KINGSVIEW

ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND LOVING ENEMIES

Michael A. King

Terrorists attack. They attack apparently because they believe America has done terrible things to their people, that God is on their side blessing them, and that they are justified in killing thousands of people because they are right. God bless the terrorists’ cause.

A country must decide how to respond. A president draws a line. He tells nations around the world that they must choose which side of the line to stand on. They must decide between right and wrong, and America’s side is the right side.

Many Americans then become indignant at the very idea that it could be wrong for the American response to be killing far more innocent people in Afghanistan and in Iraq than were killed on 9-11. War is a messy business, this war against terror must be fought, and we are right. God bless America.

Mennonites, members of other Historic Peace Churches, and peace-loving people in general must decide how to respond. Some conclude that because Jesus taught us to love enemies there is only one right way forward: that is the way of peace. Any use of force is wrong. If more innocent people die due to terrorist attacks, that is the way it must be, because peace is a messy business, the way of peace must be affirmed, and we are right. God bless our understanding of peace.

In each of these three cases, people believe 1) in absolute truth; 2) that God is on their side and the one who guarantees the absoluteness of their truth; and 3) that if necessary they are prepared to die for their beliefs and prepared for others to die for these beliefs.

Here I want to explore dangers of commitment to absolute truth in the way each of these three groups understand and apply it.

I don’t assume a worst case outcome; God is still at work, tempering our human ability to destroy each other. But neither do I rule out the worst case, which would be for each view of absolute truth to become ever more rigid and for each side, particularly of those who believe that force is acceptable, to justify ever more terrible violence because when you are right, you are right, and you must do what you must do.

Now one response I’ve heard to this situation is that as terrible as the combat between absolute truths is, there is one big difference between our truth and theirs: ours is really right—and theirs is really wrong.

What do you suppose they would say about this? Surely many of them, when pondering the great danger of clashing truths, must conclude that the one big difference is that we’re really wrong, even though we think we’re right—whereas they’re really right.

Oh, but if our truth is in Jesus Christ, then at last the debate is over. We’re right. No. When religions are at war, that solves nothing. If I know Jesus Christ was a great prophet, but that the greatest was Muhammad, why would I believe the discussion ends with Jesus?

So how then should we handle absolute truth at a time when using it against each other could end the world? I propose five brief points.

(1) Let no one hear me deny that there is absolute truth. I believe there is. I understand Jesus as revealed in the Bible to be the rock of absolute truth on which we stand.

(2) But absolute truth is fully known only to God. Every time humans claim to know it trouble, and often tragedy, results. This is what we’re seeing now. We need to find a way to trust in God’s absolute truth without claiming we fully know it ourselves.

(3) I believe we see within the Bible’s handling of war and peace that what we understand God is telling us about absolute truth can change over time. Exodus 21 quotes the Lord himself as saying to Moses, "If any harm follows, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Cut to Jesus in Matthew 5. "You have heard that it was said," starts Jesus. Wow! We just heard who said it. God said it, according to Exodus. But Jesus, son of God, now teaches, "You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye. . . . But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. . . . Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."

Wow. Something dramatic is going on here. Two absolute truths. Both from God. Now what? There are many ways of handling this tension between Exodus and Matthew 5, and in a column on the dangers of absolute truth I surely won’t aim to give an absolute word. But here is how I put this all together: God’s ways are always above ours. We never fully understand what God is trying to tell us. God works with us, over time, step by step, helping us grow in understanding the divine ways.

The God Exodus portrays is actually doing something more radical than we may realize. Back then indiscriminate and brutal wholesale killing was common. Exodus puts limits on it. Back then God says, only so much violence and no more. Let what you do to the evildoer be no more than what has been done to you.

This was already so radical it was likely all people in those days could handle. If we doubt how radical it was, ponder the countless Americans, many of them Christians, who said our response to 9-11 should be swift, sure, overwhelming, and, get this, disproportionate. To scare them to death, we should do more to them than was done to us, maybe a thousand lives for each eye. So simply to apply the Exodus word of the Lord today, never mind what Jesus says, remains a big move.

