Force: A Christian Option?

Some contemporary churchmen have developed a de facto doctrine of revolution that defies order and encourages violence. Both in the World Council of Churches and in the National Council of Churches there have repeatedly been calls for revolution, for the use of force to alter structures of society that will not yield peacefully and to curb the misuse of power. Unlike Communist, existential, and anarchistic revolutionary theory, churchmen have tied their views to the Christian faith and given them religious sanction. But the result is the same: Law and order break down; force and brutality take over.

No one will deny that there are powerful structures that perpetuate racial discrimination and other injustice, work against the down-and-outers, and support repressive legislation designed to protect selfish interests. This has always been so, and will always be so. The question is, then, How are we to combat these forces of injustice?

The Scriptures and psychology teach us an incomparable lesson: the weapons one chooses to use will be the weapons with which one is opposed. The Christian may use force for what he considers to be good ends; the opponent will use force for evil ends. The issue then turns on who exercises more force, not on whose objectives are valid. It becomes a tit-for-tat situation in which those who possess the greater force ultimately survive. Is this the Christian way?

History readily supplies lessons about the demonic aspect of force. In the French Revolution, intense violence was used to overthrow the French monarchy. Finally the guillotine caught up with its users, who themselves became victims of worse oppression, and totalitarian monarchy was replaced finally by the Napoleonic dictatorship. In Russia, the tyranny of the czars is gone, but the repressive, freedom-hating dictatorship of the Communists has replaced it. Cuba is a pitiful illustration of the substitution of one totalitarian government for another. And who would argue that China’s lot has improved, bad as it formerly was, under the murderous regime of Chairman Mao.

Rarely does violence lead to freedom and the betterment of the public interest. What generally happens is that one kind of force replaces another; one kind of oppression is destroyed, but another takes its place. He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword. (We are not here talking about policemen and their use of force against law-breakers in national states. Every state, whether we approve of it or not, has the right to defend itself from violence aimed at its overthrow.)

If any state is so bad that Christian conscience feels it should be overthrown, what means shall Christians use to accomplish this objective? Shall they intimidate people who don’t agree, throw Molotov cocktails in subways, murder policemen, bum down buildings, and assassinate political leaders?

In the democracies the people have the ballot box and can bring about peaceful change. This kind of change may well be difficult to accomplish, and some barriers may yield slowly; yet it has been done in the past, is being done, and will continue to be done. But what about countries where there are no democratic processes and change by peaceful means appears impossible?

There is a force that is not physical and has nothing to do with violence. It is peaceful. It is moral. It is from God. It is the only force that one would cheerfully commend to his enemy. It is a force that no one could object to when it is used against him. It appears weak and useless, and no one who is uninstructed in the Christian faith is likely to embrace it. Yet despite its apparent uselessness, it is the ultimate weapon. Scripture says that “the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4).

The greatest example of the use of spiritual power to change the structures of life and society came in the early history of the Christian Church. Caught up in the era of the Caesars, harried and persecuted, the disciples of Jesus used the power of prayer and the purity of yielded lives. They beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The Roman Empire, mightiest of them all, collapsed before this horde of peaceful proponents of Jesus, whose kingdom is not of this world. They did not riot; they did not kill; they did not destroy property. Yet they won!

Revolution in our day? Yes! But how? “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6). The Church must not only refuse to advocate force but also condemn and forsake the use of force. It must then live, and die, if need be, by the power of peace and love. It must repudiate lawlessness and work for order. It must use the weapons of God’s kingdom, not Caesar’s. And if it does, a new age can come, at least for a season, while we wait for the coming of the Prince of peace.

The Recovery Of Purpose

Every man and every nation must have goals, purposes, objectives. Without them, the man or the nation will die. All complex organisms rust out and ultimately perish if purpose goes or if, once the last goal is fulfilled, nothing remains to be done. Thus both capitalism and socialism, if totally successful, would perish. Both have as a goal the satisfaction of human material needs. If any nation accomplishes the goal of providing adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical care for all its people, that nation will die unless it has other and more lasting objectives. Ultimately life is meaningless if only material considerations are dominant.

