Help: America Is Caught In A Feedback Loop

Another day, another mass shooting in America.

Once more, a white man with an assault rifle opens fire on innocent people.

Most people say there’s nothing we can do. Others insist that only our thoughts and prayers matter now.

Many Christians believe that the Second Amendment overrules the Sermon on the Mount. So, the next time a killer with a semi-automatic rifle enters a church he’ll be blown to smithereens by all the Jesus-loving Christians who keep a sidearm cocked and loaded in the shoulder holster under their Sunday best.

Halleluiah!

Just think, if the earliest Christians in the first century had only adopted this brilliant preemptive strategy, killers like Saul of Tarsus would have been slaughtered where they stood.

Not only would that have prevented the death our dear brother Stephen, it would also have prevented us from having to carry around such a thick New Testament text, since half of it would never have been written.

But, maybe there’s another way?

I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out for a minute.

There are about 175 million Christians here in the United States. So, if even half of us decided to love our neighbors and bless those who curse us and do good to those who hate us, maybe we could use this preemptive strategy to love people?

I know, it sounds kinda crazy to follow that Jesus guy. He was SO “first century”, ya know?

But, I once heard someone say that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.

Since almost no one has tried putting these Jesus ideas into practice lately, what do we have to lose?

-kg

Jesus Came To End War

Over the last few years, I've debated and argued and reasoned with many Christians on the subject of non-violence.

I've tackled all the usual arguments - what about Cornelius the centurion, or when Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple, or when Jesus said he came to bring a sword, or when Jesus told the disciples to go and buy a sword - and I've recorded podcasts, made videos, hosted events, and written blogs and books to answer all of those objections to the idea that Jesus really was anti-war and pro-peace.

But here's another angle on the whole subject:

Jesus is the Messiah.

The Messiah is called the "Prince of Peace".

It is prophesied in Isaiah that he would "do no violence".

His mission is to "teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths."

His "path" leads the nations to "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks" so that "nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."

When Jesus arrives on the scene, he comes as a baby, not a warrior.

His birth is announced by angels who proclaim, "Peace on earth!" and goodwill to all men.

His message was that we should love one another, and turn the other cheek, and bless those who curse us, and do good to those who hate us.

After saying that he added, "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord' and do not do what I say?"

He rebuked James and John when they wanted to call down fire from heaven against another person saying, "you know not what spirit you are of".

He wept as he entered Jerusalem - the city of peace - on a donkey saying, "If only you had known the things that make for peace."

He disarmed Peter saying, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword."

He told Pilate at his trial, "My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my disciples would fight."

He prayed for those centurions who nailed him to the cross saying, "Father forgive them, they know not what they are doing."

He rose from the dead, appeared to the disciples who abandoned him and denied him and said, "Peace!"

He disarmed a zealous Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus who was going around having Christians arrested, beaten and stoned to death saying, "It is hard for you to kick against the pricks" - meaning that violence against his children was physically painful to him as well.

This same Pharisee denounced violence and began to preach "the gospel of peace" wherever he went.

He reminded us that "our weapons are not carnal" and that our enemy is "not flesh and blood."

He urged us to "overcome evil with good" and reminded us to "feed our enemy if they are hungry and to give them water if they are thirsty."

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. 

His Kingdom is here now.

His purpose is to overcome evil with good; to disarm hatred with love; to transform this violent world with proactive agape.

This is not a fringe teaching. It is not an addition to the Gospel. 

It IS the Gospel of Jesus.

-kg

Why We Shouldn't Fight

Paul’s conversion experience was miraculous, but it also tells us a lot if we’ll pay close attention to the details.

First, Paul thought he was doing God a service by travelling around to arrest Christians. Sometimes this “ministry” involved standing by while these Christians were brutally beaten or stoned to death. But for Paul, these were necessary steps to ensure that those who held differing religious opinions were silenced.

Then, something incredible happened. Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and knocked him off of his horse.

The words Jesus spoke to Paul in that moment are especially profound. He said:

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” [Acts 26:14]
So, here Jesus explains to Paul [Saul] that whenever he does harm to someone who is in Christ, he is actually causing harm to Jesus, too.

Keep this in mind.

If anyone does harm to another Christian, then they are doing harm to Jesus.

