THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996 TAG: 9607190055
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Issues of Faith
SOURCE: Betsy Wright
LENGTH: 84 lines
Last Week's Issue of Faith: Is any kind of violence acceptable to God?
This Week's Reader Responses:
From Kathleen Lee Self of Norfolk: ``One thing that concerns me about the use of the word `violence' is the disregard for rhetoric. Some people repeatedly use the word `violence' as a catch-all term to include a whole barrage of different concepts. The first definition in my dictionary defines violence as `physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging or abusing.' The purpose of exerting the physical force, is the part of the definition that needs to be considered when deciding right from wrong.
The word violence should be disassociated from describing self-defense, the defense of others, or punishment of someone who `violates, damages or abuses' the innocent. Considering the purpose should help end confusion, because someone who is first and foremost concerned with defending their own life should not be considered violent.
God obligates us to defend the innocent in order to live a just life. It may, however, seem ironic that people fight in the name of religion. It only seems ironic because some people are calling defense of the innocent `violence.' Fighting to defend the innocent (such as the Jews against Hitler), should never be referred to as violence, but as courageously standing up for what's right.
Peace is often called the fruit of justice. Justice, of course, requires us to give God and our neighbor his due. Justice means we have to punish violence, even when it means going to war. That is why the Catholic Church established what they called `just wars.' That is, exerting physical force to prohibit the violent ones from continuing their destruction of the innocent .
``It certainly clouds the issue to say God condones violence or allows it. The purpose of punishment is to create justice and this inevitably leads to peace and an end to confusion. A just God has to punish wrongdoing and so does a just society. Evidently, John Grisham clearly knows and makes this distinction, glorifying justice, while Oliver Stone glorifies real violence.''
From Lloyd Lee Wilson of Virginia Beach: ``Your column (last week) opens a topic worthy of volumes. . . . I've been on both sides of the question in my own life. (I am) a Vietnam-era Air Force ROTC graduate and officer who obtained a conscientious objection discharge. (I've) spent the rest of my life in life-giving, rather than life-taking, endeavors. I'm now an acknowledged minister of the Gospel in the Religious Society of Friends and do some counseling of young people who are beginning to realize the contradictions between the Prince of Peace and the national war machine.
``For Christians, the question (should be) `Does Christ condone any violence?' . . . What was the witness of Christ's life? When Peter took up his sword to protect the Son of God, Jesus told him to put it away, `for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,' (Matthew 26:51-52). When Jesus' very life was threatened, although he could have easily defended himself with `twelve legions of angels,' he refused to do so. Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world; if it were, then - and only then - would his servants fight (John 18:36). Though he had the greatest of all causes to advance - the kingdom of God - and the most innocent of victims to protect - God's only begotten Son - Jesus adamantly refused to use violence in any form.
``We might easily ask ourselves whether we might be misunderstanding Jesus' message due to the intervening centuries since his life and death. What was the understanding of the early church? How did Christians living in the first decades after Jesus, understand his life and teaching? The witness and practice of the early Christian church confirms that they also understood Jesus to have taught the way of non-violence. For almost three centuries after Jesus' life and death, the Christian church taught pacifism as the true Christian path. We have ample witnesses to how strongly individual Christians held to this pacifist faith, even to the point of allowing themselves to be executed rather than join the Roman army. Only after the church and Constantine made their alliance in the fourth century A.D. did the church begin to soften its pacifist stance.
``Throughout the centuries since, small groups of Christians have kept this early teaching alive through their own faithful witness. In this country, the Mennonites, Brethren and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) have maintained their Christian peace testimony and have suffered for it. For members of these groups, and for many other Christians in other denominations, the answer to the question is clearly, `No, Christ does not condone any type of violence.'
``As fallible human beings, we are not always able to live up to the teachings of Christ. When we fall short of the mark, however, the correct response is to ask God's forgiveness and help to do better, not to delude ourselves that God somehow approves of war or any violence against human beings as a `necessary evil.' '' by CNB