to the machine that you want to work.
What I believe, part 2
The Rule about Not Hitting Back
When I understood that the words "Do not fight against the evil person" really mean "Do not fight against the evil person", my picture of the teachings of Christ changed quickly, and I was surprised to look back at the strange way I had understood Christ's teachings before that.
I knew – we all know – that Christ taught us to love others. Sayings like "turn the other cheek" or "love your enemies" are at the bottom of all that he taught. From a child I knew this. But why had I not believed them as they were written? Why had I always thought that they were some kind of an impossible rule that no one could ever really obey? When Jesus said, "Do not fight against the evil person," he was saying that we should never act in any way that is not loving toward even the worst person. He said it so clearly that it is impossible to make it any more clear. So how was it that I, trying to believe that the One who said it was God, had the confidence to say that it was impossible for me to obey this rule. If the Master had said to me, "Go and cut timber," would I say, "I cannot do that"? Such an answer would have been saying one of two things: either that I do not believe what the Master says, or that I do not want to obey him.
Now here we have him telling us to do something (that is, not to fight against the evil person), and we have him saying that anyone who does this and teaches others to do it will be called great; and we have him saying that only those who obey him will receive life; and we see him living his own life by this rule; and we hear him saying the rule so clearly that we cannot be confused by its meaning. And then I find myself, who has never seriously even tried to obey the rule, saying, "But it is impossible to obey this rule; I need a miracle before I can do it."
I believe that God came down to earth in the person of Jesus, to save the world. I believe that God the Son died for us all, and by doing this he paid for our sins before his Father. I believe that he gave us the Church, to help us give his love to all who believe. But I believe too that the Son of God gave people a teaching that he wants us to follow if we are to receive his saving strength.
How had I come to say that what he asked me to do was not possible? He never said that. He just said, "Do it." And he said that those who will not do it will not go into the kingdom of heaven. He did not say it was impossible. The opposite is true. He said, "Working for me is easy, and what I ask you to carry is light." One of his followers, John, said, "His rules are not difficult." So how was it that I had said the rule that he and his followers lived by was not only difficult, but that it was impossible?
If people wanted to break a rule, what better argument could they find than the argument that the rule is impossible and that the person who made the rule never believed himself that the rule would work. This was just what I had done with the teachings of Christ. Thinking back over my life I could not remember a time when anyone had put it to me that clearly (for if they had, I would have been very surprised at the truth of it), but I could see that I had been learning to take this stand from the time that I was a child. I had been feeding on this lie as a baby takes milk from its mother's breast. And all through life I had been encouraged to build on it.
As a child I was told that Christ was God and his teachings are from God. At the same time I was told by the priests that I should see God in the government, the army, the police, and all who used force to protect me from evil people. I was taught to fight against evil people, and that it was wrong to give in to bad people. I learned to judge and punish, to go to war and kill those that I believed were bad. The army I was a part of even called itself the "Christ-loving Army". Its actions were encouraged by the Church. As a child I learned to hit back, and punish anyone who tried to hurt me, my family, or my country. At no time did the church teach me that this was wrong. The opposite was true. It taught me that all of this was right and good and in keeping with the teachings of Christ!
Peace and rest for myself, my family, and all that I owned, came through the law of a tooth for a tooth, the very law that Christ chose to change. Church leaders said Christ's teachings were from God, but that they were impossible to follow. Teachers outside the church said much the same. This teaching was so much a part of me, and so much in agreement with my selfish desires, that I never thought to question it. I did not see that it is impossible to believe Christ is God and to pray that his law of love should be at work in me when I was using my time and strength to help governments, courts, and armies build a country that goes against his teachings. What I had not seen at that time was that it would be much smarter to use my time and strength to build a country on the law of love, and then pray that God would do miracles to make courts and wars happen if that was what he wanted.
So I came to understand how this had all happened. It had happened because I obeyed Christ in my words, but did not obey him in my actions.
The rule not to hit back gives meaning to all that Christ taught; but only if you see it as a rule that we should follow – not just as a beautiful saying. It is the key that opens all, but only if you put it into the lock. Saying that the rule is impossible robs Christ's teachings of their strength. It is like putting a motor in place, starting it up, but not joining it with a belt to the machine that you want to work.
| …but not joining it with a belt to the machine that you want to work. |
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A short time ago I was reading Matthew 5 with a Jewish teacher. At almost every line, the teacher would say, "That is in the Jewish law too." And he would show me where it was. But when we came to the words about not hitting back, he did not say that they were in the Jewish law.
What he did do was to ask me, "Do Christians obey this rule? Do they turn the other cheek?"
I had no answer, for I knew that at that very time Christians were the ones who were doing the hitting and Jews were the ones who were turning the other cheek. Instead, I asked him if the teaching was in the Jewish law.
He answered, "No, it is not." But then he asked again, "Do Christians obey it?" By this question he was showing me that the Christians had nothing better than the Jews if they were not willing to follow their own rule. And I had no answer to give him.
Having understood the meaning of the teaching, I was able also to understand what had been happening in my own spirit. My lips had been saying that I believed Jesus was God and that his teachings were from God; but I had been living my life in a way that was opposite to his teachings. To bring meaning from the difference between my actions and my beliefs, I had been forced to say that the teachings, beautiful or not, were impossible in the real world. All through the Bible we read that God punished the Jews when they believed in false gods and not in the true God. In I Samuel 8 and 12 we read that God was angry because the people wanted a man-king instead of God, who had been their King. Samuel tells the people not to believe in "empty things" (12:21) He says that empty things cannot save them, and that they will die with their king if they do not hold true to the one God.
It was faith in empty idols that had been hiding the truth from me. Those "empty things" had been standing between me and the truth, and I had not been strong enough to destroy them.
A short time ago I saw a crippled old beggar sitting near the Kremlin in Moscow. I started to get a few coins to give him when a strong young soldier came running down the footpath from the Kremlin in a sheep skin coat. The beggar jumped up and ran off, as well as he could, into the trees of a park near there. The soldier ran to the border of the park and exploded in anger at the beggar as he was shaking his fist at him. When the soldier returned to where I was standing, I asked him if he could read.
"Yes, I can. What of it?" he answered.
"Did you ever read the Gospels?" I asked.
"Yes."
"And did you read where it says, "I was hungry, but you gave me no food"?
He knew the words and he listened as I said them all. Two other people had stopped to listen too. The soldier was feeling sore because he had been doing his job and now I was telling him that he was wrong for doing it. He wanted to say something to protect himself. Then a light came into his smart brown eyes and he turned his side to me as if he was going to walk away.
"And did you ever read the Army Rules?" he asked.
I said I had not.
"Then don't talk," said the soldier, throwing his head back like a winner, and pulling his coat together as he walked confidently back toward the Kremlin.
I never knew anyone in all my life who had so openly and clearly arrived at the answer that most of the world arrives at to the eternal question that faces all of us who call ourselves Christians.