Links to elsewhere on this Web site: /apologetics.html /book.html /doctrinal.html /essays.html /links.html /sermonettes.html /webmaster.html
For the home page, click here: /index.html
For the history page, click here: /newfile1.html
Why does God Allow Evil? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Why
Does God Allow Evil 0908.htm
May Christians work on Saturdays? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Protestant Rhetoric vs
Sabbath Refuted.htm
Should Christians obey the Old Testament
law? /doctrinalhtml/Does the New Covenant Abolish the OT Law.htm
Do you have an immortal soul? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Here and Hereafter.htm
Is the United States the Beast? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Are We the Beast vs
Collins.htm
Should you give 10% of your income to
your church? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Does
the Argument from Silence Abolish the Old Testament Law of Tithing 0205 Mokarow
rebuttal.htm
Is Jesus God? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Is Jesus God.htm /Doctrinalpdf/More Evidence That Jesus
Is God 08.pdf
Will there be a third resurrection? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Will There Be a Third
Resurrection.htm
DOES THE BIBLE TEACH PACIFISM?
Should
Christians use violent force to protect themselves at church or elsewhere?
The
Sermon on the Mount provides the clearest and most relevant text on this
subject in Matthew 5:38 to 48, when Jesus preaches to the gathered crowd.
Although the entire section won’t be reproduced here, some key parts should
still be quoted: "But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil,
but whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . . But
I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, in order
that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun
to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous." Therefore, if we take this literally and
straightforwardly, Christians shouldn’t counter-attack criminals who are
attacking them, at church or elsewhere.
So then, the main issue concerning pacifism concerns how to interpret and apply Jesus' statements in Matt. 5:38-48. Admittedly, this is an extremely difficult passage to obey. If it were up to me, and I had the power to remove it from the Bible, I would do so in my foolish, limited human knowledge. But God knows what He is doing, and we shouldn't second-guess Him in this regard. For what is a mark of a true Christian? One way to sort out true churches from false churches concerns using certain distinctive doctrines that most of them don’t obey but which are crucial to salvation. The Bible commands people to rest literally on the seventh day of the week (Friday night to Saturday night), but very few Christians do that (Ex. 20:8-11). Most want to rest on another day or they want to abolish it altogether. Likewise, God commands people to obey the annual Holy Days listed in Leviticus 23, such as the Passover, Pentecost, and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), but almost all Christians today celebrate Christmas and Easter instead, which aren’t even mentioned in the Bible. Then comes the principle of pacifism: Since so few churches tell their members to not go to war, most churches are wrong on this subject. After using these three doctrines to evaluate professing Christian churches, it’s necessary to conclude almost no Christian churches in the world obey the Bible literally in crucial areas.
So how are Christians supposed to apply the words of Jesus in Matt.
5:38-48? If we come up with rationalizing explanations under which we
never have to obey the teachings in Matt. 5:38-48, then we’ve got a
problem. Christ wouldn't have spoken these words if they didn't have some
kind of practical application. I basically don't see how someone can love
his enemy, but kill him when his enemy still wishes to live also. (That
is, it isn't a case of mercy killing or euthanasia, ala Dr. Kevorkian).
It just requires way too many mental somersaults and gymnastics for that to be
persuasive. If we have to follow the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12) on the
battlefield also, we can't kill our enemy if we wish to live also. I
don't see how someone can turn the cheek, yet kill someone else, whether it be
a burglar, a would-be murderer, or an enemy soldier.
Now, simply put, this text is our basic problem: Can we honestly evade
the literal application of these verses? I really don't think we can.
The founder of the Quakers, George Fox (1624-1691), realized that
Christians couldn't. But it's easy to denounce this doctrine as impractical,
as impossible to practice since other nations would then want to attack us,
such as the Nazis and Communists in the past. Likewise, strict pacifism
would require our police forces to be disarmed against criminals. True,
Romans 13:1-7 shows that God uses unbelievers to maintain law and order.
But these verses wouldn't authorize Christians to join the police or to wage
war. Since the vast majority aren’t called to be true Christians during
their first lives on earth (John 6:44, 65; cf. Eze. 37:1-14), we shouldn’t
assume those nominally upholding the Christian faith today who control our
governments are truly converted Christians. It is a point of faith,
but people who really believed in God's ways can and will receive protection
from God, and the same would go for nations as well. In three or four
cases, ancient Israel let God wage war for them instead of going onto the
battlefield to kill. For since we have more knowledge of the truth than
they did, we shouldn't assume that what Joshua was allowed to do would be what
we are allowed to do, especially when he had explicit orders from God to take
the Holy Land, unlike the case for modern wars, where God hasn't told anybody
to attack anybody else.
Can someone who follows the Prince of Peace wage war? Can we kill our
enemies, yet still say we love them, especially when they would say they don't
want to die? That's a straightforward application of the Golden Rule (cf.
Matt. 7:12). There's the insight that A.A. Milne had (as I recall; he is
famous for being the author of the Winnie the Pooh stories) in favor of
pacifism, or at least avoiding participation in war: He reasoned that why
should we, as individuals, be willing to kill other individuals, total
strangers we first meet on the battlefield, when still other strangers, our
political rulers in our respective capitals, say we should go kill those other
people? Could Christians go out and kill other Christians, their brothers
in Christ, even members of the same church, merely because (often) unbelievers
with power say they should do so?
When on trial before Pilate, Jesus said He was a king, but that "My
kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My
servants would be fighting, that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but
as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm" (John 18:36). Here Jesus
denied that His followers should fight for Him against others.
Furthermore, if Jesus' kingdom is not derived from this world, which is
the main meaning of the Greek, then Christians should not tie themselves to
this world's affairs so closely, such as by voting. This is especially
the case if God is doing the choosing of the human political leaders anyway, no
matter how bad they may be (see Daniel 2:21;4:17), or at least allows the worst
ones to take office. Our citizenship is in heaven, not here (Phil.
2:20). So we are to be like the patriarchs who were in the Promised Land,
but didn't inherit the Promised Land during their human lifetimes (Heb.
11:13-16, 39-40). They placed their priority on the next life, not the
present life. That is also a matter of faith, and very difficult to do, I
fully admit. It's a position that unbelievers can easily ridicule (such
as Karl Marx did, calling religion the opiate of the people).
But if the Bible is true, and the Second Coming will abolish all human
governments (Dan. 2:40, 44), why should be spend our efforts trying to prop up
the old dying system by voting that (I suspect) may be soon replaced?
