IJM - Jesus Christ was/is a pacifist.
Let me tell you why that isn't true. (I apologize in advance for the length I know this is going to be. I trust it is worth the time to read.)
"The search for the historical Jesus" is generally a search for ways to make Jesus say the things we think He ought to have said if He'd possessed our wisdom. The historical reality is that Jesus lived in a society under military occupation by a foreign empire, and one swarming with insurgent groups at that. He had two members of those groups among his closest disciples -- Simon the Zealot, and Judas, who likely was also a member of one insurgent group or another, given his predilection for forcing Jesus into a situation whereby he would "have to" exert His deictic power to throw Rome out of Israel. If Jesus had ever meant to condemn imperialism or endorse "liberation theology" or "wars of national liberation," He had one of the most perfect settings in all history to do so. Not only did He not do so, but Roman soldiers are just about the only group in the New Testament who are given complimentary treatment. When a group of soldiers came to John the Baptist asking what they needed to do to be saved, he told them not to abuse their power. He didn't even remotely suggest they should quit the army.
It gets worse for those who would make Jesus a pacifist. He was put to death on trumped up charges. What a perfect opportunity to condemn capital punishment. Yet, while He and two criminals were dying, one of the criminals chided the other one, saying that they were only getting what they deserved. What a perfect place to say that nobody deserves to die at the hands of the state, that the criminals are really victims of unequal wealth, lack of empowerment, and poor self-esteem. Jesus, apparently failing completely to understand what was at stake, instead promised His defender on the adjacent cross that he would join Him in heaven that very day. His followers, while they condemned the execution of Jesus and some of his followers, always did so on the sophistic grounds that they were innocent and morally in the right. Not once did they challenge the right of the state to take the life of genuine criminals.
Attempts to equate Christianity and pacifism simply don't stand scrutiny. Christianity does not teach that non-human life is sacred. Jesus and his followers ate animal products. And while Christianity does teach that
human life is sacred, Christ nonetheless told his followers not to fear those who merely destroyed the body, and said that he who loved his life would lose it.
OK, so what about "Thou shalt not kill?" Have you ever noticed that in spite of "Thou shalt not
kill," David still
slew Goliath? Why two different words?
Because the original meaning of
kill was more nearly that of
murder, whereas
slay meant homicide in general, including the justifiable homicide that occurs in war. Although there's some overlap in usage in the Bible, generally actions like killing in battle are translated with
slay. The distinction was clear in the 1600's when the King James Bible was published. It's only when we became intellectually sloppy that we blurred the distinction between the two words.
This is a
pons asinorum (bridge of asses) -- an initial first step that has to be made before any productive discussion can begin. People who trot out "thou shalt not kill" as a basis for pacifism are revealing only their inadequate study of God's word. So how does this relate to whether a person should own a weapon, or exert force when necessary?
Before we go any further, take your mouse and
put the cursor on this bold lettering.
Now, notice what you did. In order to move the mouse, you had to exert force, and very precise and gentle force at that. You didn't rip the mouse cord out of the computer, or crush the mouse in your grip, or push so hard on it that you mashed the trackball flat or punch a hole in the touchpad. The notion that force inexorably spirals out of control is precisely that trivially easy to refute.
Now it's probably true that resorting to unnecessary violence may very well lead to retaliation. So restraint in dealing with confrontations is usually a good idea. But all the talk about "ending the cycle of violence" fails to address the key question of
what do we do about people who have already turned to violence as their tactic of choice? After all, as a problem-solving tool, "violence first" has a couple of things going for it:
- It's simple
- It gets results, especially after word gets around that you don't hesitate to use violence
- It's gratifying. You get to vent pent-up rage, feel dominance over others, maybe even a sexual turn-on
Most pacifists react to this issue by simply pretending that it doesn't exist, that people either never deliberately choose violence, that violence always stems from earlier violence, poverty, or injustice, or that if people do deliberately choose violence, it's in rare cases that are not really of great importance. But history abounds with examples of people who have deliberately chosen violence. The ease with which people from non-violent backgrounds have been induced to commit atrocities in wartime shows how easy it can be for the violent to recruit assistants, and for the gratification factor to take hold. Thus, a single individual who opts for violence because he enjoys domination may succeed in recruiting many others less bold than he is.
