Is violence ever justice? Is coercion better than violence? Israel, Palestine, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Christianity, and the question of violence

What if there were no more physical violence but we agreed to argue, fight, or address conflict by other means?  Would we not resort to espionage and trickery? Is that really any better than physical violence?  But that is in the nebulous realm of international or interstate conflict.

Imagine you stand face to face with your captor. He has not physically trapped you anywhere. Instead, he has coerced you through laws, rules, finances, relationships, and so forth.  Shoot, maybe he’s plain smarter than you.  So you’re trapped doing his will.  Any little thing you do is at once what he asked—and then some—but not good enough.  You sweep the floor, dust the cabinets, even clean the undersides of the doors.  He spits on his shoes and says you missed a spot.

Now imagine that you are larger and stronger than he. You could probably catch him in his office, wallop him a few good ones, and get him to the point where he would sign the papers granting you back your freedom. He might tattle but it’d be your word against his—but he might not anyway for fear of your might. Recall that he has never committed physical violence against you nor has the threat of it ever reared its head.  But the law is on his side and people owe him more than they do you even if they do like you more.

You decide to corner him. You wind back your fist and he says “I swear this will end your contract! You’ll be out of your apartment and destitute! Everyone will think you’re crazy. You’ll never work in this town again.” You let it rip and he capitulates after the first blow. “OK OK what?” Sign the papers, you say. “Fine! Gosh.” You’re free once more.

You’ve just gained freedom by violence. What part of that, if any, sounded wrong?

The Reverend Dr. Martin Lither King Jr. was some sort of a prophet. Already by his mid 20s, he had preached a message of peace and love that continues to ripple through society, inspiring youth into protest, not war, raising statues in the name of peace.  In a1957 speech I will quote, he predicted at least the March on Washington 4 years later and the mutiny of large classes of people into communism that continues to this day (not due necessarily to its merits but, as the Doctor suggests, due to the broadening canyon of inequality’s lack of another way forward for many people within our current political economic framework).  Schools and streets and community centers bear his name not out of adulation or idolization but for memory of a message and a movement. One of his quotes concerning violence and justice haunts me as a (figuratively) second generation child of the civil rights movement and (literally) anti- Vietnam War peace protesters; furthermore, as a christian who grew up hearing messages of Unitarianism and radical peace; as a moral vegan; as a returned Peace Corps volunteer (I barely consider myself so having only done 6 months but my intention was there and it’s a long story), this quote walks me up to a precipice between militarization and willingness to die at the hands of fools or wolves if it means keeping my vows of peace. Please indulge me for a minute as I display the full quote, which I will do because it is often quoted but always shortened. (You can also read the newspaper I’ve attached to find this quote.) Speaking at some sort of a press conference (it is not clear what exactly the event was from reading the newspaper), the author transcribes reportedly verbatim from the Reverend’s “extemporaneous” speech,

“You will remember that it was in the year of 1619 that the first slaves landed on the shores of this nation. They were brought here from the soils of Africa and, unlike the Pilgrim fathers who landed at Plymouth a year later, they were brought here against their wills. Throughout slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion; he was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. He was merely a depersonalized object and a vast plantation machine. The famous Dred Scott decision of 1857 well illustrates the status of the Negro during slavery. For it was within this decision that the Supreme Court of the nation said in substance that the Negro is not a citizen of this nation; he is merely property subject to the dictates of his owner. This was the attitude that prevailed throughout.

Living under these conditions, many Negroes lost faith in themselves. Many came to feel that perhaps they were less than human. So long as the Negro accepted injustice and exploitation, a sort of racial peace was maintained, but it was an uneasy peace in which the Negro was forced patiently to accept injustice; it was a negative peace, for you see true peace is not merely the absence of some negative force. I think that this is what Jesus meant when one day he stood before his disciples—and I can imagine they wanted to hear something soothing and good and consoling, and they stood with their glittering eyes wanting to hear the word from the Master—and he looked at them and said: ‘brethren, I want to make it clear to you that I come not to bring peace but a sword.’ Now, He didn’t mean that He came to bring a physical sword, nor did He mean that He did not come to bring true peace but what Jesus was saying in substance was that I come not to bring this old negative peace which makes for deadening passivity and stagnant complacency, and I come to lash out against this peace because whenever I come, a division sets in between justice and injustice; whenever I come, the forces of light divide up against the forces of darkness. I come not to bring negative peace but I come to bring positive peace. I come not to bring this old peace which is merely the absence of tension; I come to bring positive peace which is the presence of justice and the Kingdom of God. Peace is not merely the absence of something but it’s the presence of something.”

