"Our lamb has conquered": A defense of pacifism in the aftermath of the Amish school shooting

First off, a confession.  A few weeks ago, I made the pledge that I would not get on the scale again until the end of 2006.  Yesterday afternoon at the gym, I "fell off the wagon" and weighed myself.  It's a good comeuppance, for me, I suppose; I post so often on this blog about making commitments and redirecting impulses.  I've had so much success in so many areas of my life, but resisting the urge to climb on the scale is tougher than I imagined.  Just thought I'd share my slip...

It's a busy day, and I suspect I will have time for only one post.  Both here and elsewhere, there's been discussion of Monday's shooting at an Amish school in Pennsylvania.  Thanks to my friend Jonathan Dresner, I read this particularly nasty piece from Judith Klinghoffer at my own History News Network.  Klinghoffer opines:

How low can one sink? No. I am not talking about the murderer, may his name be erased. I am talking about those who saved themselves by leaving the little girls at his mercy. Consider: 

"They found the suspect dead on the floor," Col Miller said. "Three other students between the age of six and 13 had been killed." He said that when Roberts, a non-Amish, first entered the school he apparently showed the handgun to the children and was "having some discussion in the class". "He told the kids to line up in front of the blackboard. Then, using wire ties and flex cuffs, he began to tie the females' feet together. It appears that when he shot them he shot them execution-style in the head.

And they LET him. I have yet to hear about a single person who did anything to stop him. By doing nothing, they permitted a deranged man to fulfill his sick revenge fantasy.

This is the ultimate result of Amish pacifism. All evil needs to flourish is for good people to do nothing. Evil flourished in that schoolroom.

Bold is mine.  And here on my blog, thechief weighs in:

There's something we need to realize about pacifists in general, including the Amish: They can afford to be pacifists because somebody else is holding a gun for them. They can afford not to raise their hand against evil because somebody else--a police officer, a soldier--is standing between them and true evil. Somebody else will do the dirty work of keeping them safe, except for those awful situations where the system somehow breaks down, like yesterday in Pennsylvania. Then the pacifists are going to be toast.

Let me be clear that I am an aspiring pacifist.  As Stanley Hauerwas always says of himself, I am a violent man trying to become peaceful.  When I read about stories like this one, my first thought is always "I wish I could have been there with a gun to blow the s.o.b. away."     That's my first response, but happily, as a Christian, not my second.

Both Klinghoffer and thechief have a tortured, twisted view of what pacifism really is.  First off, most Christian pacifists don't live in the United States.  The largest Christian pacifist communities are Anabaptists living in war-torn places like Indonesia, Nigeria, and Colombia.  The notion that pacifists are comfortable, middle-class white folks who are protected by a wise government willing to wield the sword is ludicrous and ahistorical.   Christian pacifism traces its modern roots to the blood-soaked Central Europe of the sixteenth century.    The pacifism of the peace churches (to which Mennonites, the Amish, the Quakers, and others belong) was a response to appalling violence by people who experienced that violence first hand.  The great lie that both Klinghoffer and thechief perpetuate is that pacifists are ignorant of the realities of human brutality; the historic truth is that pacifism was birthed by men and women who had infinitely more knowledge of the realities of violence than your average Marine in Iraq has today.

The other great lie is more simple: they equate pacifism with passivity.  A Latin lesson, girls and boys: pacifism comes from pax facere, to  "make peace"; it does not, contrary to popular misconception, derive from passus sum, to "suffer."  In other words, authentic pacifism is an active response to violence, not a passive one!   From the sixteenth century onward, pacifists have insisted that the goal of Christian witness is not to run and hide but "to get in the way."  Jesus says,  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  Soldiers quote that all the time, but wrongly.  Jesus calls us to the cross, He calls us to come and die, but He never calls us to kill.    From a theological standpoint, there is all the difference in the world between being willing to die for one's friends and being willing to kill for them.  For soldiers, both may be true.   For cowards, neither is true.  For Christian pacifists, only the former is true!

The third lie about pacifism is that it is hopelessly idealistic and has no efficacy.  Once we convince our opponents that we aren't cowards (after all, Christian pacifists are dying in places like Colombia and Iraq all the time), we usually get dismissed as "fanatics."   I mentioned in my post on Monday that I hoped that if it came to it, I would be willing to take a bullet for "my kids."  But I would not be willing to fire a bullet, even to protect the lives of my students or youth groupers.  That always strikes folks as irresponsible and prideful; I seem to be putting my theological convictions ahead of my obligation to protect the lambs.

