Fear! Underneath, it is all the same!

I was having a conversation with my lovely wife a couple of nights ago as we heard the horrific news of the mass shooting in Lewiston, ME.  Earlier in that day, our country received a new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.  I will admit that from what I have read, Speaker Johnson does not hold a single position on anything that I agree with.

Two days after the horrible mass shooting, people in several towns in Maine remain on lockdown as the shooter remains at large or unaccounted for.  No one knows for sure where he is or whether he is dead or alive.  So people are staying home, businesses are closed, schools are not open.  It is reminiscent of how things were at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

But, I thought about the fact that there are more guns in this country than there are people.  One recent survey at thereload.com suggested one in five Americans owns an AR style rifle.  That would be around 60 million of them.  Now in this country mental health rates are not significantly different than in other countries, but because these assault weapons are so easily available this country has a far higher rate of mass shootings than anywhere else in the world.  In short,

And the fear which the gun manufacturers use to pad their bottom line is as irrational as anything any American has ever said or thought.  If having more than 300,000,000 guns in our society has not made us safe, 400,000,000 or 500,000,000 will not either.  This will sound cynical but I think the gun manufacturers like when these events happen because it is good for business.

But the truth was spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Herein lies the connection between the views of someone like Speaker Johnson and the awful shooting in Lewiston.  Johnson has suggested that we are having these mass shootings because of abortion.  I would expect an attorney and the person second in line to the presidency to understand the law of cause and effect better than that.

I told a close friend yesterday that the entire laundry list of ideologies which I think are dangerous to humanity:

Christian nationalism

Opposition to immigration

White Supremacy

Misogyny

Anti-LGBTQ sentiments

Opposition to legalized abortion

Unconditional support for the nation of Israel, and the fundamentalist theology which feeds it

Strict constructionism in constitutional interpretation

Gun enthusiasm

And I am sure there are more, are rooted in fear.  There is a primal, irrational angst at the heart of all of this.   It may be fear of God's wrath, or of damnation, or fear of dying.  It may be fear of losing one's wealth.  It may be fear of people "replacing us."  (I have yet to understand why Critical Race Theory is bad, but Replacement Theory is OK.  All Replacement Theory is, is CRT for white guys.)

I saw this meme recently:

In Jungian fashion, I think all of these concerns I listed above are denominations of the same religion of fear.  They are all manifestations of some collective unconscious, and all unworthy of the people God has created and called us to be.

You Cannot Fight Terror with Terror

You cannot fight terror with terror.  It is literally impossible.  There will never be a solution to the conflict in the Middle East which involves military force.

This morning as I enjoyed my breakfast burrito and sweet tea, I thought about our own country, and it's failed War On Terror.  I do not think war is ever going to prove to be effective in fighting terrorism.  With the disclaimer that I think all war is morally wrong and can never be justified, from a pragmatic standpoint, I just do not think it works.

When the attacks of 9/11/2001 happened in this country, I remember the administration at the time (Bush 43) tried to portray the situation as a War On Terror.  We were led to believe that Afghanistan, and eventually Iraq, were two fronts, two prongs of the same war.  I remember hearing that Dick Cheney told intelligence officials to find a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Of course, no such link existed at that time, but eventually there was an entity known as "Al-Qaeda in Iraq."  Our government, by its own policies, created the very thing which it said it wanted to destroy.

Cheney, and others, was part of an effort called The Project for a New American Century.  One of the people who was part of that was Paul Wolfowitz.  One of my cohort members when I spent a week at Oxford in 2007 knew Wolfowitz and said he was a war-monger.  One article summarized the Project like this:

The glory days of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) quickly passed. When neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan formed PNAC in 1997, they aimed to set forth a new agenda for post-Cold War foreign and military policy that would ensure that the United States could claim the 21st century as its own—where U.S. military dominance would not only protect U.S. national security and national interests but would also establish a global Pax Americana. 

https://sites.ualberta.ca/~raitken/documents/0606riseanddemise.pdf

Part of the felt need for the Project was that neo-conservatism needed a new raison d'etre because the fall of the Soviet Union presented both a problem and an opportunity.  The opportunity was for the idea of a Pax Americana,  The problem was the world would never accept such expansion of American power without some cause to justify the use of force.  9/11 was a gift to this group.

