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| Walter Wink/Penguin-Random House |
Take this gem from page six: "The issue is not, 'What must I do in order to secure my salvation?' but rather, 'What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?'"
Throughout his book, Wink systematically and powerfully lays out a case for Christian nonviolence. He suggests that there are three basic ways to respond to evil - passivity, violent opposition or militant nonviolence. Wink says Jesus chose and calls us to the third option.
In light of this, faithful Sunday school attendees may be a little shocked at Wink's interpretation of Jesus suggesting that his followers turn the other cheek, give up your cloak and go the extra mile. In each case, far from being acts of passivity or acquiescence towards evil, in Wink's view, each of Jesus' statements is an example of radical, nonviolent action.
"Jesus suggests amplifying an injustice [by turning the other cheek, going the extra mile or giving up your cloak] in order to expose the fundamental wrongness of legalized oppression."
Within this framework, Jesus is not the impossibly meek-and-mild guy who got angry only once, overturning some moneylenders' carts in the temple. "Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil," says Wink.
As you might expect such a stance makes for an interesting approach to handling evil. "Jesus' teaching is a kind of moral jujitsu, a martial art for using the momentum of evil to throw it," Wink writes.
Jesus being who he was, there's a lot more going on in his moral universe than good triumphing over evil. "Jesus' intent wasn't only to disarm the enemy, but to hold open the possibility of the enemy becoming just."
So just how do we, being human, hope to accomplish this mind-bending possibility on earth?
According to Link there are three rules for nonviolent engagement:
1. Honor the humanity of others,
2. Believe that God can transform them,
3. Treat others with dignity and respect
And in the end, all of these actions will disarm the myth of redemptive violence used by those who are doing the oppressing.
Towards the end of his book, Link makes this prophetic statement (writing in 2003): "Love of enemies, for our time, has become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith. Commitment to justice, liberation, or the overthrow of oppression is not enough. Love of enemies is the recognition that they too are children of God."
This whole idea of loving our enemies, says Link, leads to the central question: "How can I find God in my enemy? Salvation used to be a purely private affair [Luther's claim of] justification by faith through grace, has now, in our age, grown to embrace the world."
What is simply amazing to me is not just the depth but the clarity and timeliness of Link's message. For anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus, or is in the least bit interested in the relevance of Jesus' message, especially with today's sensitivity towards social justice, or lack of it, JESUS AND NONVIOLENCE: A THIRD WAY speaks eloquently.
Thank you for writing this.
ReplyDeleteI have only read excerpts over the years. With Matthew 5:38-44, one question is: How is submitting to unjust demands (the common expectation of an oppressor) consistant with "loving the enemy"? And then what is the motivation for inviting further injustice, and where else in the NT does that occur? On the other hand what if one has the resources and spiritual preparation to love a person through a surprising, unexpected gesture that might give that "enemy" a memorable nudge to reassess their relationship to others?
In the Jerusalem Bible a note of 5:38 says "This deals with an injustice of which we ourselves are the victims: we are forbidden to resist it by returning evil for evil in the way laid down by the Jewish law of talio (Exodus 21:24). Christ does not forbid us to resist unjust attack in due measure (John 18:22), still less to strive to eliminate injustice from the world."
The whole section of Matthew 5:20-48 is steeped in the idea that our virtue must go deeper than the standards of old, and we must turn away from anger, lust, etc. and turn our minds to loving others instead. It seems to be a major messianic theme and reminds me of passages such as Jeremiah 31:32-33, "It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt... ... I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts." It's a movement from outward behavior to inner mindfulness.
Loving one's enemy is the emphatic and radical point, and that is the consumation of that messianic promise. Whatever other theories have been suggested, I think they must be consistent with that for them to have merit. Wink has found a plausible interpretation that cannot be ignored.