N. T. Wright and Bart Ehrman recently completed a three part on-line exchange on the theme of faith and suffering (cf. http://blog.beliefnet.com/blogalogue/). In this post, I will briefly summarise the key points of their exchange (while avoiding some of the tantalizing rabbit trails and side points — which you can always go and read for yourselves) and then offer a few of my own thoughts.
Debate Summary
Round One
In his first entry, “How the Problem of Pain Ruined My Faith”, Ehrman initiates the conversation with some autobiographical comments about his own movement away from faith, and how he gradually progressed from believing in an actively suffering God, to believing that God is not active in the world. It was largely his confrontation with the magnitude and ongoing nature of suffering that led Ehrman to this transition. Thus, he writes: “We live in a world in which a child dies every five seconds of starvation. Every five seconds. Every minute there are twenty-five people who die because they do not have clean water to drink. Every hour 700 people die of malaria. Where is God in all this?”
Ehrman then concludes this by pointing to his recent book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer, and argues that the biblical authors offer many, sometimes contradictory, and generally unsatisficatory, answers to this question (i.e. we suffer as punishment for sin, as a test of faith, as a result of the influence of evil cosmic powers; suffering is a mystery; suffering is redemptive, etc.). Ehrman emphasizes that, in this book, he is not attempting to “convert” people to his form of agnosticism; rather, he is encouraging people to think.
In his first response, “God's Plan to Rescue Us”, Wright gratefully accepts this encouragement to think, and then presses Ehrman on two general elements found both within God's Problem, and within Ehrman's post.
First of all, Wright questions the rhetoric employed by Ehrman, and wonders if Ehrman is simply engaging in an appeal to emotion. He writes: “I'm not sure what logical or moral (as opposed to rhetorical) force you add to your case by describing in such detail the horrors of the world.”
Secondly, and not surprisingly, Wright takes issue with Ehrman's analysis of the biblical material. He points to three main places where he thinks Ehrman gets things wrong, but the key point — and the one that remains dominant in the rest of the discussion — is that Wright thinks that Ehrman fails to account for the trajectory of the biblical narrative as a whole. In particular, Wright reads Scripture as the story of how God is going about responding to the problem of evil and suffering, and wants Ehrman to do the same.
Round Two
In his second post, “What About the Actual Suffering?”, Ehrman responds to the two central challenges Wright raises.
First of all, he argues that Wright demonstrates an inappropriate and “uniquely post-enlightenment position” by trying to exclude emotions from this debate (it's rather humourous to note that, from here on out, Ehrman and Wright go back and forth on referring to the other person's position as a “post-enlightenment position”!). Thus, Ehrman concludes: “The issue of human suffering is not a logical problem to be solved… It is a human problem that requires empathy, sympathy, emotional involvement, and action.” Consequently, he is “dead set against an approach to suffernig that thinks that human agony is to be seen from the distance of intellectual engagement with the 'issues'”.
Then, turning to the issue of how one reads the biblical material, Ehrman emphasise the diverse voices and perspectives found in Scripture and notes that many of these perspectives are “completely at odds with one another.” Indeed, he finds Wright's synthesis of the biblical material to be rather strange, for, given that Wright knows of the plurality of voices within Scripture, Ehrman is puzzled as to why Wright “act[s], speak[s] and write[s] as if it were otherwise”.
Finally, and most importantly, Ehrman points out that Wright has yet to deal with the problem of suffering. He writes: “You hint at the idea that you have some theological explanation for it all. But you don't indicate what that explanation is. I would like to hear it. My view is that it is impossible to reconcile the pain and misery all about us… if there is a good and all powerful God in charge of the world.”
In his second response, “What it Looks Like When God Runs the World”, Wright finally jumps in on the issue of suffering.
After an initial aside on the topic of the importance of emotions within a debate (while not wanting to reduce the discussion to “cold logic”, Wright fails to see how multiplying examples of the problem adds to the force of the discussion), Wright turns to the public career of Jesus in order to respond to, or, rather, redirect, Ehrman's question about suffering. Wright argues that Jesus' public career was “the inauguration of 'God being in charge of the world' in a new way.” As such, all our expectations about God, and how God should run the world, are challenged for Jesus offers us a “striking redefinition of power” and reveals that “What 'we would want God to do'… seems to be the very thing that Jesus was calling into question.”
