Possessions as the Source of Violence: But What About MY Body?

A few eons ago, I started a blog series on the compatibility of self-defense/violence and Christianity.  This issue is incredibly important to me and the questions continues to haunt me.  As I described in the blog post prior to this one, I have taken martial arts for the purpose of self-defense for the last several years.  Why? People scare me.  I have friends who have been attacked and assaulted.  I have been approached by a stranger but was successfully able to deescalate the situation.  Statistics show that way too many women will get sexual assaulted in their lifetime, the vast majority before they hit 30 (and usually by someone known to them, but also sometimes by strangers).   So, both reason and experience point to idea that it is not too crazy to be watching your back and have a ready answer with what you would do the day the approach/attack happens.  The moral source that carries the greatest weight on this issue for me is Scripture.  But it is way more complex than most Christians admit it to be.  Not only is there a mixture of both violence as well as commands to love one another, but Scripture also does not address my moral question directly.  This creates a complex issue to wade through.

 Loving Your Enemy            

The majority (all) of Christians pick and chooses which biblical passages are their norm and leave out anything that may challenge their interpretation.  Nearly everything I have read on this topic falls into to extremes. For example, I was reading a blog recently entitled, “Love Your Enemies, Unless…” where the guy argues that there are no exceptions to Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies (Luke 6:32-36).  He argues that many Christians mistakenly view this command as an ideal that does not have relevance in the real world.  The blogger particularly emphasizes that when personal safety or the well-being of a loved one is at risk, Christians’ quickly dismiss concern for one’s enemy (which is a fair critique).  The guy contends that Jesus and the early church praised self-sacrifice, love of neighbor, and even died before lifting a finger to save themselves.  There are no references in the Bible to putting one’s own safety above the well-being of another person.  Many pacifists similarly quote examples from the Sermon on the Mount, which contains many of the passages that are said to argue for following the higher calling of loving others.  Hauerwas (probably one of the best known Christian pacifists out there with a lot of great questions on how to live life with a higher calling), for example, cites Matthew 5:43-48, as well as other pericopes from the Sermon on the Mount, to justify his argument for the ethical significance of Jesus and the foundation for his book, The Peaceable Kingdom. He writes, “For our possessions are the source of our violence.  Fearing that others desire what we have…we seek self-deceptive justifications that mire us in patterns of injustice which can be sustained only through coercion.  And of course we believe our most precious possession to be the self we have created, that we have chosen…What Jesus offers is a journey, an adventure.  Once undertaken, we discover that what we once held valuable, even the self, we no longer count as anything.”  Hauerwas argues that once we become disciples, we cannot count our personal safety as more valuable than another person’s well-being; the question of self-defense is no longer an issue when the self is viewed in this light. (But…it’s still an issue for me and I’m guessing most other people. So, why I think his statement is incredibly enlightening, I have some more ideas to wade through before I my “that’s it!” moment turns up. I would however, like us to keep it in mind as we continue, since there is a lot of truth to it.)

 The Grey Area: More Complications

            Both the blogger I mentioned and Hauerwas argue that Jesus’ command to love one’s enemy is a Scriptural ideal that is meant to be applied literally and in all circumstances.  When a person uses violence against another, both men would see this action as morally wrong.  However, it is extremely doubtful that Jesus meant all of his statements to be taken literally by his followers.  He often uses hyperbole to make a point, such as cutting off body parts in order to keep from sinning (Matt 5:27-30).  Few theologians argue for Christians to follow this command, despite the fact that it is in the same chapter as Christ’s command to love one’s enemies.  Additionally, does loving one’s enemy always necessitate a non-violent response?  Could one show love to a neighbor by stopping them from assaulting a woman?  Furthermore, passages from the Sermon on the Mount fail to deal with violence supported by Yahweh in the Old Testament and even by Jesus elsewhere in the Gospels.[1]  If Scripture includes a mixed assessment of violence, why should the Sermon on the Mount be more authoritative than other passages?[2]  Since self-defense against assault does not have an exact analogy in Scripture, the issue becomes a complex puzzle of different viewpoints from Scripture in addition to an attempt to apply passages to situations that were not necessarily written to address it.  Neither violence nor pacifism is upheld throughout all of Scripture.

 And that is where I am going to stop for today. (I know, cliffhanger!). The hope of the series of posts I am going to be putting up this week is that people will take a second to see where they fall on the issue of violence (I’ve heard one or two people talking recently about guns and gun control?) but then also on the issue of self-defense. Just to clarify, this has absolutely nothing to do with constitutional rights and national laws. I am concerned not about what the law allows me to do, but what can I ethically condone in my own life with an issue that terrifies me?
 Join me next time for how experience and stats are a second moral source to draw from! (This part is one everyone can relate to, I’m sure of it!)
 

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[1] OT references include Nehemiah 1:14. References for Jesus’ support on violence, see Matt 26:51-53 and Luke 22:36.  A great book to check out is by Brendan F. Furnish, and Dwight Hervey Small, The Mounting Threat of Home Intruders: Weighing the Moral Option of Armed Self-Defense (Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 1993), 107-125. Also, David Matson argues that modern translations of Luke 22:51 are portrayed as more pacifist than the Greek allows.  Any edition prior to WWII has a very different translation of the passage. One cannot help but wonder if this tragic war left its mark on the pages of our Bibles. David Matson, “Pacifist Jesus? The (Mis)Translation of Luke 22:51,” a soon to be published paper presented at the Stone-Campbell Journal Conference, Nashville, Tenn.: March 2013.[2]  Hauerwas rejects the depiction of war and violence in the OT as legitimately Christian.