Is Loving as Jesus Loves “Irresponsible”?

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). There are three main ways of understanding this teaching of Jesus. The first, Christian pacifism, understands this command of Jesus, the Lord of the universe, as something to be obeyed in every aspect of our lives, thus making the use of violence in any context incompatible with Christian discipleship. The second understands this command of Jesus to apply generally, while allowing for exceptions–war, capital punishment, and/or self-defense–in which the use of violence against evildoers is compatible with Christian discipleship. The third, Christian realism, acknowledges this command of Jesus as absolutely prohibiting violence, but then goes on to claim that, in a Fallen, violent world, it would be “irresponsible” for Christians to always follow this ideal; sometimes, it is necessary for us to use violence against evildoers in order to show love to our neighbors who are suffering injustice.

I have spent a significant amount of time on this blog making the case for Christian pacifism and critiquing Christian just war theory. However, I have spent little time addressing the “Christian realism” perspective on violence. This I will do in this post.

Christian Faithfulness and Indirect Harm

The Christian realist agrees with the Christian pacifist exegetically: Jesus calls us to love our enemies, He really means what He says, and there are no good reasons to think Jesus intended there to be exceptions to this command. However, the Christian realist then claims that sometimes “we have no choice” but to use violence. Implicitly, the Christian realist is appealing to a principle which is understood to be able to override the Lord Jesus’s commands. That principle is that if the obedient action (or inaction) of a Christian indirectly results in someone else inflicting harm on others, then the Christian is morally responsible for this harm and should have acted differently to prevent it. 

Is this principle theologically sound? There are many biblical reasons for thinking it is not.

Let’s begin by looking at Jesus’s own words about the effects of His Divine ministry. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’” (Matt 10: 34-36). When some members of a family put faith in Jesus and others do not, it can cause division and tear families apart. For example, a Middle Eastern Muslim who becomes a Christian today may very well get disowned by their entire family, get divorced by their spouse, and have their children taken away from them permanently. Undoubtedly, this causes pain and anguish not only for them, but for their family members as well, especially their children. Yet, Jesus is clear that this provides no excuse for compromising on being fully devoted to Him. “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37). If someone responds to the faithfulness of a Christian by inflicting harm on themselves or others, that is tragic, but that is their choice. The Christian is not morally responsible for this harm, even if they know very well, as Jesus did, that their faithful action may indirectly result in it. 

Another example of this from the New Testament is the practice of church discipline taught by Jesus and the apostle Paul (Matt 18:15-20, I Cor 5, 2 Thess 3:6-15). A church member who falls into sin and stubbornly refuses to repent, even after being rebuked multiple times, should be excluded from the church community until such a time as they are willing to repent and turn back to the Lord. The apostle Paul speaks of this excommunication as handing someone “over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh” (I Cor 5:5). The excommunicated church member may feel lonely. They may “feel ashamed” (2 Thess 3:14). They may feel hurt. But whatever harm is inflicted on them, it is their own fault for refusing to submit to the authority of their church community and repent. The church is not morally responsible for this harm, even if they know it is the likely result of their disciplinary action.^[1]Unfortunately, there are times that churches practice church discipline in a sinfully unloving manner, but here I am only concerned with the teachings of the New Testament itself about faithful … Continue reading The church must be faithful in practicing biblical church discipline, for the sake of the health and integrity of the Church’s life and mission, and for the sake of the ultimate wellbeing of the sinning church member, in the hope “that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord” (I Cor 5:5). 

These examples clearly establish that if someone responds to the obedient action of Christians by inflicting harm, Christians are not morally responsible for this harm, nor can they use avoiding this harm as an excuse for disobedience. But does this apply even to life and death situations? There are good biblical reasons for thinking that it does. 

Jesus clearly and repeatedly warns His followers that they will be hated, persecuted and even killed for being His disciples (Matt 24:9; Luke 21:12; John 15:19-20, 16:12). Then, He commands them, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19-20). When missionaries preach the Gospel in areas where Christianity is persecuted, they are not only putting their own lives at risk, they are also potentially putting the lives of their converts at risk. If the Gospel were not preached to them, these converts may have lived peaceful lives as members of their old religious communities. But because of being converted to faith in Jesus, these converts may experience persecution, suffering, and death. This was true when the apostles preached the Gospel in the first century, and it is true in many parts of the world today. Obviously, this does not mean that the Church should disobey Jesus’s command to preach the Gospel to every nation and to seek to evangelize the whole world. The Church, the community of the cross, must be faithful to her Lord, even when the world responds by inflicting harm or even lethal violence.

“Christian Realism” and the Reality of the Gospel

The New Testament is clear that the Church is to be faithful no matter the cost, and even if the world responds to this faithfulness by inflicting harm or death on them or others, Christians are not morally responsible for this, and should be faithful anyway. If the primary responsibility of the Church were to make the world a better place, then the Christian realist position might be able to get some traction. But the responsibility of the Church is not to make the world a better place. The responsibility of the Church is to visibly embody the reality of God’s new creation in the midst of a Fallen world and to invite others to participate in the reality of God making all things new through Jesus by becoming part of His Body, the Church. The world’s response to this may cause division, suffering, even death. But that is exactly what Jesus and His apostles tell us we are to expect. 