Thus, Wright argues that Jesus does not provide us with an answer to Ehrman's question; rather, he provides us with “the matrix of thought and life within which God's people are called to continue to grapple with the problem. A living relationship with God through Jesus transforms the “dark mystery of suffering” so that Christians can continue to have faith in God in the midst of a world shaken by horrible occurences (here Wright points out how the Christians who lived before modern medicine knew more about pain and suffering than most of us — yet their faith was not seriously shaken; thus, he concludes that 'the problem of evil' is largely a “post-Enlightenment construct [I told you they throw this post-Enlightenment thing back and forth at each other!]).
Finally, Wright also argues that the problem of suffering is one which requires an active response, and he argues that the life of the church should be the Christian response to evil today.
Round Three
In his final post, “God's Kingdom Has Not Come”, Ehrman continues to challenge Wright on the question of emotions, and on his reading of Scripture.
Beginning with “that ole emotion issue”, Ehrman argues that multiplying examples does add to the force of his argument. He writes: “My view is that numbers matter because people matter. They all matter and they are all that matter. If the Nazis had killed only one Jew, we would not be having this conversation (we probably should be, but we wouldn't be). They killed six million. Each is an example, and multiple examples matter, logicians (please, one might add) be damned.”
Then, turning to the biblical vview of suffering, Ehrman argues that Wright's summary “overlook[s] virtually everything the Bible actually says about the subject.” He then spends some time detailing some of the various views held by Scripture arguing that the dominant view is that suffering is the result of God actively punishing us for sinning, while also pointing to contradictory positions (like Job's view that there is no answer for suffering because “God is almight and not accountable to us peons”, and Ecclesiastes view that life is short, there is often no justice, things go wrong, and there is no afterlife to sort things out). Thus, he asks Wright, “how can you leave out of the equation most of what the Bible actually says about the subject?”
Secondly, and in the same way, Ehrman argues that Wright's overarching synthesis of the Gospel (and Pauline) message is one that “undercuts what each individual author actually has to say.” Ehrman continues to stress difference, and contradiction, over against Wright's emphasis upon unity and continuity, and wonders if Wright has simply created another arbitrary “canon within the canon.”
Furthermore, Ehrman challenges Wright's understanding of the inauguration of the kingdom, and argues that the imminence of the kingdom is central to the Gospels' understanding of the kingdom of God. However, “The kingdom never did come… The view that the kingdom is already beginning to be manifest in the life and ministry of Jesus hinges on its actual appearance in the (imminent) days to come. If that actual appearance is jettisoned, everything is changed.” Jesus, Ehrman argues, was talking about God breaking in now, but nothing has really changed, and the world goes on as it always has.
In his final response, “The Bible Does Answer the Problem–Here's How”, Wright continues to press these same points.
First, on the issue of rhetoric and emotion, Wright wonders if Ehrman's book wasn not “making a case” but rather “expressing an emotion.” Thus, he wonders about the relationship between the rhetoric Ehrman uses, and the “actual substance” of the case he is making.
Turning, then, to the “more substantial” issue of the biblical view of suffering, Wright finally realizes that he and Ehrman have been talking about two rather different things: Ehrman, Wright argues, wants to know why suffering happens, but Scripture, Wright argues, doesn't ask this question. Rather, Scripture assumes suffering and asks “what is God doing about it and/or with it”. Thus, turing to his overarching narrative framework (which Wright argues is not a “canon within the canon” but rather “the narrative offered by the canon itself!”), Wright argues that Scripture tells us that God began to address the issue of suffering by calling Abraham, and continued to address that issue through Abraham's descendants, through Christ, and, now, through the Church.
Wright then challenges Ehrman's kingdom theology, and argues that the resurrection (which Ehrman rejects) was actually seens as that which inaugurated the kingdom of God. Thus, following a resurrected Lord, the early Christians continue to challenge evil and suffering, by continuing Jesus' kingdom work: “Things did change. The early Christian did make a difference.” Indeed, Wright asserts that Christians must continue to actively work in this way (interestingly enough, Wright states that it was this line of thought that led him to leave the academy in order to try to energise the church to work more in this way).