The bottom line is that the United States spent 20 years in pursuit of this Pax Americana, spending trillions of dollars, and losing.  The withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan happened, and basically nothing has changed.  The fact that the Taliban now governs Afghanistan is a case in point.

As horrible and evil and unacceptable as the recent Hamas attack on Israel was, keep in mind that Israeli attacks on the people of Gaza and the West Bank have been, for half a century now, as commonplace as a Friday night High School football game in the US. I think the US government's support for Israel is misguided and mistaken in at least three ways.

1.  It is not possible to advance the cause of peace by means of war.  That is like saying to a heroin addict they also need to get hooked on cocaine or meth.  It is like addressing the problem of drunk driving with free, all-day happy hour.  More violence will not lessen violence.

2.  It is not wise to look at the recent Hamas strikes in isolation from 56 years of occupation and apartheid.  I am astounded at how our political leaders and media  have expressed unequivocal support for the Israeli response to the  horrific Hamas attack without any expression of condemnation for what Israel has done to precipitate it.

3.  We know from history that terrorism cannot be extinguished by means of warfare.  The 20 year experience of the US in Afghanistan ought to tell us that approaching terrorism with military might does nothing but cause terrorism to grow and expand.

The security of Israel is inextricably linked to the freedom and prosperity of the Palestinian people.  When St. Paul said, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him", he had no idea of what 21st century warfare would look like, but I do think he would have agreed that bread is more helpful than bombs.  As long as the basic dignity and necessities of the people of Gaza and the West Bank get ignored, Israel's own policies significantly increase her vulnerability to attack.

St. Paul said as well, right after "if your enemy is hungry, feed him,"  "do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good."  The evil which threatens to overcome us is not the evil of potential attackers.  The evil which threatens is the damage we do to our own humanity when we threaten the humanity of others.  The guy who fights back is the one who is overcome with evil, not the guy who feeds his enemy. 

As I said, the security of Israel is inextricably linked to the freedom and prosperity of the Palestinian people. 

The Most Dangerous Words in American History

 I wrote this in January 2017 but I think it is relevant also:

One of the things I encounter sometimes as a philosophy professor is students who sign up for my class because they want to take something “where there are no right or wrong answers.”  They are so disappointed when I point out that no such thing exists in the entire universe.  We do not always know the answer, but that does not mean there is no answer.  Maybe nothing in the intellectual world is more arrogant than thinking that if we do not know an answer, it must not exist.

I use this analogy to make my point.  I say, suppose this is an algebra class, and I give you a difficult problem on an exam.  Let’s say there are 20 students in the class, and they come up with 20 different answers.  I ask the students, “Is it a certainty that one of the 20 answers is the correct one?”  They know that is not a certainty.    It is within the realm of possibility that all 20 got the problem wrong!

Next, I explain, that if we are able to judge that an answer is wrong, then of necessity some answer must be right.  I am using a math analogy to explain what my mentor, D. Elton Trueblood, taught me about the law of non-contradiction:

“Two contradictory statements cannot both be true but they can both be false.” 

For example, suppose I said I was born in 1963, and sometime later I claimed I was born in 1957.  Now, I am speaking strictly of biological birth here.  Both of those statements cannot be true.  In fact, neither of them are true because I was born in 1959.

Trueblood said the law of non-contradiction means that error is a certainty.  He use to ask people to say to themselves “errors happen.”  Now, he would say, that statement is either true or false.  If it is true, then we know errors happen, but if it is false, then the statement itself is in error, and therefore we still know errors happen.  And, having shown the fact of error, he concludes that it is logically necessary that truth exists.  We may not always know what the truth is, but it is logically necessary that truth exists.