Jesus chose to deal with the evil of the world through His suffering and death on the cross, and He refused to resort to violence, even in order to free God’s people from the massive violence and injustice being perpetrated on them by the evil Roman Empire. Jesus and His apostles repeatedly call us to follow Jesus on the way of the cross, to love as He loves, to deal with evil as He deals with evil. Given this, what are we to make of the Christian realist idea that sometimes the Way of Jesus must be set aside and violence be used instead in order to prevent massive injustices? It represents, to put it bluntly, a lack of faith. We know what Jesus calls us to, but we’re not quite sure He knows what He’s talking about, so we hedge our bets, disobeying when the cost of obedience is high, and telling ourselves that this is the responsible, prudent, pragmatic, “realistic” thing to do. To this, Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy puts it well: “To obey God’s Will is to be a realist and a pragmatist and a prudent person. To refuse to obey God’s Word and Will, once it is known, is what is truly nonsensical, is what is imprudent in the extreme. The individual human being and all humanity are brought out of the silence of nothingness by God and are kept out of the abyss of nothingness by God and God alone. For the creature to refuse to obey the Creator’s Word is more than irrational. It is madness, chaos, evil. To try to proclaim the Gospel, by continually abandoning the Gospel as naive, is just dopey Christianity. To publicly adore Christ, while secretly believing His teaching of nonviolent love to be half-baked and quixotic, is preposterous.”^[2]Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, All Things Flee Thee for Thou Fleest Me: A Cry to the Churches and Their Leaders to Stop Running from the Nonviolent Jesus and His Nonviolent Way (Wilmington, DE: Center … Continue reading The truly “irresponsible” thing for Christians to do is to fail to be the Church that Jesus calls us to be, to fail to follow the Way of Jesus, and thus fail to show the world who Jesus is and what His Kingdom looks like.

What if the stakes are extremely high, though? What if there is the threat of an entire nation being destroyed? While the destruction of a nation is tragic, Christians, who are citizens of heaven, participants in God’s Kingdom, members of the holy nation of God’s covenant people, cannot regard the continued existence of any worldly nation, empire, or civilization as being of ultimate value. Nations, empires, and civilizations rise and fall throughout history. That is the way of the world. God’s Kingdom alone remains forever. 

In 1999, after the U.S. carried out a bombing campaign against Serbia in response to the genocide carried out by Serbia against Albanians in Kosovo, the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, visited Kosovo to survey the devastation. In his speech there, he declared, “If the only way to accept a greater Serbia is by crime, then I do not accept that and let that Serbia disappear. And also, if a lesser Serbia can only survive by crime, let it also disappear. And if all Serbs had to die and only I remained and I could survive only by crime, then I would not accept that–it would be better to die.”^[3]Joan Brown Campbell and Leonid Kishovsky, “Journey to Belgrade: Religious Partnership,” Christian Century 116, no. 20, May 19, 1999, pages 14-21. Surely this should be the attitude of all Christians toward the worldly nations in which they live. Nothing, not even the preservation of an entire nation, provides a good reason for God’s people being unfaithful to the Way of Jesus. Even in cases of mass murder, our hope in the resurrection and Jesus coming again to set all things right should lead us to remain steadfast in the Way of Jesus and to refuse to respond in kind. 

The Bible teaches that there are things much worse than death, namely, the sin and godlessness that separates human beings from God, leading to eternal death. This means that, when unbelievers and false teachers teach people to turn away from God and to sin, they are inflicting much greater harm than physical suffering and death. Yet, Jesus and the apostles are clear that Christians must always evangelize and combat false teaching using persuasion, rather than violent coercion. Violently kidnapping the children of unbelievers to save them from being indoctrinated in godlessness or burning heretics at the stake in order to prevent them from spreading their false teachings are obviously actions that are fundamentally incompatible with the Way of Jesus. If Christians should not use violence even to prevent the spiritual harm of sin and false teaching, then how much more is it the case that Christians should not use violence to prevent the harm of physical suffering and death.

When we see massive injustice and violence in the world, it can be hard to believe that Jesus really is reigning as Lord of all, and that the nonviolent Way of Jesus is what really leads to the restoration of the world. The book of Revelation was written to first century Christians to remind them that, in spite of their experiences, Jesus really is the Lord of all who is making all things new, and to encourage them to remain faithful and obedient no matter what. We are in need, just as those first century Christians were, of this apocalyptic vision of spiritual reality, of true “Christian realism.” Our prayer must be, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). And when we do give in to the temptation to use violence to try to make the world a better place, we must repent and find God’s mercy and forgiveness.