As you can see, our Faith, unfortunately, is equivocal on this question. Both the Book itself and our practice of it. I appreciate the Reverend Doctor’s bending this parable of Jesus away from weaponry. But it is hard to take “sword” to mean something else. For a counterexample, the passage of the Bible I most commonly hear in response to my veganism is God’s Noahic Covenant in Genesis, in which God gives us “dominion” over animals according to the King James Bible. To me, that makes it quite dubious that God was saying that we should eat animals—kings and queens, for example, rarely if ever eat those over whom they have dominion. It rather seems that God was saying something along the lines of those with great power have great responsibility. However, it was true that at the time of the utterance of the Noahic Covenant that all the plants had died from the 40 day flood, so perhaps God was saying that when there is no other option, humans may eat nonhuman animals. My point here is that “dominion” seems to allow for a much broader range of interpretation than does “sword.” Sure, we could imagine that really sword just meant any sort of long shaped tool but that seems a stretch of the imagination compared to “sword” really just meaning “sword.” I am glad that the Reverend steered us away from that, especially in such a tense moment in a violently racist Alabama, but scripture seems to ask for force and even the Reverend is at least a little equivocal when he says not to take sword literally but also not to take peace to mean the absence of tension. Tension, fortunately, is not violence. That keeps Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. consistent in his message. Is it, however, truly what scripture would ask of us?  In Matthew 10:34, Jesus does indeed say “I came not to send peace but a sword.”  In context, it’s still similarly unclear what this means.  Jesus did not proceed to kill anybody or attack by sword.  But what he was asking his disciples to do by is not clear—it’s almost as if they are the sword he was sending.  Sure, maybe that means that they were to be his verbal sword—after all, it seems like ministry was their method—but then why specify “not peace?”  And I wonder the same for religions whose scriptures I am unfamiliar with, such as Judaism and Islam.

I listened just yesterday to a sermon on YouTube by Senior Pastor Mike Ashcraft of Port City Community Church that, while eloquent and well intentioned, similarly opened the floor to ambiguity. I will transcribe some of it here, “I consider the way of Jesus…This leaves us with enormous tension between our desire for justice and our need for protection and the call of Jesus to enemy love. God intends to create a new humanity, one humanity, from every tribe and every tongue and every people group…reconciling all of us from everything that threatens and separates and undermines us…Jesus is the peace for which we pray and his cross is the way that puts to death all of the hostilities. Those are very clear…Our prayers are always intended to bring about peace and reconciliation and never war and revenge. So let our hearts be broken for the suffering of both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people without feeling like we’re condoning terror or injustice… I recognize that peace is not simply the absence of conflict. Jesus said he offers another kind of peace. A peace of the presence of Jesus and the reality of his reign. So I want Jesus to reign in a way that brings about pockets of this reality on Earth as it is in heaven. Right in the middle of the chaos as God intended for it to be and he longs for it to be. So, for me, our place to begin the prayers for the Middle East is at the feet of Jesus in humble prayer and offer words that align our will with his and intercede on behalf of all of those who are entangled in this war. Lasting peace in the Middle East is not likely to come from war but from prayer in God’s word. So our prayer isn’t just a response to our hopelessness in watching from afar but a declaration of our trust and our hope.” And he proceeds with a beautiful and heartfelt prayer that does indeed seem quite peaceful. However, I cannot help but see the inconsistency between such a prayer and phrases like “enormous tension between our desire for justice and our need for protection and the call of Jesus to enemy love,” “our prayers are always intended to bring about peace and reconciliation and never war and revenge,” “I recognize that peace is not simply the absence of conflict. Jesus said he offers another kind of peace.  A peace of the presence of Jesus and the reality of his reign,” and chaos as God intended, etc. How peacefully should we imagine “another kind of peace,” or “desire for justice” if be it not the absence of conflict? Yet, clearly Pastor Ashcraft here is not asking for violence—but what are we intending when we intend “another kind of peace” that is not the absence of tension or when we should align our intentions with those of God who intends “chaos?”

So it is not uncommon for us Christians to be at least a little confused on the question of whether there could be a just war or just violence. Obviously, historically, Christianity has been used to rationalize or launch broad scales of gross, ugly violence.