Our world today is convulsed precisely because it has no larger goals than the solution of material problems. The agony rises in part from the fact that perceptive men now doubt that these material goals can ever be achieved. Thus Professor John Holt of Yale, who spent some time teaching at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, has written:

Nobody seriously believes that we are likely to solve, or are even moving toward a solution of, any of the most urgent problems of our times—war, the proliferation of atomic, chemical, and bacteriological weapons, overpopulation, poverty, the destruction of the earth’s natural resources, the degradation of man’s physical and biological environment, the fossilization and depersonalization of his political and economic institutions, his increasing alienation, boredom, anger. We do not think any more that we can really make the world a fit and happy and beautiful place for people to live; we scarcely think that we can keep it a place where people can live at all.

Because they are convinced that material goals are the sum total of life, despair grips the hearts of many. If material ends are all there is to life and if these ends cannot be secured, then life is a meaningless charade.

Dag Hammarskjold, in his earlier days, found life meaningless. He wrote: “What I ask for is absurd: that life shall have a meaning. What I strive for is impossible: that my life shall acquire a meaning. I dare not believe, I do not see how I shall ever be able to believe: that I am not alone” (Markings, p. 86). Such a feeling is the mother of despair, and of self-destruction.

Like Hammarskjöld at this stage in his pilgrimage, many young people today think that life has no ultimate meaning. They tell us this through the use of pot and LSD, the occupation of buildings and other assaults on the Establishment. They know only too well that the structures are ephemeral and that decay has set in. Sensing the impermanence, they continue to search for genuine meaning without any conviction that it exists. They want to find purpose in life. They want to lose themselves in something to which they can be fully committed and for which they can work, suffer, even be willing to die.

Dag Hammarskjöld found what he was looking for in Jesus Christ. He said yes to God. From that hour, he says, “I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, thereafter, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”

In these early days of 1970 we say to people everywhere that beyond the material things of life stand the great spiritual realities that endure forever. And beyond the spiritual realities there is God, revealed in Jesus Christ.

Before and beyond Christ there is nothing—for he is life’s ultimate. When men say yes to him, they find purpose and meaning in life, and a goal to which they can commit themselves without reservation.

Josef Hromadka

The late Josef Hromádka wrote in 1964 that although “believing Christians have certain objections to the principles of Marxist thought,” we dare not overlook, among other things, its concern for man’s “yearning for freedom of thought, ethical dignity, and a rich emotional life.”

We doubt whether Hromádka could have reaffirmed this earlier idealistic appraisal on his deathbed. The Czech Reformed theologian spent the Second World War teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. He returned after the war to a Czechoslovakia that had become a Soviet satellite and spent the rest of his life trying to build a theological bridge between the Communist and capitalist worlds. As a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, he helped to formulate pronouncements that subjected American policies to severe scrutiny but seldom said anything of Soviet attitudes. Hromádka founded the Christian Peace Conference, which reflected a similar, more intense bias. Although he denied he was a Communist, he left the impression that Marxist socialism was preferable to capitalism.

Hromádka’s optimism was shattered on August 21, 1968, when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the “democratization” program of Alexander Dubcek. To his credit, Hromádka courageously defied the intervention. He wrote a letter of protest to the Soviet ambassador in Prague the very next day.

It appears that relations between Eastern European churchmen deteriorated steadily thereafter. The showdown came at a meeting of the Working Committee of the Christian Peace Conference held last October in Bucknow, East Germany. One wing of the committee came demanding the resignation of Dr. J. N. Ondra as general secretary of the conference. Subsequently Ondra did resign. His opponents had hoped to keep the eighty-year-old Hromádka as a figurehead president, but Hromádka gave up the post in protest of the pressure upon Ondra.

Hromádka said in his letter of resignation that he “realized very clearly that the background of the drive against Dr. Ondra was purely political.” He felt that he himself was the real target because of his criticism of the Soviet-led invasion. “After a long talk with an official personality,” he said, “I came to realize that the issue of Dr. Ondra had been decided at a higher political level and that any activity of Dr. Ondra as general secretary would be made utterly impossible.”

