Can We Transcend the Nuclear Stalemate?: Our Task Is Not to Wrestle with the World on Its Own Terms, but to Transform It from Above

There is on this earth a fierce struggle between two kingdoms—the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Between these two kingdoms, the great issues of our faith hang in uneasy balance. Who can resolve the tension between the social gospel and redemptive proclamation; between love and justice; between law and spirit; between Caesar and God? Simple answers have given rise to many of the one-sided and devastating movements of history.

Both kingdoms are in our midst. The dividing line between them runs through the human heart and cleaves it in two. I have entered the kingdom of heaven just so far as I know the lordship of its King; but the pattern of my life reveals other allegiances as well. And so the battle of sovereignty is waged upon the homely ground of my daily existence.

Dead End?

There are those who urge the United States toward unilateral disarmament but who steadfastly refuse to address the question, What will be the fate of a major power after it yields up its capability to defend itself? Similarly, many press for even stronger military might, but will not squarely face the simple fact that an unabated arms race must sooner or later spell doom for the planet—it is only a matter of time.

We may take these to be the extreme positions in the current debate. And yet, what middle ground offers itself? There seems to be none that simultaneously avoids the morbid certainties lying at both extremes. The debate becomes increasingly surrealistic, and one begins to crave a return to common sense and honesty, however humble. Imagine a national leader making a short statement to this effect: “Our present policy appears to be leading to disaster. The only alternatives we know of also promise disaster. We see no way out of the dilemma.”

Such a speech might have a remarkably transforming effect upon the national psyche. To begin with, there is a healing and creative power in the truth itself. There is also something to be said for official forthrightness. And then, one is almost compelled to conclude this fearful admission with the words, “Let us pray.” When we have abandoned hope in the old resources, we are moved to seek new ones.

What resources might we discover in such a position?

It may be best to approach the problem by first bringing it closer to home. If an armed murderer appears at my door, threatening my wife and children, should I crush his skull with a wooden club, or should I forgo violence and seek instead—by whatever means presents itself—to show love toward him, even if it means watching him destroy my family? Some, appealing perhaps to the Sermon on the Mount or to God’s love, argue for pacifism. Others, referring to the principle of justice, or to scriptural support for a sword-wielding civil authority, claim the right to protect their loved ones through violence. Who is right?

There is a curious incident recorded in the Gospel of John. The Roman cohort places Jesus under arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is concerned to protect his disciples. He asks those who have come, “Whom do you seek?” They answer, “Jesus the Nazarene,” and he replies, “I am he.” At this word, they are thrown to the ground as if by some unseen force. The question and answer are then repeated, with this difference: Jesus says, “I told you that I am he; if therefore you seek me, let these go their way.” It seems clear, then, that the demonstration of uncanny power—which must have thoroughly shaken the soldiers—was intended for the disciples’ protection.

Can this incident instruct me regarding nuclear war or the murderous challenger at my own door? It hardly seems so. Indeed, was it not a cheap escape from the human dilemma when Jesus invoked supernatural power to deliver himself from the awful choice between violence and the harm of his disciples? When the chips were down, he summoned a deus ex machina, and so fled his humanity. What did he leave us as options when the soldiers come? Nothing but an ugly choice between a sin of commission and a sin of omission.

Or have we missed something? Might not the lesson of Gethsemane be simply this: at that point where the kingdom of God takes hold of us, it transforms our world. The old contradictions and limitations no longer apply. The world, even in its outward aspect, becomes an expression of the kingdom. Our task as Christians is nothing less than to transform the world around us, to live the prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven.”

Now, one of the principles of the kingdom is just this: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” In truly loving our enemies, we tap that power of the heavenly kingdom that transforms the world. Or rather, the love is the power. Jesus loved the soldiers and officers fully as much as he loved his disciples. The power of his words in Gethsemane was not a cheap device, but the inevitable result of his desire to protect his enemies and minister to their needs. After all, the battle lines between the warring kingdoms run through the hearts of the soldiers as well.

