Path of nonviolence is God's call: Exploring two traditions

Some profound ideas need new words to express them. Such is the case with “satyagraha,” a word that evolved in 1910 in an attempt to identify the powerful philosophy being taught by Mohandas Gandhi. While sometimes incorrectly described or limited to “passive resistance,” its power proved to be superior in freeing India from many of its own evils as well as from the domination of the British Empire. Some have called satyagraha the moral equivalent of war.

In a like manner, Jesus embodied an active non-violent life. He promised that if we followed his example, it would create a universal kingdom characterized by peace and justice. Jesus understood that, as some might say, it is “natural” to return a blow for a blow. Yet He required his followers to do just the opposite: “Never pay back evil for evil ... If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink ...”  “If he compels you to carry his burden for one mile, carry it two miles instead.” Jesus taught, and evidently believed, that love could change the heart of an enemy and even turn the enemy into a friend. 

For anyone seriously interested in exploring this philosophy I refer them to a recent relatively small soft cover book by Terrence J. Rynne, “Gandhi and Jesus – The Saving Power of Nonviolence.” In less than 200 pages, one is challenged with the practical and realistic teachings of Gandhi and Jesus as being superior and more lasting than the numerous wars, pogroms and genocides that have characterized human history both past and present.

In many ways the book is very timely, particularly in our present situation where we have been playing footloose and fancy free with many of the precious lessons mankind has learned through the years.  Of all nations, ours is possibly the most egregious in recent years in throwing out mankind’s lessons embodied in the Magna Carta, the Geneva Conventions and, through a clever twist of words, stripping “enemy combatants” of their basic human rights.

I apologize in advance for anyone who mistakenly thinks I am discounting the debt of gratitude we owe our brave military men and women, but it still seems valid to ask, “Just what have our wars accomplished?” Or perhaps the question should more accurately be, “What have our wars accomplished that could not have borne better fruit using other means?” Historians are now even asking whether or not our own great Civil War could have been avoided.

Author Rynne even suggests that Christian soteriology (the theological term for the “study of salvation”) may need to be reevaluated. I feel he may be on to something. I have never been comfortable with the idea of God punishing someone else for my sins. Nor do I find moral or ethical satisfaction in a gleeful anticipation of a bloody battle of Armageddon fulfilling the will of a loving creator. The Sermon on the Mount indicates nonviolence is central to Christianity or, as Rynne says, “Nonviolence is the praxis of God’s system.”