like to look at this issue and figure out where my boundaries lay.
