The Journey Towards Nonviolence

Personal Reflections during Graduate School at Andover Newton Theological School
March 28, 2007

The Journey Towards Nonviolence

My pilgrimage towards nonviolence this semester has not been an easy journey.  I’ve found the road surprisingly bumpy and uncomfortable.  Readings and class discussion have not always been agreeable or easy to imbibe.  But, the wrestling has been valuable and the opportunity to reflect on my journey is timely.

I did not expect the road to be bumpy.  I have been increasingly sensitized to violence over the past decade.  I have changed my own behavior and made conscious, personal decisions to support a more loving and peaceful world.  I turn off violence on television.  I can’t watch the level of brutality I once took in and refuse to view commercial movies that glorify violence.  I’ve eliminated my own engagement in road rage and try to adopt a stance that gives everyone the “benefit of the doubt” when conflict arises.   I also have become more aware of violent conflicts taking place in the world and can no longer support any military action of any country.

A significant turning point for me in refusing to take in the vox populi viewpoint complicit to violence came during the OJ Simpson Trial in 1995.  I could not watch the daily media reports about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.  I was appalled at the public’s fascination with the case.  From the moment the media began reporting the story I wanted to protect the privacy of the victim, the perpetrator, and everyone directly involved in the unfortunate situation.  I couldn’t understand how it was “water cooler” conversation at work and why so many people watched every detail of the story every day in the media.  It seemed to drag on for months and humanity’s interest never elevated itself beyond sensationalism.  It was at this point that I stopped looking to traditional media as a moral and guiding voice in the public square.

My own country’s reactions to violence in the past decade seems to be out of sync with what I believe to be the progress that is happening many other places.  Evidence of nonviolent conflict resolution appears to be increasing.  Since the 1980s there have been significant nonviolent resolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Soviet Union, South Africa, Serbia, and the Philippines.  Why hasn’t this form of conflict resolution captured more people’s imagination?  Why has the United States chosen war on seven occasions in the last twenty years?  What is contributing to our culture’s fractious and contentious state of response?

Wrestling with the Readings
James Gilligan’s book, Violence – Reflections on a National Epidemic, offered several insights and possible actions for resolving the current violence crisis in this country.  Even though Gilligan’s area of expertise lies within a single field dealing with mentally ill criminals, he identified several psychological reasons for violence that can be applied beyond criminal activity.  His insight about all violence being an attempt to achieve justice and the place that “shaming” holds as a catalyst for violence suggest, to me, root causes that can be addressed in helping to reduce violence.  From Gilligan’s book I came away with four possible solutions to explore:

1.    Cultivate ways to enable love to grow
2.    Take better care of each other
3.    Admit that we are NOT self-sufficient
4.    Restrain capitalism (narrow the gap between the rich and the poor)

Gilligan’s insights suggested areas where I could focus my own spiritual practices as well as approaches I could incorporate into community interactions.  Buoyed by these ideas I turned to Walter Wink’s writings.  Having never read Wink’s works, I was looking forward to mining his treasures of hope and solutions.  Instead, I found his writings difficult to comprehend and challenging to my sensibilities.

Wink’s description of the Domination System tended to reinforce my concern about scapegoating.  His lengthy description of the forces that impede expressions of love went on a bit too long for me.  It presented the Domination System as such a huge force I felt overwhelmed and discouraged.  After ninety pages I was parched for a more positive message.

What was it about Wink’s message that was so difficult for me to take in?  Was I simply reacting to new ideas, rejecting them because they were different from my frame of reference?  What was the rough terrain in Engaging the Powers that I found challenging?

While I couldn’t agree more with Wink that “every act that weakens the Domination System strengthens the new order of God” (Engaging the Powers, p. 48) I was disappointed in Wink’s description about what the new order of God might look like – and, the section about Jesus’ Third Way in particular.  The three scriptural examples of 1) turning the other check, 2) giving your undercoat, and 3) going the second mile, found in Matthew 5:38-48, as cited by Wink doesn’t present as viable a practice as I believe is implied in the text.  The historical context Wink presents is especially helpful in understanding that Jesus did not do nothing in response to hatred.  But I can’t agree with Wink that Jesus’ third way includes “meeting force with ridicule” or “shaming the oppressor into repentance” or to “force the oppressor to see you in a new light.”  (Engaging the Powers, p. 186-187)

I don’t view Jesus’ actions or teaches as including ridicule, shame, or force.  I believe that Jesus’ radical third way includes beholding his oppressor as God beholds him – as a friend and vital agent in expressing God’s goodness in creation.  Refusing to see an enemy and responding only with love is what I perceive to be the spiritual power that trumps human power.  Divine mercy, not human justice, is Jesus’ third way.  Leaving retribution to God, returning blessing for cursing, hating no one, forgiving and forgetting wrongs, and not fancying that you have been wronged when you have not been seems, to me, to be the secret sauce in Jesus’ teaching about loving your enemies.

