Non-Violence

There is a group within the church hoping to declare the PCUSA "non-violent" at the next General Assembly. Being who I am, I asked something about us being able to be non-violent because we have other people to be violent for us.

I am having trouble with this concept. Ghandi was non-violent, against the violence of the British. Martin Luther King Jr. was non-violent, against the violence of the Southern White Political Establishment. Nelson Mandela was non-violent, against the violence of the white imposed racial separation of apartheid. I am not sure how we hold to non-violence when there is not a great evil-a great evil willing to use violence-to be overcome.

I noticed in the previous examples that non-violence was practiced against white people in every case. I, as a white man, find it ironic that our church, which has a majority of white faces, is seeking to coopt the very strategy that has been used against us time and time again.

OMG! I am judging whites by the color of our skin!! Doesn't feel too good, does it?

We are coming up on the first anniversary of the Navy Seals finally killing Osama Bin Laden. How much violence against our country was prevented by the use of violence against him?

One of my predecessors at the church was a practitioner of non-violence. He went from here to the South to march with MLK Jr. and the others who gave everything, even their very lives, to force change.

WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? He would get violent when the need arose, as when he drove the money changers out of the temple. And at the Sermon on the Mount, he said, "Blessed are the Peacemakers...", a blessing that, for me, belongs squarely on the shoulders of Law Enforcement Officers, Peace Officers, in this country.

I don't have answers. I am still struggling to ask the right questions. Maybe non-violence is the stance that the church ought to take. I still need to know a lot more about what that would look like and how we'd use the non-violence to change a world desperately in need of change.

Peace, how hard it is...