I have many concerns about the new President, his administration, and where we are headed.  I am not for “free trade”, I am for “fair trade”…the idea known as free trade exploits people on both ends of the trading partnership.  I abhor it.  The idea of tariffs suits me fine.  But in all honesty, that is about the only area of agreement I have with President Trump.  He is for gun rights, I would abolish the 2^nd amendment.  He thinks Obamacare went too far, I think it did not go far enough.  He is for the Keystone Pipeline, I am against it.  He wants to cut taxes on the rich, I want to significantly raise them.  He wants a nuclear arms race, I want the US to pursue unilateral nuclear disarmament.  And so on…

All of these are perfectly legitimate positions for people to have, on both sides…and we can have a free and open debate about any of them, and let the American people decide which way we will go.  That is fine.

I abhor many of President Trump’s policy ideas, but none of that is what worries me about the future of our country.  What worries me more than anything is this idea of “alternative facts.”  If someone believes in alternative facts they do not believe in the law of non-contradiction.  And if there are no facts, facts cannot be debated.

               This alternate reality did not begin with the inauguration of a new President.  It did not begin with his campaign in the summer of 2015.  It has been with us for a while, as the popularity of radio personalities like Alex Jones attests.   I believe the reason we ended up with a post-fact President is that we have been becoming, for some time now, a post fact society…where “I have my truth and you have your truth.”  That statement is blasphemous to me, I think it rapes the word truth, and renders it practically useless.  Francis Schaeffer, a philosopher with whom I mostly disagree, said one thing which I think any thinking person should agree with—we need to be able to talk in terms of what he calls “true” truth!

In reality—no pun intended—I do not think anyone can consistently live as though they do not believe in facts.  This is why President Trump, in my view, is forbidding the EPA and government funded climate science from presenting their findings to the public.  The administration might appeal to alternative facts, but we all know alternative facts are in fact not facts—they are opinions.  When actual facts infringe upon the opinions of this crowd, they become frightened and do all they can to obfuscate the truth.

If I were going to organize a march on Washington, it would be for this cause:  Facts are facts.  Alternative facts are not facts.  Truth exists.  Truth is not invented, it is discovered.

We can debate healthcare, the concerns of women over this administration's policies, immigration, jobs, economics, LGBT concerns, the needs of the disabled, etc.  And we need desperately to have those debates.  But none of those debates will actually happen until we can resolve the issue of facts:  Facts are facts.  Alternative facts are not facts.  Truth exists.  Truth is not invented, it is discovered.

The suggestion that there are alternative facts may be the most disturbing thing ever said by a presidential administration.   If there are alternative facts, there are no moral mandates incumbent on anyone. 

This suggestion alone accounts for why, in the eyes of this philosopher, this administration is going to be the most immoral one in US history.

 

Why C.S. Lewis Should Have Been a Pacifist

 I wrote this ten years ago, but it seems apt for the current times.

C.S. Lewis was not a pacifist. But he should have been. It is a betrayal of his own logic that he was not. It was a disservice to his followers that he was not a pacifist. Lewis was not willing to apply the logic of his famous “Trilemma”, so effective in evangelism and apologetics, to Christian ethics.

Here is how Lewis, in his classic, Mere Christianity, formulated the Trilemma:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God." (pp.54-56)

Elton Trueblood recounted in his autobiography, While It Is Day, how this reasoning converted his own thinking:

Though I was never privileged to meet C.S. Lewis, his influence on me has been greater than I at first realized. When, after the death of Lewis, I enjoyed a productive conversation with Dr. J.B. Phillips, I found that though Dr. Phillips had never met Lewis either, our conversation turned to him almost at once. The influence of many persons fades rapidly at their death, but C.S. Lewis is now appreciated even more than he was while he was among the living. The words which he wrote with such power of thought are even more convincing today. We still have some academicians who assert blandly that belief in the existence of God is now obsolete, or that what they vulgarly call "God-language" is no longer relevant, but their intellectual position is made extremely difficult if they have the courage to face the careful reasoning of Lewis. What we need desperately is many more like him. Our hope lies in the emergence of Christian intellectuals who are able to meet the double requirement of competence in some particular field of inquiry, whether it be physics or psychology or some other, and also a firm grounding in Christian truth. (p. 97)

