What Would You Do If...

Because I lean toward a nonviolent ethic, I often get into conversations about the morality of war. Unfortunately, the conversations are entirely too predictable. They always go something like this:

Me: I’m not sure if Christians should resort to violence, no matter what the cause.

Friend: Yeah, but what if the violence is for good reason?

Me: Well, using violent means to stop violence seems morally suspect.

Friend: Sometimes we are obliged morally to do whatever we can to stop evil.

Me: Are we, though?

Friend: Well yes, what would you do if someone broke into your house and was about to…

This hypothetical situation is always (annoyingly) where such conversations end up. I must confess, I hate this, because the hypothetical situation is always used as a trump card, as if it is a situation where one cannot possibly argue a nonviolent position, and thus the poser of such a question tends to assume that concession to such a situational violence endorses any form of violent intervention.

For my sake, as well as for the sake of anyone else who might be inclined toward nonviolence as a stance and has been similarly frustrated by such a hypothetical, I would like to analyze such a hypothetical to see if it really closes the door on the nonviolent stance, as is usually supposed. As a note: many of the ideas/arguments I will propose are mine, but many are set forth by a theologian, John Howard Yoder, whose article I recently read. If anyone cares to read the article, which is a much longer treatment of the issue, I will gladly share it.

Okay, so what if? The hypothetical question has many variations—the alleged criminal intending to kill oneself, rape one’s wife, kill one’s kids, or commit other similarly outrageous acts of a morally reprehensible nature. However, there are many generic elements of the proposed situation that I would like to critique.

First, this situation, as entirely hypothetical, is entirely deterministic. The criminal thus functions as a mechanical part of the dilemma, rather than a real human being. Thus I am the only one in the situation considered to have options, when in fact, in real life, the criminal is an agent in the scenario as well, whose ability to make decisions is equal to mine. He is not an automaton. For whatever reason he is acting as he does, the criminal must be recognized as a player as well.

Second, in the situation, one is assumed to possess absolute knowledge of the intent of the assailant. I wonder how often in real life this is the case. Do criminals often break into houses loudly proclaiming, “I’m gonna rape your wife, kill your kids, then kill you.” This is important, because even if one were to accept the use of violence in a situation of defense, surely killing another human being must be the last resort. It cannot be morally defensible to kill someone for the mere act of theft. Our society is built on the principle that the punishment must fit the crime. Acknowledging this, at what point in the situation does one know for certain that the assailant is going to kill? Further, I think that when one can conclusively know that the criminal intends to kill, it is probably too late for anything to be done. Imagine a standoff, with both oneself and the criminal each leveling handguns at each other: “Are you going to kill me?” “Because if you are, I have already decided I must kill you in defense.” You may object that that is an absurd situation that would never happen. I agree. The point is real situations don’t play out so neatly. I am merely suggesting that the ending of a life is serious business, in which one must be very confident that the act of killing must be justified, if at all, by similar intent to kill by the assailant.


Third, the question is posed in such a form that one is presented with only two options: kill the assailant or allow the misdeed to happen. As Yoder notes, there are more possibilities than these two. Suppose for example, that the attacker intends to kill oneself and one’s wife. Yoder notes these possibilities:

1. Tragedy. The criminal assailant may accomplish the evil he intended, which is argued by the proposer of the situation as the worst possible event.
2. Martyrdom. This is the same result as (1), yet it takes into account the effects of the tragedy. The possibility of martyrdom cannot be excluded for us who claim Christ. It may be that by engaging the criminal I may refocus his attack for such a time that my wife. Martyrdom in the past has stood for the conviction that for Christians, this life is not the end and that God is the ultimate provider of justice. Further, it may be that society, in witnessing the occurrence of such an evil, will be inspired to do more to see that such situations are less likely to happen.
3. There might be another way out.
a. This way out may be providential one. If we as Christians sincerely believe that God works in this world, especially for those who he calls his own, we cannot exclude the possibility of divine intervention.
b. This way out may be natural. If we note that the attacker is a reasonable moral agent, we must allow for the possibility that he may dissuaded from his intent by nonviolent means.
4. I may try to kill the attacker.
a. In doing so, I may succeed, assuming that I have the moral and legal right to do so, and that this is the best option. Account should be taken of the psychological effects of such action, which could have lasting and devastating effects on us as Christians, who have theological reasons to value life, regardless of whether we believe that such an act was justified. Further, the theological consequences of such an action must be considered. In killing the assailant, we (presumably) send the assailant to hell, while those of us who look forward to heaven remain alive on earth.
b. I may try to kill the attacker and fail to do so. This event is actually very likely because we presume that the attacker is adequately prepared for his intended task. It is likely that this may make the situation worse. The attacker, if somewhat harmed, may in anger attack more people, while we in defense have committed a lesser evil (attempting to kill) and not succeeded, with the result that the greater evil has happened as well.


I don’t really know what I would do if someone attacked someone I loved. I realize that in concrete immediate situations, such as set up in the scenario, one is required to make decisions quickly and live with the consequences. I do believe, however, that it is reductionist and uncreative to cast such a situation in the form of two options: kill or be killed. I hope that just by keeping in mind the possibility of a nonviolent solution, I will be able to do not just the lesser evil, but no evil.

A TestaMental Issue

A couple weeks ago I drove a secret agent to the state hospital. Sarah—and I’m using a pseudonym, of course—doesn’t like her picture to be taken, and she told me she has lots of foreign state enemies: Belgium, Germany, and France, to name a few. You see, I’m a transporter for the Behavioral Health unit at St. Vincent Hospital, so I drive lots of people like Sarah to various destinations: residential care facilities, hospitals, and, if they are well enough, home. Many patients that I drive experience delusions like Sarah does—I’ve encountered both Michael Jackson and Madonna on the unit, and to be honest, their performances were less than Grammy worthy—but others suffer from schizophrenia, mania, depression, or other mental illnesses.
Often the drives are long. I go to Fort Smith, Helena, and El Dorado pretty regularly, and on such drives I have the opportunity for extended conversation with the patients. I don’t have a background in psychology, so I don’t understand a lot of what is going on with these people. But I have found that I can listen. When I listen to these patients tell their stories, I find out that most of them are people just like you and me who have come upon hard times either in the present or the past. I’ve heard a lot of stories on these drives, sad narratives of divorce or death of a loved one, miserable accounts of addiction, and heartrending tales of physical and mental abuse from family members.
So what, then, should I do, when I hear these stories that are painful to hear? What, then, should we as a church do, when we are confronted with the disordered lives that walk into our homes and Bible classes and worship service? What should we do when those painful stories are coming from our own pews? I think that, first, we must acknowledge that we are not so different. We, too, live with caffeine and sugar induced addictions. We, too, hear voices—voices that tell us we are not good enough, or voices that tell us we need more stuff, or voices that tell us we really are better, that our lives aren’t as messy as Joe or Jane, or Sarah the spy. We, too, live in relational blunders, bruised from our broken attempts at love and faithfulness. We, too, need help sometimes.
The second thing we must do, as people, and as a church, is to tell a counter-story. Laquisha is a patient who needs another story to tell. She is barely twenty and has lived on the streets, pimped out and beaten, for more than five years of her life, and now her mind has gone into psychosis in order to deal (or more accurately, not deal) with her past. I want to tell Laquisha that there is a bigger story, one that envelops hers. This bigger narrative is about a God who is putting the world to rights, who has made the nations a footstool, who will conquer death, who will balance brain chemistry, who will undo sexual abuse, and who will overcome evil. I want to tell Laquisha that there will be a day when this will all come about, that every tear she has forgotten how to cry will be wiped away, and that there won’t be any more pain, prostitution, or need for Prozac.
Until that day, it is good for us to welcome those with mental illness into our community, because right now things can still be pretty bad. And as we listen to and tell stories, we wait for the undoing of mental illness, doing the best we can, with therapy and pharmaceuticals and patience and respect. I have hope for that day.