It's enormously difficult to overcome Satan's controlling influence of
the world's governments (cf. Matt. 4:9; this offer Satan couldn't have made if
he didn't control them), the weight of evil human nature in us all, and the
weight of the surrounding civilization's past way of doing things. The
examples of communism and socialism in the past century are particularly
important; their idealists soon ran up against human nature itself, which made
their systems unworkable and their revolutions failures. If society
ultimately is really like Golding's "Lord of the Flies," we shouldn't
pin our hopes on some politician or political party or political movement to
really solve the world's problems.
Is war always immoral? Should Christians be pacifists? How should
true Christians deal with ISIS and other aggressive Muslim terrorist
groups? How should they have dealt with the Communists and Nazis in the
past? In order to take a swipe at his libertarian anti-interventionist
opponents, the Wall Street Journal’s writer Bret Stephens set up his swing
by dismissing pacifism’s seeming naivety: "George Orwell once
observed that pacifism is a doctrine that can only be preached behind the
protective cover of the Royal Navy. Similarly, libertarianism can only be
seriously espoused under the protective cover of Leviathan." But is
this how Christians should look at the world? Should Christians mainly
live for this world or for the next? If the Bible, correctly interpreted,
teaches pacifism, how would Christians be protected against common criminals
from the streets or invading armies from other countries? But since the
Bible commands Christians to be pacifists, we should have faith in God that he
would protect us
Now, why did God in the Old Testament order Israel to wage
war? Does that allow Christians to wage war today? Because God
doesn't reveal all His laws and His overall will all at once, the Bible is a
book that records God's progressive revelation to humanity. God doesn't
reveal everything all at once, or people would reject it as too overwhelming,
i.e., be "blinded by the light." The famous German philosopher
Immanuel Kant once said something like, "If the truth shall kill them, let
them die." Fortunately, God normally doesn't operate that way, at
least prior to the Second Coming (Rev. 1:5-7) or all of us would already be
dead!
The principle of progressive revelation plainly appears in
Jesus' debate with the Pharisees over the Old Testament's easy divorce law in
Matt. 19:3, 6-9: "And Pharisees came up to him [to Jesus] and tested
him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?' . . . What
therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.' They said to
him [Jesus], 'Why then did Jesus command one to give a certificate of divorce,
and to put her away?' [See Deut. 24:1-4 for the text the Pharisees were
citing]. He said to them, "For the hardness of heart Moses allowed
you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I
say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries
another, commits adultery." Now, this Old Testament passage should
not be cited to justify easy divorce procedures as a New Testament
Christian. That law has been superseded. It wasn't originally
intended as a permanent revelation of God's will, but it served as temporary
"training wheels," so to speak, until such time as a mass of people
(i.e., the Church after Pentecost) would have the Holy Spirit, and thus be
enabled to keep the law spiritually by God's help.
By contrast, ancient Israel as a whole didn't have the Holy Spirit,
and so correspondingly they didn't get the full revelation of God.
Now we have a Scriptural record in which God allowed, even
told, Israel to wage war, but then centuries later, through the Sermon on the
Mount, God told people to love their enemies and to turn the cheek, which
simply aren't compatible with waging war. (See Matthew 5:38-48). So
here the issue is how to reconcile pacifism as commanded by Jesus in the New
Testament with the record of Israel's wars in the Old Testament.
In three or four cases, God waged war for Israel, and Israel just had to stand
and wait in faith. One of the most spectacular cases was after King
Hezekiah prayed for deliverance from the Assyrian army led by Sennacherib by
having an angel kill the Assyrian army's warriors (see II Chron. 32:19-22).
Another case was when Israel was delivered from Pharaoh's army by the Red
Sea's parting and then rejoining, which delivered Israel but destroyed the
Egyptian army (see Exodus 14:10-31). Notice that in verses 13,-14 Moses
told Israel, "Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord . . . The Lord
will fight for you while you keep silent." Likewise, when Gideon’s
tiny “army” of 300 defeated the vast Midianite and Amalekite army, they had
only trumpets and torches in their hands (Judges 7:20). When they blew
their trumpets, Jehovah “set the sword of one against the another even
throughout the whole army; and the army fled as far as . . .” (verse 22)
The next verse mentions men of Israel being summoned to pursue Midian, but
plainly God gave this victory to Gideon without his company of 300 having to
kill anyone themselves. King Asa of Judah got a great victory over the
Ethopians by asking for God’s help (although Israel probably did kill the
Ethopians themselves in this case) (II Chron. 14:11-13). But he later
relied on buying an alliance with the king of Aram in order to cause the
Baasha, the King of Israel, to withdraw his army from threatening Judah.
In response, a prophet told him (II Chron. 16:7-9), “Because you have relied on
the kin of Aram and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of
the king of Aram has escaped out of your hand. Were not the Ethiopians
and the Lubim an immense army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet,
because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand. For the
eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly
support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in
this. Indeed, from now one you will surely have wars.” Modern
ruling “Christians,” by rejecting God’s help and relying on their own power to
kill others by the sword, are similarly condemned.
Although Israel also waged war, God's overall intention from the beginning was
different. Notice that God wouldn't let King David, who had fought in
many wars, build the Temple of Jehovah. Why? "You have shed
much blood, and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to My name,
because you have shed blood on the earth before Me" ( I Chron. 22:8).
The New Testament also has an Old Testament text showing how someone
loves should love his or her enemy. (Romans 12:20 cites from Proverbs
25:21-22). Even though God allowed Israel and even told Israel to wage
war, it would have been different if Israel had had more faith originally.
But God was working with an (often) disobedient nation that was supposed
to be His model for the world, so He didn't impose His full truth on them at
that time, including concerning waging war.
True, a number of texts could be cited from the Old
Testament that contradict pacifism (such as Deut. 20:12-19). God's truth
for humanity was revealed progressively. The New Testament is a more
complete revelation of God's will than the Old Testament. That isn't to
say we should throw out the Old Testament when it comes to matters of guiding
Christian conduct. The Ten Commandments are plainly still binding
principles for guiding how Christians should live their lives today (see James
2:9-12; Romans 7:7; Matt. 19:17-19). Jesus didn’t come to abolish the
teachings of the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them (Matt.
5:17-19). And Jesus didn’t obey the letter and spirit of such moral laws
as the law against murder and adultery so that we don’t have to obey those laws
today!