Subtly and slowly the change in my message began to appear. The influences were of course numerous, but it may have been the writings of C.S. Lewis that first shocked me out of my unexamined liberalism. In reading Lewis I could not escape the conclusion that the popular view of Christ as being a Teacher, and only a Teacher, has within it a self-contradiction that cannot be resolved. I saw, in short, that conventional liberalism cannot survive rigorous and rational analysis. What Lewis and a few others made me face was the hard fact that if Christ was only a Teacher, then He was a false one, since, in His teaching, He claimed to be more. The supposition that He taught only, or even chiefly, about loving one another is simply not true. The hard fact is that if Christ was not in a unique sense "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), as the early Christians believed, then He was certainly the arch imposter and charlatan of history.

C.S. Lewis reached me primarily because he turned the intellectual tables. I was wholly accustomed to a world in which the sophisticates engaged in attack, while the Christians sought bravely to be on the defense, but Lewis turned this around and forced the unbeliever into a posture of defense. In the Screwtape Letters dated July 5, 1941, at Magdalen College, Oxford, Lewis who up to that time had been an inconspicuous academician, inaugurated a new Christian strategy. I had already begun to sense that however vulnerable the Christian position may be, the position of the opposition is more vulnerable still. Once when a graduate student asked one of my professors whether the study of philosophy would help him in the support of the Christian faith, the professor replied, "No, it will not; but it will do something else of great importance — it will help you to see the weaknesses of the enemies of the faith." (pp.99-100)

That teacher was Alfred North Whitehead. I have used the same approach as a philosophy professor.

I have always been curious about why Lewis did not see that the inner logic of his own Christology should have made a pacifist out of him. Jesus made two statements which have occupied much of my thought lately:

Matthew 5:38-40 (NIV)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.”

Matthew 10:28 (NIV)

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Taken at face value, Jesus is forbidding violence here, on the part of his followers. Lewis says that these passages do not cover seeing violence to a third party, but I believe this command in Romans does:

Romans 12:17 (NIV)--Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

It seems to me that Lewis ignores the plain meaning of Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount as hyperbole. I had a professor in a doctoral class who said the same thing. I responded by saying that in the same Sermon, when Jesus says “don’t lust after a woman”, I suppose that is hyperbole as well.

Rather, I think it makes sense to take the Sermon on the Mount at face value. If we do, three views emerge on his statement “turn the other cheek.”

1. The Liar View: This is the view that Jesus actually said the words in Matthew 5:38-40, but he was not telling the truth, this is not what Christians are to do. (A variant of this view would be that he did not say these words; that Matthew recorded them but then Matthew is the liar.) Either way, Jesus did not intend his followers to be completely non-violent, and so we are off the hook.

2. The Lunatic View: In this view, Jesus did say the words found in Matthew 5:38-40, but it is really unrealistic or not possible to live by them. In this view, Jesus really is “on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg.” If this is the option you take, then Jesus meant for his followers to be pacifists, but he really did not know what he was talking about, it’s all kind of crazy, and again we are off the hook.

A variant of this view is that we cannot use violence in our personal lives but we can if our country calls us to. I think this is a completely unsustainable position logically. Would a woman who sends her husband and the father of her small children off to kill for her country send him off to sleep with other women for her country? Bad idea all the way around. I can respect one who gives his life for his country. I have trouble with anyone who would take a life for their country. “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

This is why in 1887, Quakers said:

We feel bound explicitly to avow our unshaken persuasion that all war is utterly incompatible with the plain precepts of our divine Lord and Law-giver, and the whole spirit of His Gospel, and that no plea of necessity or policy, however urgent or peculiar, can avail to release either individuals or nations from the paramount allegiance which they owe to Him who hath said, "Love your enemies." (Matt 5:44, Luke 6:27)

“No plea of necessity or policy” means there are no circumstances which relieve Christ’s followers of the duty to obey his command to be completely non-violent.