But until then, Sarah the spy, may you have no more enemies.

Plato, Aristotle, Frogs, and Sexual Ethics

It all goes back to Plato—our theology of sexual ethics, that is. You may recall Plato’s position that a world of ideals exists corresponding to this world. According to Plato, this ideal universe is the true reality, of which our world is only a shadow or copy. Thus, every material thing in our world is a form of the true form or idea, of which that thing only a copy. For example, Plato believes that we recognize various kinds of tables as “table” because they correspond somehow to the idea, “table,” that exists in the ideal universe. So for Plato, the object of life is to rid oneself of the imperfection of this world of copies of forms and understand the world of true forms.

Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that Plato’s philosophy of forms was ludicrous. For Aristotle, a table is a table, not a reflection of the true idea or form, “table.” Aristotle, the father of logic, thought it is illogical to start with an idea and then proceed to interpret the world based on such ideas. Rather, Aristotle would say that we recognize various kinds of table based on their common characteristics—legs, flat surface, and distance from the ground—and categorize them under the rubric “table.”

These differences of philosophy are why Plato is generally thought of as the father of philosophy, whereas Aristotle is the father of science.

Although Aristotle has won the day in science, Plato has dominated in the church, where we tend to interpret the Bible according to his theory of the forms. This Platonic interpretation is not a difficult leap, however, because the Scriptures often interpret themselves according to the idea of forms. For instance, in Hebrews, the temple on earth is thought to be a copy of the temple in heaven. However, I wonder whether the Scriptures interpret all of our world to be a copy of heaven. I lean towards no. I think we can take the Aristotelian approach and say that an apple is an apple, not a copy of the heavenly apple, while at the same time affirming the existence of things outside of our universe (by which I mean the heavenly realm).

Moving towards Aristotle would have some profound significance of our theologies, though. In particular, I’m thinking about our theology of gender. We tend to think of sexuality in Platonic terms of form. There is the form, “masculine,” which we think to be a divinely ordained category, by which we can only mean a form separate from any particular man, and then we judge how well men fit into this category. The same goes for the “feminine” form as well. The problem is, nature is not so precise in fitting into these predetermined forms. There are many animal species that can actually change gender—frogs for instance, which makes for a great plot when you add some frog DNA to some ancient dinosaur DNA and try to create a Jurassic Park. While this doesn’t happen to humans, hermaphroditism, possessing both the female and male anatomies, has been documented. I think this poses a problem for our theology of gender as some idealized form which is separate from each particular individual. The existence of hermaphrodites seems to deconstruct the way we do sexual ethics in church. To follow our traditional theologies of gender, we must either say that hermaphrodite individuals are either an abomination, since they don’t fit into either form of male or female, or we must say that there exists a universal form, “hermaphrodite.” Either way, this seems to undo our gender theology. Particularly, it presents problems for both our theologies of the roles of women and men and our negative view of homosexuality.

God Bless Ethnocentrism: or, why I’m an (ex)patriot

I’ve been reading about zero-sum game theory recently. It’s a term used by mathematicians to describe situations were there are finite and exclusive outcomes. For instance, if two people decide to play poker, one might come out $20 in the hole, in which case the other would leave with an extra $20 of money to spend. The sum of their outcomes, -$20 and +$20, would equal zero. So I’m no mathematician, but I am really interested in how this theory describes much of the world.

In particular, I’m interested in how this applies to that bumper sticker I see every now and then that says “God Bless America.” Now first of all, let me disclaim that I don’t really know how that phrase is intended. If by “God Bless America,” people mean, “God, bless America as well as every other nation in this world,” then I would affirm that statement, although I would say it would be better to just say “God Bless the World” on your bumper-sticker. What I think it means because of the military context the phrase is usually used in, is, “God Bless America in Particular,” or “God Bless America over-against the rest of the world.”