Part of Jesus’ way also has to do with nullifying the law where “every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.”  Refusing to react, to return evil for evil, is more than recognizing one’s own power or taking control of the power dynamic.  It’s transcending earthbound laws and aligning one’s self with God’s power – with a power that neutralizes and de-escalates violent tendencies.

It’s this type of “new order of God” that I wish was more center stage in our readings.  When Wink writes on page 192 of Engaging the Powers, “Finally, nonviolence must not be misconstrued as a way of avoiding conflicting,” I say “amen.”  But when he goes on to assert, “Nonviolence seeks out conflict, elicits conflict, exacerbates conflict, in order to bring it out into the open and lance its poisonous sores,” I pause.  I concur with the sentiment to lance violence’s poisonous sores, and even to bring it out in the open, but the choice of the word “conflict” seems unfortunate.  I would not choose combative language.  Jesus’ third way isn’t about tit for tat – it’s about jumping the curb to a new paradigm that dissolves and resolves conflicts.

I know that Walter Wink has given the subject of nonviolence a get deal more thought than I have and I hesitate to criticize his contribution.  And, perhaps, I have overlooked the perspectives I written about in his writing.  Or, perhaps, since the publication of his book is more that fifteen years old, Wink himself would chose to revise his writings to include the above perspective.  Regardless, at this juncture of my journey, it has been helpful to articulate what I found jarring about Engaging the Powers and what I find intuitively powerful about the spiritual practice of loving your enemy.

Martin Luther King Jr. as a Witness
Martin Luther King Jr. represents an individual who, together with a movement, grasped the possibility of a new order of God on earth – an order where violence is extinct.  Humility, love, spiritual poise and vision appear to be key ingredients in the Civil Rights Movement’s success.    In his “Walk for Freedom” reflection King writes of the power of love, “Love must be at the forefront of our movement if it is to be a successful movement. … This is a spiritual movement, and we intend to keep these things in the forefront.  We know that violence will defeat our purpose. … Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil.  The greatest way to do that is through love.  I believe firmly that love is a transforming power that can life a whole community to new horizons of fair play, good will and justice.”

Coupling the spiritual force of love with nonviolent resistance brought many successes to the Civil Rights cause.  But eight years after King wrote the above words, as the Movement was experiencing extreme resistance from society’s leadership and power, the Movement seemed to be questioning the limit of nonviolence’s effectiveness – at least as they understood it:  “Negroes have found nonviolent direction action to be a miraculous method of curbing force, but it is not a cure-all.  When the glare of a thousand spotlights illuminates the misdeeds of southern police, their guns and clubs are temporarily muzzled. Yet so shameless are the mores of the feudal South that even in the presence of millions of witnesses police still employ such barbaric weapons as the cattle prod and the high-pressure hose. … The inevitable conclusion is that as Negroes have marshaled extraordinary courage to employ nonviolent direct action, they have been left–by the most powerful federal government in the world–almost solely to their own resources to face a massively equipped army.  They have endured violence to reveal their plight and to protest it; their government has been able to muster only the minimum courage and determination to aid them.”  (“Hammer on Civil Rights”)

Perhaps, though, nonviolent resistance wasn’t really being questioned by the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement in “Hammer on Civil Rights.”  Perhaps it was just rhetoric being skillfully deployed to help those who have not experienced the power of nonviolence to move closer to its practice?  What seems to me to be going on behind these words of Martin Luther King Jr. is the immense challenge of adopting a new cultural norm.  Nonviolent resistance won hearts and brought results quickly in the Civil Rights Movement.  But as the Movement grew, and was re-interpreted by a larger community, it had to meet and respond to those “equal and opposite reaction” forces.  “Hammer on Civil Rights” responds to the oppositional forces by articulating how the new order includes the federal government – how society once it has awakened to its own injustice corrects and adjusts its behavior:  “There is genuinely a new South, but it cannot surface without the shelter of federal power and order.  …The necessity for a new approach to the executive power is not a matter or choice.  The newfound strength of the civil rights movement will not vanish or wither.  … Now is the time to anticipate needs, not when the flames of conflict are raging.  This is the lesson the past teaches us.  This is the test to which concerned national leaders are put–not by civil rights leaders as such, but by conditions too brutal to be endured, and by justice too long delayed to be justified.”

Concluding Musing
King and other workers in the Civil Rights Movement were privileged to have experienced the power of spiritually grounded love on such a grand scale.  What a life-affirming experiment to have applied vision and spiritual authority on earth.  What I continue to be wonder about though is how the sparks of a nonviolent society can en masse and take hold permanently and pervasively?   King and the Civil Rights Movement is one example that went a long way towards reaching critical mass.  But what will it take to finish the job – to find humanity’s consciousness normalized by the spiritual animus of love?