But as a Christian, I know that there is more to our story than our life on this earth.  I love life, I love this planet, I love God's incredible creation.  But my story -- our story -- doesn't end here.  This is not my final home.  I am a "resident alien" in a beautiful, violent, scary, wonderful place.  I know that while death is overwhelming and terrifying, it is not the end.  Not only do I have an even truer home elsewhere, so too do those lambs I am called to feed.  They are Christ's lambs, not mine.  Their lives are precious, but so too are their eternal souls.  Crazed gunmen can kill the bodies of the young and the innocent; crazed gunmen can break the hearts of a community.  But crazed gunmen don't get to write the final chapter of the story.  After the tears, there will be rejoicing, no matter what, no matter what, no matter what.

It is with the certainty that death does not separate us from each other or from God that I can claim my pacifism. If I thought death was the end of the story, I'd probably be packing heat in the glove compartment of my Toyota Solara.  To prolong the short lives of my loved ones here on earth, I would do anything and everything.  But I know that love endures past the end.  I know that I am called to follow Christ first and foremost.  Thanks to Him, I already know how the story turns out in the end. Those of us who are true pacifists are not cowards who run in fear, muttering prayers of thanksgiving for the protection offered us by violent men. We are people who have seen the end of the book.  We know that after the crucifixion, comes the resurrection.  After the bullets and the terror comes the peace and the joyous new life.  With that certainty, we can offer up our lives non-violently.  It's not that we seek death, or value life any less.  It's that we are quietly, absolutely, peacefully certain that our Lamb conquered death for all of us 2000 years ago -- and with fear, trembling, and yes, joyful certainty, we will follow Him.  No matter what.

Comments

[K]

Thanks for the history lesson, and I see some of the issues regarding participating in war (though am unconvinced myself), and see several reasons not to own weapons. But I think this post will serve mainly as a testament to the absurdity of some strains of pacifism. There's nothing moral about saving yourself while handing children to a man who intends to raped and kill them. A real man* would have defended those girls with a pitchfork, chair, desk, eraser, or whatever was available.

I believe it was Peter who cut off a soldier's ear who came to crucify Jesus. Jesus restored the ear, since he needed to die. But if the soldier were coming to rape and kill a little child, I'm srue that our Savior (who once fabricated a whip) would have praised Peter for acting rightly by protecting the powerless from injustice. "Laying down your life for your friends" seems to imply that something positive could come from your death, i.e., trying to tackle a gunman with the realization that he would probably shoot you (or dying for their sins). “Laying down your life for nothing” by standing there saying "kill me too, please" would be participating in evil by abetting, furthering, and worsening the carnage.

I don't see fatal violence encompassed by "turn the other cheek;" that would be "if a man tries to stab you, offer him your jugular also."

*(and probably woman...I can’t give the woman’s perspective)

[K]

In defense of the adults who were present (at both shootings), the best course of action may have been the one they chose: escort as many children as possible to safety and then call for help.

[Hugo]

K, that's a huge stretch to read that into Jesus. A whip is not lethal. Pacifists are allowed to get angry. Pacifists can even push someone. We can't use lethal force. "Thou shalt not kill" does not mean "thou must avoid displays of righteous anger." There's a lot of room in there for a whip, but no room for a sword.

(And when Jesus tells his disciples to take up a sword for their travels, the sword he refers to was a small dagger used to protect oneself from animals, not from human beings. Ya just gotta know the ancient languages and the context.)

[Hugo]

Oh, and a pacifist could definitely tackle the gunman. We could try and wrestle the gun away. But we can't use the gun, no matter what.

[Lya Kahlo]

This is a bit of a grey area for me. On the one hand I agree - how could they just walk out and leave those small children to fend for themsevles (which, would clearly be impossible - and why the murderer chose them in the first place)?

On the other hand, I've read that the adults in the room were pregnant women and women with infants. Exactly what could they have done?

Is it written somewhere that women must sacrifice their lives to save others no matter what?

[Hugo]

I'm certainly not criticising anyone who walked away. I am saying that walking away, running away, is not generally what pacifism calls for. Pacifism calls for "standing in the gap", "getting in the way", and yes, laying down your life. But no pacifist I know is judging those who fled.

[Stephen Frug]

"If I thought death was the end of the story, I'd probably be packing heat in the glove compartment of my Toyota Solara. To prolong the short lives of my loved ones here on earth, I would do anything and everything."