Nevertheless, there’s still solid truth in the notion that
the New Testament is a more complete and lasting revelation of God's will in
the matters it touches on than the Old Testament. For example, a
nineteenth-century Mormon could easily assemble a long list of examples from
the Old Testament that men could have more than one wife. He could also
have noted that the noted polygamists of the Old Testament included great men
of faith, such as Abraham, Jacob, and David. But do we today believe that
polygamy is allowed by the New Testament when it tells the leadership of the
church to only have one wife (I Tim. 3:2, 12)? Do we really think the
laity should be any different? Are there any prominent New Testament
Christians, Jew or gentile, who had more than one wife? Therefore, we can
safely conclude that God allowed polygamy for a time, but it wasn't supposed to
be permanent. We're now, as New Testament Christians, called to a higher
level of righteousness than what Abraham, Jacob, and David maintained.
Why did God order Saul to kill all the
Amalekites, including babies, in I Samuel 15:3?: "Now go and smite
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill
both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
God mentioned in the prior verse why He wanted to inflict this utterly
severe collective punishment: "I will punish what Amalek did to
Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt."
So then, why did God, in general, want the
Canaanites to be exterminated at the hand of Saul and (in a prior
generation) Joshua? One key principle is the need for to keep the
Canaanite's system of pagan idolatry and its corresponding sexual
immorality from contaminating Israel's pure worship of Jehovah. By
totally eliminating the Canaanites at God's command, the Israelites would help
to preserve their moral and spiritual purity. Even before Israel
entered the Promised Land, God knew very well that His Chosen People would
chronically want to copy the religious practices of the people they were
supposed to conquer and displace. In Deut. 12:29-31, God warned Israel,
"When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations which you are
going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware
that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you,
and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How do these nations
serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?' You shall not behave thus
toward the Lord your God, for every abominable act which the Lord hates they
have done for their gods; for they even burn their son and daughters in the
fire to their gods." But, of course, so often Israel did fall away,
and worship the false gods of the Canaanites, suc
general after Adam and Eve ate of tree of
knowledge of good and evil. By totally eliminating the Canaanites at
God's command, the Israelites would help to preserve their moral and
spiritual purity. Even before Israel entered the Promised Land, God knew
very well that His Chosen People would chronically want to copy the religious
practices of the people they were supposed to conquer and displace. In Deut.
12:29-31, God warned Israel, "When the Lord your God cuts off before you
the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and
dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after
they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods,
saying, 'How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?'
You shall not behave thus toward the Lord your God, for every abominable act
which the Lord hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their
sons and daughters in the fire to their gods." But, of course, so
often Israel did fall away, and worship the false gods of the Canaanites, such
as Baal, Molech, and the Asherim poles. After slaying thousands
of Israelites who fell into idolatry with Midian (Num. 25:1-9), God in
turn had those Midianites slain en masse (Num. 31:1-18) who
seduced His people into worshipping false gods using idols while committing
fornication.
From a 21st century liberal humanitarian
perspective, why was God so seemingly harsh? Here we have
to reckon with how utterly holy and pure God is, and how He wants His
people to believe and live the same way, to be as perfect as He is
(Matt. 5:48). In order to drive this point home emotionally to us
humans, in Scripture God let Himself be repeatedly portrayed as the
betrayed husband of an adulterous wife (Ezekiel 16:1-43; 23:1-49; Jer.
3:6-11). If we ponder the emotions of that comparison carefully, we'll
then understand much better why God would command even the babies of the
Canaanites to be killed, since when they would otherwise grow up, they would
deceive His people into betraying Him. So long as the Canaanites
lived as a separate, competing civilization with their own gods, the
people of Israel routinely fell into apostasy and would worship the false
gods of the Canaanites. Although he was wrong, a bitter, disillusioned Elijah
felt he was the only one left worshipping Jehovah out of all of Israel (I
Kings 19: 10, 14, 17) during the time Ahab was king and the Sidonitess Jezebel
was his queen.
But, of course, there are other major collective
punishments that God inflicted on the human race. God had Gomorrah and
Sodom totally destroyed for their sins (Genesis 18:20; 19:13,
24-25). And even more completely and utterly, God drowned every human
being and land animal in the world during the great Deluge, except for Noah's
family (only 8 people!) and the animals with him in the ark (I Peter
3:20). So now, is God evil for executing people for violating His
law? Well, God tells us through Paul that the wages of sin is death
(Romans 6:23). Sinners have no right to live in God's sight: He has
the right at any time to execute someone for their sins before time of natural
death comes. Fortunately, God normally doesn't exercise that
option! And most mysteriously, He had His Son, who also was God, take on
the pain and sin of the world, and die on its behalf despite He was
innocent! Jesus' great sacrifice allowed God to reconcile mercy and
justice together: For our sins make us worthy of death, but by having
Jesus pay such a great price in our stead, that death penalty is lifted off us,
but not because of our merit from obeying His law (John 3:16; Romans 5:6-10;
7:25).
But why would God's order to
Saul include the execution of young children, even the babies of
the Canaanites? Weren't they innocent of sin? But this leads to
another problem: If they were allowed to live and be raised by their
parents, they would grow up and then believe and practice the same sins as
their parents (i.e., idolatry, paganism, religiously-motivated fornication,
etc.) That's why God wanted Israel to make a clean sweap of
all the Canaanites in almost all cases (excepting Rahab and her family in
Jericoh, which was one notable exception).
Besides punishing the Canaanites for their sins, God
inflicted other collective punishments on the human race. Jehovah
had Gomorrah and Sodom totally destroyed for their sins (Genesis 18:20;
19:13, 24-25). And even more completely and utterly, God drowned every
human being and land animal in the world during the great Deluge, except for
Noah's family (only 8 people!) and the animals with him in the ark (I
Peter 3:20). So now, is God evil for executing people for violating His
law? Well, God tells us through Paul that the wages of sin is death
(Romans 6:23). Sinners have no right to live in God's sight: He has
the right at any time to execute someone for their sins before time of natural
death comes. Fortunately, God normally doesn't exercise that
option! And most mysteriously, He had His Son, who also was God, take on
the pain and sin of the world, and die on its behalf despite He was
innocent! Jesus' great sacrifice allowed God to reconcile mercy and
justice together: For our sins make us worthy of death, but by having
Jesus pay such a great price in our stead, that death penalty is lifted off us,
but not because of our merit from obeying His law (John 3:16; Romans 5:6-10;
7:25).
God still believes in and practices capital
punishment, unlike the western Europeans. As the Creator of
life, He may also take it. But unlike men, He can resurrect and bring to
life again the people He executes. For example, God chose to execute all
the people on earth outside of Noah's family by sending the great flood because
of humanity's general wickedness (Genesis 6:5-7): "The Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry
that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So
the Lord said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the
earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry
that I have made them.'" Notice that Jesus predicted that many would
be killed again when He returns like it was in the days of Noah (Matt.