3. The Lord View: Simply stated, Jesus said the words of Matthew 5:38-40, and he meant them, and he was not crazy in doing so. As Lord of the universe, he intends his followers never to use violent force under any circumstances.

Many people call Jesus Lord, but take view 1 or view 2 instead of view 3. That puzzles me. You can say his words are hyperbolic, but that is view 1. You can say if your country calls you have no choice, but that is view 2. In my considered opinion, and I have pondered this for over 25 years, only those who take view 3 can make a consistent witness to Jesus’ Lordship. Others may believe in his divinity…in his love…but non-pacifists patently defy his authority.

Jesus does not like it when people call him Lord and reject his commands:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23 (NIV)

Someone said to me once, “well, to believe what you believe really requires you to believe God will protect you.” I said, “No, that is irrelevant.”

As the three Hebrew children said to the king when they refused to worship his image:

“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

We are called to be an "even if God does not" people. In the book of Revelation, there is a great blessing for those “who did not love their own lives, even to the point of death.”

The tragedy of Gaza and Indigenous People's Day

I am listening to the English broadcast of Al-Jazeera as I write this morning, heartbroken over the war which has broken out in Israel.  I say "in Israel" because Israel has been waging war against Gaza for decades,

I am struck by the contrast of the New Testament instruction that "if your enemy is hungry, feed him" (Romans 12:20) and the Israeli government cutting off food, water, electricity and supplies from the people of Gaza. It is not right.  What Israel is doing right now is indiscriminate bombing which is tantamount to war crimes.

In our country, today is what some call "Columbus Day."  Many of us prefer to acknowledge this day as "Indigenous People's Day" because of the cruel, brutal portrait of Christopher Columbus which we now know to be accurate.  I happen to live in Columbus, Indiana.  It would not bother me if this wonderful place where I have lived for 21 years now would change its name.

There are some points of irony, of glaring inconsistency, which come to my mind on this infamous day in light of what is now going on in Israel and Gaza.

1.  It is not lost on me that, at the same time our country is simultaneously supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Russian occupation, and supporting Israel as it wages war on Gaza.  In one case, the United States is supporting those resisting occupation,  and in the other case, the US is supporting the occupiers.  Ukranian president Zelenskyy has expressed support for Israel.  I find it offensive that a president of a nation resisting occupation voices support for occupiers.

2.  I think those of us who prefer the designation of Indigenous People's Day over Columbus Day also need to be aware of an inconsistency which could pop up in our own thinking.  The plight of the Palestinian people for the past 56 years is not unlike that of the Indigenous People of North America.  The tragedy of Gaza, where in an area the size of Detroit, MI, four times as  many people of Detroit are forced to live, and an awareness of Detroit's many problems, this should concern us all.  Gaza is like a concentration camp.  There is no moral justification for that.  If we think of ourselves as enlightened enough to celebrate Indigenous People's Day, but we are not supporting Gaza, we are hypocrites.

I believe the United States government should, as a condition for any aid to Israel, military or otherwise, insist on the end of the occupation and full right of  return for the Palestinian people.  The settlements must be disbanded and that land and those homes given to the Palestinian people.  There can be no peace until there is justice.  I believe the plight of the Palestinian people to be akin to the trail of tears.  The government of Israel--not the people, but the government--by what they have done for 56 years--is a state sponsor of terror.   European governments are freezing aid to the people of Palestine.  I think this makes them accomplices to human rights violations.

Theological Masochism

I have a dear friend, a sister in ministry, Rev. Dr. Starlette Thomas.  God has graced her with a ministry to point out how the church has really done much harm in the area of race.  As I understand her, she says race is a human construct, something which we have created, but it is transcended by the Gospel. Her podcast is "The Raceless Gospel."  Here is how she defines that term:

The Raceless Gospel is rooted in the Christian’s baptismal identity, which transcends all fictitious binaries and failing dichotomies (Galatians 3:27-28; Colossians 3.10-11). It is not a color- blind prescription or a post- racial vision but an invitation to see race for what it is and as it is. Paul says it plainly to the believers in Corinth: “Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish” (First Corinthians 15:39, NRSV).  

