Defence
Jesus speaks of turning the other cheek. What limits, if any, do you see on this?
Defence seems necessary in some sense for nation states. Or your neighbours could just walk in and take what they like.
But what about personally? Martyrs accepted their lot; I assume these are examples for us if persecuted. And Christians, in times past as well as the present, who find themselves under unfavourable rule often just get on with life as best they can as far as I see. I know zero about Greek independence from the Ottomans (except it happened), but that was some form of uprising I take it. French resistance in WWII, to take one example I'm more familiar with, seems valid. Do actions have limits, or does (almost?) anything go?
I have pondered this with Ukraine. I pondered the exceptionally remote possibility that if I were a citizen of an invaded country, is there one Christian response? Those, were they Quakers?, who were gaoled rather than serve? Is it conscience? Is there a duty to one's country? It all seems rather a muddle to my simple mind.
Defence seems necessary in some sense for nation states. Or your neighbours could just walk in and take what they like.
But what about personally? Martyrs accepted their lot; I assume these are examples for us if persecuted. And Christians, in times past as well as the present, who find themselves under unfavourable rule often just get on with life as best they can as far as I see. I know zero about Greek independence from the Ottomans (except it happened), but that was some form of uprising I take it. French resistance in WWII, to take one example I'm more familiar with, seems valid. Do actions have limits, or does (almost?) anything go?
I have pondered this with Ukraine. I pondered the exceptionally remote possibility that if I were a citizen of an invaded country, is there one Christian response? Those, were they Quakers?, who were gaoled rather than serve? Is it conscience? Is there a duty to one's country? It all seems rather a muddle to my simple mind.
Comments
This has been abused.
But I think Ukraine's self-defence for example meets all the criteria.
Most UK conscientious objectors who were jailed 1914-18 were extreme pacifists, rather than Quakers specifically. Indeed, Quaker men of conscription age were approached with something approaching reverence - reverence is a direct quote from an assessment of UK tribunals at the time - because they tended to go through on the nod to a frontline ambulance unit rather than prison. It's difficult to generalise, but as a generalisation (!) British Quaker men tended to accept a duty to serve, but not to fight.
You had to try very hard to end up in prison as a British conscientious objector in the Great War, because there was a process to sort people into other work, and only about 1500 (off the top of my head) ended up rock breaking at Dyce or Princetown.
They were called 'Absolutists'.
By comparison something like 5.5 million men served in the army, and another half a million in the navy 1914-1918.
There were more conscientious objectors in the UK 1939-1940 (about 60,000), but again Absolutists who would do nothing at all for the war effort were a tiny minority (ie most were content to do something for the war that didn't involve carrying a firearm).
I know this because my grandfather was one of them until the winter of 1940-41, when the Blitz (he lived in London) changed his mind, and he decided - as he told me - that the result of the conflict raging in the world mattered more than his own personal beliefs, and he went through the process of release from the electricity company, and joining the army, which he then served in from 1941-46, 8th Army, from the desert all the way up Italy.
Not a lot of fun.
Specifically, what Jesus says is “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 . . . .” Note the action is “strikes you on the right cheek.” In other words, “if anyone slaps you.” That is not a physical attack that requires physical defense; rather, that is an insult.
And note that Jesus specifically says “the right cheek,” and remember that Jesus and those listening to him when he gave the Sermon on the Mount were in territory occupied by Rome. Remember that, at the time, the right hand was considered “clean,” and the left hand (in Latin, the sinister hand) was considered unclean. And note that this particular saying is part of a trio of sayings, all of which have to do with treatment by Roman soldiers or occupiers.
In the culture of the day, a “superior,” such as Roman soldier, would strike an “inferior” with the back of his right hand, hitting the inferior on the right cheek. When a soldier struck an equal, they did so with their right fist on the left cheek. This was just one way of reinforcing the very strict class distinctions of the time. By offering their left cheek, Jesus’s followers would either by inviting the one insulting them to treat them as an equal (by using the right hand) or to use their “unclean” hand. Either way, it was Jesus’s follower who, without violence, was holding the moral high ground.
So when Jesus suggests offering the left cheek, he isn’t saying “go ahead, be a doormat, let them beat you up.” He’s saying “challenge them, nonviolently, to treat you as an equal, not as an inferior, or to see that they, so to speak, have unclean hands.”
This saying from Jesus was a major influence in the nonviolence movements of Gandhi, MLK and others.
Agreed.
On the issues of Quakers and pacifism, my impression is that their position is more nuanced than no violence at any price. My brother was told of Quakers who bore arms in WW2 as they believed that Nazism was such an extreme menace that it could only be resisted by force.
One of those WWII Quakers was Richard Nixon, who would eventually go on to authorize a massive (and Congressionally unauthorized) bombing campaign against Cambodia.
We picked up what remained of our work, took the willing 60% and relocated to a sister church's basement--where we remain to this day. (Our adversaries took their handful of people and ran them into the ground within two years, when the group formally dissolved. We know all this because several of those people were calling us on the phone to apologize for their role in this--they were terrified of the violent threats, and they hoped we wouldn't blame them. Some of them managed to make it back to our group in the years to come.)
Ok, I was thinking of British Quakers, and in very few instances, but that is a salutary point.
Thank you all for the responses, corrections, additions, etc. I had not heard that explanation, Nick Tamen; as with all new interpretations (new to me, not in time), one I will ponder and wrestle with.