Hromádka suffered a heart attack several weeks after submitting his resignation and died in a Prague hospital the day after Christmas. The question he seems to have left behind is whether he ever really trusted Communist leaders, or whether he was engaging in an experimental strategy on behalf of Christians who have no choice but to live under Communist rule. If indeed he had confidence in Red officialdom, then he surely died a disillusioned man. If the whole posture was a strategic experiment, it must be judged a failure, though one from which mankind can learn. The evidence seems to show that the Communists played along with him as long as he served their purposes. That is part of the essence of Marxism.

Mormons And Blacks

For many years the Mormon church has been under pressure from within and without to change its doctrine that forbids black males from becoming priests even though all other Mormon men are expected to do so. George Romney had to contend with this discriminatory doctrine when he was a presidential aspirant. More recently Brigham Young University has faced the refusal of blacks to compete against it in athletics. In response to this an authoritative statement has been issued from the church’s highest officials.

We commend this religious body for refusing to let popular protest shape its doctrines. Full civil liberties for blacks were affirmed, but the church contends that its priesthood is not a matter for civil law (unlike polygamy, where civil pressure was allowed to change practice if not doctrine). Freedom of religion demands that Mormons be allowed to have the kind of priesthood they want. In view of the rising women’s rights movement, one could expect future demands that not only blacks but women also be admitted to the Mormon priesthood!

On the other hand, we do not believe that any blacks should feel deprived because they are not eligible for this particular priesthood. While we applaud the Mormons’ stand for morality, we believe they are tragically misguided in their acceptance of Joseph Smith as a prophet and the books he allegedly discovered as divine revelation. They claim to accept the teachings of the Bible and assert that the other books in their canon do not contradict the Bible. But on this very issue of racial discrimination (as well as on many others) the Mormons go against the clear teachings of the New Testament. Whenever in the apostolic church there appeared the tendency to discriminate because of race, wealth, or religious or cultural background, it was roundly denounced. Paul said, for example, that among those for whom Christ is Lord “there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). To the extent that any group teaches or practices such discrimination it cannot be considered true to the biblical revelation.

The Biafran Tragedy

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has urged readers to pray for the resolution of the Biafra-Nigeria conflict, and we greeted the news of the ending of its military phase with thankfulness to God. But the war has not really ended (see News, page 32). Left are thousands of suffering people whose physical agony and whose devastated homeland constitute a desperate cry for help. The marks of the struggle will not be erased from the bodies or the minds of many Biafrans all the days of this life.

The prayers of Christian people are still essential. But more is required of them. May they, and the nations of the world, respond with an extraordinary outpouring of compassion, sending food, medical supplies, and other help, and doing whatever else they can to promote the reconstruction of this stricken land.

We hope that the nations of the world will see to it that the Biafrans in defeat are treated humanely by Nigerian leaders, brought back into the councils of the state, and given every opportunity to develop fraternal relationships that will encourage peaceful progress in a nation that can ill afford war as a means for the resolution of differences.

Jock Yablonski

In the final hours of a decade marked by a series of assassinations, Jock Yablonski and his wife and daughter were murdered in their home in the heart of the western Pennsylvania soft-coal country. The motive behind the slayings may never be known, but the potential effects are obvious and should be resisted. Yablonski campaigned unsuccessfully for the presidency of the United Mine Workers on a reform platform. Other union leaders with courage ought not to be intimidated by his death. Christians of all people need to be in the forefront of efforts in behalf of integrity and justice—in the labor movement as in every other social institution.

Betrayals Of Purpose

Every year after Christmas the many learned societies congregate, and thousands of professors renew contacts with men in their own disciplines. Ever since their beginnings these organizations have, like shoemakers, stuck to their lasts. But this year things were different. Under the proddings of New Left professors, most of the learned associations endured disruptions and serious challenges to the purposes for which they were established.

