“Live by the sword, die by the sword” – It is a well-known expression that probably takes its root from the verse above. Violence not only does not resolve conflicts or problems, but tends to escalate them. One speaks of violence spiraling out of control because it spreads easily each time involving more and more people. By the way of violence, the only peace that can be attained is the peace in the cemetery, of death and destruction.
Jesus of Nazareth challenged the domination system and its core value of redemptive violence. And he did not live long because of it. The Church in charge of proclaiming his teachings did not carry them out in full measure, maybe because she did not really understand them, or maybe to survive she had to adapt to the culture and ally herself to the dominant power.
The Christ of history that the community passed down in time was a Christ who was watered down, diluted, less radical, less revolutionary. Providentially, however, this Jesus of Nazareth, who did not sail into the Christian community, nor made history, is contained in the Gospels, and it is through them that we perceive the revolutionary dimension of his teachings.
Jesus rejected the autocratic power (Matthew 20:25-28), appealed for economic equality (Mark 12:30-31), rejected violence (Matthew 5:38-41), broke the customs that treated women as inferior (Luke 10:38-42), broke the rituals of cleanliness that separated people from one another (Mark 1:40-45), challenged the patriarchal view of the family (Luke 11:27), and rejected the belief that God demanded sacrifices of blood (Matthew 9:9-13).
Power as service, not as dominion
But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’. Matthew 20:25-28
But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:8-12.
Jesus is an anarchist not in the sense that a society should not be orderly and governed, but in the sense that no one should have the right to exert power over someone else; power is either a service or is malicious.
For Jesus, all autocratic government is naturally violent and oppressive. He saw power as service to the people and not dominion over them. He substituted love for power, for the power of love and service to others. This is the way to the greatness and popularity that is so coveted by the powerful.
Those who exercise power tyrannically are feared, not loved; the leaders that are loved by the people are those who exercise power by means of service; these are the great ones in the history of humanity. The great ones in our own personal history are also those who have served us like our parents, teachers, catechists, doctors etc., and not those who have dominated us.
Economic equality and equity
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 12:30-31.
Within a single commandment, Jesus unites the two values that human life is based on. To love God above all things means to acknowledge no authority above God’s authority and to submit to no one and to nothing. This is the guarantor of freedom as a value on which the dignity of the human person rests.
On the other hand, since a human being is not an island, the social dimension is based on equality; under God, no one is more than someone else. The combination of these two dimensions, vertical in the love of God and freedom, and horizontal in the love of our neighbour as ourselves, form the symbol of Christianity, the cross.
Jesus warns us of the danger of wealth that makes men antagonistic and bars them from salvation (Mark 10:25). For this reason, he invites the rich young man to detachment and to give all his money to the poor thus redirecting his sight on a greater treasure in heaven (Matthew 19:21). He praises Zacchaeus for his act of giving back and sharing his money thus earning him his salvation (Luke 19:1-10). The sharing of material goods is part of the criterion of entry into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 25:31-46).
Love for enemies
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous...’ Matthew 5:43-45.
You have heard that it was said ... But I say to you … -- Several times in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus uses this grammatical construction to expose each statement of the ancient ideology or domination system and to reciprocate one for one with his doctrine.
Jesus came to prove that the domination system is not the only way to live in society; the Kingdom of God that Jesus brought by his coming into the world, is an alternative to the dominion system, the only alternative in fact. The Kingdom of God initiated by Jesus is a win-win situation, because everyone wins, no one loses; there are no oppressors nor oppressed, no winners nor losers.
For the system of domination to work, man has to be a predator and this is why he must convince himself and his fellow men that the enemies are treacherous and that the only way to live in peace is to destroy them. For Jesus there are no enemies; but even if there are, they will not be won over with hatred which only makes them stronger; it is like trying to put out fire with gasoline; only love can truly disarm them.
For redemptive violence to operate, it is necessary that some people be declared as enemies, so that their elimination by means of violence is viewed as a redemptive act. Jesus' command to love our enemies leaves redemptive violence without its moral justification. In connection with this Rosenberg says, “When we understand the needs that motivate our own and others behavior, we have no enemies”.
Jesus came to make this world the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of justice and peace, a “civilization of love” as Pope John Paul II liked to repeat. The Sermon on the Mount is the Magna Carta or the Constitution of this Kingdom.
Redemptive Nonviolence
‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.’ Matthew 5:38-41.
The Code of Hammurabi enacted in Babylonia, the same place where the myth of redemptive violence emerged, is the first code of law that human civilization knows. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was a law designed to restrain the natural escalation of violence, permitting its controlled use for revenge within the principle of reciprocity. For Jesus, this is not the solution because it tackles violence with violence.
Do not resist an evildoer – To resist violently, to seek revenge or to conquer evil by violent means, is to let oneself be controlled by violence and to perpetuate the myth that salvation is achieved in this way. Theologian Walter Wink notes that this verse has traditionally been interpreted as advocating passive submission to oppression; therefore historically, Christianity has rejected the teachings of Jesus concerning nonviolence as a utopic, impractical and naïve idealism.
The truth, however, is that the Gospels do not teach nonresistance to evil; Jesus teaches us resistance, but without violence. Wink assures us that if we take the words of Jesus in their historical and cultural context, it is clear that Jesus is advocating a creative form of nonviolent opposition to oppression, not submission. On the other hand, Wink also insists that the above verse is a poor translation of the original Greek which according to him says, “Do no react violently against the one who is evil”. The examples that follow are additional proofs of this.