If the people that have this bumper sticker really mean “God Bless America in Particular,” or “God Bless America over-against the rest of the world,” which I think they probably do, then I have some problems with that statement.

First, I think if God is still in the business of blessing nations, then maybe we should infer, by our liberties and our wealth, that we already are blessed. In this case, we shouldn’t be asking for more blessing but rather the wisdom to use our blessings well. In the Bible, divine blessing or election is always as much a responsibility as it is a gift. Thus, Abraham is blessed so that all peoples of the world will be blessed. Israel is brought out of Egypt to be a kingdom of priests with the duty of manifesting holiness to the world.

Second—and this is really what I’m more concerned about—I think that zero-sum theory works on the world stage. The world is finite. The energy sector is dealing with this as they look to other energy sources when oil runs out. In particular I’m interested in what zero-sum theory means in the context of war. Mark Twain has a fascinating short story set in the context of the war on the Philippines. As a congregation is praying for their soldiers who are about to go to war, an unknown man comes into the church, walks to the front, and addresses the church:

Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

Then he prays:

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

I do have particular views on war, but what I’m more interested in is the idea Twain is imaginatively expressing, namely, that for God to bless one group, especially in the context of war, this blessing occurs over against another group. And war may not be the only context in which zero-sum theory might be important. If the world has only finite resources, this theory may play out in economics as well. The global economy may be a giant game of poker, in which winning means someone else is losing.

I think the call to discipleship is call to transcend national boundaries, and while that may not mean denying our national identity, it does mean that we are concerned with God’s agenda of putting the entire world to rights with the blessing of his justice, peace, and love. As the world becomes increasingly more connected, this may mean that Christ’s call to suffer may have new significance when having means someone else has-not. So God Bless the World.

Competitive Inhibition

So I’ve been thinking about orthodoxy recently. Actually I’ve been thinking about the opposite of orthodoxy, heterodoxy. A blogger-friend recently posted about the need to repress bad theology, and while I agree that bad theology, or heterodoxy, is destructive to people and the church, I’m not sure that silencing them is the best solution.

The problem is that the church tends to value right doctrine over right practice, and when someone challenges the doctrine of the church, the church responds with rather poor practice. Here I’m thinking of John Calvin, who had a tendency of burning his nay-sayers at the stake. Even when we don’t strike up a match at the mention of a questionable doctrine, we often respond by either haranguing with unkind words or by closing them off from the conversation. At worse, we actively work to silence the questionable by disfellowshipping or not allowing their voice to be heard. These overt methods of dealing with what we consider wrong doctrines or ethical stances are problematic because they don’t allow for 1) the possibility of multiple interpretations, and 2) the subjective role of the interpreter.

Alexander Campbell in his plea for unity proposed that churches could unite over the “facts” of faith. For him, these facts would include things like the existence of God, the virgin birth of Jesus, and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He considered every other doctrine more subject and therefore a matter of interpretation. Thus, he thought churches could unite around the facts and be graceful to each other concerning the interpretive doctrines. These “facts” that were so important for Campbell are remarkably similar to the “rule of faith” of the church fathers which was later canonized in the Nicene Creed. I think that Campbell is correct that the heart of Christianity is centered around the facts, or the regula fidei of the church fathers. Other doctrines of the church are derivative from these central teachings.

So here’s my proposal. I would like to offer a metaphor for the way we should conceive of church doctrine and how to respond to heterodoxy.

In microbiology, I learned that there are natural bacteria that live on our bodies. They feed on the various oils and substances we excrete from our skin, as well as reside in the gut and consume the food that our bodies don’t use. These bacteria are good for us. The proliferation of these nonharmful bacteria crowd out the bad bacteria. For instance, this is why it is recommended to load up on acidophilus before taking a trip to Mexico; the acidophilus bacteria proliferate and help prevent more harmful bacteria from taking up residence in your gut and producing rather unpleasant effects. Anyhow, this concept of good bacteria preventing the residence of the harmful is called competitive inhibition.