How do we respond to people who have opted for violence? Appeasement merely reinforces the conviction that violence gets results. The best historical example of this is British PM Neville Chamberlain trying to "appease" Hitler by giving up greater and greater chunks of Europe, hoping to satisify the appetite of the monster. We all know how well that worked. Moreover, appeasement provides gratification by reinforcing the feeling of dominance. When confronting people who have already opted for violence, non-violence has a very good chance of perpetuating the cycle of violence. Again, look to the example of Hitler's reaction to Chamberlain's "appeasement." It resulted in greater and greater demands and larger and larger acts of war and atrocity ending in utter enslavement and destruction of whole nations, not satisfaction and a laying down of arms. Retaliatory force, on the other hand, makes the results of violence a lot less simple, a lot less effective in getting results, and a lot less gratifying. Once violence is adopted by the aggressor, it leaves very little choice for the victims of aggression other than to adopt a violent retaliation, if they don't consider defeat and domination an acceptable option.
Furthermore, violence is only the far end of the spectrum of force. Every screaming brat who throws a temper tantrum in public is testimony to the fact that children do not need to be taught the use of force. And regardless how loving, benevolent and diligent a parent is in meeting and supplying the child's needs, every child sooner or later runs into the fact that other people, much less the physical universe, will not fully meet the desires and demands inherent in all of us. Sooner or later every human being has to face the fact that some desires will not be gratified.
When the Persian Gulf War broke out, critics of the war complained that we had not given diplomacy enough time to do the job. Years later, after a decade of economic sanctions had reduced Iraq to utter misery, many of the same people were complaining that sanctions should have ended because they had failed and because they were causing great suffering. The direct result of this wishy-washiness was Operation Iraqi Freedom, made necessary by the unrepentant hubris of Sadaam Hussein who, being unable to violently force his will on the world, decided to limit his exercise of brutality toward his own people while being aided and abetted by opinion among members of the world society who were willing to apologize to this animal for his being treated better than he deserved. What he deserved for starving his people and leaving them without any semblance of adequate humanitarian care was to be assassinated and replaced, but the pacifists were unwilling to take that responsibility, despite the fact it was obvious he was killing his own people to spite the world.
So what, exactly, was diplomacy supposed to accomplish in 1991? The only actions we can take against a country from outside are to blockade it. If blockade has not been effective after ten years, and if a blockade is considered morally objectionable if it causes human suffering, then exactly what measures were we supposed to take against Iraq? It is my contention that, despite the hand-wringing and uncalled-for apologies of the pacifist front -- an overarching attitude that eventually forced us out of Iraq before we accomplished what the majority of Iraq's democracy-seeking people wanted us to help them acheive -- we nonetheless accomplished in Iraq most of what we should have finished 21 years ago, the first time around. The pity is we were forced to abandon them by the pacifist-Marxist front pervading the liberal wing of US politics.
I suggest that pacifists have a moral and intellectual obligation to answer the following questions:
- What specific measures will lead to a peaceful solution?
- What evidence do you have that these measures will work?
- What criteria will we use to decide if the pacifist approach has failed?
For example, saying "The United States should have relied more on diplomacy to capture Osama bin Laden" doesn't cut it. What specific diplomatic approaches should we have tried? What evidence is there that they would have worked? How long should we have persisted before concluding that they didn't work? Are there other criteria (credible evidence of bin Laden acquiring nuclear weapons, for example) that would justify immediate, violent, retaliatory action? Or would there ever be any regard whatsoever for such "credible evidence" among the pacifist elite?
It isn't as easy as you wish to make it. Hard questions get asked, hard answers are considered, and the result is often something no one wants, but something that is inevitably necessary if we want to remain secure in our persons, our homes and in our nation.
