This could be applied to about anything, but today it comes about because I've been thinking about the problem of violence (again) the last couple days due to a conversation over on The God Journey Forum. One of the things that seems to always come up with difficult issues like this is people always bring up hypothetical questions of what they would do if such and such was to happen. This morning something seemed to become clearer to me as I thought about why the Christian community remains so supportive of war and the use of violence and why we as individuals remain so confused about the things Jesus said about loving others...even our enemies. Hypotheticals are a form of future tripping and Jesus doesn't exist in those imagined futures. So we are left all alone there with our fear, and then all that makes sense is self-preservation. The hound of heaven just doesn't seem to let me off that easily anymore. And what I mean by that is, his love for me and the love I know he has for every other human being just won't allow me to live in peace while I keep violence as an option, stuffed in my back pocket, ready to use at moments notice. His gentle loving of me and his wooing of my heart and mind into a new space over the past few years has silenced my "YES, BUT". It has taken some time, but back at the beginning of myself feeling challenged in my heart and mind on these things, he did promise me that he could take me there.
Here is where it has left me. I don't know how I would react in a moment of threat to my life or the life of someone I care for. All I can go by is what I know Jesus is speaking to me right now in this moment and that has nothing to do with hypotheticals. And as I learn to stay in the moment with Jesus, I know this very thing...the actions of self giving, of love, of sacrifice, of dying are of Him...violence is not and never will be.
10 comments:
Fantastic post!
I am just beginning to let go of the hypotheticals. When this war talk was going on at TGJ forum a year ago, I was thinking out all of those hypotheticals about someone putting a gun to my child's head and what would I do. It took me nowhere. As you stated, Jesus isn't in those imaginings. He is here and now and I am grateful.
This is incredibly timely. Thank you.
Great stuff, Kent.
Now, I'm gonna trip over to TGJ and see what all the fuss is about :)
The picture I found for this post seems to convey the most profound thing to me. Everything is either an expression flowing from freedom and the love that makes real freedom possible or it is flowing from non-freedom and the fear that controls us there.
The picture reminds me of Ecstasy by Maxfield Parrish .. You can see it here (amongst other places)...
http://www.artsycraftsy.com/parrish/mp_ecstasy.html
Mike T
In Tennessee
PS... I enjoyed reading your site
That's a cool picture Mike and I can see the connection to the picture I posted.
I'm glad you found something worth reading here. Seeing The Shack listed in your favorite books I'm guessing that is how you found your way here?
Thanks for this Kent. The conversation you referred to made me very unsettled and i didn't know why. I wanted to give room for people to express what they thought. I thought so many of the ideas were so out there and found no emotional energy to confront AS IT WAS SO theoretical.
You addressed my unsettledness here. In this discussion, i found that Jesus wasn't a part of as it had nothing to do with the present. I really enjoy your blog !
Thanks for dropping the comment Jim. I agree that the way those conversatins often go it is unsettling to most watching in on it. I had sent the author of the thread a PM with a podcast for her to listen to if she was interested and had told her I was doing it privately because I rarely get involved these days on the forum with stuff like that because it seems to always end up in the realm of disrespectful on so many levels. Well, I ended up waking up one morning with something I just felt like adding to the conversation with the hopes that it might be helpful for some watching in on it. Who knows if it was.
But for me, as I have mentioned here, I think the Spirit let me see something through that thread that turns out to be very helpful to me in describing and putting to words something that I see as being very problematic for us all.
While you were here adding your comment I was on the forum starting a new thread about hypothetical questions and situations. Timing is an interesting thing.
I'm glad you are finding things here that are encouraging to you.
Hi Kent,
I love your perspectives on things! I think I'm starting to see you as a Spirit-father in some sense. a shepherd without the lording-it-over.
As I read your post, something that I've thought on before when listening/reading about the violence-and-christianity debate came to mind. I can't remember the exact reference, but as Jesus is going towards the cross, and has an understanding of what is ahead of Him, He actually encourages His disciples to arm themselves(which lead in part to Peter (the Zealot) chopping the ear off someone.. ). In the light of Jesus-the-pacifist, this is an interesting thing for him to say. Could it be, that He knew He was called to lay down His life, but that in certain circumstances, we are called to protect ourselves - possibly with violence? I think, personally, this takes me back to God's leading in a given situation, and I don't think it gives us the right to excuse religious wars, or the like, but think that there might be value in 'violence-as-protection' when and if the spirit leads us.
I do think this is a bigger topic than I can flesh out here, but it is something that's come up in discussion often, and that scripture was something that had brought me to question whether our hard-and-fast rule of Jesus' non-violence was something He expected His followers to abide by in ALL situations..
Cam, how about just thinking of me as a brother.... :) and as far as finding things here on my blog and on the forum that are helping you think differently about some of these things, all I have to say is...the more fear begins to lose it's grip on us the more this will continue to happen. It's a good thing to be able to clear the slate and look at things through a prisms of love and not that old prism of fear. That happens as we come to a place of feeling safe with Father and begin to rest in his love and grace....a love and grace that takes away the fear of making mistakes.
As far as violence goes and what I can speak to from my own experience is that this has been a gradual process of change. So, all you can do is walk in what Father has revealed to you today and continue to ask the questions. 3 years ago I couldn't embrace what I feel free to embrace today and never in the process did I feel forced. It was a gentle invitation to keep walking each day in what was opening up in front of me. I cannot say that these were not difficult things to face, it was always very challenging things to my former paradigms. But in time, stepping out of one space into a new one always began to feel possible....and before I was even aware of it having happened I was seeing things in a way that I had never seen them before. And when those changes produce a tangible peace and a freedom from frear like we have never experienced, it has a way of confirming to us that something real has happened and is still in the process of happening.
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