Necessity demands...

Some ramblings as I flesh this out further...

When in my life I feel necessity striving within me, I try to examine it.

I NEED tobacco, I NEED a drink, I NEED sexual fulfilment, I NEED justice, I NEED to make them understand, I NEED to have this...

The needs mentioned above are not sinful in and of themselves. But when I NEED them, to make it thru the day, to feel complete and satisfied, I am in those moments leaving the faith. Trusting as it were in another sovereign, namely me.

I can still do them. I do not condemn those who do as well, what I'm learning to condemn is the thought I can do so as a Christian.

This most importantly comes into focus though with violence. "I need to use violence to solve this problem. This aggression against me." This may be so and often seems like the only answer but it can never be said to be Jesus' answer. In those moments we have joined the world.

Hypothetical Exhibit A: I am arrested this weekend for a crime I did not commit. But I languish over the weekend in jail. I submit to this violence trusting not in the powers that be, though I employ and challenge them, but in Jesus. Kuddos to you, you say. But while 'waiting', a man in my cell decides he is going to satisfy his sexual desires using me. At some point, all the praying, pleading and threats will have been issued. I can in this moment, defend myself. Using violence as a means of stopping his aggression. I would understand if you did likewise. Applaud you even.
But I cannot declare I've been Christ-like. I can seek forgiveness afterwards but I cannot justify it, after the fact.

Hypothetical Exhibit B: While in the mission field, the village I'm in the care of is assaulted. Machete wielding thugs descend from all sides. I can in that moment choose to pick up a machete to defend my new friends to the death. I wouldn't expect you to do any less either. But I cannot declare this the best and most Christ-like option. To die along with the villagers without defending myself might be a better witness. Surely a complete non violent response would testify even more. Not a testimony to non-violence itself mind you but a testimony that my life, your life, our lives as Christians are not our own. We give them up to find them in Jesus, the one true God. Our acts testify even to the oppressor.

The Christian's first act of nonviolence is that he refrain from asking others to live as if they were Christians. When violence is in question, it is not our business to lecture them and urge them to be nonviolent. That is an atrocity since only the Christian can behave like one. The power to behave as a Christian comes from faith. You cannot demand or expect the non-faithful to do it.

The thugs, the unconverted villagers, the cellmate cannot and will not abide by my ethic. They will do what men necessarily do, act and react with violence.

Only the Christian can become the witness. The pacifist in my midst lays down his life for nothing. To just be simply non-violent in a violent world is suicide.
I do not expect Russians and Georgians in the Caucuses to do anything other than fight and kill one another. I do not condemn them nor do I seek to lecture them on how to act as Christians when they are not. Should their leaders testify that they are Christians then I can bring all I have to bear on the subject to persuade them that their actions, however necessary, are not Christian.

To ask a government not to use the police when rioting is engaged, or not to use the army when the Nation is under attack, is to ask the state to commit suicide.

"So, if a Christian feels that he must participate in a violent movement (or
in a war!)let him do so discerningly. He ought to be the one who, even as he acts with the others, proclaims the injustice and the unacceptability of what he and they are doing. He ought to be the mirror of truth in which his comrades perceive the horror of their action. He ought to be the conscience of the movement; the one who, on behalf of his unbelieving comrades, repents, bears humiliation, and prays to the Lord; the one who restrains man from glorifying himself for the evil he does." - J. Ellul

The Christian who accepts violence, like the Christian who thinks he can ignore violence, has renounced his Christianity as a way of life. He has given up the attempt to express his faith in the difficult situation of today. This would go for economic, psychological and physical violence.