Now for the metaphoric turn. If we conceive of the church as a body (I think that metaphor has been used before) then I think we can also conceive of Campbell’s “facts” as the food of the body. It is from the food of the central teachings that we have life as a church. Our interpretive traditions feed off of this food as well and while they don’t feed us as the central teachings do, they give us a certain odor and help prevent bad teaching from proliferating and possibly harming the body.

Okay, so no metaphor is perfect, but I think this metaphor does have particular use in the case of heterodox interpretations. Rather than silencing or condemning those interpretive stances which we don’t like, we should proliferate the good interpretations in order that the bad don’t have room to grow.

Pax Christi, Part II: Paul’s Anti-Imperial Rhetoric

In my last post on this subject, I proposed that the term “gospel” had inherently political connotations to the first century readers of the Gospel narratives. Now I would like to examine the possibility that Paul similarly had a view of the gospel that profoundly affected his notions of Caesar and the Roman Empire.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3, Paul writes this to the church in Thessalonica:

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

From the context of this passage in the rest of the letter, it seems that the church was curious about the end times. What I am particularly interested in, however, is the phrase “peace and security” in this passage. This phrase seems to be one of the hailing cries of the Roman Empire, especially after the reign of Caesar Augustus. This is what Everett Ferguson says about Augustus’ promotion of peace:

There was a great emphasis on peace: his rule ushered in the pax romana. After the wars of the preceding period a genuine sense of gratitude was expressed toward Augustus for the restoration of peace. He promoted this virtue of his reign, given monumental expression in the ara pacis (altar of peace) in Rome…security and safety made possible travel, trade, and renewed economic development and prosperity.

It seems that, at least in Paul’s mind, the peace and security of the proud Roman Empire was ill-spoken. Paul, for whom Jesus is Lord, does not place his security in the hands of an emperor, no matter how powerful. After taking into consideration the account in Acts 17 of the political turmoil caused by Paul in Thessalonica, I think it is plausible to say that Paul’s message that Jesus is Lord was taken as contrary to the Roman state.

However, we all know the text in Romans that speaks about submission to those in authority. The biblical witness makes clear that God intends order in the world, and having government is part of the meting out of social order. I think that the point of contention that Paul would have with government comes precisely where those in authority cross their purposes with God. For the early Christians, the primary controversy with government came when the emperors claimed too much authority for themselves. Caesar cannot be Lord if Christ is Lord, and unfortunately, this assertion of the early Christians cost them their lives.

So what does this mean for us? Well, here’s my take on it. We as Christians should affirm the necessity of government, but always maintain a critical stance towards it. Our position is not to endorse candidates, parties, or political systems, but rather to prophetically call the existing governments to fulfill their God-given directive to create and maintain order and justice in the world. I think that means in a democratic system of government that we should vote for whom we believe most consistent with God’s order, but that when these politicians are put in place they will still need to be critiqued by God’s standards. Christians should thus not expect a particular system or party to solve the world’s problems. I think, on the contrary, Christians should be the ones who are the leaders of justice and order. So for instance, when Lyndon Johnson told Martin Luther King, Jr., that he was unable to motivate Washington to create a voting rights act, King led a march from Selma to Montgomery, which led only five months later to a voting rights act.

May we, in such spirit, lead our government towards greater and greater manifestations of justice.

Pax Christi: Worship the Baby, Not the Empire

They say politics and religion make strange bedfellows. While I certainly agree that religious governments—like, say, the ones we are having trouble with in the Middle East—are problematic, I think our enlightenment notions of religion being a private matter and politics a public matter should be reexamined in the light of the gospels. In fact, a reflection on the birth narrative might be a departure point with which we might think about what the gospel(s) have to say about the politics of Jesus.

