Nonviolence? Really?
November 7, 2025
Turn the other cheek. Give your coat as well. Go also the
second mile. Matthew 5:38-42. Love your enemies. Matthew 5:44. Those who live
by the sword die by the sword. Matthew 26:52. These verses, especially those
from Matthew 5, don’t actually mean what most people take them to mean. They
don’t command meek passivity in the face of evil. If you want to know more
about that truth see Walter Wink’s book The Powers That Be, especially
the chapter titled “Jesus’ Third Way.” Still, there is no doubt that Jesus
taught and lived nonviolence. He never told us to accept evil, but he told us
never to resist it violently. Jesus wouldn’t even let his followers use
violence in an attempt to save him from crucifixion. Violence is not Jesus’ way.
It isn’t Jesus’ way because it isn’t God’s way. It must, therefore, never be
our way. I have taught, preached, and written about Jesus’ teaching of
nonviolence for decades. I have said that while I have colleagues who see their
primary call from God being work for justice or ecological sanity, I see my
call from God to be primarily the advocacy of Jesus’ way of nonviolence.
I still believe that to be true, I guess. But. But this
morning I saw something that, frankly, has caused me to have my doubts. This
morning I received a mass email to which I’ve subscribed from Diana Butler
Bass. If you don’t know who Diana Butler Bass is, don’t worry about it. She’s a
prolific Christian writer, but who she is doesn’t matter for my purposes here.
In this morning’s email she attacked the notion of empire at length, saying,
correctly, that Jesus opposed the Romen Empire every way he could (except, I would
add, with violence).
Then Bass gave a statistic I hadn’t heard before, citing an
article from the New Yorker as her source for it. We all know that early in his
current term as president the American fascist Donald Trump brought in the
world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and together they took an illegal and immoral
hatchet to the federal government. Among the unconscionable, sinful things they
did was to destroy the American programs that provided vital, life-supporting
aid to the poor people of Africa. They basically shut down USAID, and agency
that was the primary provider of that aid. I knew they’d done that. I’d heard
the predictions of the harm what they had done would cause.
I’d heard, but I didn’t really know. Not until this morning.
In Bass’ email I read that since Trump and Musk destroyed USAID, something like
600,000 Africans, most of them children, have died because they lost
life-saving aid from the United States. Six hundred thousand men, women, and
(mostly) children dead. Men, women and children who would still be alive but
for the American fascists Trump and Musk (who, by the way, isn’t actually
American but African). That’s the population of a good-sized American city. It’s
more than the population of one of our states (Wyoming). It’s more than the number
of American casualties in World War II, as horrific as that casualty number
truly is.
And, of course, that’s not all the deaths Trump and his would-be
brownshirts have caused and are planning to cause. Trump’s gross mishandling of
the COVID-19 pandemic during his first term in office caused an unknown but
huge number of avoidable deaths. Now he wants to cut food and medical care off from
millions of Americans. After all, to him, if you need a bit of help to live,
you don’t deserve to live. The horrors of the two Trump administrations just go
on and on, with no end in sight. I mean, we won’t even get to vote against Trump
and his MAGA allies again for another year. In the meantime, and probably even
thereafter, Trump’s killing of innocent people in service of a fascist ideology
and our country’s billionaires will continue.
As I read Bass’ piece this morning and thought of all the
other death Trump has caused and has set out to cause in the future I thought:
Nonviolence? Really? I mean, millions of Americans support the son-of-a-bitch
(no offense to female dogs intended), and the rest of us sit here, wring our
hands, write essays no one will read, occasionally go to an anti-Trump
demonstration, vote against Republicans when we get the chance, and otherwise
do jack shit to get rid of Trump and his fascist minions. Folks, for perhaps
the first time in my life, this morning I felt that violence may after all be
needful. Perhaps violence is the answer. Perhaps violence is the only answer.
Now, I am not here to advocate violence. I am a Christian. I
am even an ordained Christian pastor. Not a Christian Nationalist Christian,
for those so-called Christians aren’t really Christians in any meaningful sense
at all. A real Christian. A Christian who believes that to be Christian is to
follow Jesus in every way we can, and that includes perhaps first of all
following his teaching and example of
nonviolence. It means to know it when we can’t bring ourselves to follow Jesus
and to pray for forgiveness for our failure to do so.
I am here to say that sticking to Jesus’ teaching of
nonviolence isn’t easy. The temptation to resort to violence in an attempt to
solve problems to which there seems to be no other solution is strong to say
the least. Being nonviolent can make it feel like we’re not doing anything, or
at least not doing enough, to fight demonic evil like Donald Trump.[1]
And according to the standards of the world, we aren’t.
But here’s the thing. God does not call us to live according
to the standards of the world. And though Jesus once said that his yoke was
easy, Matthew 11:30, he also said deny yourself and take my cross upon you, Matthew
16:24. There is, of course, nothing easy about taking on an instrument of
torture and execution like a cross. And human experience, or at least my human experience,
tells me that truly following Jesus is rarely actually as easy as we would like
it to be.
We humans always want moral decisions to be easy. We’re much
more comfortable with black and white, yes/no questions than we are with most
of the question life actually presents us with. Those questions are more often
difficult than they are easy. Sure, it’s easy to say don’t murder, and that one
is always simply true and has no actual nuance to it.
But never use violence, not even to defeat diabolical evil?
That one is nothing but nuance. By that I mean that when we obey Jesus’
commandment never to use violence, there are tradeoffs. We have to give up our
human belief that using violence would actually solve the problem. We have to
live with frustration that comes from the fact that nonviolence can seem so
ineffective as a solution to evil, at least in the short term. We may have to
live with the charge from more worldly people that we’re cowards for not using
violence. Or that we’re complicit in the perpetuation of evil because we will
not take up arms against it.
Today I’m frustrated as hell that I can’t take up a weapon
and go to war against MAGA, but I know that I can’t. I know that I mustn’t. I
know that I can’t and that I mustn’t because I am a Christian. And so I know
that I won’t. I am not by nature a violet person in any event; but, even if I
were, Jesus would tell me “Oh no you don’t! No violence, Sorenson. Period.” So
I won’t. Ever. No matter what. And I’ll live with what feels like the moral
ambiguity of that decision trusting that the decision is not actually morally
ambiguous at all but is rather God’s way and therefore must be my way.
So. Nonviolence? Really? Yes really. Yes nonetheless. Yes
despite how it feels in difficult times. Yes, despite what can feel for all the
world like moral ambiguity. Yes despite what the world says. Yes despite what
other so-called Christians say. Nonviolence is God’s way. That really is all
there is to it. And because it is God’s way, it must be our way too. That’s all
there is to it too. Sticking to nonviolence isn’t easy. In our culture with its
mania over guns and the military it isn’t popular. But: Nonviolence? Really?
Yes really, So be it.
[1]
Every time I write something like that, my quite extensive knowledge of Soviet
history (I have a PhD in Russian history and lived in Soviet Russia for a year
doing PhD research) comes to mind. When Stalin ruled the USSR, writing things
like that about him would get you sent to the Gulag at best if not get you a
bullet in the back of the head. I scream about Trump being a fascist and an
existential threat to my country, and he is both of those things. Still, I am
glad that saying those things won’t get me imprisoned or killed, not yet at
least.
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