24:36-39).
Clearly, nobody is truly "innocent" or
"good" separate from God. God always has the option of imposing
the death penalty on us at any time, but normally He doesn't, since His mercy
triumphs over His justice, thanks to Christ's sacrifice. Furthermore,
since He can resurrect the dead, He can give them their lives back. This
helps to explain why He would (say) have Sodom destroyed when not even ten
righteous people could be found living there (see Genesis 18:22-33;
19:24-25). These people were living such a sinful and personally harmful
way of life that it was better for them to be put to death rather than still
living that way. Hence, it's hard to look upon the people in Sodom and
Gomorrah, the people drowned in the great flood (Genesis 6:11-13) that Noah
lived through, and the Canaanites that God had killed by Joshua's army as
"righteous" or "innocent," due to their crimes of violence,
idolatry, etc. When He resurrects them at the end of the millennium (see
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Rev. 20:11-15), the thousand years of the earth being ruled by
Jesus, they will receive a chance to be saved then.
Therefore, since God is the Creator of human life, we humans
are in no position to judge Him for being inconsistent when He takes the life
of those who break His law. He made human life for particular purposes of
His own. If we don't fulfill those goals, He has the right to
terminate our lives at His discretion. We have to respect the
utter sovereignty of God, as Job ultimately learned, although that isn't a fashionable
idea in the world today. God is in charge, whether we like it or not, so
we humans just have to get used to it and get with the program. For we're
all going to die, whether we like it or not. If God provides us a way out, a
way to get eternal life, we should accept it and the conditions involved,
especially if they are for our ultimate best good.
In the New Testament, there are no cases of Christians waging war or enforcing
the law against criminals. Furthermore, the general tradition of even the
Sunday-keeping church was pacifist before the time of Constantine and the
proclamation of the Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) Therefore, Christ's words
should be literally applied to Christians, and therefore shouldn't participate
in military conflicts or in law enforcement.
Presumably, critics of pacifism would say it’s totally impractical, that that
this teaching requires a lot of faith. I agree. The
world agrees with them, whether they believe in the Bible or not. But
many of God's ways aren't "practical" in this world either: How
many people lose their jobs over the Sabbath and Holy Days? In countries
with standard six-day workweeks or other hostile workweek traditions, many of
the brethren end up being in sales or self-employed because they wouldn't be
able to support themselves otherwise. Similarly, consider the case of
Daniel's three friends being ordered by Nebuchadnezzar to worship an idol, or
otherwise be executed. It wasn't "practical" for them to
resist, but they did so, and God delivered them. Similarly, we may be
tested on this law of loving our enemy just as they were concerning not
worshiping idols. Would we be willing to give our lives to avoid
worshiping idols, like Daniel's three friends, but not to if we're ordered (or
choose) to kill others on the battlefield? I've heard more than one
"strange" story under which God has protected a pacifist Christian or
after they took one punch, the attacker, being astonished at the lack of
resistance, walked away. One friend of mine, Phil Davisson, for example,
has a story like this. So then, do we have the faith to obey Christ's
words literally? Didn't Daniel's three friends have such faith to
defy Nebuchadnezzar's orders about worshiping idols?
Let’s lay out some systematic principles by which we believe
some Old Testament laws are done away with and others aren't. I used the
example of polygamy in the Old Testament above to illustrate the general
principle of progressive revelation in the Bible: I wouldn't
accept a 19th-century Mormon's case that "plural marriage" was
allowed for New Testament Christians despite all the cases in the Old Testament
that he could cite in his favor. Similarly, we know the New Testament
teaches that Christians need no longer do the animal sacrifices (Hebrews
9:8-10; 10:8-10) and circumcision (Galatians 5:2-3, 11-12). On the other
hand, I can cite cases in which the Ten Commandments are quoted as evidence the
Decalogue is still in force (James 2:8-12; Romans 7:7-12). Are the laws
governing warfare in the Old Testament now like the law
concerning circumcision (i.e., abolished), or like the law concerning
adultery (i.e., not changed)? Furthermore, somewhat separately,
what evidence is there that killing on the battlefield for Christians is
like polygamy, and thus prohibited now when it wasn't for God's people before
Jesus' first coming? We shouldn’t arbitrarily "pick and choose"
which Old Testament laws to obey and which ones to ignore.
The interpretation of Matt. 5:38-42 that
strictly limits it to restricting vengeance/justice to the legal system's
jurisdiction reads a desired narrow meaning into the passage. It isn't
only about that, or else it wouldn't discuss giving to those who beg or borrow
from us. In the case of "the second mile," this particularly
refers to a Roman procedure under which its soldiers would suddenly
"draft" people to carry their equipment.
In the general context, Jesus throughout Matthew 5 was
contrasting some narrower, often literal, application of the Old Testament law
with its broader meaning and application. Hence, lusting after a woman
also violates the law against adultery (v. 27-28). Should we similarly
narrow the application of verses 38-39 to a courtroom/legal proceedings when so
much becomes so broad spiritually elsewhere in this same section of
Scripture? After all, it does say "any one" in verse 39,
doesn't it? Where does the text say it is limited to courtroom
proceedings as opposed to taking revenge in general elsewhere? After all,
under the Old Testament law, people were still allowed to kill those who
accidentally killed others, not merely intentionally. That's why
the cities of refuge were set up, to keep give protection to those
guilty of (in today's legal terminology) involuntary manslaughter (Numbers
35:9-28). (Of course, that leads to the question about whether this
system should be allowed for Christians today). And during trials,
under the ancient Jewish legal system, someone wasn't supposed to strike the
defendant anyway, as Paul observed after he was hit in his mouth at the
order of the high priest (Acts 23:1-3). But Paul didn't drop
defending himself legally (i.e., with his words) after this illegal act
occurred (i.e., "turn the cheek" in the courtroom setting). So
the application concerns the use of force in retaliation (whether "self
defense" or not) after someone else strikes us, in whatever situation in
life, not just the courtroom. To narrow Christ's meaning to a
slap only and not other uses of force would be like saying the law against
adultery doesn't also apply to fornication. We should seek the broad
spiritual application of the law in the Sermon of the Mount to general
conditions in life, not a narrow, Talmudic kind of application that allows us
to escape from God's law if we work hard enough at it.
