Jesus and Redemptive Violence

I have a list of blogs I check every day. Some represent where I have been theologically, and some reflect the direction in which I am moving at the moment. One blog, Pyromaniac, which is definitely "old school" me, keeps me abreast of debates raging in the Reformed evangelical world. It is one of the spiffiest looking blogs around, and while I almost never agree with the musings of its author, Phil Johnson, I have picked up some interesting reading ideas from what is routinely condemned. One book mentioned often, with much opprobrium, is Steve Chalke's The Lost Message of Jesus. So I bought it and found it a mildly interesting, highly redacted depiction of Christ as a loving, welcoming Messiah. No anger, no big stick, no hell-talk.

It wasn't until I came to chapter seven, "A New Agenda," that my interested was peaked. Chalke writes about how repentance is more than regret, confession, and a resolution to "never to do that again." Repentance is a call to follow Jesus into the shalom of God, that is, the abundant life of communion with God in Christ (John 10:10). In Chalke's words, "It is a calling to something rather than away from something." He then turns to Jesus' words in Matthew 5:48, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." The word "perfect" (telios, τελίος), describes a copy of something, an exact duplicate. Thus, Chalke translates this passage as, "You must always act like your Father in heaven," which Jesus summarizes as loving God completely and your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37).

If repentance means living God's way, it means we must stand against what Walter Wink called the myth of redemptive violence. Early Christians were uniformly pacifists, who were willing to be martyred rather than serve in the military. They were merely following their Lord, who said, "For all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). The early church turned its back on the idea that violence could somehow achieve solutions to societal problems. It was St Augustine, amidst a sea of barbarian invaders, who baptized the idea of the jus bellum, the just war. By that time, Christianity had already "conquered" the Roman Empire, not with swords, but by the blood of the martyrs, and the power of the gospel.

I mention all this because today the body count from Islamic terrorists is once again over 100. The situation in Iraq is not improving, and the mood in America is skittish and dark. We have decided as a nation to confront terrorism with violence, and have reaped only further violence, and the deaths of countless innocents. Chalke mentions Carl Jung's oft-quoted words, "You always become the thing you fight." I fear we will become so frightened of al-Qaeda, and so self-righteous in our political theology (and we do have a political theology: America as a shining light, a city on a hill, manifest destiny, etc.), that we will resort to even more violence and become filled with hate. This is not the way of Christ, the way of repentance, or the way of righteousness, and our so-called Christian leaders should know that.