In Luke 2 we read the story of the birth and the accompanying passages, which I can’t help but read with the voice of Linus from Charlie Brown’s Christmas. We all know the story: the census, the birth, the manger, and after Jesus was born, the angel appearing to shepherds in the countryside, telling them, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people,” which is the birth of Christ, the Lord. Afterwards a heavenly host breaks out in song, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

What interests me here is the amazing connection this story has with the political world of Mary, Joseph, and the baby. It is not hard to imagine, first of all, the alarms that would ring in the head of a Jew when he heard of the census. Kings, even pagan ones, were set in place by God, and God specifically forbids the use of a census by which a king might add up his power. Further, I think the use of the word gospel (often translated good news) connotes an overtly political meaning. This decree from Asia Minor in 9 B.C. shows just what the rest of the Roman world thought of when they heard the word gospel:

It is a day which we may justly count as equivalent to the beginning of everything—if not in itself and in its own nature, at any rate in the benefits it brings—inasmuch as it has restored the shape of everything that was failing and turning into misfortune, and has given a new look to the Universe at a time when it would gladly have welcomed destruction if Caesar had not been born to be the common blessing of all men...Whereas the Providence which has ordered the whole of our life, showing concern and zeal, has ordained the most perfect consummation for human life by giving to it Augustus, by filling him with virtue for doing the work of a benefactor among men, and by sending in him, as it were, a savior for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease, to create order everywhere...and whereas the birthday of the God [Augustus] was the beginning for the world of the glad tidings[a translation of the same word for gospel] that have come to men through him.

Thus, to proclaim a gospel other than Caesar flies in the face of Roman power. In a world where Caesar is savior, Rome is the order, and Pax Romana is hailed, heralding the birth of this child as savior, Lord, and bringer of peace would be subversive, if not downright rebellion. Pax Romana was indeed a great accomplishment of the Romans. In fact, the Roman Empire was great, that is, as long as you weren’t one of the 25-30% of the population who were in slavery, and as long as you weren’t a woman, and as long as you were not subject to the oppressive tax rates, such as those levied upon the Jews. It seems that the Pax Romana served the elite patricians, rather than the vast majority of the empire. With this in mind, we might read Mary’s Magnificat as a prophetic announcement of what the baby in her belly will do:
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.

Now, what do we do with all this political subversiveness of Jesus? I’m not sure, but I do have a few ideas. I think first of all that we balance it with the other ideas in Scripture that have to do with God instituting rulers. Thus, we must conclude that there is a place for governing authorities even when what they are doing is contrary to the kingdom of God. Second, I think it is okay when the subversive gospel that Christians preach comes at odds with what the government says. I know many of you will disagree with me here, but I think Scripture unequivocally calls for the good treatment of aliens and foreigners in the land (regardless of legitimacy). Perhaps this is a case in which the borders of God’s kingdom must be larger than the borders of the American Empire. Again, maybe being proclaiming the kingdom means disclaiming what the government says about abortion. Maybe it means that in a world where democracy has replaced Caesar as the “common blessing of all men,” we should remain at least skeptical. Jesus is Lord, not democracy. Again, maybe we should be subversive about economics in the kingdom of God. After all, while capitalism might be better than the other economic systems today, it seems that this system makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Something might be inequitable with this system. The politics of the kingdom of God seemed to have something to say about economic equity; it seems that the early church, at least, thought it did. Capitalism is not Lord, Jesus is. I’ll, be honest, this reading of the gospel kind of scares me. I grew up with the whole Christianity-is-about-going-to-heaven teaching, and while the birth of Jesus certainly meant more than a political coup, I don’t think it was less than one. The working out of the gospel of Jesus has endless ramifications to how we live and breathe in all our spheres of life, political, economic, physical, social, and spiritual. I think though, that the gospel begins with one idea: we worship the baby, not the empire.