Next, although Wright is glad that he and Ehrman want to stress the idea that people — Christians or otherwise — should be actively responding to evil and suffering, Wright concludes by questioning the reason why Ehrman thinks this way. Basically, he argues that, without faith in a good God, we have no real reason to pursue justice and mercy (nor he argues, can deeply rooted impulse to do justice and mercy be explained without the existence of a good God).
Finally, I should note that, although Wright does spend some time responding to the issue of plurality that Ehrman sees in Scripture (he challenges Ehrman's understanding of what the prophets are saying, as well as Ehrman's interpretation of Ecclesiastes), he mostly doesn't respond to the point that Ehrman presses. Ehrman had concluded his final post by arguing that Scripture has many, sometimes contradictory, mostly unsastisfactory, views on this subject, and Wright mostly neglects this point. One is almost left with the impression that Wright denies the suggestion that Scripture contains a plurality of voices.
Reflection
To be honest (and to my own surprise), I found Ehrman to be the more compelling of the two in this discussion. While I agree that Ehrman and Wright were talking at cross-purposes for much of the discussion, Wright never goes on to address Ehrman's question. That is to say, even if the bible never adequately addresses the question of why we suffer, because it is focused on a response to suffering, the question of why we suffer should still be seen as a valid (albeit extra-biblical?) question. While I grant Wright the point about the focus of the biblical narrative, I wish that he had recognised that Ehrman, and others, will continue to ask this why question anyway.
Furthermore, I thought that Ehrman was right to “multiply examples” and I felt that Wright's argument, despite Wright's assertions to the contrary, was one that failed to account for the perspectives that come from the lived experience of suffering. Ehrman seems to experience suffering as a trauma, whereas Wright seems to experience suffering as a “dark mystery”. I think that Ehrman multiplies examples because he thinks we should also be traumatised by suffering, and Wright seems to fail to see why suffering should be seen as traumatic. “Okay, I get it,” he seems to say. “People suffer. No need to go on about it in so much detail.” To which Ehrman seems to respond, “If that's what you think, then you really don't get it at all.” On this point, I'm with Ehrman. In my opinion suffering is the great challenge to faith; it should traumatise us, and it should jeopardize the things we hold dear. This place of trauma — i.e. this place where our world is fundamentally disoriented and made unrecognisable — should be where we start (but, thankfully, it is not where we end, and it is here where I diverge from Ehrman). Now whether or not Wright has struggled with suffering to this degree, and has since developed on from that place, is hard to say, since he really refuses to engage suffering from this perspective (which, when coupled with what Wright actually says, leads me to suspect that Wright has never struggled with suffering at this depth).
Of course, there is more to be said about the way in which an active relationship with God through Jesus Christ transforms how we understand the “dark mystery” of suffering, but Wright never really develops this thought in much detail. This is really too bad because the way in which we relate to that “mystery” varies a great deal depending on whether or not we have encountered suffering as trauma. If we have not been traumatised by suffering, then the mystery thereof is sort of like a regretable, mind-bending riddle; if we have been traumatised by suffering, then the mystery thereof is something deeper, something aw(e)ful, something that throbs. Thus, in response to Ehrman's question, “Why do we suffer?”, I wish Wright had responded, “I don't know. But I continue to believe in God, and here's why…”. Of course, I don't believe that others will find the “here's why…” to be compelling, because I think that the only reason why we continue to believe in God, when confronted with the magnitude of suffering, is because we have met God. The reason why I find faith to be compelling is because God has chosen to come out to meet me, and I suspect that the only reason why a person like Ehrman would believe in God would be because God comes out to meet him as well. Now I can't help but wonder if Wright, in his efforts to engage in a substantial and reasonable dialogue, deliberately avoids this track, and where it leads, because it seems entirely too subjective and experiential.