It doesn’t matter if we try to justify our violence by saying, “But Jesus, those Christians were disagreeing with my theology”, or “Those Christians were soldiers fighting for the other side.”

It doesn’t matter if we attempt to validate our aggression by claiming that those Christians are citizens of another nation.

It doesn’t make any difference to Jesus if our reasons for hurting, or shooting, or bombing, or killing our brothers and sisters in Christ are based on religion, or nationalism, or anything else.

No. The simple truth is this: We are not allowed to bring harm of any kind to another brother or sister in Christ for any reason.

There is no excuse.

According to Jesus, whenever we do harm to another Christian, we are causing Him pain as well.

That means that we, as followers of Christ, are not allowed to justify violence against other Christians by claiming that we’re simply following orders.

And this is why I believe that Christians shouldn’t participate in military combat. Because there’s no way of knowing if the people we are about to shoot, or bomb, or kill are members of our Christian family.

Shooting those brothers and sisters in Christ is the same as shooting Jesus. 

"Whatever you have done to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it unto me." - Jesus

Bombing those Christians is the same as bombing Christ.

But, if we remain neutral in matters of war then this is never an issue for us.

Let us resolve to repent of our violence and to forever lay aside all weapons of war.

Our King is the Prince of Peace.

Our Gospel is the Gospel of Peace.

Our Nation is a Holy Nation.

Our weapons are not of this world.

Our enemy is not flesh and blood.

-kg

Preemptive Love

Some people define the teachings of Jesus as being pacifist or "non-violent", and while I don't disagree with that assessment, I prefer the terms "Preemptive Love" and "Proactive Agape."

Here's why.

Rather than frame the example and ethic of Jesus as something we don't do, or something we avoid doing, I prefer to frame it in terms of what Jesus DID do and what He DOES tell us to do: Love Preemptively.

Our first and constant posture is always love. This means we are already loving before our enemy attacks us. Our love for them is not reactive, it is proactive. Just as His love for us isn't reacting to anything we have done or will do. He just loves us - and everyone - all the time. Our love is what initiates action because love is a verb.

So, as we follow Jesus we are always loving because He is always loving us. As His love for us is poured into us and over us and through us, we also reflect that love and funnel that love and redirect that perfect, unmerited, unconditional love right back out to everyone around us.

Love begins with God and continues in, and through, us. We are His ambassadors of love. We are the incarnation of love in this world today.

Non-violence suggests that we are holding violence back, or that we are denying the violence within us. But Preemptive Love declares that we are beings who are so perfectly and constantly loved by God that we are being transformed into carriers of love who cannot help but love Him in return and others at all times.

Let's love preemptively and practice agape proactively.

"If anyone claims to be in Him, he must walk as Jesus did." - 1 John 2:6

PROTECTING THE INNOCENT

“Greater love has no man than this; that a man may lay down his life for his friends” – Jesus [John 15:13]

It’s honestly a real struggle for many American Christians to process Jesus’ commands to love our enemies. Especially when we try to filter that through years and years of indoctrination from our society about what it means to be a “Good American”. We have been raised from infancy to glorify violence as a redemptive act. All of our heroes growing up used violence to stop evil. Most of my heroes were holding guns.

So, it’s very hard for us to look at Jesus through that paradigm. He is sort of a hero, but he didn’t kill anyone. He laid down his life for us, to set us free, and we see that as a noble sacrifice. That fits into our American hero grid a little better. But when Jesus commands us – His followers – to walk away from a fight, or to go beyond that to actually bless the person who hates us, or to demonstrate actual love to someone who would like to see us dead – that is another story.

In fact, for many American Christians, it’s just simply impossible to even consider. There’s no way Jesus meant that we shouldn’t fight back. What about using violence to protect the innocent? [Like maybe our spouse or our children are being held at gunpoint by an armed intruder, for example. What then, Jesus?]

I get it. This isn’t easy. But believe it or not, Jesus was serious about loving our enemies. 

Dead serious.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked a powerful question. He asked “If you love those who love you in return, what credit is that to you? Don’t even the tax collectors do that?”

This question highlights what sort of love Jesus has in mind. He expects us to love extravagantly. We’re not allowed to settle for ordinary love. We’re called to be filled with His brand of extraordinary love that extends to every single person around us.