An interesting issue comes up concerning Jesus' citation of
the Old Testament in Matt. 5:43: Where does the statement,
"hate your enemy" actually appear in the Old Testament? Well,
we're told to not hate our brothers and to love our neighbors (Leviticus
19:17-18), of course. So what was Jesus' quoting or
actually alluding to? Well, Israel was told to hate their national
enemies, weren't they? Look at Deut. 23:5-6; 25:17-19. So then
Jesus was dealing directly with not hating one's national enemies, which means
the battlefield in particular. If God gives rain to both the just and
unjust (which gives an interesting insight on the whole problem of evil and
Job's predicament), and we're supposed to be perfect like God is, we should extend
love and mercy to those who don't deserve it similarly.
Consider this scenario: In the Church of God, we
have members who are citizens of different countries. Suppose two or more
of these nations went to war with each other. And this has happened in recent
history, such as Argentina versus Britain over the Falklands. If church
members were in the military of these nations, they would be obligated to kill
each other, wouldn't they? How can one follow I John 5:20-21 literally
then, let alone with average people in the world: "If someone says,
'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar, for the one who does not
love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love
is brother also." And this principle I wouldn't restrict to just
those in the Church of God: It should apply to our relationships with
family members, co-workers, neighbors, and random strangers of the general
public. And should we run into these random strangers on the battlefield,
we shouldn't kill them since they would wish to live also, just like us.
It’s correct that "Thou shalt not kill" is much
better translated as "You must not murder." But changing how
this word is translated doesn't refute at all the explanation
given above. After all, the killing of people on the
battlefield is totally deliberate and planned, much like a serial killer goes
about his business in committing first degree murders randomly. To be
consistent, capital punishment shouldn’t be enforced by true Christians
today. However, capital punishment (in principle, not when it may be
mistakenly applied to the innocent, etc.) shouldn’t be condemned when
done by our national or state governments. Consider Paul's perspective in
Romans 13:1-7. It's obvious that when he refers to the civil government
using the sword (verse 4), he is referring to its power to execute people for
crimes in particular. But he had absolutely no idea that ultimately
"Christians" of some kind would make up nearly the entire population
of many nations in the Medieval period in the centuries to come. He was
plainly picturing the Roman gentile pagans doing the work of maintaining law
and order, or perhaps secondarily various local native ruling bodies like the
Sanhedrin. He certainly wasn't telling (true) Christians to enforce
the law against wrong doers, but instead telling Christians to expect to be
punished if they did disobey their governments. So I believe the same
procedure should apply today: Let the police and the courts of the world
arrest, imprison, and execute the criminals, but it isn't the job of true
Christians to assist in this process when it involves the use of force,
directly or indirectly. So besides avoiding military service, Christians
shouldn't be guards at prisons, police officers, judges, or prosecuting
attorneys.
Fundamentally, an administrative shift occurred after
the death and resurrection of Jesus concerning God's people and the civil
law. Before that time, especially when the kings of Israel and Judah
reigned, there was a human government on earth in which God's
leaders were expected to enforce the law of God on the people of God,
whether they liked it or not. But since that time, there is no government
in the world that's especially a tool of God's government on earth.
Today, there truly is a separation of church and state, in God's eyes,
unlike the case for Old Testament Israel. America, the modern state
of Israel, nor any other country, use the Torah as the fundamental principle of
their legal system. Therefore, although the civil law may be a
useful guide to Christian conduct today in many cases, it shouldn't been seen
as something it's our duty to enforce on (uncalled, unsaved) people. Unlike God's
truly called and saved Christians today, Old Testament Israel wasn't
called or saved mostly. Hence, God didn't hold physical
Israel to the same standards, for they didn't have the Holy
Spirit. We truly called Christians today are held to a higher
standard, just as we are concerning divorce and remarriage, than Old
Testament Israel was (Matt. 19:3-9), since we know more than them.
Therefore, just as polygamy and easy divorce and remarriage are prohibited
for Christians, despite being allowed under the Old Testament law, the same
goes for deliberately killing random strangers on the battlefield merely
because some people in Washington (or elsewhere) choose to us
permission (or order us) to engage in this activity.
In Matthew 5, notice that when Jesus made the statement,
"You have heard that . . . " in verses 21, 27, 31, 38, 43, it each
involved a quote from the Old Testament. These weren't merely teachings
made up by the Pharisees or the traditional Jewish establishment of the
time. The formula "it is written," need not introduce all Old
Testament citations. So then, when verse 38 reads, "You have heard
that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'" the
quotation within the quotation is directly from the Old Testament, from Ex.
21:24, Deut. 19:21, and Leviticus 24:20. Two of these citations, of
course, you do mention below. The general point in this
chapter was that obeying the Old Testament's letter wasn't the total of
man's duty to God and/or his neighbor, but that the spirit of the law needed to
be obeyed also. It wasn't about correcting teachings the Pharisees
or their predecessors had made up, like the oral law's Sabbath
observance restrictions, in these verses (v. 21, 27, 31, 38, 43).
Rather, it was about how they didn't teach the underlying spiritual
principle of the written law as guiding human conduct also. In the case
of what follows verse 38, it's obvious it isn't only about judicial proceedings
or people taking revenge/restitution against those who killed family members,
but deals with general morality in any situation. Consider verse
42: "Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from
you do not turn away." That's obviously not about judicial
proceedings. Even consider verse 39 more closely: "But I
tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your
right cheek, turn the other to him also." First of all, don't people
in the Church of God often file lawsuits to advance their rights against the
government or private individuals for any number of reasons. What about
against employers who have discriminated against them (concerning the
observance of the Sabbath and Holy Days)? Are we "turning the
cheek" then, when we sue others for any reason in the world? We
don't always settle out of court (see Luke 12:58-59), do we? But, of
course, we don't interpret verse 38+ to have this meaning at all. It's
about how to deal with personal violence, not a command saying
to never exercise one's legal rights under man's present governmental
systems (such as Paul was willing to do, Acts 25:11).
Let's now focus on Matt. 5:43 in particular:
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate
your enemy.'" We know that the first part of this
quotation comes from Leviticus 19:18; it wasn't something merely made up
as part of the the Jewish oral law. Notice the formula "it is
written" is missing; it simply isn't always necessary for
introducing an Old Testament quotation. Now, who are the enemies we're
supposed to love in this passage? Martin Luther's solution said
it concerned personal enemies, not national ones. But can we construe
the following two verses passage this way? "But I say to you,
love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you,
and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be
the sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."
