To Hell with Violence

Pastor’s Epistle—May, A.D. 2019 C

Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle.

—Solzhenitsyn

By rights, May ought to be a season of celebration, of new life and new warmth. In the dozen or so years that I’ve lived in the upper Midwest, May has quickly become one of my very favorite months. It heralds graduations and confirmations and blessings of every sort. The snow reluctantly retreats, and the sun lingers blissfully deep into the night.

Yet instead of a celebration of life, the news reports a litany of death: shootings in American synagogues and New Zealand mosques; the bombing of Sri Lankan churches on Easter Sunday; everywhere violence in the name of race or tribe, country or creed. The Middle East has ISIS, while the US has Nazis and white nationalists. I’d ask where all this has come from, but I suspect that it’s always been there, a sickness sizzling beneath the surface. Only recently has it grown bold enough to step again into the light.

Christianity must condemn violence in all its forms, whether we’re dealing with mass shootings or police brutality, terrorism or warfare. Violence must always and only be a last resort, because it represents a complete spiritual failure and humanitarian breakdown. Even those Just War theories most prone to celebrate the sword as an instrument of state or divine justice readily admit that the only truly just war is a defensive war.

I can’t believe that it’s become necessary to say this in the twenty-first century, but just to be clear, one cannot be both Christian and Nazi. One cannot embrace both Christ, a Jew, and white nationalism. Blood and soil are the oldest and cruelest of the pagan gods, and with organized religion in retreat they’ve once again come crawling out from their holes. To humbly acknowledge cultural blessings inherited from our forebears is one thing; to worship our own birthplace and blood as somehow superior to the rest of humanity is quite another.

Racism is a mortal sin. If we think that a person’s language or skin color or ethnicity or creed makes them somehow less than fully human—that the value of our life is greater than theirs—then we have already enrolled ourselves into the armies of hell. We have already exalted ourselves above our brothers and sisters, as Satan did, and we are already casting our neighbors into the refuse heap of history, as Satan does.

The value of each and every human life is the exactly the same: One. It doesn’t matter how old or how young, how dark or how light, how Western or how Eastern; healthy or unhealthy, strong or weak, male or female, Gentile or Jew, slave or free. All of us are made in the image of God. All of us are human, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. “That,” said Aslan, “is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

There is never an excuse for shooting up a synagogue or blowing up a church. There is never an excuse for unarmed suspects shot dozens of times by police, or for wedding receptions in the Middle East annihilated by drone-fired missiles, which we in our prophetic arrogance name “hellfire.” There can never be an excuse for racism, or terrorism, or children dying of sickness and starvation by the gated communities of the rich. None of that is of heaven. All of that is of hell.

And all of this would drive us mad, had our Lord not unmasked the impotence of all violence from the Cross. We threw everything we had at Him that day—nails and spear, thorns and lash—and He just took it. He took it all upon and within Himself, all of our rage, all of our state-sponsored cruelty. And He drowned it in the infinite depths of His life-giving mercy and love. The Resurrection lays bare the lie upon which all of our violence is founded. Hell shall rage and death lash out, but they cannot change the fact that God shall have the final Word. And that Word is life everlasting.

To hell with violence. To hell with hatred. To hell with racism and tribalism and endless unholy wars. That’s where it all belongs, in hell. Look instead to the power of the Risen Christ. Look to the Cross victorious over sin and death and hell. Look to the Resurrection of us all.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.