At the heart of the thrust by the New Left was the old endeavor of trying to politicize scholarship, to make these organizations the agents of revolution. The American Philosophical Association was exposed to two hours of raised voices and illogic before it yielded to the demands of the radicals and voted for an immediate pullout of U. S. forces in Viet Nam. What competence the philosophers have to make pronouncements on political matters remains undefined. The Modern Language Association learned the language of politics amid scuffles, loud voices, and protests. The usual left-wing proposals were advanced and will be voted on by mail since they were not adopted at the annual meeting. The American Historical Association suffered from a bruising foray designed to bring radical left-wing historian Staughton Lynd to the presidency; the attempt failed by a vote of 1,040 to 396.

What has this all to do with the Church? Perhaps the words of a refugee professor from Nazi Germany answer the question. Aron Gurwitsch said: “The problem before us is whether a professional and scholarly association does not become unfaithful to its destiny, to its logic by taking a stand on political questions. It would mean the beginning of complete politicization of our organization and all spheres of life, and this is the beginning of totalitarianism.” One need not look further than the World Council of Churches meetings at Uppsala in 1968 or the recent imbroglio of the National Council of Churches in Detroit for the moral. The ecumenical movement has been politicized more than any of the learned associations, and this has caused it to become unfaithful to its destiny and to its logic. In the transition the trumpet the Church is called to sound has been muted, the Gospel it is called to proclaim has been concealed.

Surely the time has come for the Church to reverse the process of politicizing, to discover again its spiritual mission, and to redevote its energies to what its genius consists in—proclaiming the Gospel, by which men are reconciled to God and to one another.

On Admiration

The Gallup organization asked 1,500 American men and women last November which two living men (from anywhere in the world) they most admired. As usually happens, the incumbent President headed the list. A little fewer than one-fourth of those interviewed named President Nixon as one of their two choices. In second place was Billy Graham, who was named by one out of every twelve people polled. Third place went to Vice President Agnew. Graham and Pope Paul (who was ninth most admired, named by one in forty) were the only men in the top ten who were not connected with the presidency or vice-presidency, either as incumbents or as aspirants.

That 8 per cent of a representative sample of Americans think so highly of Graham is illuminating. But unlike the politician, Graham is not seeking recognition for himself. He desires instead that all men admire and believe the God of whose Gospel he is privileged to be the most conspicuous proclaimer in our day. We fervently hope that the adult Americans who greatly admire Billy Graham are serving Jesus Christ in their own ways as devotedly as Graham serves him.

Honoring Parents

“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold” (Rom. 12:2, Phillips). For the Christian young person, refusal to fit into the world’s mold is difficult and challenging. One of the most important—and most often overlooked—ways for a Christian young person to be different is in his attitude toward his parents. In contemporary society, obeying and respecting parents is out, and “doing your own thing”—regardless of what anyone else may think—is in.

Both the Old and the New Testament make it clear that part of obedience to God is obedience to parents. One of the commandments of the Decalogue deals specifically with this issue, and that commandment is repeated in the New Testament. Paul says to children, “The right thing for you to do is to obey your parents as those whom the Lord has set over you” (Eph. 6:1, Phillips).

Paul bases this exhortation on a specific command from God himself. He does not suggest obedience simply as a pragmatic appropriation of the wisdom of parents, nor does he recommend it only as an expression of love for parents. He states that children should obey because it is right; it is the clearly revealed will of God.

Paul has in mind the young person who finds himself in a Christian home, and so he calls for obedience “in the Lord.” He is not asking young people to follow the guidance of parents who deliberately oppose the will of God for their children. But the general principle is that parents are a God-ordained authority and are to be obeyed.

Although this obedience is not optional, it is not represented as a grudging, resentful yielding to an oppressive power. It is the outgrowth of honor and respect and love for those who have first demonstrated their love for their children. There is no doubt that some children question with some validity whether their parents are worthy of honor. And parents are faced with a grave responsibility to their children. But Christian young people must beware lest in criticizing the “hypocrisy” of parents they reveal their own hypocrisy by ignoring God in their attitude toward parents while they busy themselves doing “important” things for God.

It is folly to ignore God’s commands, and this is especially true in the case of the command to honor father and mother. Society suffers when parental authority breaks down. The Christian young person who refuses the will of God at this point can hardly expect the blessing of God in other areas. And perhaps saddest of all is the fact that often Christian young people have been a hindrance to unsaved parents because they have failed to take their Christianity into the home.

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