The love that God is consumes, purges, destroys, transforms, purifies. If, confronted by the marauder at my door, I were driven by a love as eager to deliver him from the threatened evil as to shield my own family from harm, I would discover in that love the means of its own fulfillment.

I would become a channel for the divine invasion of the world. The kingdom of God, at that moment and place, would burn away the worldly illusion that I must choose this evil or that. A choice between evils is always a reflection of my own limitation, of my opacity to the divine light that would shine through me.

Transcending “Either/Or”

Joseph Chilton Pearce relates an incident illustrating well the transforming power of the kingdom. A young woman in New York City was seized by two men and thrown into the front seat of a car, a knife at her throat. The men, nearly incoherent in their agitation, informed her repeatedly that they were going to rape and kill her, and asked her what it was like to know she would soon die. Sensing the intensity of their fear and anger, she realized that their threats were real, and that she was indeed about to die. She yielded to that realization, and immediately discovered within herself a place of serenity and acceptance. As the men drove her to an isolated spot in New Jersey, she questioned them with a sincere interest in their difficulties, which seemed only to perplex them and increase their frenzy. As Pearce continues the story:

“They arrived at a place that seemed familiar to them and in the dim light pointed out to her several mounds they claimed to be previous victims. Demanding that she tell them how it felt to be the next, they stripped her and threw her to the ground, both now whimpering and making strange noises. Looking up at the boy mounted over her, she dimly sensed a contorted and broken face. Compassion filled her anew, and she put her hands up, cradled his cheeks in her palms, and said quietly, ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid.’

“At this, the young men collapsed into a heap, overcome with great, wracking sobs, shaking uncontrollably in a spasm of wild grief. The other man sat pounding the ground and shouting, ‘What is it? What is it? What’s going wrong?’ Then he, too, burst into the same strange, grief-stricken sobs.”

There was nothing left but for her to suggest they take her back to the city. This they did, continuing their sobbing, and when she asked for subway money, they complied. She walked away, descending the stairs to the subway, and fainted.

Law And The Kingdom

Can we extract rules from this story? Not at all. It teaches neither violence nor inaction, and what it does teach we dare not formulate as a law. Indeed, it may be only because she was bound by no law that the young woman found a way to rise above the constraining alternatives that form the content of any law. For a law can say, “strike back” or “do not strike back.” But just as it cannot decree, “When your enemies confront you, display a power that makes them fall down”—neither can it say, “Discover that place of peace and love within you that transforms the current moment and creates new possibilities for healing.” We cannot command the Spirit; rather, he commands us, and when he does, no law constrains us. We know only the overpowering presence of a reality greater than ourselves; the necessity of action that can be nothing other than what it is, namely, the inevitable expression of love in these present circumstances, at this moment, unique in all of time and space. We become the instrument of the Spirit of God. Here is the gospel that sets at nought the law.

Such, however, is not my normal experience. The moment for decision arrives, and, unfortunately, I find that my personal limitations are controlling. When the murderer appears at my door, I will most likely defend my home with violence, or else cower in fear—or perhaps I will cast about frantically for some diversion to buy time, only to realize with horror that I have let the opportunity for action pass. I am what I am.

But if, amidst my limitations, I respond according to the best guidance of my own conscience—whether it be to protect my loved ones with violence, or to follow a course of inaction on deeply felt principle—and if death follows, who then will be my judge? I myself know—or hope—that someday I will be capable of a far higher response to such a threat. But in the absence of deeper spiritual resources, my limitations rule; and it would be a moral failure for me not to remain passive, according to the demands of my conscience. While both alternatives fall short of the kingdom, and neither can be pronounced the “right” one, either may gain a moral authority over me as a result of my limitations.

