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

Blessing the Soldiers of ISIS

Image by kathleen patrice via Flickr

Image by kathleen patrice via Flickr

In light of the overwhelming response to Greg’s post about loving the soldiers of ISIS, we thought we would explore Jesus’ teaching on this topic further. The following is an excerpt from Myth of a Christian Religion. The perspective below stands in contrast to the perspectives exhibited by many Christians, one being the recent article written by Gary Cass.

__________

Not only are Kingdom people forbidden to respond in kind to their aggressors [for more on this see this post on “turning the other cheek”], we’re commanded to love and serve them. In contrast to the “holy war” tradition of the Old Testament, in which Israelites were at times commanded to kill enemies, Jesus taught, “Love your enemies, do good to them who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28).

Note that loving our enemies, according to Jesus, entails doing them good. It is important that we understand this because there’s a long and sad Church tradition, dating back to Augustine, that divorces one’s loving disposition toward an enemy from one’s actions. This allowed Christians to torture and kill their enemies while claiming to love them.

In reality, Jesus doesn’t leave open this possibility. Just as God demonstrated his love toward us by acting in self-sacrificial ways to bless us, so we are to demonstrate our love toward even our enemies by acting in self-sacrificial ways toward them—to “bless them.” By “love your enemies,” Jesus means we must do good to them. …

Augustine speculated that Jesus’ decision to suffer unjustly rather than use coercive force was not intended to be a permanent example for all Christians to follow. Rather, he reasoned, Jesus had to suffer and die unjustly because he was the Savior, and his suffering and death were necessary for us to be freed from the devil and reconciled to God. Now that this has been accomplished, thought Augustine, and now that God (allegedly) had given Christians the power of the sword, it was not only permissible for Christians to use violence when the cause was “just,” they had a responsibility before God to do so.

This was the beginning of what’s called the “just war” tradition within Christendom.

Whatever one thinks of the just war theory as applied to secular governments, it has no place in the life of Jesus’ followers. For contrary to Augustine, the New Testament is as clear as it can be that Kingdom people are called to follow Jesus’ example of suffering unjustly rather than resorting to violence.

Paul commands us to “follow God’s example” and to “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph 5:2)—while we were yet enemies of God. Peter encourages us to be willing to suffer injustice out of “reverent fear of God,” for “it is commendable if you bear up under the pain of unjust suffering because you are conscious of God” (1 Peter 2:19). And our model in this is Jesus himself. When people “hurled their insults at him,” Peter continues, “he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats” (2:23). Instead, Peter says, “He entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

Peter further encourages people facing persecution to “revere Christ as Lord” in “their hearts” by responding to their persecutors with “gentleness and respect” (3:14-15). Following the example of Christ who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring [them] to God,” followers of Jesus are to maintain a gentle, loving attitude so that “those who speak maliciously against [their] good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander” (3:17). Our willingness to suffer serves our enemies, for…it opens the door that they will be convicted and change their ways. (97-99)

If you want to explore this further, view the Q & A entitled Spiritual Warfare and Holy War.

Related Reading

Enemy Love

 Rob Hogeslag via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus shared the story of Paul Keane who offered his own burial plot to Tamerlan Tsarnaev if his family could not find a cemetery that would accept his body. You’ll remember that Tsarnaev was one of the men who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings and…

“I’m Angry, Too”

A reader (thanks, Jen!) sent us this blog post by Rachel Pieh Jones, an ex-pat from Minnesota living in Djibouti. She has some incredibly insightful and sad thoughts about the hateful responses to the recent protests and threats going on in other countries (and our own). We hope that as Christians we can contribute thoughtful…

Jesus and the “Eye for an Eye” Command: A Response to Paul Copan (#10)

As I noted in my 9th response to Paul Copan’s critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Copan argues that Jesus merely repudiated wrong applications of OT laws in his sermon on the mount, not any OT law itself. He thus thinks I’m mistaken when I argue that Jesus placed his own authority above…

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day, we thought we would repost Greg’s thoughts from 2007. In this post, Greg expresses his conflicted feelings over this holiday and gives a brief defense of Christian pacifism.  *** Hope you all had a happy Memorial Day. (Isn’t that something of a misnomer — a happy time remembering people killed in war?) Memorial Day…

5 Differences Between The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the World

Image by matthijs rouw via Flickr The kingdom of God looks and acts like Jesus Christ, like Calvary, like God’s eternal, triune love. It consists of people graciously embracing others and sacrificing themselves in service to others. It consists of people trusting and employing “power under” rather than “power over,” even when they, like Jesus, suffer because…

Does Romans 13 Condone Government Violence? (podcast)

Greg deconstructs problematic interpretations of Romans 13.  Episode 649 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0649.mp3