But What if He Shoots Me?
Today I was reading the Sermon on the Mount. I love it because it never fails to challenge me. When I came to Matt 5:39, it literally jumped out at me and then got my brain going a mile a minute. I wrote out my thought process in this blog. Welcome to my mind…
“do not resist an evil person….” Matt 5:39
do not resist an evil person??? REALLY? Like seriously? This begs the question that has been in my brain for a month now…. Did Jesus really mean what he said?
Did Jesus really mean that we should not resist evil people? That we should just allow ourselves to be walked on? What if someone tries to shoot me or rape me…should I not resist? But that is exactly what he said!!!
So what do I do with that? Do I believe that Jesus meant what he said? Or do I draw a line….well, I won’t resist an evil person unless they try to kill me, or hurt me in any way.
Jesus said next “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the left one as well“. Matt 5:39
Well, slapping me in the face sure sounds like it would hurt. (Maybe Jesus anticipated my thought process.) And it sounds like he doesn’t want us to reciprocate…but further than that…he doesn’t want us to block the slap and then he wants us to present a fresh new opportunity for the violence to continue. It does not, however, mention anything about shooting someone in the face. Does omission translate to permission? If he didn’t say, “if someone shoots you in the right cheek, then offer the left cheek as well”, then is it okay to shoot someone after they shoot you?? (I’m pretty sure the answer is NO)
Is it possible that Jesus thought through this? I mean, is he telling me never to resist evil? I could end up losing my life. Is THAT what he wants?? What am I supposed to do? How do we fight evil if we don’t resist it? Are we just supposed to lie down and play dead? I didn’t get my soul lit on fire to sit by and watch evil happen without resisting it.
I don’t think that is what we are called to do. I don’t believe we are supposed to watch violence happen and do nothing about it. Jesus did not say, “don’t resist evil”. He said, “don’t resist an evil person”. We are called to bring light to the darkness. We are called to bring freedom. That doesn’t happen without a battle. We are warriors.
But if we don’t resist people… Then how do we fight? How do we win? The answer is simple. The answer is LOVE. And love is a lot damn harder than anything else. To really love someone takes a ton of courage. As Michael Hindes said in his last blog, “Love is real love only when it’s released unconditionally and risks being unrequited. Love cannot demand a return on its investment…” That kind of love is HARD!!
Love is vulnerable. Love is disarming. And love is powerful. And it makes absolutely no sense.
God has been teaching me so much about love lately – I can’t even put it all into words. He has just SHOWERED me with love… It is difficult for me to learn to receive it. But how can I ever really love people unless i receive the love they give me? I’ve always been so afraid of letting people into my world. But God has put amazing people in my life to teach me how powerful love really is. My friends have loved me when I didn’t deserve it. I’ll tell you what….to be loved when you don’t deserve it is the most disarming thing in the world. Nothing makes walls come down faster than being treated with love when what you deserve is a punch in the face.
And nothing is harder to do.
There are a lot of unanswered questions in my head. If someone is attacking me, am I really not supposed to defend myself? Is that what we are supposed to do? Is that how we are supposed to live? Did Jesus literally mean everything he said? If he did, then where does self defense fit in? Jesus’ life ended pretty violently. He was tortured to death. And when they came to arrest him, he healed the ear of one of the soldiers. He begged his Father to forgive his tormenters because they didn’t know what they were doing. He did NOT try to defend himself. But is that really how I’m supposed to live? If we put the whole message in context, you can draw a conclusion that Jesus was telling us to refrain from retaliation…can I just agree with that and move on?
What I know is that love is so much more powerful than hate. It is more powerful than violence. Love is actually quite revolutionary. When it comes unexpectedly, it is altogether disarming. I think because God is love and when people are experiencing love, they are experiencing God as well. Love transforms hearts. Love transforms lives. Love transforms nations. Maybe…just maybe….even if I’m facing some unthinkable situation and I love instead of cower in fear or fight, my love will make a lasting impression that will change the life of the attacker. Jesus did ask us to carry our cross. Maybe this is what he is talking about. Truly selfless love.
This might sound radical, but everything God is teaching me goes back to love. Everything is about love. God is about love. He IS love. His business is love. My dear friend, Gretchen says, “Be Love. Bring Kingdom”. There is so much truth in that….when we love, we spread the Kingdom of God. And when we love unexpectedly, we spread it even more. We love, not just the people that are easy to love, but the ones who hurt us, abuse us, defile us, spit on us, lie to us, etc… Jesus said that he came for the sick. He came for the least of these. He came for the poor, the smelly, the nasty, the crude, the disgusting, the drug addicts…He came for the outcasts…the ones who know they don’t have their crap together. Those are the people we are called to love. And loving them is HARD. Following Jesus is HARD. But those are the people that will be transformed by our love. They will never believe in Jesus unless we SHOW them Jesus. We do that with love. And maybe we are supposed to do that in the face of violence. Jesus did.
I have no idea what that looks like or what will come out of me in a real life dangerous situation. I have no idea what loving someone in the face of violence looks like. I have no idea if that is even what Jesus was saying. I’m certainly not saying that we should recklessly run into dangerous situations and never try to get out of them. I’m a big fan of running away. I’m really just wrestling with that statement….”do not resist an evil person”.
..we will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is coperation with good. And so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Burn our homes and threaten our children, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and beat us and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half dead and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process.
Martin Luther King, Jr., American Dream Speech, 1964
Reading the Bible is dangerous. Sometimes it scares the crap out of me. Today was one of those days.