Well, if the national enemies get sunshine and have rain fall on
them, we'd have to love them too, right? Can we kill them yet love
them? That requires too many mental somersaults to be believable, if they
want to live as much we do. Love isn't just a word or a nice sentiment;
it includes active, outgoing concern and parctical kindness, such as what's
commanded in Romans 12:17-21; Prov. 24:17, 29; 20:22; Ex. 23:4, 5. These
texts show it wasn't allowed to hate personal enemies, and the Jewish oral law
doesn't contradict this. Robert Clark, in "Does the Bible Teach
Pacifism?," develops a convincing case that the Jews in their writings,
such as what appears in the Talmud (which records the oral law and their
learned commentary on it) that "hate your enemy" wasn't a
teaching of the oral law. Rather, Jesus was referring to what the Jewish
teachers of his time said about the national enemy: The
Jews considered it fine to hate the idolatrous pagan, gentile
Romans! The same went for hating their agents, the tax collectors,
who collaborated with the occupying army's civil administration. They
could have cited texts favoring their position, such as Deut. 23:6 (you would
argue that would be out of context); Deut. 25:17-19; Ps. 139:21-22;
137:8-9. Indeed, David's Psalms often ask God to punish His enemies,
i.e., he prays against His enemies, not for them, which is what Jesus
said to do instead in Matt. 5:44. So although Jesus here just
summarized what's taught in these verses rather than providing an exact
quote, it can't be seen as something not taught in the Old Testament concerning
national enemies. But as Jesus explained, this wasn't God's (permanent)
will for His true believers; Christians are called to a higher standard than
Old Testament Israel was. David wasn't allowed to build the temple precisely
because he had killed many men in war (I Chron. 22:8).
My general perspective is that hatred or resentment does not
need many seconds to develop, but a flash of anger during a struggle to kill
someone is plenty enough to fall into the category of what is condemned in
I John 1:9, 11; 3:14-15. This is true for self-defense in civilian life,
not merely killing the enemy on the battlefield, which is normally
planned for in principle many days, weeks, months, or even years in
advance. Keep in mind the whole purpose of wartime propaganda (for
either side) is to generally dehumanize the enemy while justifying the
actions or beliefs of one's own side. Their goal is to teach hate, not
love. The military, while training people for combat (i.e., front line
infantry duty), doesn't want men to think, just react and obey.
Terry Robison's way of putting it was that they wanted the men to act and react
like animals, and to stay in this mode while on tour. This keeps them in
an unthinking mode about the higher purposes of life, or even long-term
materialistic goals. None of these general purposes can be deemed to fit
in with God's higher purposes of reconciling all of humanity with each
other. We as true Christians are called to live for these higher purposes
and thus develop holy righteous character in the process.
Participation in war is no aid in that process.
But suppose someone in combat doesn't even see the enemy in
combat, such as when dropping bombs from airplanes on cities or firing
battleship guns at a target 15 miles away? They may regard the enemy
impersonally them. But the lack of active hatred doesn't change the
reality that the enemy is being killed. That is, just because someone
doesn't work themselves into a fury of hatred doesn't excuse their conduct when
it violates the Golden Rule and the Second of the Two Great Commandments.
What matters also is when people who want to live are being killed, not merely
how much hatred is felt at the moment bombs are dropped or missiles fired
at unseen, unknown enemies. Herbert W. Armstrong, the televangelist,
defined love as having outgoing concern for someone else, i.e., practical
actions are involved, not just nice sentiments. Blowing someone up
doesn't show outgoing concern for him or her, even if one didn't feel burning
fury or hatred for the enemy when flipping a switch.
There are many Old Testament laws that can be cited to
support institutions and practices that today even people in the world would
generally condemn, such as slavery and executing witches/mediums. In
the case of slavery, I can't see how this institution would be restored during
the World Tomorrow, if we applied the Golden rule to evaluating the
practice. (That is, "Would you want to become and stay a
slave?” So then, would you want to hold others as slaves, such
as debtors who couldn't pay their debts?) Rather, God
accepted the continuation of this human institution, but regulated it,
much like the case with war and easy divorce and remarriage, but didn't
see it as something that was a permanent moral law (Matt. 19:7-8). We
know as Christians, from the cases of the abolition of the animal sacrifices
and circumcision, that we can't cite the Old Testament merely, and then say
that proves the given law is still in force. In the case of polygamy, the
church in Africa has routinely made men with multiple wives divorce all the
ones added after the first one (still living). Presumably, in a country
such as Ghana, there would have been men informed enough who would have
cited the examples of the Old Testament's kings to him when counseling, but to
no avail. And we know what the kings did, such as Solomon, surely reached
the level of violating what God's law commanded in Deut. 17:17, which
condemned them from multiplying wives to themselves. That is, we can't
cite practice of someone's personal example as proof it was allowed according
to God's will.
More to the point, would be (again) there are no cases of
Christians in the New Testament or in early church history (Sunday-keeping or
not) who were properly allowed to have more than one wife. The early
tradition of the church (the false also, not just the true) was also
against participation in warfare before the time of Constantine.
Maxmilian, later made a saint by the Catholic Church, was martyred (in 295) for
refusing to join the Roman army. In the "Harvard Theological
Review" in 1946, R.H. Bainton writes: "All the outstanding
writers of the East and West repudiated participation in warfare for
Christians." (See Robert Clark, "Does the Bible Teach
Pacifism?," p. 83. We shouldn't brush this aside as not mattering,
that this records what the early Catholics taught. Isn't one
principle of COG efforts in writing church history looking for true teachings
still taught in its early centuries by what became the Catholic church? A
priori, it strikes me as hard to believe the earliest (true) Christians would
have promoted joining the army, but then the Sunday-keepers made a turn to
becoming more separate from the world than the true Sabbath-keepers. The
main error of the Sunday-keeping church after the time of Constantine
especially was to compromise with the surrounding pagan culture.
Let’s examine the implications of the easy divorce and
remarriage law concerning whether God dealt with war in the Old Testament in
the same way. He allowed it, even ordered people who were going to go to
war anyway to do so, but it wasn't His permanent, desired will for
humanity. It's much like Christ's telling Judas, "What you are
going to do, do quickly" (John 13:27). This was a command to do
evil, right? Robert Clark explains in "Does the Bible Teach
Pacifism" (p. 56) the principle that God "may sometimes tell them
[men] to do things which, though better than what they would otherwise have
done, are far from being in accordance with the true will of God."
The examples he gives concern Israel's demand for a king (I Sam. 8), Elisha's
telling men to not search for Elijah, but later bending (2 Kings 2:16-18),
and Balaam's being told not to go with Balak initially (Num. 22).
Under this dispensation, God allowed for things or ordered things to be done,
such as the animal sacrifices and circumcision, that weren't His permanent
moral law for mankind. Therefore, as God's will becomes more clear over
the centuries in the Bible, from the Old Testament into the New, various
institutions or laws that weren't part of His permanent moral law were
set aside.