This gets at the suspicion that many atheists -- including me on Sundays and alternate Wednesdays -- have of religion: pious folk often talk as if they would do incredible evil if they were not religious. (I am reading "incredible evil" into the phrase "anything and everything"; I think many defenses of the innocent are moral -- I am not a pacifist -- but "anything and everything" explicitly sanctions the immoral, it seems to me.)

Well, I wouldn't. I do know (if you can use the word "know" for what I describe as your beliefs, then I suppose I can too) that death is the end: we are a consciousness running on a meat computer, and when it dies so do we. And -- again, not a pacifist -- I would fight to protect my loved ones and my ideals and (I trust) in some cases to protect strangers too. But there are some things I wouldn't do: moral lines I wouldn't cross. (I hope! As you said in your comment about giving your life for your kids, we can't really know how we would react until we are in that situation.)

I assume you're being honest in saying that that's what you'd do without a belief in another life. But those of us who know (silly word: but it was yours, so, again, I'll use it too) that there is no such hereafter still have to choose how we will walk in this world: kindly or cruelly, justly or unjustly, well or poorly. We are as fallible as any human being. But we still attempt -- with roughly the same success, on average, as the faithful -- to live moral lives.

... This hasn't been very coherent. But I think my point is made, or at least gestured at. Those sentences struck me in a long and meaty post.

[Hugo]

Stephem, I was engaging in a bit of unfortunate hyperbole. But the truth is that my pre-conversion life was violent and irresponsible. The fact that Christ changed me doesn't mean that those who don't know Christ are violent and irresponsible. That was my very real narrative, but it isn't everyone's.

[Stephen Frug]

Oh, and a minor suggestion. You write that pacifism comes from "men and women who had infinitely more knowledge of the realities of violence than your average Marine in Iraq has today." I respectfully suggest that -- given the horror that Iraq has become -- that that is an unfortunate and unfair piece of hyperbole. I take your point about the lives of pacifists, and respect it; but I think you disrespect one reality to emphasize another here.

So I suggest the following emendation:
"...men and women who had infinitely more knowledge of the realities of violence than almost any American today, save perhaps a Marine in Iraq." -- Or something like that.

[SamChevre]

Oh, and a pacifist could definitely tackle the gunman. We could try and wrestle the gun away. But we can't use the gun, no matter what.

A pacifist could (depending on your interpretation of pacifism). But the traditional Anabaptist position and interpretation of non-resistance would not permit even that amount of resistance.

From this we understand that therefore, and according to His example, we must not inflict pain, harm, or sorrow upon any one, but seek the highest welfare and salvation of all men, and even, if necessity require it, flee for the Lord's sake from one city or country into another, and suffer the spoiling of our goods; that we must not harm any one, and, when we are smitten, rather turn the other cheek also, than take revenge or retaliate.

[Hugo]

With all respect, Stephen, the Marines in Iraq are protected by rifles and body armor. The pacifists who were slaughtered by Catholics and Protestants alike in the sixteenth century went to their deaths with no such protections. I accept that our servicemen and women in Iraq know more about violence than your average American -- but they know it as perpetrators as well as victims; the Anabaptists who were martyred were not perpetrating violence on anyone. Respectfully, that sentence stands.

[Hugo]

Sam, you're right that there's a tremendous amount of discussion about the limits of non-violence within pacifist circles. Towards the end of his life, the great Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder was working on a project for "pacifist policing". He met with a lot of folks in the law enforcement community, I'm told, and was open to a middle ground that rejected any possibility of lethal force.

[SamChevre]

Hugo,

You are right on Yoder, and on pacifists; but the Amish (really, Plain groups generally, including plain Mennonites) view the Mennonite General Conference as not really nonresistant. The plain world rejects association with violence to the point of not voting; governments use force, and we won't have ANY involvement in the use of force.

[Stephen Frug]

Hugo, I guess we just disagree on the issues of Marines in Iraq. Fair enough! (I think that what particularly struck me, thinking it over, is the word "infinitely".)

Incidentally, I wonder if it's worth making a distinction between pacifism (or "nonviolent resistance") in larger social movements and in cases such as a single psychotic gunman? There are a lot of practical arguments for the efficacy of the former, and such practitioners as Gandhi and King made practical as much as moral arguments, about nonviolence as a way to reach the reason of those one opposed. But in the latter sort of case, there seems little hope of doing so. Of course, the religious rationale stands equally in both cases -- but it's harder to argue for pacifism as an effective tactic in the latter.

