Contributing to the Movements of Non-Violence

Dear Friends,

Nowhere in the Gospel does Jesus ever advocate violence. In the Garden of Gethsemane, where Peter cuts off the ear of Malchus, Jesus says, “no more” and heals Malchus.

Jesus is a non-violent teacher of non-violence. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus offers two imaginative non-violent responses to violence.

“When someone strikes you on one cheek,” He says, “turn the other cheek.” The theologian Walter Wink offers insight into the meaning of that call. When people in the military would strike their inferiors, it would be with a backhanded slap to the left cheek. To turn the other cheek was, in effect, to say to the violent person: if you hit me on my right cheek, it means you acknowledge I am your equal. This would give the violent person pause.

The second admonition of Jesus was equally clever. “When someone asks you to go a mile with them, go two.” Again, from Walter Wink we learn that the someone in that admonition was actually a Roman soldier. By Roman law, the soldier could press a civilian to carry his ninety pounds of gear for one mile, but not more. For the civilian to carry it more than a mile might sound generous. In fact, the soldier could be found disobedient to the law. The civilian undermined the military in a non-violent way.

A unique characteristic of the 20^th Century was the international rise of non-violence to solve problems. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the Mennonites and Quakers were prime proponents of non-violence. Their protegees included the American Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who told us, “The way to silence error is by truth and not by violence.”

This decade of the 21^st century has found Americans descending deeper into violence on our streets, with guns, killing multiple people who are strangers for ideological reasons or out of rage. Abortion, domestic abuse, senseless aggression all arise from and lead to violence.

Are we helpless? Not really, but we do have to exert and discipline ourselves for action.

Training in non-violent ways of problem – solving is necessary at a personal level. So too are learning empathetic listening and assertive, non-judgmental, non-destructive speech. These require a discipline, which we might need to do in tandem with others. If you have a computer, go to several sites to see where groups of people are learning and sharing the practice of non-violence. Braver Angels is a citizens organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America. (The term Braver Angels comes from Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural speech in 1861.) Go to the Center for Non-Violence Communication or Global Citizens. On the Global Citizens website, you can read how 100,000 Estonians in 1988 gathered for five nights of group singing to protest Soviet rule. It worked.

As Americans, we can be creators of and joiners in movements of non-violence. The time to do this work is now. Let the peace of Christ which binds us together be the source of our strength as we learn to live in love and peace with one another.

~Sister Joan Sobala