Recently I asked what it meant to approach conflict with the idea that, “There is no war!“  And without a doubt the dialogs on non-violent resistance always leads to a single exception to the rule of love.  We can’t help but articulate it because as parents we feel the responsibility to protect our children.  Storm articulated this in that post. He asked,

“What if that person is attempting to hurt someone else, say a child? Should we fight to protect the innocent?”

It’s a legitimate question and one I’ve wrestled with.  It seems to be the one exception people throw up to non-violence as a rule.  We like exceptions, don’t we?  They provide us safe comfort to hold love just far enough as to personally comforting but not discomforting.

And I will be honest that I haven’t had a good answer or response to the question.  I’ve asked myself the same thing and come up empty.  But for some reason this time was different. Something snapped inside of me.  An image popped into my head about what I would personally want to do if someone were to attack my children.  And I think it’s the answer to the exception.

I would offer myself in their place.

Think about it. It’s the only way to hold the dignity of everyone involved.  It is the only way to embody Jesus in that moment.  It’s the only means to embody non-violence to the other who is, for some reason, inflicting violence. It would be the only way to convey love both to the oppressor and the oppressed.

If I’m serious about following Jesus and engaging the Way of love, this is the response I would want to teach my kids.  I would want them to see the last thing I do as an act of love and sacrifice.

And let me be clear that this is my hope.  I have never encountered the exception in my life.  I pray that if the moment ever comes, and I do not wish for it to come, that when history called on me to respond, I would choose to love when it mattered most.

What if the way to end a war begins with saying, “There is no war.”?

A couple of days ago, I was browsing through my Blog Reader and came across this title”

“Winning The Drug War By Ending It”

The title refers to a short post from Andrew Sullivan on the war on drugs, but it got me thinking about what Jesus said.

Luke 6:29 – If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.

What if Jesus is giving us the more radical and wholistic means to end conflict. What if the best way to end conflict is to simply hold onto the idea that, “There is no war.”  When we strike back, aren’t we validating the notion that there is a war?

What if the most courageous person in a fight is the one who is willing to see the true identity and dignity of the other person, and by holding back the punch, we are reminding the other person of who they really are?  A child of the living God, called very good.  And when we hold onto to that standard of justice, we are validating it in our own life.  We are in essence saying, “This is true.”  And not because it is true cosmically, even though it is, but because we need we need it to be true in our lives.

So when we say, “there is no war” were not ignoring the obvious in justice.  We’re calling out the reality that non-violent resistance is actually first about holding on to what is true in our lives?