Jesus gives us more of the limit on violence and the highlighting of love God was setting in motion in Exodus. We get closer here to God’s absolute truth. But do we now own it? No, no more than did the people of God in Exodus times. If they faithfully followed everything God commanded in Exodus, they still barely glimpsed truths Jesus would teach. We are not somehow exempted from that situation and ourselves given all truth. As the apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 13, now we see only dimly; only then, only at the end of our earthly journey, will we know fully.

(4) That leads to my fourth point, which is that Mennonites or other peacemakers committed to love of enemies are not exempt from falling into trouble through blind commitment to absolute truth. Our temptation is to believe that in standing on Matthew 5 we finally can claim to know absolute truth. I say no.

What Jesus teaches is one of the greatest truths we can know. We should be willing to die for it. Countless conscientious objectors to war in World War I were imprisoned by the U.S. government when they said that to obey Jesus they must love rather than kill enemies. Countless more during wars since have declared themselves conscientious objectors and entered ministry in hospitals, jails, areas of poverty and need. They are the heroes I hope Christians will imitate. (See more on them in Daniel Hertzler’s column, this issue.)

But: This doesn’t mean Christians committed to a way of peace indebted to Matthew 5 now know absolute truth and can simply tell governments they must apply for membership in one of the Historic Peace Churches. Jesus is teaching his followers, not necessarily the government, to love enemies. When the New Testament speaks directly about governing authorities, as in Romans 13, God is said to give the government the sword to discipline evildoers.

I do hope and pray that over time love of peace will deepen around the globe, and that governments will increasingly understand how easily—as we appear to be seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq—efforts to restrain evil with force simply breed more evil. I hope that governments will truly come to see force as the tool of very last resort, not simply give lip service to it. I hope governments will someday invest the billions in peace they always somehow seem more ready to invest in war and truly give peace a chance rather than pretending to do so to clear the decks for war.

And yet. . . . And yet. Can peace lovers be sure that if, say, millions of people in Philadelphia someday face nuclear attack, we know enough about what God wants at that moment to insist the government simply love whoever is preparing to vaporize an entire city? Can we be sure God does not intend government to be a divine tool for restraining such evil? I say no.

I say that instead of being so sure of absolute truth that we are willing either to kill or let others be killed for it, our calling is to learn what it means to live another of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 7, which is "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." For if we treat the other as enemy, we can expect to be treated as enemy. If we treat the other as wrong, we can expect to be seen as wrong. If I think I have the truth but not you, I can expect you to turn the same attitude against me.

(5) That leads to my final point, which is that our challenge as growing Christians is to learn how to be simultaneously so committed to the truth to the extent we understand it that we would be willing to die for it—yet at the same time humbly accept that only God knows absolute truth.

I believe it is possible to be so committed to God’s truth that we die for it yet still realize that commitment to loving enemies and not judging includes never through weapons or words killing our enemies with our absolute truth. Instead we are to love our enemies, and one reason we need to do so is because the way they see the world may help us understand aspects of God’s truth we are too blinded by the log in our own viewpoint to grasp.

To guard against our own blindness, those of us committed to the way of peace need to include as "enemies" to be loved not only such enemies as our country fights but also those warmaking Christians we tend to see as our enemies.

To guard against their blindnesses, Christians quick to support resisting evildoers with the sword but slow to hear Jesus telling them to resist not evil need these peacemaking convictions: Governments, fallible as they all are, prone to use their power to aggrandize themselves rather than truly restrain evil, prone to shade or hide or twist the truth whenever it calls them to account, have no license to wield even their possibly legitimate swords without restraint. And whatever the state does, Christians are to model a new way.

To guard against our mutual blindnesses, Christians and Muslims amd others quick to see the violent thorns in each other’s sacred scriptures and histories need each other’s help to see the log in our own. Then instead of getting back judgment, hate, and death, we may get back from the others the same humble readiness to learn from us that we have offered them.

—Michael A. King, Telford, Pennsylvania, is pastor, Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church, and editor, DreamSeeker Magazine.