We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

You’re Not a Pacifist Are You?
Brian Zahnd wrote a great piece the other day on this topic. He contends that when he is asked this question, it often has the same flavor of the question, “You’re not a pornographer are you?” Why is this question so contentious among believers? Brian has some interesting ideas about it. And it might interest you to know that he does not call himself a pacifist. You should really check it out.
From Brian’s post:
But I actually don’t claim the label of pacifist, and for this reason: pacifism is a political position on violence; it’s a position one could adopt apart from Jesus Christ — as for example the great writer and humanist Kurt Vonnegut did. But I am not a political pacifist. What I am is a Christian. And as a Christian we can talk about how Christ informs humanity on the subject of violence.
In my long and winding journey I’ve come to understand that to live gently in a violent world is part of the counterculture of following Christ. This is not something I would ever have arrived at on my own. I am not by nature a gentle person. For most of my life I have viewed violence with a kind of affection. In my youth I got in plenty of fights. I enjoyed violent movies. Cowboy justice held a romantic appeal. As a pastor I supported nearly all (if not literally all) of America’s military adventures. If my views on violence have changed — and they have — the blame falls squarely on Jesus! It’s not like I just woke up one day and said, “Hey, I think I’ll adopt a position of Christian nonviolence just for the fun of it. I bet that will be popular!” No, that’s not what happened. What happened was once the red, white, and blue varnish was removed from Jesus and I learned to read the gospels free of a star-spangled interpretation, I discovered that my Lord and Savior had a lot of things to say about peace that I had been missing. I was as surprised as anyone! But once you’ve seen the truth you can’t un-know what you know and be true to yourself. So let’s talk about it.
Category: General
Tags: America, Brian Zahnd, Counter-Culture, Gentleness, Gospels, Jesus, Kingdom Living, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Peace
Related Reading

The Bible, Government and Christian Anarchy
This “essay” contains my informal reflections on biblical texts that I believe support what some call “Christian Anarchy.” Consider it a very rough draft of a future project. I’ll argue that Kingdom people are called to pledge their allegiance to God alone, not to any nation, government, political party or ideology. Because Kingdom people are…

A Book That Won’t Leave You Unchanged
St. Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuits, taught that to experience the transforming power of Scripture, we need to read it “with all five senses,” using our imagination to get on the inside of the characters and story we’re reading about. A just-released book by Frank Viola and MaryDeMuth entitled “The…

A Coming Storm
There is a storm beginning to brew on the horizon. It is a debate among Evangelicals about the violent depictions of God, stirred up largely by Eric Seibert’s Disturbing Divine Behavior. Here is a post that sounds “the clarion call.” The debate is presently around two options. Option #1: Traditionalists argue we must simply embrace…

The REAL Problem with Divine Violence in the OT
As I mentioned in my previous blog, while I will continue to offer video-blogs responding to questions that come in, I’m also planning on sprinkling in reflections based on my forthcoming book, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, over the next couple months. Today, I just want to state what I consider to be the real…

Jesus, the Light that Blesses
God spoke a promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that his descendants would be a great nation and that all of the nations would be blessed through him. In this sermon clip, Greg discusses how Jesus became the new Israel that would bring a blessing to all people. You can find the full sermon as well…

Thankful for the Passion of God
The classical view of God has held that God is impassible, meaning he is above pathos (passion or emotions). The main reason the church came to this view was that, following the Hellenistic philosophical tradition, they associated emotions with change while believing God was above all change (immutable). Moreover, experiencing emotions implies that one is affected by…