Jesus on Self-Defense – Part 1
I regularly see bumper stickers that attempt to use the Religious Right’s values against them. For instance, many religious conservatives claim both to believe that Jesus is a divine authority on moral issues and that military action against rogue or immoral nations is morally permissible. Some dissenters attempt to highlight an apparent inconsistency in these claims with pithy one-liners:
and
The question these witticisms raise is, of course: What would Jesus really say about self-defense and just war?
As always, there are a couple of dead ends we should set aside from the start. The first is the verse where Jesus says:
“Judge not lest you be judged with the same measure with which you judge” (Matthew 7:1-2, NASB).
Some interpret this verse as expressing that no one should ever judge anyone. This interpretation, however, is unfortunate. Even reading the verse literally, it is a conditional claim: If you judge, then be prepared to be judged by the same standard. If your judgment is appropriate, you have nothing to worry about. For instance, if I buy a potato from you for $1 and I give you a $5 bill, but you only give me $3 in change, I judge that you short-changed me. I am perfectly willing to be judged by this standard, and I hope I am. Similarly, if I beat one of your children to a bloody pulp, then you should judge that I have acted immorally. I hope you’re willing to be judged by that standard, too.
So, should we interpret this passage as a call to refrain from all judgment or merely as a call to caution with respect to the standard of judgment we apply? Surely, it is the latter.
The second dead end passage is found in Romans where Paul writes:
“Never pay back evil for evil to anyone…. Never take your own revenge…for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12: 17, 19, NASB).
Some people interpret this passage to mean that we never have the right to seek justice. It would seem we are forever at the mercy of liars and thieves. What considerations might support this interpretation?
One consideration might be another of Jesus’s teachings: “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28, NASB). So, perhaps it is because we will live for eternity that we need not worry about justice in this life. But that seems strange given that the Bible includes so many moral commands we are supposed to keep during our time on Earth. And the context of this passage is specifically about being persecuted while preaching the Gospel, so, even if this were a complete restriction on seeking justice, it might apply only under these circumstances.
But another motivation might be an uncritical reading of the passage itself. “Never pay back evil for evil,” seems to some to suggest that seeking justice is evil. But a straightforward reading of the passage does not imply this. It literally says: If someone does something evil to you, do not do something evil in return. If someone steals $10 from you, you are morally entitled to that $10. Therefore, it is no evil for you to demand it back, or to seek coercive means of getting it back (e.g., [very] small claims court).
However, if you were to demand your $10 back, plus $100 more, or 50 lashes with a cane, then you are seeking more than what was taken from you. You are seeking to do “evil” in repayment for evil–you want something beyond justice, you want vengeance. Understood this way, Romans 12 says nothing different from the Mosaic Law. Many interpret the Mosaic Law (specifically, the Lex talionis) as a restriction on compensatory action, not a guide to it. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is a limitation on the damages you can seek in response to losing an eye or a tooth, not a prescription for what you should seek in every case. You cannot repay a lost eye by killing the offender’s family and livestock. You can seek damages up to, but not beyond, the offender’s eye.
So far, then, we have no reason to think believing that Jesus is a moral authority implies an obligation to suffer injustice or accept pacifism. But perhaps there are passages that more clearly express these implications. After all, the bumper sticker is right that Jesus says, “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). More on this in a future post.
July 13, 2010 at 1:35 am
To me, the most profound teachings of Jesus have nothing to do with judging or retribution but rather the very many times he instructs his listeners to seek out the Kingdom of God that is present all around them but they cannot see it or inside themselves and they cannot find it. Thus be like little children—with no preconceptions if you want to enter the Kingdom. Be born again in the spirit and with fire if you want to enter the Kingdom. What he is talking about is self-realization, much as the Buddha did six hundred years before. I have written a fictional account that focuses on these teachings called Tales of the Master by Karl Bruno Gatti withe narrative coming from the apostle Thomas recalling all he saw Jesus do and say the three years they spent together. It’s available through Amazon.com and in it I am careful to keep out any of the teachings of Paul as they are all essentially dogma and have little to do with the teachings of Jesus.
July 13, 2010 at 10:58 am
Karl,
Thanks for your comment. I agree that “judgment” has negative connotations in contemporary public discourse, but I certainly don’t mean to invoke negative overtones. I am simply referring to appropriate vs. inappropriate types of judgment; a distinction that is often overlooked in certain criticisms of fundamentalists.
It may be that the “most profound” teachings of Jesus “to you” are about seeking the Kingdom, and they may even be objectively the most profound, but they are certaintly not the only significant aspects of Jesus’s teachings. We have to guard against falling subject to Xeonphanes’ criticism of animistic religions: “the horses would draw their gods like horses, and cattle like cattle.” I might agree that Jesus is talking about self-realization if he taught that we could achieve it on our own–as the Buddha taught. Instead, Jesus taught that his followers are branches that depend essentially on the vine, who is “the bread of life,” “the light of the world,” “the door,” “the good shepherd,” “the resurrection and the life,” and “the true vine.” I take it this is very different from the Buddha’s teachings, though perhaps not incompatible with them, since the Buddha’s teachings also seem fairly pluralistic.
I am surprised, however, that you see Paul’s teachings as diverging so greatly from Jesus’s. Both were Jews, both claim that the Mosaic Law is necessary but insufficient for proper relationship with God, both assent to an end-times resurrection (a distinctly Jewish idea), both acknowledge an afterlife (both significantly informed by the inter-testamental book of Enoch), both use divine phrasings in reference to Jesus, and both take following Jesus as essential to Christianity. (I am overlooking that you use the term “dogma,” by which I take it you simply mean that he makes positive claims concerning the nature of Christianity, and in that sense, anyone who accepts the law of noncontradiction is a “dogmatist.”) Am I missing something?