Furthermore, sometimes our most powerful witness to faith in God in a suffering world, is found in silence. Remember Job's friends? They only truly exhibited their wisdom when they they first met Job and sat and mourned silently with him for seven days and seven nights (cf. Job 2.11-13). They became fools, and only deepened Job's sufferings, when they began to defend God. We would do well to learn from their example. We demonstrate our faith in God, not by answering the cry of forsakenness raised by those who suffer, but by sharing in their cry and refusing to stop crying until God answers.
And so, you see, Ehrman's form of agnosticism is a faith that I respect (and even admire) a great deal. Essentially, he appears to be a 'protest agnostic' — an 'agnostic for God's sake.' This, I think, is the same faith that Camus held, and portrayed so powerfully in The Plague. Furthermore, just like Tarrou in The Plague, Ehrman sees no reason why agnosticism should lead him away from a life of loving service for others. Thus, I was a little disappointed to see Wright trotting out the tired old argument that agnostics have no grounds for living sacrificial lives. Obviously a good many agnostics have lived sacrifical lives of love, so Christians should give up on saying, “Hey, you have no reason to do that!” For the agnostic simply responds, “What do you mean? I need some deeper justification to love others? Good Lord, I'm terrified to think of how you would act if you didn't believe in God!”
Were it not for my own encounters with God, I believe that this for of agnosticism would be the position that I would take. I'm not sure if Wright would concede this point. He seems to think that there is more to be said for an objective apologetics (although he does stress the significance of a relationship with God for our exploration of these things, so, as I said, I'm not sure what Wright would concede, or why he approaches the issue the way he does).
As for the hermeneutical points that both Wright and Ehrman were trying to make, there isn't a lot that one can say in response. Due to the limitations of the chosen form of dialogue (something both Wright and Ehrman lament), the hermeneutical debate doesn't progress much beyond making assertions (Ehrman: “It doesn't fit together; biblical authors contradict each other”; Wright: “It does fit together, and your contradictions are more apparent than actual”). However, Ehrman does (implicitly) raise a good question: “What are the criteria that we use to understand the way(s) in which the various elements of Scripture relate to one another?” Indeed, Ehrman implies that there really are no good criteria for relating the various elements of Scripture to one another in any sort of coherent “synthesizing” manner. Unfortunately, while Wright presents an attractive synthesis (and one that I, personally, find compelling), he never explains the reason why his synthesis is justified. Here, I think, we are at a confessional impasse. I suspect that Wright believes that Scripture can be synthesised because God was at work in the process of producing Scripture, and offering us Scripture as a life-guiding narrative, whereas Ehrman, as an agnostic, sees no good criteria for tying together such an eclectic collection of ancient manuscripts. Apart from faith in Scripture as a witness to the revelation of God, I can't think of a reason why one should try to synthesize Scripture, and it is quite possible that, apart from this faith, one would be unable to see why certain passages are more central to the ongoing narrative than others.
Of course, at this point we arrive at an hermeneutical issue that is an ongoing contraversy within intra-Christian dialogue. That is to say, although I find Wright's metanarrative to be compelling, there are many other Christians who see it as flawed, and so they argue that the texts Wright chooses to highlight, as excellent “short-hand” illustrations of the broader story, are either misinterpreted or are poor choices. Ultimately, I don't think that this issue can be objectively resolved. At the end of the day, I think that all of us are (more or less) open to the criticism of having arbitrarily selected what passages we highlight, what passages we reject, and what coherence we find in Scripture (of course, the “more or less” is an important proviso here!).
So, in conclusion, let me say that I enjoyed the thinking stimulated by this discussion and, although I believe that Wright wins the point concerning what Scripture says and does not say, I believe that Ehrman wins the point concerning our own existential confrontation with suffering. Wright, I believe, is the better exegete, but, in my opinion, Ehrman appears to have more honestly and openly confronted the pain of the world in which he finds himself. Thus, I return to a point I made about Wright in my reviews of two of his recent books (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/137308.html). Although I am inspired by his move from the academia to the Church (in order to encourage the Church to be an agent of new creation within the broken places of the world), I cannot help but wonder if his efforts in this regard are stifled by his rootedness in places of privilege and power (not to say that such places necessarily stifle our efforts or our understanding — Ehrman, after all, is comfortably situated at UNC — but I suspect that they go a long way to stifling the efforts of many).