We are not discussing a perspective restricted to exceptional cases or to global dilemmas. Every choice raises exactly the same considerations. Only the action is wholly good that represents the living Spirit’s transforming activity in the world. The manner of the kingdom’s working in the Garden of Gethsemane is its manner of working at all times and everywhere. The smallest gesture to my neighbor represents a choice between evils, unless I am as fully “possessed” by the Spirit as was the young woman confronting her attackers. For the gesture is an expression of all that I am—and I remain torn between two kingdoms. Who among us can help another without knowing some hint of pride?

Christian thinkers have long realized that sin is more fundamentally a state of being than a definable action. We can fully judge a man’s actions only when we see them as an expression of what he is. All that we have been discussing reflects this fact. Caught between two kingdoms, I find that my character has been formed substantially under the influence of the lower one. To speak of my limitation, then, is simply to acknowledge that my choices and actions reflect my character. While I always possess some area of freedom to alter my character—to move toward full citizenship in the higher kingdom—that freedom is rarely if ever absolute. It is constrained by what I am, by the accumulated effects of past choices and errors. Therefore, the alternatives confronting my fallen nature in the world—and those offered by every legal formula—present an apparent “choice between evils.”

Christian And State

The only escape from this choice lies in the transforming way. We see this way in the life of Jesus. We cannot imagine him forming rule-based “contingency plans” for meeting the next day’s challenges. His life was, purely and simply, the unmediated life of the kingdom. Where he was, life poured into the world. The relation between Caesar and God—to take one example—did not represent a “problem” for him. He always knew what was required of him, because he always acted within that spiritual realm where every man—whether he be Caesar or bishop—stands naked before God. At each moment there was simply the absolute, tranforming necessity posed by the severe demands of his love. It is only because we are cut off from the kingdom of heaven, and are forced to conceive its principles in terms of the possibilities of this world, that we end up with theoretical “problems.”

Jesus did not respond to his questioners by recommending particular courses of action as general rules. If he said, “Sell all your belongings,” or “Go and wash,” or “Rise up and walk,” he was addressing the innermost and present needs of the one before him. Requests for general legal formulations were met with baffling responses—baffling just because they redirected attention to unseen spiritual possibilities.

Scripture records an instructive incident in this regard. Tax collectors approached Peter, wondering whether his master paid a certain tax. Later, Jesus responded by asking, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their sons, or from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel; take that and give it to them for me and for yourself” (Matt. 17:24–27).

If earthly kings do not collect taxes from their sons, how much more should the sons of God be free from taxation? Taxes sustain the institutions of earth, and these in turn survive as institutions precisely by bowing to the either/or alternatives of a world blind to the Spirit. For the Spirit is a great destroyer, bursting every form into which we pour him. What has not yet become “as in heaven” must pass away. Not once, but many times, we must exchange old wineskins for new.

“Then the sons are free.” But, however free Jesus himself may have been, the disciples had barely glimpsed the transforming way. They still lived very much in the world, and so some sort of accommodation to the demands of the world was required. But Jesus would make no law out of the accommodation; his demand for perfection would not allow it. He said neither “You must pay the tax” nor “You must not pay the tax.” His practical guidance for the current case was solely prudential (“not to give offense”), and the immediate requirement was met by—what? Another apparent resort to a deus ex machina—which, in fact, was the perfect, transforming response flowing from the higher kingdom.

It is as if Jesus attempts to block at every turn our tendency to see the matter in the world’s terms, directing our gaze instead to the kingdom. Look again at the message: (1) as a son, the disciple is free from obligation to pay the tax; (2) in order not to give offense, he will pay it this time; (3) but—as if to give the final blow to any rule satisfying the terms of the world—the tax is actually paid by a supernaturally produced coin.

If we would elicit a principle from the episode, it must be that our relation to the institutions of the world has no fixed definition—it is prudential, incidental to the working of higher principles that do not recognize the world’s “hard realities.” The goals we strive for relate to another kingdom. But insofar as we fall short of entering that kingdom, we face the necessity of accommodation with the world. We may hope to glean treasure from the sea, and so contribute to the institutions about us in the unstained coinage of the Spirit. But all too often we will find ourselves caught between the two kingdoms. In the absence of spiritual treasure, we are left with coins of the world, with institutions we require for our livelihood but can never wholly support, and with a host of insoluble “issues.” And so we balance prudence with our highest guiding principles in the best way we can.

