The call to love embodies the rejection of violence

In The Violence of Modernity Stephen Freeman posited ten responses to the question, How should we live? I have been interacting with each of these points in a series of blog posts. Thus far:

• We live in the light of a Kingdom.
• Loving others begins with the love of God.
• Where your treasure is . . . 
• On the False God Called Politics
• On Loving Our Enemies
• More Thoughts On Loving Our Enemies

And so we come now to Father Freeman's sixth item:

Sixth, raise the taking of human life to a matter of prime importance and refuse to accept violence as a means to peace. Every single life is a vast and irreplaceable treasure.

The operative word here is "raise." In other words, we're not there yet. The taking of human life is widely condoned or excused in many situations: violence against the unborn being one example that leaps to mind. Police violence being another. Capital punishment another. And on the international scene, the constant threat of war.

But persons must begin with the personal. We are already far too prone to think in terms of movements, or political endeavors, of the world stage, before we first think of the near-at-hand, the personal, the given moment. 

But Father Freeman is nothing if not personal in his advice. To refuse to accept violence as a means to peace, or to any other form of well-being, has its prime application in relationships. In marriages, in friendships, among co-workers, on bowling teams, buses, or lines at the grocery store. 

Because "every single life is a vast and irreplaceable treasure," every personal relationship must be treated as sacred. When I talk to the cashier at the grocery, I am interacting with "a vast and irreplaceable treasure." How would it be if we approached all our personal interactions that way?

How do we get to that place? This would take such a re-working of my own natural tendencies and long-established habits as to almost require that I be born again! Who can imagine such things! It seems too much for me!

Well, here we might begin to notice that this sixth principle on Father Freeman's list really does rest on the first five. 

1. The Kingdom has come. This is the new reality of every Christian.
2. We are called by King Jesus to love people as image-bearers of God.
3. Therefore, economics is not the basis of relational life.
4. Neither is politics.
5. So we should love even those who on the level of economics or politics might be deemed "enemies."
6. And naturally then, eschew violence at all levels of human relationship.

Non-violence, non-retaliation, will be elements of responsible love for our enemies. And it should be needless to say, if we are called to love even our enemies and do them no harm, the same call applies to everyone else (not only our friends, but even the vast majority who are neither friend nor enemy).

There are many implications of this principle that might be teased out. God loved "the world" (meaning all), and so should we who are his children and are being formed in the image of Jesus. The call to sacrificial love is the highest calling imaginable. The Christian life is nothing if not transformative. 

People have sometimes asked me if I am a pacifist. My answer is No, because a true thoroughgoing pacifist can imagine no situation in which violence, fighting back, might be an appropriate response. I am not that fellow. But I do think that every act of violence is an affront to the Kingdom that Christ has ushered, and is ushering, into the world, and that I am called to represent. It is a Kingdom of Peace with a Prince of Peace. Therefore, all our justifications for violence are capitulations to the world's ways (the old world that will one day burn away, to be replaced by God's renewed creation).

Within the call to love is a call to do no harm. "Love does no harm to a neighbor," said Paul [Romans 13:10]. It is not up to us to draw the line where neighbor stops and enemy begins [Luke 10:25-37]. It is up to us to be the best neighbor our neighbor ever had (vast treasure that each of us are). 

There is no fear (of enemies) in love [1John 4:18], therefore no call for violence (by which we strive to protect ourselves from those we fear). Love calls us forth, it does not wall us in. Love tears down walls, it does not build them. And love heals wounds, it does not inflict them. There is no violence in love.