For the people who came to my talk, after giving the talk, I realized I missed and wasn’t clear about some points. For people who missed the talk, here’s a synopsis.
Yesterday night I gave a 48 minute talk about ‘Nonviolence: the Gospel and the State.’ I was only supposed to talk for 30 minutes but I got carried away. It was my first time giving a talk in front of people. Some key thoughts:
1) the greatest commandment is the purpose for our lives,
2) we should obey the government but not become part of the government or else we’ll become violent (assuming the government has a military),
3) early century Christians were nonviolent, but when Christianity become the State religion in the 4th century, violence became part of Christian teaching,
4) during the reformation, both protestants and catholics persecuted another reformation, The Radical Reformation (Anabaptists), that was going on at the same time where nonviolent Christians were trying to separate from the State,
5) the puritans from the Puritan reformation, which happened after the Protestant reformation, came along with Catholics to America slaughtering Indians, enslaving Africans and further persecuting nonviolent Anabaptists in America because the Anabaptists wanted to be peaceful,
6) still to this day, the theology of violence and non-separation of Church and State, which come together, are prevalent, but are in contradiction to the Greatest Commandment.
7) Furthermore, I argued against objections to nonviolence, such as the end times wars being ‘descriptive, not prescriptive’ and Jesus establishing a new covenant with all people, not only Israel, meaning that God wouldn’t authorize wars like in the Old Testament because God loves everyone equally, both the righteous and unrighteous.
8) We can’t love and kill enemies at the same time.
9) It’s OK to discipline children to reform them, but if you kill the child, you can no longer reform him/her.
10) By being nonviolent like Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi you respect everyone, even the government (praying for the government as we pray for our enemies; obey our enemies), because you allow everyone to have their voice by not killing, imprisoning or kidnapping your opposition.
11) Our enemies have needs and if we obey, not ignore or rebel against, their needs while still obeying the Greatest Commandment, we will be the brightest light of God’s love.
12) God calls us to nonviolence, because it respects human dignity, humbles us and is the truest expression of love to everyone, just as God perfectly loves us.
P.S. I answer objections to Christian Biblical nonviolence in the comments at http://www.interconnectedness.net/2006/12/05/biblical-ethics/
This entry was originally published at Interconnectedness
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