What Shall We Do?

“Well,” you may reply, “all this to tell us we must live in the world prudently! Have you nothing more to say? There are Christians fighting for a nuclear freeze, and there are Christians demanding a further weapons buildup. If we are not, in fact, at a dead end, what do you counsel?”

There is little more I know to say. The rules you ask for cannot be given. If our hearts do not burn within us as we contemplate the kingdom of God, then we bring no hope to the world. If they do, then while we will each individually go whatever way we must go, and while we may seem to work at cross-purposes, the result can only be an ever-greater realization of the kingdom.

This is not to say that the particulars of our choices, and our struggles to discern the right way, are unimportant. Indeed, these struggles and these choices are critical to our destiny. But the point is this: Our activities lose their importance when we view them against the backdrop of world history, rather than against the coming of the kingdom. After all, we do not measure the significance of the life of Jesus against the social, political, and military issues of the Roman world.

The effort to see kingdom history, then, is no denial of the world. For the acts that promise a transformation of the world are precisely those that descend from the Spirit. Shall anything ascend to heaven that has not already decended from there? Our task is not to wrestle with the world on its own terms, but to transform it from above. And if we do wrestle, we shall nevertheless see our wrestling in a light that is lost to the world.

A friend of mine—a deeply spiritual individual—was a pacifist and conscientious objector during his college years. This was the Vietnam era, and he faced the necessity of military service upon graduation. After a great deal of soul searching, he rejected his status as a conscientious objector, entered the army’s officer corps, and subsequently served in Vietnam. He commented to me afterward, “I believe it would be possible to train one’s rifle sights on a Viet Cong guerrilla and squeeze the trigger, all the while loving him.”

The remark startles. I do not like it. But this friend was acutely aware of the human pain and suffering likely to result from every alternative the world offered in Vietnam. He did not feel he could escape responsibility by claiming to be above the either/or of the world when in fact he was not. He studied the situation in all its complexity, and then resolved to act according to his best understanding. Above all, he knew that the particular physical cause of a man’s passing from this world is not nearly so important for the world’s future as the love and hate that accompany even the most routine chatter over afternoon tea.

I have learned to accept my friend’s stance as a genuine expression of the divine necessity pressing upon him. We may charge him with the death of that guerrilla—just as I may be charged with the death of my children if I choose nonresistance when the murderer appears at my door. Both positions are the expression of love striven for, but a love that is still imperfect and therefore subject to the choice between evils.

I urge neither stance upon my fellows. How could I? The very love sought in both causes—if once it takes hold of a man—will burst the shackles of every law. I do not even know that the two stances are, in the final analysis, different. For to love as best I can the murderer I meet pacifically at my door, or the human target sighted along my rifle barrel, is one thing. To be wholly possessed by love—and that is the goal of both strivings—is quite another. From where I stand now, I cannot know what that love, once achieved, will require of me, nor what radical transformations of the world it will make possible. I serve a Lord who, by his pain and suffering—by his ability amidst his own extremity to love the soldiers who arrested him—loosed into the world a power of healing sufficient to reconcile all things to himself.

We share in his mission. If we fulfill it well, then we will remain brothers and sisters even as we pursue opposite political strategies, even as we aim bullets—or atomic bombs—at each other, even as we drive tanks or lay our bodies down before them. And through our love we will discover … well, who can describe what the world will then see? But one thing is certain: in no other way will the kingdom come.

Tim Stafford is a free-lance writer living in Santa Rosa, California. He is a distinguished contributor to several magazines. His latest book is Do You Sometimes Feel Like a Nobody? (Zondervan, 1980).

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