If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also – Any slap on the face is given with the right hand because the left hand, according to the Jewish law, is only used for unclean tasks. Now, to slap someone's right cheek with your right hand, this can only be done with your backhand. Even today, a slap with a backhand is given not with the intention to injure physically, but rather to insult, humiliate and degrade.
It was not given to a person of equal status, but to an inferior; it was the type of slap that a master would give to a slave, a husband to a wife, a father to a son, a Roman to a Jew, in order to remind them of their position of inferiority and put them back in their place; or to cut someone down to size as the saying goes.
To strike the left cheek the aggressor can no longer use the backhand, that is, cannot humiliate again, to strike he would have to do it, this time, with the palm of his hand, something that could happen only between people of the same social status, so that if the aggressor were to do it, he would be lowering himself to the same level as the one he is assaulting.
Therefore, the act of turning the cheek is meant to say at the time that, ‘I am your equal in dignity, I do not accept being humiliated’. He can no longer strike the right cheek with the backhand because it is now hidden, the nose will be in the way. Therefore, more than offering the other or left cheek, he is hiding the right so not to be humiliated again; he is rebelling and leaving the master without arguments, not being able to attack without lowering himself and recognizing the other as an equal.
If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well – To understand these words, one needs to understand the Roman tax system that led the poor farmers to be so indebted to the point of losing their lands or inheritance to creditors, left without any means of sustenance, completely embezzled and unprotected, that is, stripped naked.
The parable of the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew (20:1-16) refers to those who had lost their land because of their debts and are now obliged to go to the square every day in the hope of being hired. Ironically, the landowner hires first those who were the previous owners of the land because they know the work well and only later, in needing more hired hands does he return to the square to hire other labourers.
The debtor had no chance of winning the case in court because the system always favored the creditor. As we saw in the case of turning the other cheek, and later in the case of walking the extra mile, one of the rules of nonviolence is to be assertive; by stripping himself of the only garment left to him, and ending up naked, the debtor protests and points the finger at the system that brought him to this state.
Nakedness was a taboo in Israel, but the shame fell less on the naked person, and more on the ones viewing and causing the nakedness (Genesis 9:20-27). In fact, even today, in many situations, displaying nudity is a form of protest. Stripping off the cloak and leaving the court naked is equivalent to saying, ‘you stole everything from me, I only have my body left, what are you going to do now?’ The attention and accusatory glances are now directed to the one who caused the nakedness, the creditor.
As Wink concludes, Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence points to a strategy of confronting the system by unmasking its essential cruelty and mocking its pretensions to justice. Those who hear these teachings will no longer accept to be treated like sponges to be squeezed by the rich. On the surface they can accept the rules of the game played by the rich, but in reality they are exacerbating the rich and the system to the absurd, and thus exposing their cruelty. By stripping naked before their fellow men, what is left naked is precisely the system and the creditors.
If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile – It was the custom at the time of Jesus that whoever was found on the road or in the street could be forced into service by the Romans, like the Cyrenian who was forced to carry the cross of Christ (Mark 15:21).
In the imperial Rome, high ranking soldiers had slaves, donkeys, horses or carts to carry their baggage; not so with the low ranking ones, therefore they could force whoever they found on the road to carry their baggage for a mile. To carry the baggage for more than a mile was illegal and punishable by Roman military law.
As in the two previous instances, the question here is how the oppressed can regain their initiative and assertively affirm their human dignity, in a situation that for the time being cannot be changed, that is, within the Roman dominion. By carrying the soldier’s baggage for an extra mile, the soldier could not but be taken by surprise and feel provoked as not only he did not have to coerce the Jew to carry his packs but the latter even exceeded in the task. By depriving the soldier of the predictability of his victim’s response, he is thrown into confusion and left without a moral authority.
Now it is the soldier who has to plead to have his pack back to avoid being punished by his superiors. The humor of this situation may have escaped us, but could hardly have escaped Jesus’ audience, who must have been delighted at the prospect of teaching a moral lesson to their oppressors. In conclusion, Jesus is against passivity and violence; evil can be confronted and overcome without the use of violence.
The third way
In the face of danger or threat, the fight (armed revolt, violent rebellion, revenge) or flight (submission, passivity, surrender, withdraw) responses are the two possible reactions of any vertebrate living being because these responses are imprinted, as we shall see in the next article, in our first brain, the reptilian brain.
According to Walter Wink, Jesus offers a third way. This new path marks a historical change in human development: the revolt against the principle of natural selection. With Jesus a new way emerges, by which evil can be fought without being mirrored. These would be the directives that are deduced from the Gospels:
• Do not stay inactive but take a moral initiative
• Find a creative initiative to violence
• Assert your humanity and dignity as a person
• React to violence with disdain and humour
• Break the cycle of humiliation
• Show unrelenting refusal to any position of inferiority
• Expose injustice in the system
• Assume dynamically a position of power
• Shame and ridicule the oppressor into repentance
• Stay firm
• Compel the powers to make decisions that they are unprepared to make
• Recognize your own power
• Be willing to suffer, instead of taking revenge
• Compel the oppressor to look at you in a new light
• Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a demonstration of force is effective
• Be ready to pay a price for breaking unjust laws
• Conquer the fear of the domination system and its laws
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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