(Taken from https://racelessgospel.com/definition/ )

Starlette and I have never met in person but she is a kindred spirit to me.  I have a deep love and appreciation for her ministry and just for who she is.

In a Facebook discussion today, Starlette raised the question we have all struggled with:  why do people of God suffer?  I think from the way the discussion went, she and I are on the same page, as we often are.  One of her followers raised the question of the old adage that "God never puts more on us than we can handle."  I think that statement is true, with qualification, but it also puts into play a horrible assumption.

First, the level on which it is true.  I do not think God causes any suffering.   God is love and the first rule of love is that love does no harm to a neighbor. Romans 13:10.  I think God does not cause suffering, and God takes no delight in suffering.  If it is true that "God never puts more on us than we can handle," the reason is that God does not put suffering on us.

I am part of a theological community known as Open and Relational Theology.  I am currently trying to wrap up my third book, which will be titled Open and Relational Ethics.  The leading figure in this community is my good friend, Dr. Thomas Jay Oord.  He is best known for his book God Can't.  His premise is that,   because God's nature is love, God cannot singlehandedly prevent evil and suffering.  I agree with Dr. Oord 100% on this.  His book has been one of the most transformative things in my life.

For years, I taught my philosophy students that even God cannot do the logically impossible.  The old question of can God make a square circle comes to mind.  Of course God cannot do that, because a square circle is a logical impossibility.  Likewise, God cannot give people free will and force them to do things at the same time, so God cannot prevent evil from happening.

I thought about this as I discussed on Facebook with my friend Starlette.  It is true that God never puts more on anyone than they can handle...but it is also true, I believe, that people put more on one another than they can handle...all the time!

And that is where I thought of the term Theological Masochism.  Others have used that term, so I cannot take credit for it at all.  Maybe I heard it somewhere.

But in the course of the discussion today someone suggested it makes people feel better to say "God never puts more on us than we can handle." I can think of a couple of reasons why that may be so.  One would be that we like to think there is a higher purpose in things.  I want to make a suggestion here.  I do not believe God has a purpose in suffering because God does not cause suffering.  But I do believe God has a general purpose for us whether or not we are suffering, and that is to love us and have a relationship with us.  We do not have to believe God sends our suffering in order to incorporate our suffering into our relationship with God.

The other reason people want to believe "God never puts more on us than we can handle" is that, if we believe that, it absolves us of the need to go above and beyond to minister to the suffering.  The reason is, we can convince ourselves God has some purpose in the suffering and if we put our hands on it, we can mess things up.  Of course I think this is a big-time cop-out.

If it is true that God never puts more on us than we can handle, in the traditional sense of that saying, then it is like saying everything happens by God's design.  But think about it--that takes human responsibility out of the equation.  So if I haven't seen you for awhile, it does not matter if I hug you or slug you, if I say "God bless you"  or (forgive me in advance for saying this) "God damn you" because it all comes from God, and there must be some purpose in it.  To me that is Theological Masochism. I believe a God like that should be hated and damned instead of loved and worshiped.   But thank God, that isn't the God we have.

Baptism into Jesus' death, and raised to a new (non-violent) life

St. Paul wrote in Romans 6:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

I thought about this verse today after pondering something which was quite distressing to me.  I blocked someone on Facebook who is a fellow member of my own Catholic parish--someone I love and have worked closely with as a catechist in the past--and who I have prayed for daily for the past 10+ years.  I will continue to pray daily for this person.

I made this comment on Facebook:

There are people who I like quite a lot but I end up blocking them on Facebook because I have trouble with the self control to just let go some of the grievous stuff I see in their posts. I just blocked someone for posting a meme advocating people have AR-15 style weapons to keep politicians afraid. This person is a member of my Catholic parish. This stuff tears me up inside.