This leaves me without moral conclusion on the current conflict in the Middle East. This is one that is close to my heart, as many friends growing up were Jewish; I played soccer in high school with many Muslims (whom I admired for their adherence to fasting during Ramadan even while we’d play soccer for hours in the hot summer sun! Both the commitment to their faith and love of soccer impresses me to this day); a good friend of mine in college was Lebanese and taught me skills and attitudes that changed my life; and into my adulthood I have had Palestinian, Iranian, Syrian, Jordanian, Tunisian, and Israeli friends. Another friend who worked at the Afghanistan Embassy during our military pullout did not rest a day during that time. What to say? I believe that practicing religion is one of the best, if not the best, things that humans ever do. It yields the most meaning, the most beauty, the most hope. But it does not yield the most peace—it doesn’t even always ask for it.

…

And so with my question at the beginning of this essay I hoped to skip the question of when violence should ever be justified or justice.  Let’s assume that it is never justice.  Would we really be satisfied with a world in which we could even be right but coerced by the smarter or quick-witted, by the well-positioned, the social or societal chess players?  Blackmail is not physical violence.  Is it more morally justifiable?  What if we were morally righteous but peacefully coerced by the wicked and we were probably capable of gaining freedom through physical violence?  Would we be satisfied with freedom being a door knock away?  What should content us about a world in which trickery should beget wealth and success while physical might, health, and social and personal integrity would be nice to have but not necessarily rewarded?  I will admit that perhaps I am simply weak-willed; a radical Gandhi hypothetically would let a mob kill him or a bear eat him. Would we really be like that radical Gandhi?  I do not believe that I would be. Were an animal to attack me unprovoked, and I had a gun, my guess is that I would shoot the animal.  What about a human?  It almost seems like that is even worse because the human is obviously capable of moral contemplation.  What good would such a peaceful person do by falling in the forest like a tree with no one around to hear it?  Thus, I have been told by a carnist, let’s say that violence is never justified; lest he risk being that tree, the vegan must shout his veganism from the mountaintops or pursue some level of media campaign, so is true of the radical pacifist.  It is at least a little convincing that one should always choose nonviolence and be the bigger man/woman/etc. if the situation were to arise in which the choice were between death and committing violence.  And yet, historically, has this not been a sort of eugenics leaving behind the violent?  I genuinely do not have a good guess.

Perhaps I am only seeing one step past physical violence. Perhaps there is another world.  In this third world—the first being physical violence, the second being violence prohibited but replaced by trickery and wits—in this third world, love and integrity would reign.  Conflict would be resolved by communication, nothing more.

How would we found this third world?  Would we start with the principles of the current world?  I.e., property rights, landlords, rule of law enforced by police and military, taxes, judges and lawyers, juries of peers, CEOs, jobs with contracts, banks and loans, fiat currencies. Jails. Grocery stores.  Long supply chains. Schooling for children modeled off factories.  Would those found the world governed by love, integrity, communication sans violence or coercion?  It almost seems that our current world is taking steps towards the second world I’ve mentioned.  In general, social coercion prevents violence with exceptions where violence boils over.  I worry that our goal is the second world, one of chicanery, tomfoolery, data, terms and conditions, and hypervigilance—a world though not violent in which we walk on egg shells and that which is not nailed down is whisked away—and not the third where we genuinely coordinate and orchestrate for justice, beauty, sharing, and harmonious love.

Notes:

In this same speech, Dr. MLK Jr. refers to Hegel—when he says that synthesizing the extreme optimist and the extreme pessimist in the realm of race relations and progress is the realist, “like the synthesis in Hegelian philosophy the realistic position seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites, while avoiding the two extremes of both.” I have cultivated an appreciation of Hegel’s work over the last few years and was pleasantly surprised to see the Reverend reference it where indeed I find it quite relevant; Hegel is uniformly left out of public discourse these days.

This is also a fascinating speech because leftists today try to align Dr. King with all sorts of positions that I wonder whether a historian would say he really held.  For instance, here Dr. King urges, “our love of America and our Democratic way of life” and a moment later criticizes, “if we don’t do something about civil rights and justice in this nation, America will wake up and discover that the uncommitted peoples of the world will have turned their allegiance to a false idea of communism.”  Many leftists try to say that Dr. MLK preached socialism in his later years.  Did he?  Did he, perhaps, reject communism but embrace socialism?  Did he see the two as connected as they’ve been painted as in recent decades?

I have seen his idea there before I believe; at least I have detected its possibility. The idea is that communism or socialism are a response to inequality, not necessarily a positive political or philosophical movement.  Rather than principles, communism or socialism are seen as “the way out” of poverty.  That would check out with society’s current political position.  Seeing no way to home-ownership or a stable career, or really ownership of almost anything, many millennials turn to socialism.  Again, though, I do not wish to conflate socialism with communism.