[justaguy]

"On the other hand, I've read that the adults in the room were pregnant women and women with infants. Exactly what could they have done?"

They could have at least tried to restrain and/or overwhelm him, e.g., tackle the guy just like Hugo says is reasonable and proper for a passifist. That is, if you accept the notion that men and women are equally capable and responsible members of society. Granted, the pregnany women might have an excuse based on their physical condition (albeit a pretty shaky one), but the women who weren't pregnant don't have that excuse.

"Is it written somewhere that women must sacrifice their lives to save others no matter what?"

Silly question. Of course women are not expected to do such things - in Western societies it's a man's duty to sacrifice himself for women and children.

[morpheme]

As an atheist pacifist, I wanted to thank you for this post. While we differ on some specifics -- I can't really engage with the final two paragraphs and my third-to-last paragraph would be ideological rather than theological convictions -- this is incredibly good as a guide to how pacifism is not passivity.

I don't believe pacifism is prideful, either -- another turn of phrase I wouldn't use as an atheist, btw -- I just believe it is the right thing to do to demonstrate my humanity. I don't believe that a gunman has any right to kill others, and I'm going to try to prevent that any way I can, including laying down my own life, but I cannot and will not compromise my humanity and human dignity to do so by taking up a gun myself. I believe in preserving human dignity as a basic and fundamental right that drives many of my activist concerns, and would never wish to deprive another human being of their basic humanity and human dignity either. But it's hard to phrase that all without sounding wea k -- and yet, I know that it's a priciple necessary to prevent and resist abuses of human rights, and aas an atheist, it's the best way I have to phrase my understanding of the things you describe in theological terms.

Anyway. Thanks.

[Stephen]

Hugo:

The Marines who were killed in Iraq were not, ultimately, protected by rifles and body army. Moreover, you seem to make a distinction between the . . . value? . . . of the Marine's death and the pacifist's death because the Marine is a "pepetrator" of violence. I'm sure you wouldn't want to argue that the Marine somehow deserved to be killed . . .

The original Stephen

[Jendi]

I don't find pacifism convincing, but you've made one of the better cases for it, Hugo, in saying that as a Christian, you believe there is a value higher than mere earthly life. Presumably in an Amish school one could assume the potential victims have made the same value-choice, but maybe not in a lot of other classrooms. What if the teacher or other responsible adult is a pacifist, but the folks for whom he is responsible are not? Can you decline to protect them, in the name of an afterlife they may not believe in? (I guess you can, but I just feel there's potential sin in either direction here.)

[The Gonzman]

One thing that has always impressed me about the Mennonites is their dedication to principle.

I am not a pacifist. To be simple, perhaps oversimple, I find the scriptural foundation for it to be from an overly scrupulous exegesis. I am prepared, if necessary, to do great violence if that cup passes before me. By the same token, sitting not 3 feet from where I type is my Glock, the third in a succession of arms I have carried for 25 years, and have never had to draw. Whether anyone believes it or not, I pray every time I clip it on my belt that I will lay it down that night unfired, except for the range.

I have been a bouncer in my life. I have studied several armed and unarmed styles of combat. I have worked security and as a bodyguard; and in those times when I had to put some lumps on heads, it did not please me. I always preferred to talk trouble down, and I'd like to believe I was successful at it for the most part. Sad to say, though, there are some human beings running around who only keep themselves in check when presented with someone who can do a tap dance on their skull without breaking a sweat.

I'm not a believer in universal salvation, I think it a violation of free will. In many respects, Hugo, I have some deist beliefs. We live in an imperfect world. Full of imperfect people, and sometimes the choices given us are between lesser evils. I in no way believe God holds it against us when faced with such choices, even and we choose wrongly. It's the whole catholic thing there, grave sin - moprtal sin - must include an intent to choose the evil path.

It is the difference between legal and moral. Where I live, I walk in and find you burglarizing my house, I can blow you away, and won't spend so much as a night in jail so long as I keep my mouth shut - or even lie. Morally? Unless you are a grave threat to me or mine, it is murder.

I have stood in a position of having to visit violence on people who would do it on another. I have made the choice to do so, and would do it again. Because I believe that I would be asked "You had the ability - the means - the power I gave you to stand against evil, and strike a blow for those who could not defend themselves, and you did nothing? You let Evil triumph through your inaction?"

