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.