I hate to break it to you, but killing an armed intruder to protect your family falls under the category of “Loving those who love you in return”. It’s simply not good enough. 

As Jesus goes on to say:

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for those which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends the rain upon the just and on the unjust.” [Matt.5:44-45]

Surprisingly, Jesus has very little to say to us about how we should respond to protect the lives of the innocent. Here’s what we do see:

*Peter used a sword in an attempt to protect the life of Jesus and Jesus rebuked him for it.

*Jesus told Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight.”

And that is about all the New Testament has to say about the subject.

Maybe the reason Jesus said so little about our need to protect others is because he knew that doing so would necessarily involve violence?

At any rate, Jesus gives us no commands about protecting one another's safety. 

What we do see for the first 300 years or so of Church History is that Christians who were putting the words of Jesus into practice were put to death all the time for their faith. We have no examples of other Christians stepping up to protect the lives of their brothers and sisters. What we see is that everyone was expected to be responsible for their own life. Sometimes Christians would offer their lives in exchange for their brothers or sisters in Christ. Other times they would offer to die alongside of their brothers and sisters so as to share in the sufferings of Christ together. But we see no evidence – not even once – of Christians fighting to protect the lives of others during almost 300 years of intense persecution.

Why is that?

Well, maybe because they understood that their lives were already forfeit to Christ on day one. They understood that anyone who seeks to save their life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for the sake of Christ will save it and keep it forever. [See Matt. 16:25]

My question is: Why don’t we understand this?

Perhaps because we are American Christians who have been told that being American and being Christian are nearly synonymous [even though the two ideals couldn’t be further apart].

We’ve been told to salute our flag, pledge allegiance to our nation, applaud the military, carry a gun and fight for our rights. Jesus told us none of those things. In fact, Jesus is dead against Nationalism, swearing oaths, using violence and demanding our rights.  Jesus told us to love everyone – including our enemies. 

If you love someone you don’t kill them. That’s pretty obvious.

Unless, of course, you don’t want to see that. Then, it’s practically impossible to convince you that loving your enemies and using violence are incompatible concepts. [Believe me, I’ve tried].

“But what about when someone is in danger and we have the power to stop the violence?”

Great question! But stopping the violence can be accomplished without more violence. One way to stop someone from hurting another person is to insert ourselves in between the attacker and the victim. We absorb the violence ourselves and allow the victim to escape. We might even be able to convince the attacker to stop and win an opportunity to explain what compelled us to take such a bold, and dangerous step. [Hint: It’s the love of Jesus].

Honestly, I don’t know if the Church in America will ever really awaken from Her dream of retributive, redemptive violence and embrace the self-sacrificial love of Jesus. I don't know if we can ever really accept the idea of fighting without weapons or defeating evil without violence.

What I do know is that I can’t stop reminding the Church what Jesus said, and what Jesus called us to do in the face of evil.

Our only hope is Jesus. Our only weapon is Love. And if it comes down to it, we are the only one's who die.  

-kg

OUR ONLY HOPE

Once again our daily news carries the headline that more unarmed black people have been killed. This time not by racist police officers, but by an armed white supremacist who sat for an hour and listened to a Bible Study before pulling out his weapon to gun down nine innocent people.

It hardly matters whether these dear people were killed by a white cop, or by an angry white man. They are still dead.

It really doesn't matter how they were killed, by a handgun, or a rifle.
They were still murdered.

It doesn't even matter where they were killed, in a church, or a park, or a department store.
They are all still gone.

What does matter is that, in our nation, this sort of thing still happens on a regular basis.

What does matter is that it will continue to happen, more and more, unless we decide to do something about it.

No doubt some will use this as an opportunity to push for stricter gun regulations.

Others will use this to encourage more open dialog between people of different races and backgrounds.

Still others will exploit this tragedy to raise money for their campaign, or advance their agenda, or to demonize their opposition.

But make no mistake here, none of those things will improve the situation.

None of those responses - even if they are successful - will do anything more than make it harder to kill someone you hate with a particular brand of weapon.

Here's what will make a difference: The Gospel.

Only Jesus can transform us from the inside out.

Only Jesus can teach us the power of love over hate.

What should we do about the horrible news today?

We should pray.
We should love.
We should tell others that there's only one hope for our nation.

His name is Jesus.

-kg

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