Again - real pacifists, like Martin, thje fellow I buy a lot of my leather from - I won't judge their consistancy or principle, though I think them mistaken. Martin wouldn't even call the police when his shop was vandalized because he'd not be a party to someone doing violence on his behalf, and he indeed paid a fine for not doing so, as the law required him to report that crime.

But not all such pacifism is as principled; not all have the courage to accept the consequences of their beliefs. And those people aren't pacifists - they are nothing but cowards.

[Col Steve]

From a theological standpoint, there is all the difference in the world between being willing to die for one's friends and being willing to kill for them. For soldiers, both may be true.

Hugo - since earlier your wrote Soldiers use your referenced Biblical quote wrongly, I infer you mean Soldiers focus on the "being willing to kill" portion. I would disagree. My experiences suggest the former as well. If you look at works such as Samuel Stouffer’s “The American Soldier” study released in 1949 or more recently Lenny Wong's “Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq," I believe you find evidence that supports more emphasis on the former as well.

I would be interested in your expansion of these lines: Pacifists can even push someone. We can't use lethal force.

The military is putting more emphasis on and close to fielding greater "non-lethal" capabilities -- if the Amish could have "zapped" the school where everyone inside would have been incapacitated for a period, without any serious short-term effects (hard to tell long-term effects of say getting a microwave jolt), would a pacifist employ that type of weapon?

[Hugo]

Col Steve, you ask the very sort of question many of us are asking these days; the answer is "I don't know." Within the peace church community, there's been intense discussion of this sort of thing. I think we can work closely with the powers and principalities to help create a less-lethal way of fighting. I won't let the best (total non-violence) be the enemy of the good (concrete steps towards lowering lethality).

[mythago]

Hugo, aside from issues of pacifism, this really strikes me as death-worship. If there is a better life waiting after death, why bother to rescue anyone from death at all? Doctors should put away their medicines, parents with ill children should let them succumb to disease, we should all stop carping about Darfur and put our efforts into making sure that the victims of genocide accept Jesus before they are slaughtered. What awaits them is better than what's here, right?

Prolonging the short lives of your loved ones sounds an awful lot like selfishness: I know you'd be better off in eternity with the Lord, but right now I want you here, so too bad.

[Hugo]

Ha, that's a common charge. Mythago, the other part of this faith life is the sense that we are called to use our lives to bring justice and transformation to the world. Creation is magnificent, and it is a gift, and we are to enjoy it and delight in it. The fact that it is not our truest home doesn't mean that it isn't wonderful,and good, and in need of our best efforts. I am here to "build the peaceable Kingdom". Since Jesus seems to be tarrying, there's plenty to do.

[Emily H.]

Maybe because I'm a (relatively) young woman, I've never thought of this in terms of my ability to cause violence, but of violence hypothetically committed on my behalf.

And the bottom line is that I don't want violence committed on my behalf. I think that killing is a wrong thing and a terrible burden to bear, even when done in self-defense or in defense of others, and whatever comes after death I don't think it could be so bad that a person should kill to save me from it--I feel like it would be adding in some way to the evil in the world.

But I feel like I have the right to make that decision for myself--but not to make it for anyone else. Which is why I'm not as much of a pacifist as I could be.

[Antigone]

Thank you for talking about this Hugo.

I would like to be a pacifist, but honestly the reason I couldn't be is because I'm afraid. Pacifist's aren't cowards: most of the time I think it's people who perpetuate violence that are.

I cut my teeth on guns. I had a bb gun since I was old enough to hold one and know how to handle it safely. I've done Tae Kwon Do, and am quite good at grappling. I own multiple firearms and am proficient in them.

Yet, I hate to hurt people. When I get into real fights, I break down bawling at the end of them because I hurt someone. I'd rather lose a fight, never hitting, and getting the crap beat out of me. But whenever I think about swearing off violence, I think about what got me into fights in the first place. I think about my little sister crouching in the corner because she's scared.

I don't want anyone to be scared either. It's not okay for people to hurt other people. And people above are right: evil does florish when good men do nothing (although I hope they remember that when we're talking about domestic violence funding and poverty). However, does doing "something" mean being evil as well? If the violence is evil, surely it's evil when anyone does it. So, good men doing evil against evil? That seems wrong somehow.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but this keeps me going back and forth. Whever I think about violence, two pictures always waver back in forth in my head: my sister crying in the corner, and the bloody broken mess that was his face after I was done with him.