A reader writes:
As a guy who has been become convinced in recent years that the Christian walk is a call to non-violence, I really enjoyed your Newsweek piece. In that spirit, I thought I'd zap you an excerpt from a talk given at a Pax Christi event:
Another way Christians discount Jesus’ teachings is to find snippets in the Gospels that they think justify the use of violence. They may cite Jesus’ healing of the Centurion’s servant and point out that Jesus didn’t tell the Centurion to give up his occupation as a soldier (Mt 8:5-13). But that was an example of Jesus loving a representative of his people’s enemy, the occupying Roman army, a pagan. When Jesus teaches his disciples, his message is clear. Or they may cite Jesus’ mentioning the sword as a metaphor (Mt 10:34, Lk 22:36) and conclude that Jesus approved of the use of weapons in self-defense. But Jesus did no such thing. When the disciples in Luke misinterpret Jesus’ saying and think he is referring to real swords, he rebukes them. And in the garden, he rejects the use of a sword in his own defense.
Or they may cite Jesus’ making a whip of cords when he cleansed the temple (Jn 2:13-16), as if that justified our building nuclear arsenals. But the possibility that Jesus used a whip to drive animals out of the temple is hardly a justification for the use of lethal force against other human beings loved by God.
The early Church resorted to no such dodges to justify the use of violence even in legitimate self-defense. They accepted suffering and death, in imitation of Jesus, with the result that—as Tertullian said in the 3rd Century—the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. Their response to persecution also seemed impractical and ineffective in worldly terms, but God was able to use their faithfulness to build his Church.
Many modern readers who wish to justify Christian violence are especially interested in finding violence in the Temple cleansing scene. I think it's important to note that Scripture doesn't mention any harm coming to anyone or anything during that narrative. Since the audible "crack" of a whip was, and is, a common animal herding technique, that seems the most logical assumed use of the whip. Jesus used the whip to quickly drive the animals from the Temple "marketplace."
Also, we should consider an elephant in the room: The authorities who executed Jesus made no mention of violence having occurred at the Temple. For a group that was eagerly seeking trumped up charges against him, a conspicuous event in which Jesus had whipped people at the Temple would have been a gift-wrapped legal charge. But there is no mention of it in their justifications for sending him to the cross.
The Dish 