What the Two Witnesses do (Rev. 11:5) shortly
before Jesus' return can't be equated with any and all human governments
ordering their citizens to go to war. The Two Witnesses are special
prophets of God given special miraculous powers by God. This is also
shortly before Jesus returns, and is part of the process of the events that
lead to God's kingdom's arrival and the punishment of His
enemies (II Thess. 1:7-9). Since God is the Creator of life, He
has the lawful power to take it also. He can resurrect who He kills;
we can't. We as Christians, unless we're prophets reliably given such
commands, can't go out and kill people, in self-defense or otherwise.
Consider the general principle, "Vengeance is
Mine; I will repay" (Romans 12:19). We as Christians can't take
revenge, but God can. So we can't cite what God does, and then say we
humans can do it also, especially when we don't have God telling us by special
revelation (e.g., prophetic dreams and visions) to do it. Jesus told
Peter after striking off the ear of the high priest's slave, "Put your
sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword"
(Matt. 26:52). Notice that Jesus' objection wasn't phrased in some narrow
way with an application to the immediate situation, such as referring to His
need to die as the Lamb of God. Instead, we get a general condemnation of
resorting to violence without any qualifications. When on
trial before Pilate, a similar issue comes up when Jesus said (John
20:36): "My kingdom is not of [i.e., derived from] this world.
If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not
be delivered onto the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here."
So, since the Kingdom of God isn't from men in the world, but is from God
in heaven, Jesus said His disciples weren't supposed to fight even to keep Him
from being killed. Again, He didn't put the response in narrow terms, by
saying (in so many words, suitably adjusted for a pagan ruler's possible
understanding) He had a special one-time, historic, prophetic mission to
die for the sins of the world, but referred to where His authority as king came
from. Since it came from heaven and not from earth, His servants weren't
supposed to fight even to protect Him from death.
A key example of "progressive revelation" in the
Bible is the law of divorce, which was looser in the Old Testament than
for the New Testament as Jesus explained it (Matt. 19:3-9). However,
there are some foreshadowings of the New Testament teaching about
pacifism in one key regard: David wasn't allowed to build the temple
because he was a "bloody man" who had killed many men in
battle. He would have served as a poor spiritual type personally for
what the temple symbolically represented (i.e., God's dwelling in unity
with mankind on earth). There are also three or four cases in which God
fought battles for Israel, and Israel didn't have to use the sword
themselves. But by themselves, without using the New Testament, it is
true, these cases can't prove pacifism is a Biblical teaching based
on the Old Testament alone.
It’s dubious to use the life of David, the personal example
of Saul, or even the sketchy, extremely limited information we have on (say)
Cornelius and other New Testament converts to Christianity after they were
saved, to override a plain interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Was
(say) Publius told to give up using statues of false gods in worship?
Scripture is silent about that also. And silence about what happened
after these men accepted Christ doesn't prove anything against such clear
commands as "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to
those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute
you" (Matt. 5:44). David practiced polygamy also, not just war; does
that mean Joseph Smith was right, that Christians may practice "plural
marriage" also? There is a certain level of truth to the concept of
progressive revelation, even dispensationalism, so long as it isn't pushed too
far (as the WCG did in 1994-95). Consider Jesus' dispute with the
Pharisees about the (relatively) easy divorce and remarriage law of the Old
Testament. The Old Testament law, in this regard, was not meant to stand
forever as the permanent moral will of God for the human race (Matt.
19:8): "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you
to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so."
Likewise, war was not God's will for Israel to engage in either, but He allowed
it, even commanded it, but plainly wasn't pleased with it intrinsically.
The WCG long ago cited the four (three might be more accurate, however) cases
in the OT in which God fought for Israel, that they didn't have to actually
kill their enemies themselves. Because David was a man of war, he wasn't
allowed to build the first temple: "You have shed much blood, and
have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to My name, because you have
shed so much blood on the earth before Me" (I Chron. 22:10).
But the fuller revelation of the New Testament commands
pacifism, which even the general witness of the Catholic Church before
the time of Constantine. So we now know Christians should not bear the
sword in warfare for worldly governments even when the Old Testament standing
by itself could easily be interpreted otherwise. For what it is worth, a
useful book if brief surveying the Biblical case for pacifism is Robert Clark,
"Does the Bible Teach Pacifism?" His arguments were helpful to
me when I wrestled with this teachings years ago when I first being
called. (Yes, I appreciate the irony of recommending a book by a Sunday-keeper
that teaches a doctrine that most Sunday-keepers reject, but a majority of COG
Sabbath-keepers accept!)
Let’s consider a hypothetical cruise ship example of
stranded pacifists who are preyed upon by one or more criminals. It’s
best to respond like the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand did when
"lifeboat" examples were thrown at her, as a defender of (in a
non-Christian form) moral absolutism. I live in a real world, not a
hypothetical one. So I concern myself with daily, routine, likely and
near-likely situations. I'm not worried about (say) how to select the
people to eliminate from an overloaded lifeboat. That makes for good
movies, but it's a lousy thing to seriously worry about as a Christian, that we
might end up in a state-less society somehow by accident. I'm not worried
about (using one philosopher's actual example) whether someone should lie to
Nazis inspecting fishing boats looking for refugee Jews on board that were
being smuggling out of occupied Europe. (This was his way of proving
there are no moral absolutes, or at least that no moral code that has more than
one absolute command could exist). God will not tempt us beyond our
strength. We can invent all sorts of worrisome hypothetical examples to
"prove" or "deny" this or that ethical or moral
principle. But I live in a real world, not a desert island after being
shipwrecked off some huge ship the authorities (in this world with GPS systems
and other highly technical nautical and detection equipment, such as infrared
night vision) aren't apt to miss for long when there are survivors.
(Maybe we could switch to a crashed "airplane" example instead; think
of the situation of the human cannibals of the dead in "Survive!"
stuck up in the Andes).
Let’s not with such unlikely hypotheticals beyond a
pacifist’s likely experience, when the real issues are (say):
Should we serve on a police force, in which we may have to gun someone
down on a moment's notice with incomplete information? We should
join an army that can at any time be ordered to wage a sinful war, even
according to what is by a Catholic "just war" doctrine
analysis. I don't see how I can kill an enemy, who wishes to live
himself, so I myself may continue to survive, and yet call that
"love." Dr. Kevorkian's victims, at least, wanted to die, so he
has more "love" than the police have for a (truly guilty) criminal
they shoot down on the streets. It isn't like corporal punishment, in
which the punished child learns from the correction administered in the future,
if done properly, since death is final. I consider pacifism one of the
main ways to eliminate most Sunday-keepers as true Christians, for very few of
them (there are admirable exceptions, as noted above) will ever take the Sermon
on the Mount literally enough to obey its letter.