I will not paste the meme in here, but I will describe it. It was a picture of George Washington holding an AR-15, and a comment to the effect that corrupt politicians fear armed citizens. I find this post troubling and offensive on many levels.

1. I believe the call to follow Jesus is a call to Christian pacifism. I do not think anyone can, under any circumstances, be following Jesus and take up arms against another human being, even for defensive purposes. I will elaborate on that below.

2. For sure, I think using the threat of violence to achieve political goals is not permissible for a Jesus-follower. Think about this...a Christian can say "give me liberty or give me death." But a Christian cannot say "give me liberty or it will mean YOUR death." The thought that a Christian could approve of the threat of death or violence when the objective is political, let alone when one's life is in danger, is something I find chilling. When former President Trump calls for anyone to be executed, that ought to be enough to turn any person concerned about following the teachings of Jesus away from Mr. Trump.

I will be devoting a full essay to this at some point, but I realized in my New Testament studies in my doctoral work, that Jesus tasted death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9) Jesus said that to impose death on someone, you had to be without sin (John 8.) And yet, being without sin, Jesus took upon himself the death penalty for every crime ever committed. About four years ago, Pope Francis said something I have been saying since 1994:

Any Christian who supports the death penalty is saying to the accused, "Jesus died for MY sins, but YOU have to die for your own." It is inconsistent with possessing the redemption we claim to have, to advocate for anyone else ever to be put to death.

It is just impossible, simply, to reconcile either the death penalty or war to achieve a political goals, with the call to follow Jesus in non-violence.  Jesus said in John 18, when Peter took out a sword, "My kingdom is not of this world, and that is why my servants do not fight."  We do not have the luxury, as Christians, to take part in political violence.  This meme is one of my favorite quotes of all the Church Fathers.

3.  In reference to the meme with George Washington and an AR-15, even the threat of such violence is off limits to Christians, because it is an indication of a willingness to use violent force to get what we want.  Even if that AR-15 is never fired, having it is a form of bullying.  

St. Paul tells the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6 that when they have disputes, they should not take one another to court.  He says that this is a poor witness for the body of Christ, and it would be better to have our brothers and sisters in the church help resolve disputes.  There are Christian mediation services which aim to help persons put this into practice.  But what if the dispute cannot be resolved?   Paul would say at that point to just let it go.  He asks them in verse 7, "Why not rather be wronged?"  He suggests it is more Christlike to suffer wrong, as Jesus did, than to do wrong by insisting on one's own way.

I believe this principle applies also to the idea of weapons.   Someone once said they thought my Christian pacifism was not a good idea.  This person said he wanted to protect what he had.  I asked him what he had that could not be replaced.  He professed Christian faith--I said if you believe what you profess, wouldn't you rather have your life taken from you and go to heaven instead of use a weapon to stay here?

I have another very close friend who is one of twin brothers--both ordained ministers.  As his brother was dying, he said that as much as he would be missed, no one in their right mind would rather stay here than go be with Jesus.  That is exactly the same reason I think Christians should not practice self-defense.

Which brings me back to the verse I quoted at the beginning of this piece:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

I am now Catholic, but I grew up Baptist, and Baptists, despite their name, are terrible when it comes to pre-baptismal catechesis.  I do not think people have the full meaning of what they are doing when they present themselves for baptism impressed upon them.  It seems to me that there is a tie between the idea of being "baptized into his death" and what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?

If we really believe we die in baptism, if baptism is as I was taught, a picture of our being crucified with Christ, then our lives are no longer our own.  If my life belongs to Jesus, and he has told me in the Sermon on the Mount and in John 18 among other places, not to defend it, then I should not defend it. The reason is, I no longer own my life, and the new owner said do not use force.

What occurred to me tonight is that baptism is the point, where, if I really understand what I am doing, I forfeit any claim I might otherwise make to any right of self-defense.  The question is whether I am willing to follow Jesus in that path.  Actual violence or even the threat of violence are taken off the table.