Nonviolence

It's now several days away from the tragedy in Arizona. The memorial services are running their course and Congresswoman Gifford is recovering rather miraculously. Jared Loughner is in solitary confinement, for the moment and for the likely long term no longer a threat to society and the well-being of others. We will be hearing more about his mental state and motivation down the road, but for now we have to be content with the knowledge that his brain chemistry was imbalanced and had been bothering him since at least the age of 16. Clearly his family life plays a role in all of this, but when it comes to mental illness even the most well-adjusted families can produce troubled children. The sad thing is that he did not get the help he needed and it doesn't seem that he was going to anytime soon. Will he now?

Still, it was a violent act. On Martin Luther King Day it is appropriate to consider nonviolence in a culture that seems to embrace violence, justified with terms like constitutional rights, liberty, righteous war, and personal or national defense. King had serious questions to ask about the necessity and the pragmatic consequences of violence. He could not have been more adamant on any issue than he was about this. His philosophy was rooted in the New Testament letter known as I John. Here love is key and is grounded in the nature of God with implications for the entire cosmos. "God is love," it says and King saw everything else flowing from that reality. For King it was built in to the basic structure of creation. It allowed him to trust in the future, the goodness of God sustained over the long haul, and even in humanity created in God's image. He appealed at all points to the higher nature of human beings and refused to be pulled in to name calling, hateful or divisive rhetoric of any kind (including the "Black Power" slogan, though not the content of the movement's analysis), or physical violence, even in retaliation to unjust acts. This he learned from Gandhi and from Jesus' words and actions in the gospels. He was against war on the grounds of love, for love cannot harm another person for any reason. He was sensitive to the way people are exploited and used and advocated for the dignity of fair wages for honest work. He saw the exploitation of labor in his time and he saw the way economic power diminished the value of workers for greater profit. But he would not, and could not, respond to even the most extreme injustice with violence and hate. He learned from Gandhi that the goal of resistance to injustice is the redemption of the one(s) who is inflicting the injustice. This is also rooted in the meaning of the death of Christ at the hands of his enemies, the Christ who answered his enemies with forgiveness rather than hatred and judgment.

King's nonviolence was an active resistance to evil, defined as the diminishment of the integrity and beauty of those created in the image of God. Had he lived, he would have extended this to creation itself. Love does not know limits. Of course he was criticized harshly when he seemed on the surface to abandon a clear focus on racism alone. But as he says himself his calling was always broader and deeper than that. Segregation and racism were first on the agenda, for their time had come to be challenged. For Martin, that was the beginning of his ministry. But there was always much to do to bring in a just society. He was committed to doing God's will (and one can hear his voice in those words) for God's will was to see justice fulfilled in the world (not legalistic justice, but justice as redemption and reconciliation).

I was once asked, as part of a group of students in an anthropology class, if the United States was a violent culture. No one wanted to speak up on that one, perhaps because the answer could implicate us. We struggled to say anything, mumbled some avoidance sounds, until the teacher called us on it. Of course we are! The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, slavery, our treatment of Native Americans, our participation in international wars and colonialism, our attitude towards guns and the right to guns. our armed police, and so forth.  We are not self-reflective about this, but King was not ambivalent about it at all. He knew the violence of American society; he'd seen it up close, and experienced it himself. He had seen cruelty to children and women and young men and old men at the hands of white police in the south. In a culture steeped in violence there could be no answer in a violent response, except to deepen it and expand it. If peace was going to be achieved at all, it would be by peaceful means and that alone. The alternative was unthinkable and also unsustainable in the long run. It was a choice: to choose nonviolence or not. The future would be built upon that answer.

It would be good if King's clear philosophy were to be enacted again in our society. Our current reaction to outrageous hate rhetoric is to throw it back. Hate for hate. An eye for an eye. The so-called left is rightly criticized for jumping quickly into blaming rhetoric almost moments after the Arizona shootings. The call for a more civilized conversation and society seems to begin with, "Shut up!" Not a good start, nor in the spirit of nonviolence. King would have words to say along the lines of President Obama's speech the other day in Arizona, though King would extend the nonviolent call to our (and others) international wars and turmoil. But he would not answer any hateful or name calling rhetoric with more of the same. He was always looking to redeem his enemies so they would travel with him. He was looking for disciples of nonviolence, for people to answer a higher calling given to them by their creation in the image of God.

I believe that King's entry into the arena of history sets a new standard for social transformation movements. Gandhi, likewise, opens up another way for history to move. It is a way superior on all counts to the Civil War and even the Revolutionary War. It is superior, certainly, to all violent revolutionary movements. It is superior to the segment of the violent left of the 60's and the more recent Tea Party movement with its insulting rhetoric about government and of people who disagree with them. It lives brightly in the Truth and Reconciliation commissions of recent history and in the work of people like Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea). It lives in the movement for restorative justice in our judicial system. I think we can say that it has become a valid moral option for anyone choosing to adopt it. There is historical precedent and a background of success. We can question and argue about it, but I don't think we can honestly say that it can't be done (though that is the argument people use to discredit it). A cabinet level Department of Peace, anyone, to explore and study alternatives to war? Or is that just too much to consider?

We may have to come to grips with the death penalty for Jared Loughner. After his violent rampage, would that be a just punishment? Would that solve something? Would that deal with our need to forsake violence in our culture? An eye for an eye? Is that the way into our shared future and that of our children?