I decided to go online and figure out what my “carbon footprint” is (cf. http://www.carbonfootprint.com/). To my surprise, I discovered that I release approximately 4.196-4.206 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air every year. Dear me.
Naturally, I was concerned about this, and I explored some of the ways in which I could “offset” this carbon footprint. It turns out that planting six (6) trees a year is all I need to do.
Now then, seeing as I planted about 200,000 trees when I was working up north (to pay for my undergrad), I discovered that I'm set for about 33,333 and 1/3 years. Dear me.
Naturally, I was appalled to discover that I've overdone things by about 33,253 and 1/3 years, so I'll have to find some ways to release a lot more carbon dioxide. If anybody would like to help me purchase a few SUVs, fly around the world, or set fire to a few oil wells, I'd be deeply grateful.

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
~ Ro 5.6-11
Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Within the first part of this series, I argued that the way in which we understand the term “enemy” must be expanded. Instead of defining our enemies as those who injure us personally, I argued that we must understand our enemies to include those who injure the vulnerable, and those who injure the people whom we love. Furthermore, I conclude that the appropriate Christian response to our “enemies” is love, and that this love excludes violence — protective, pre-emptive, or otherwise.
In this post I wish to further deconstruct the term “enemy” from a Christian perspective by building on the Christian understanding of what it means to love our enemies. However, the Christian call to love as God loves seems to make the whole category of “enemies” problematical. Although a wise person once asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” some of us are scratching our heads wishing somebody had asked: “Who is my enemy?” (But perhaps the parable of the Good Samaritan also goes a long way towards answering that question as well?)
What I would like to suggest is that Christians should follow the pattern established by God, and laid out by Paul in Romans 5. They should live as agents of reconciliation who offer themselves in an act of friendship, not only to those who are just a little bit hard to love, but to those who seem impossible to love — our enemies.
Yet how can we be the friends of our enemies? How can we know our enemies as our friends? Such thinking appears to be confused and contradictory. However, I think that it is not — the question of “friends” and “enemies” is a question of perspective. From our perspective, shaped as it is by the Spirit of Christ, and our participation in Christ (who forgave his torturers, even while they tortured him and two others) there is now no person so violent as to be excluded from friendship. However, from the perspective of the person who acts violently towards us, we are enemies — for it is this person who reveals that s/he thinks of us as enemies by acting violently towards us. We know this violent person as a friend when we actively love him or her, while the violent person knows himself or herself to by our enemy by acting violently toward us. Consequently, even though we are called to love all people, and know them as friends by acting lovingly towards them, we can still use the language of “enemies” so long as we realise that this language is only appropriate to the extent that it reflects the way in which the violent person understands his or her relationship with us — and it is, therefore, inappropriate beyond that extent.
So, if we come to know our “enemies” as friends by actively loving them, what are some of the ways we can go about doing this?
The first and most obvious way is by following the words of Jesus in Mt 5 — we love our enemies, and learn to love our enemies, by praying for them. Here I am reminded of the commentary of John Stott in The Message of the Sermon on the Mount:
'This is the supreme command,' wrote Bonhoeffer. 'Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.' Moreover, if intercessory prayer is an expression of what love we have, it is a means to increase our love as well. It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him [sic], and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures. We must not, therefore, wait before praying for an enemy until we feel some love for him in our heart.
Stott is quoting from Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, and Bonhoeffer goes on to write the following:
For if we pray for [our enemies], we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them.
Thus, Bonhoeffer argues that prayer drives us to identify with our enemies, both because we intercede for them, and because we realise that Christ died for all and that we, too, were enemies of God. This prevents us from completely ostracizing our enemies, from deeming them to be subhuman monsters and thereby justifying their destruction, and causes us to wish for them what we ourselves have discovered — the liberating grace of God. We love our enemies by continually hoping for their salvation, not by hoping for their destruction; this is simply a continuation of Jesus' words in Mt 7.12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
Consequently, I can only conclude that Christians are so quick to hate their enemies, and act violently towards them, because they are spending little, if any, time praying for these enemies.
