NONRESISTANCE
But Jesus had not yet arrived at the most
stupefying of His revolutionary teachings. "Ye
have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: But whosoever shall smite thee on
thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at
the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy coat also. And whosoever
shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." (Matt. 5:38-39)
There could be no more definite repudiation of the old
law of retaliation. The greater part of those who call themselves Christians
not only have never observed this new Commandment, but have never been willing
to pretend to approve of it. For an infinite number of believers this principle
of not resisting evil has been the unendurable and inacceptable scandal of
Christianity.
There are three answers which men can make to violence:
revenge, flight, turning the other cheek. The first is the barbarous principle
of retaliation, now smoothed over and emasculated in the legal codes, but
nevertheless prevailing in usage: evil is returned for evil, either in one's
own person or by the means of intercessors, representatives of our tribal lack
of civilization, called judges or executioners in the legal profession. To the
evil committed by the first offender are added the evils committed by the
officers of justice. Often the punishment turns on the punisher and the
terrible chain of violence from one revenge to another stretches out perpetually.
Wrong is two-edged; it fails even if inflicted with the desire of doing good,
in nations, or families or individuals. A first crime brings after it a train
of compensations and punishments which are distributed with sinister
impartiality between offenders and offended. The law of retaliation can give a degrading
relief to him who is first struck, but instead of lessening evil it multiplies
it.
Flight is no better than retaliation. He who hides
himself redoubles his enemies' courage. Fear of retaliation can on rare
occasions hold back the violent hand, but the man who takes flight invites
pursuit. He who hides invites his adversary to make an end of him. His weakness
becomes the accomplice of the ferocity of others. Here also evil begets evil.
In spite of its apparent absurdity the only way is that
commanded by Jesus. If a man gives you a blow and you return another blow, he
will answer with his fists, you in turn with kicks,
weapons will be drawn and one of you may lose your life, often for a trivial
reason. If you fly, your adversary will follow you and emboldened by his first
experience will knock you down.
Turning the other
cheek means not receiving the second blow. It means cutting the chain of the
inevitable wrongs at the first link. Your adversary who expected resistance or
flight is humiliated before you and before himself. He was ready for anything
but this. He is thrown into confusion, a confusion which is almost shame. He
has the time to come to himself; your immobility cools his anger, gives him
time to reflect. We have the example of Christ Himself. He cannot accuse you of fear because you are ready to receive
the second blow, and you yourself show him the place to strike. Every man has
an obscure respect for courage in others, especially if it is moral courage,
the rarest and most difficult sort of bravery. An injured man who feels no
resentment and who does not run away shows more strength of soul, more mastery
of himself, more true heroism than he who in the blindness of rage rushes upon
the offender to render back to him twice the evil received. Quietness, when it
is not stupidity, gentleness, when it is not cowardice, astound common souls as
do all marvelous things. They make the very base understand that this man is
more than a man. The bully himself when not incited to follow by a hot answer
or by cowardly flight, remains paralyzed, feels almost afraid of this new, unknown,
puzzling force, the more so because among the greatest exciting factors for the
man who strikes, is his anticipated pleasure in the angry blow, in the
resistance, in the ensuing struggle. Man is a fighting animal; but with no
resistance offered the pleasure disappears; there is no zest left. There is no
longer an adversary, but a superior who says quietly, "Is that not enough? Here is the other cheek; strike as long as you
wish. It is better that my face should suffer than my soul. You can hurt me as
much as you wish, but you cannot force me to
follow you into a mad, brutal rage. The fact that someone has wronged me
cannot force me to act wrongly."
Literally
to follow this command of Jesus demands a mastery possessed by few, of the
blood, of the nerves, and of all the instincts of the baser part of our being.
It can only be performed by the truly saved, not the pretenders. For the others it is a bitter and repulsive command; but Jesus never said it would be easy to
follow Him. He never said it would be possible to obey Him without harsh
renunciations, without stern and continuous inner battles; without the denial
of the old Adam and the birth of the new man. And yet the results of
non-resistance, even if they are not always perfect, are certainly superior to
those of resistance or flight. The example of so extraordinary a spiritual mastery,
so impossible and unthinkable for common men, the almost superhuman fascination
of conduct so contrary to usual customs, traditions and passions; this example,
this spectacle of power, this puzzling miracle, unexpected like all miracles,
difficult to understand like all wonders, this example of it strong, sane man
who looks like other men, and yet who acts almost like a God, like a being
above other beings, above the motives which move other men—this example if
repeated more than once, if it cannot be laid to flat stupidity, if it is accompanied
by proofs of physical courage when physical courage is necessary to enjoy and
not to harm—this example has an effectiveness which we can imagine, soaked
though we are in the ideas of revenge and reprisals. We imagine it with
difficulty; we cannot prove it because we have had too few of such examples to
be able to cite even partial experiments as proofs of our intuition.
Many
in the church use made up situations like…”what if a man comes in your house
with a gun? And then wants to….” Jesus
told Peter to put the sword away. Put the gun away and non-resist.
But if this command of Jesus has never been obeyed or too
rarely obeyed, there is no proof that it cannot be followed, still less that it
ought to be rejected. It is offensive to human nature, but all real moral
conquests are repugnant to our nature. They are helpful abstractions of a part
of our soul—for some of us the most living part of the soul—and it is natural
that the threat of mutilation should make us shudder. But whether it pleases us or not, only by
accepting this command of Christ can we solve the problem of violence. It is
the only course which does not add evil to evil, which does not multiply evil a hundredfold, which
prevents the infection of the wound, which cuts out the malignant growth when
it is only a
tiny pimple. To answer blows with blows, evil deeds with evil deeds, is to meet
the attacker on his own ground, to proclaim oneself as low as he. To answer with
flight is to humiliate oneself before him,
and incite him to continue. To answer a furiously angry man with reasonable
words is useless effort. But to answer with a simple gesture of acceptance, to
endure for three days the bore who inflicts himself on you for an hour, to
offer your breast to the man who has struck you on the shoulder, to give a
thousand to the man who has stolen a hundred from you, these are acts of heroic
excellence, flat though they may appear, so extraordinary that they overcome
the brutal bully with the irresistible majesty of the divine. Only he who has conquered himself can
conquer his enemies.* Only the saints can charm wolves to mildness. Only he
who has transformed his own soul can transform the souls of his brothers, and
transform the world into a less grievous place for all.*
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