Third (see below), I have long thought that the accusation of “naive” simply doesn’t make sense when used by a non-pacifist of a pacifist. I get this all the time: “You're being naive. You want a world that doesn’t exist. In the real world, violence is necessary to deal with evil.” So often I want to say, “No, you want a world that doesn’t exist. In the real world, violence simply doesn’t deal effectively with evil - at least not as well as you imply.”

People often bring up Hitler as the prime example of when it was necessary to engage in violence. That may or may not be true, but it is a fact that even though Hitler is now dead, evil continues to wreak havoc on our world. Killing Hitler did not stop the birth and accession to power of men like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. (I only pick these two because in my culture they are the two most recent and baddest bad guys.) The fact is that we live in a world where evil is and will continue to be, and nothing we can do will change this fact.

Of course one can make the argument that evil must nevertheless be restrained or minimized, and that violence is necessary for this task. First, while the first part is true, it is no way proven, or even likely in my opinion, that continuing the cycle of violence is the most effective way to minimize the world’s violence. Second, even if it were, that says nothing about the responsibility of Jesus-followers to participate in this violent restraint. If it is true that our central task is not effectiveness in making the world a bit safer place, but rather faithfulness to the gospel and lordship of Jesus the Messiah, then the whole point is moot. (Again, I’m oversimplifying, but it really does seem this clear to me, at least some of the time.)

As for the main point I’m trying to make, I was glad to see Carter similarly picking apart this idea that pacifists are somehow more naive than non-pacifists when it comes to living in a violent evil world. We must all first acknowledge what can and cannot be expected to result from our attempts to mitigate evil, whether through the use or the rejection of violence. No program or system or commitment is going to rid the world of evil and/or war. And, second, we must allow this realism to bring to light how we are and should evaluate our actions in this regard. Which question is more important: What actions will most effectively minimize evil and suffering in this world? What actions will most faithfully witness to the gospel and lordship of Jesus Christ? Perhaps they are the same question; then again, perhaps not. (And now, by the way, we come full circle, for it makes no sense to opt for the second question apart from the reality and promise of resurrection.)

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Second (see below), I've been thinking lots lately about the significance of confessing Jesus as "fully God, fully man." For a long time I haven't given much weight to such theological affirmations (scary, I know), because I could not see how they mattered or were essential to the Scriptural gospel. I wrote them off as fourth century Greekified aberrations from (or at least unnecessary formulations of) New Testament truth. But thanks to some suggestions from I don't remember where, I came to see that confessing this means that Jesus becomes determinative for our portrait of true divinity and our paradigm of true humanity.

That is, believing that Jesus was fully God means that any picture of "God" that isn't congruent with Jesus is not (faithfully) describing the One True God. (In my estimation, this would include the Calvinist God, as well as the God who can't allow sinful people into his presence, or who must punish people even though he doesn't want to.)

Moreover, believing that Jesus was fully human means that his whole life is a model of what it means to be truly and faithfully human. We should therefore pattern our entire lives after his life - including the so-called public or political parts - which I of course think means renouncing the use of violence even in defense of justice (among many other things).

In addition to confirming the convictions that were already developing in me, Carter highlighted a totally new thought for me in this regard. It is often said that Nicene Christology (i.e. Christ as fully God and fully man) is more Greek than Hebrew in that it separates thinking about Jesus from the actual Christ of history. That may in some ways have been the case, but Carter argues the opposite: by affirming that it was in the form of a fully human life that God embodied Godself, we can never separate our thinking of God from the specific life of this Jew from Nazareth. (This is important because otherwise Jesus becomes part of some "god" totally disconnected from us and our real lives.) Taken this way, Nicene Christology, at least in theory though often not in practice, totally affirms and protects the humanness and thus the Jewishness of our Messiah-Savior-Lord.

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I recently read an incredibly important book (!) for understanding how the church has gotten to where we are today, as well as what choices faces us as we approach tomorrow: Craig Carter's Rethinking Christ and Culture. The whole book is a re-analysis of what H. Richard Niebuhr called "the enduring problem" - how Christ (and/or) the chrch relates to culture. Regardless of whether you've ever heard of him, Niebuhr has shaped the way all of us think - at least those of us who are Christian and American and have lived any time from 1950 to today. In 1951 he wrote a book called Christ and Culture, which was an instant classic and has been read as a textbook in colleges and seminaries ever since. In this book Niebuhr laid out five options for how Christ has been and can be related to culture by his followers: Christ of culture, Christ against culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ transforming culture. Among other things, this work popularized the idea that pacifist Christians can only remain pacifist at teh expense of responsible engagement with society.

Carter's book is a thorough critique of Niebuhr's work; Carter's main gripe is that Niebuhr fails to account for the underlying assumption between all five types: Carter calls "Christendom," which basically refers to a world where the church functions as the religious arm of the state as part of a unified system in which both are seen as partners in God's efforts to run the world. I'm oversimplifying horribly, and I'll try to offer a better analysis after the other books I promised to blog through, but for now I just want to mention a fe specific things. Oh, let me say one more general thing about the book first: Carter locates the dividing line between faithful and unfaithful Christian approaches to culture precisely at the church's willingness (or nonwillingness) to engage in state-sponsored violence of any kind. Very interesting.

In this and the next few posts I'll discuss a few specific points Carter made that line up exactly with thoughts I've been having lately. It was actually eerie at one point, when Carter made the very same claim I tried to articulate in the last post: "Like Jesus, we are called to live lives that make no sense if there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead" (208). I know, crazy! :) Let me say again that I think this is absolutely crucial to following Jesus faithfully. How we talk about God (theology), how we aim to be good and do right (ethics), how we lead churches, how we pray, how we get and stay married (or don't get married at all), how we raise children (whether ours or someone else's) and everything else in our lives must be founded upon, line up with, and draw its resources from the central reality of resurrection. Stating it bluntly, to the extent that our lives and choices fail to require resurrection in order to make sense, they should not be described as "Christian."

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