Secondly, this should lead us to express an interest in our enemies, just as we express an interest in our friends. We should desire to know something of their respective journeys, their experiences, and the things that have shaped them. In this regard, I wish to put an altogether different spin on the words of Sun Tzu, quoted above. While Sun Tzu argues that knowing one's enemies is a way to conquer them, I would like to suggest that knowing one's enemies is a step towards learning to act peace-ably, and graciously, towards them; although there may be struggles (or “battles”) we are able to avoid the “disaster” of violence! Yes, there is a conquest in this way of knowing, but it is the conquest of evil by good, for it is through this sort of knowledge that one develops genuine compassion.
Let me, then, apply this to the example provided in Part 1 — those who sexually abuse children. When all we know about such people is that they sexually abuse children, it is next to impossible to love them. However, if we learn about some of the key factors that contribute to the perpetuation of these acts — say the observation that a significant percentage of pedophiles were abused as children — the door is opened to compassion, and if we actually personally journey alongside of such people as individuals and not as statistics, we may find compassion to be unavoidable.
That, at least, was how things developed for me. There was a time in my life when, due to the experiences of some people very near and dear to me, I would have responded very violently to sex offenders. However, in the work I was then doing with street-involved men, I became friends with a certain fellow who touched my heart deeply. It was only after we had become close friends that I discovered that this fellow had sexually abused children. When I learned of this, my very first reaction was to feel like a bad person for liking this man — now only did I hate what he had done, I hated myself for loving this man as my friend! Thus, it was this experience that forced me to revisit thoughts I had on these things, and attitudes I had taken for granted. I realized, “I cannot cast the first (or any) stone at this man. Rather, I hope that this man comes to know the love of God, as I have come to know that love, and so I think it best to be an agent of that love to this man.”
Indeed, perhaps this means that I cannot cast any stones. As with this man, so with all others.
In conclusion, I am reminded of the words of Conor Oberst, who sings the following:
Where was it when I first heard that sweet sound of humility?
It came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody;
how grateful I was then to be part of the mystery,
to love and to be loved.
Let's just hope that is enough.
(Cf. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z4TueFlXKfU, or http://youtube.com/watch?v=biuHzcnEXf0; the lyrics are much clearer in the second link, but it has no video.)
Humility requires those committed to nonviolence to surrender any smug self-righteousness they may feel, and it requires those who are committed to violence to recognize the supreme arrogance of claiming authority over the life and death of others. In humility let us pursue love and hope that love is enough for, as we worship a God who is love, we have nothing else to which we can turn.
[NB: In Part 3, I hope to return to the question of how we can go about “protecting” both the vulnerable and our loved ones, so bear with me!]

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
~ Mt 5.43-48
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse… Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
~ Ro 12.14, 19-21
The violence of our contemporary world is sustained by the mythic discourse of protection. That is to say, violence is routinely justified as a means of protecting the vulnerable, and, in particular, protecting those whom we love. Thus, troops are mobilized and forcefully cross international (and other) boundaries, not because said troops are “going to war” but because they now operate as international “police” forces. In contemporary discourse, a basic (shall we say “ontological”?) shift has occured in the nature of armies. The armies of the dominant global powers are no longer aggressive forces trained for terrorism and conquest. Rather, they are defensive forces trained to implement, and police, “the peace.”
Of course, there is nothing new about this discourse. Empires have always waged wars for the sake of peace, and, in retrospect, we have been able to see that, time after time, it was these wars which were the greatest obstacles to peace. History has taught us that empires that promise peace through violence are, inevitable, the primary agents of the perpetuation of violence in the world.
Still, it is amazing how easy it is for us to understand this about the past, while simultaneously failing to see how we are being manipulated in the present.
Be that as it may, it is worth noting how the discourse of protective violence also operates closer to home, within our own justice systems. Take, for example, those who are in favour of capital punishment in cases of violent or especially heinous crimes — and let's take the example that is most despised in our society: those who have sex with children. Many Christians support death sentences for pedophiles.