Also, when I consider this hypothetical cruise ship example,
I have an equally good "hypothetical" solution: Suppose after
the prayers and fastings of the would-be COG people involved, God either
strikes the criminal(s) dead or makes them repent. I can invent reasonably
likely hypothetical solutions to resolve absurdly unlikely hypothetical
situations myself. And I remember when one pacifist taught the church's
traditional teaching against self-defense and war, and some left for another
church as at least as a partial result in part for his doing so, his using one
or more actual cases of people in the COG being protected by God when criminals
threatened to attack them. So then, do we have faith or
not? Will we be like Daniel's three friends, and choose to die
rather than violate God's law when it comes to pacifism instead, not
idolatry? Is God asking more of us than He did of them, should it come
down to a martyrdom situation? (See Daniel 3:16-18, which did address the
hypothetical situation that God might let them burn).
What I did find interesting to discover, years ago in a
general business law class at MSU, was that under English common law the life
of the thief (burglar) was worth more than what he was stealing. That is,
the householder couldn't kill the thief merely for stealing his stuff, but he
would have to threaten the life of the householder before deadly force could be
used against the thief. This stuck out in my mind precisely because I was
a pacifist, but also that (somehow) the teachings of the New Testament may have
helped to influence the law a little in this regard.
Consider now the parallel text to Matthew in Luke
6:27-30, which has no "legal court proceeding" context:
"But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who
hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use
you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also.
And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic
either. Give of everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes
away your goods do not ask them back." The last injunction I think
particularly applies to the awful situation you were in when being
robbed. I've investigated the Greek of this text in the past, and it
means "demand" back (i.e., ask with insistence). God really
wants to test us in this regard, that even when it comes to what we've earned,
and we're being robbed, we shouldn't insist on hanging onto our property.
Here's where we have to give up material values for spiritual ones, as a
special kind of test. Because this passage, in particular, lacks the
"court proceeding" context, I don't believe Jesus' injunctions here
can be limited to merely not pursuing revenge after a fleeing criminal, but
also concerns letting ourselves be injured if we can't escape (cf. Matt.
10:23).
Strange things sometimes happen when pacifists take stands,
for people may react strangely under the influence of God's spirit or
providence. For example, one man in the local church stopped on the side
of the road, got out of his car, and got punched by another driver for some
reason (likely a traffic offense) I can't remember now. When the COG
member just stood there, perhaps saying something non-abusive, the other driver
apologized, got in his car, and drove off! There also have been stories
about personal protection being given by angels in these situations as well in
the Church. We shouldn't think that we have no protection from God.
Of course, just as God let many of his faithful prophets suffer injury or
even be killed, we shouldn't think that couldn't happen to us also. (That
whole issue leads to the problem of evil, obviously, another BIG can of
worms). One COG member in the local church, a Vietnam
vet, compared taking a pacifist stance and the possible loss of
one's life with the test Daniel's three friends received when told to
worship a graven image. If we're willing to give up our lives to not
worship an idol, are we willing to act the same way concerning not defending
ourselves if God requires that of us as a test? Do we put this life and
its material goods as more important than the next life? Here's yet
another way God can test us.
I think good evidence for Christians using the services of
the state to protect themselves and/or to assert their rights can be found in
the life of Paul as described in Acts. For example, after Paul got
arrested in Jerusalem, he pointed out to the Roman soldiers standing by that he
was a legally uncondemned Roman citizen, so why should they bind him to be
scourged (Acts 22:24-29). Paul also used his political rights to be let
go from prison in Philippi from the front of the prison publicly, not the back
privately (Acts 16:35-40). When the Jews hauled Paul before
Gallio in Corinth, he dismissed the case before Paul said anything in his
defense as lacking standing (see Acts 18:12-17). We also have the cases
Paul, Stephen, and Peter and John testifying before the Sanhedrin (Acts
4:5-22; 5:22-42; 6-7, 22:30-23:10). They defended themselves,
unlike the case of Jesus, who was as silent before His accusers as He could be
in order to help assure His execution and fulfill prophecy. We also have
Paul's defenses before Felix and Festus, and appealing to Caesar to escape the
clutches of the Jews and being put on trial in Jerusalem. Hence, I can't
see it as a sin for Christians to use the services of the state that God has
put in place to maintain law and order, as per Romans 13. For God at this
time wants to veil His power: He doesn't want to use angels or His own
power directly to protect innocent people, whether they be true believers or
not, from the evil elements of society, so he lets all the uncalled people who
deem pacifism to be unrealistic to protect us from the bad guys. They eat
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, hence, human society's
governments have a mixture of good and evil. Satan controls them
(Matt. 4:8-9), yet God uses them as well.
I do believe that what Jesus discussed also means we should
attempt to settle out of court whenever possible (Matt. 5:25-26) and not insist
on paying only the minimum (Matt. 5:40) to the plaintiff who wins.
Pacifism is a very hard teaching to obey. I
believe it's one of the signs of who are true Christians and who aren't, much
like the Old Testament signs of the Sabbath, Holy Days, etc. But I
still believe we should obey it. You can't kill the burglar or thief, and
still claim to love him, any more than I could claim I love the random stranger
my government's human leaders told me to kill on the battlefield some place
hundreds of miles away from home.
Click here to access
essays that defend Christianity: /apologetics.html
Click here to access essays that explain
Christian teachings: /doctrinal.html
Click here to access notes for sermonettes: /sermonettes.html
Does Islam cause
terrorism? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Moral Equivalency
Applied Islamic History 0409.htm
Is the Bible God=s Word? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Is the Bible the Word
of God.htm
Why does God Allow Evil? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Why Does God Allow
Evil 0908.htm
Is Christian teaching from ancient paganism? /Bookhtml/Paganism influence issue
article Journal 013003.htm
Which is right?: Judaism or Christianity? /Apologeticshtml/Is
Christianity a Fraud vs Conder Round 1.htm
/Apologeticshtml/Is Christianity a Fraud vs
Conder Round 2.htm
Should God=s existence be
proven? /Apologeticshtml/Should
the Bible and God Be Proven Fideism vs WCG.htm
Does the Bible teach blind faith? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Gospel of John Theory of
Knowledge.htm
Links to elsewhere on this Web site: /apologetics.html /book.html /doctrinal.html /essays.html /links.html /sermonettes.html /webmaster.html For the home page, click here: /index.html
For the history page, click here: /newfile1.html