Of course, Christians who are in favour of capital punishment in these cases, generally don't justify their position on the basis of vengeance. That is to say, while the families of the survivors (or “victims”) may desire vengeance, the general Christian public is a little more suspicious of vengeance. In theory, we recognize the dangers of vengeance and we recall the inability to see clearly, or respond appropriately, that frequently arise when we've been wronged. Furthermore, we remember the example of Jesus and the injunctions of Paul, and we think, “yes, although we would never blame the families for desiring vengeance, perhaps it is best if we leave vengeance to God.” So, yes, let us confess our desire for vengeance — indeed, let us fully work through that desire, rather than repressing it — but let us distrust vengeance as a motivating force, and let us distrust our ability to see clearly while we are under the influence of this force.
But what of justice? And not only justice but what of protecting the vulnerable? What of ensuring that others will not suffer at the hands of those who commit such acts? This, then, is where the general Christian public becomes attracted to capital punishment. Yes, perhaps we should never kill others based upon feelings of vengeance, but perhaps we should kill others in order to protect the vulnerable (children, in this case) and in order to protect our loved ones (our children, in this case).
Of course, this form of justice is somewhat suspicious. It risks being little more than an act of pre-emptive vengeance. Here it is worth recalling the example of military action. In our day, we have seen the ways in which pre-emptive military campaigns have been waged by some nations in order to prevent other nations from developing the ability to wage war. In general, we have also seen how artificial such pre-emptive reasoning tends to be. Or, stated differently, we have seen that pre-emptive wars are immoral wars. Indeed, I think that all pre-emptive forms of justice risk falling into the same artificiality and immorality. I do not believe that pre-emptive acts of violence are ever justifiable.
However, I think that there is an even more fundamental reason why Christians should refuse to support the death penalty, or any other type of killing that is premised upon the discourse of protection (here I will leave aside references to the biases, incompetence, and corruption that exists within our judicial system — such injustices have been well documented elsewhere and, although such injustices alone are reason to reject the death penalty, I'll leave it to the discerning reader to explore the research on these things). The primary reason why Christians should not support the death penalty in particular, or protective violence in general, is because we are called to love our enemies.
Here it is absolutely essential to recall that our enemies include the enemies of our loved ones. Stated in an overly simplistic manner, the discourse of protective violence runs something like this: “If you hit me, I'll turn the other cheek; If you hit my wife, I'll fuck you up, motherfucker.” The discourse of protective violence rests upon an artifical distinction between “my” enemies, and the enemies of my loved ones, or of the vulnerable. I tell myself that I am committed to forgiving and loving my enemies, but I fail to see that those who hurt my loved ones, or those who hurt the vulnerable, are my enemies. The enemy of my loved ones, the enemy of the vulnerable, is the enemy who I am called to love.
(Some of us tend to forget this because, coming from places of privilege, we have never really encountered anybody who merits the label “enemy”. We think loving our “enemies” means being nice to the guy who picked on us in highschool because we didn't swear or something like that. Thus, when we discover that one of our dear friends has been violently abused, we don't think of the abuser as the “enemy” whom I am called to love; we think of the abuser as a subhuman monster that should be destroyed — “enemies”, after all, are like that guy who picked on me, and so people who do horrible abusive things must belong in a different category altogether!)
With this realisation, those who wish to engage in any act of violence, “protective” or otherwise, must demonstrate that that act of violence is an expression of love for both the vulnerable and the enemy. Indeed, I believe that it is precisely this realization that led to the nonviolence of Jesus, and of the early Church — this is why the early Christians were told that they could not become soldiers, and this is why they allowed themselves (and, nota bene, their loved ones!) to be killed by their enemies. Once we realize that we are called to love our enemies, then we must simultaneously realize that we cannot kill our enemies.
Thus, if Christians are to live as a peace-able people today, if Christians are “to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect” (which means that they are to love as their heavenly Father loves), then the primary challenge which we must confront, deconstruct, and reject, is the mythic discourse of protective violence.
This is truly where the rubber meets the road in our faith, for the most trustworthy gauge of how seriously we take our faith is not how we respond to those who abuse us, it is how we respond to those who abuse our loved ones.