God's Will or God's Way?

Lacksana, my wife, just volunteered to help offer unarmed civilian protection (UCP) to two women in the nation of West(ern) Sahara.  Because the Khaya sisters have been leading the resistance to the occupation of West Sahara by Morocco, they have been abused brutally – beaten, raped, sodomized, injected with unknown chemicals, one eye gouged out.  Some local women who visit the sisters are being tracked down and having their fingers, or legs, broken.

I have been helping organize small teams of Americans, preferably women, to accompany and protect the two sisters.  Because Donald Trump is the only world leader who did not condemn Morocco’s occupation, the first UCP team we got in, clandestinely, has not been beaten or abused.  But that is not guaranteed for future teams, such as Lacksana’s.

A friend of our family challenged her decision very strongly.  “I don’t believe this is God’s will.  I don’t believe in God’s will.  Humans are a mixture of good and evil.  Are you seeking martyrdom?!”  So I have been thinking about why I try to practice nonviolence.

My first thought was that God does not will martyrdom.  God never wills any form of violence in any situation.  When I was given a death threat (1968), I planned to get a gun.  But then I was given a dream -Jesus took me by the hand to go talk with the man who wanted to kill me.  The clear message was that guns, and violence, are never God’s way.  I understood that my safety was not guaranteed.  But I also understood that, even if I was killed, I would never be abandoned.

Then I thought about Bishop O’Dowd High School, where I taught during and after Vietnam.  Because our senior boys were facing the military draft, the good fathers there drafted me to create and teach a course on the just war theory.  Such a war, besides having a just cause, requires that civilians not be targeted, and that the violence it inflicts not be more than the violence it prevents.  But military technology has grown much more violent than when the theory was written.  By 1975 I concluded that a just war is no longer possible (so I have redirected my annual war tax to peace and nonviolence since that year).  As my own understanding of nonviolence grew, I added more and more material about Gandhi and principled nonviolence to my Alternatives to Violence course over the next 40 years.

In 2001 I began a sabbatical, with Michael Nagler, founder of Peace & Conflict Studies at UC Berkeley.  When September 11^th happened, I instantly realized that our response would be very violent – our US culture believes that violence is redemptive, that we can make the world better by just killing the “bad guys.”  I understood that made the need for nonviolence much more urgent.

Seven months later, Michael pointedly suggested I consider Christian Peacemaker Teams request for volunteers for an emergency delegation to Palestine in the face of Israel’s re-invasions of the West Bank.  There was a little danger, although I believe that no one on any of the existing peacemaker teams had yet been killed deliberately (Rachel Corrie was killed a year later in Gaza; Tom Fox was executed four years later in Baghdad).  I did not wonder if it was God’s will that I die - I thought that was very unlikely.  I simply thought that unarmed civilian protection is God’s way, and the results are up to God.  So I went to Palestine in the middle of a small war.

In 1984 when the theologian Ron Sider issued the original challenge to pacifists to show up in warfare and demonstrate how “love your enemy” actually works, he said that, if millions of soldiers are willing to lay down their lives in the belief that killing people can make the world better, what about we who believe that non-killing can make the world better?  Are we willing to lay down our lives?  Soldiers are not seeking martyrdom.  Neither are we.

Jesus of Nazareth taught “Love your enemies.”  I began to understand that when suffering is lovingly accepted, it can be redemptive.  I find his crucifixion the most compelling example of this redemptive suffering.  He repeatedly told his disciples that he was going to be crucified - his going forward to his own overwhelms me with respect for his courage.  Even as he hung on his cross, he still asked God, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” This incredibly disciplined love has won my total trust.

His Sermon on the Mount was read every day by a man named Mohandas Gandhi, who gave birth to modern nonviolence, in the Johannesberg Theater on September 11^th, 1906, where he addressed a thousand angry indentured Indian laborers, enraged by the disrespect and violence inflicted on them by the white government of South Africa.  He explained that, “Through our pain we will make them see their injustice, and it will hurt, as all fighting hurts!”  He later wrote that suffering is what “compels reason to be free,” ie, to recognize the opponents’ humanity.

When Martin Luther King spoke at the funeral for the four black girls killed in the church bombing in Birmingham, he said, ““We must not lose faith in our white brothers.  Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.”  Millions of white Americans, including myself, began to trust him. If his faith in us was this strong and this disciplined, he could never betray us.  As our trust grew, our hearts began to open to him. As our hearts opened, our minds began to open to his message.  This is how the law of redemptive suffering works.

“Take up your cross and follow me” appears six times in the four Gospels.  This suggests to me that God is asking us to participate in redeeming the world.  This may involve suffering.  There is even a small chance of martyrdom.  But we are not seeking it.  We are simply following God’s way. 

In 1968 when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia, the Czech people chose to respond nonviolently.  They talked to the Russians, who had been told they were rescuing the Czechs from a terrible dictator.  When they explained to the Russians that they loved their free speech and democracy, the soldiers refused their orders.  After six months, the Russians went home.  Almost no one was killed.

In 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, half the Ukrainians wanted to try nonviolent resistance.  But the other half believed that only violence can work, and so they began killing Russian soldiers.  They may win in the short run (after creating a million or more martyrs).  But, as King pointed out, in the long run, nuclear civilization’s only choices are “nonviolence or non-existence.“  And even in the short run, violence is less than half as often successful as is nonviolence (see Chenoweth and Stephan’s “Why Civil Resistance Works,” p 9)

So Vietnam, Palestine, Czechoslovakia, West Sahara, Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine have been invaded and/or occupied.  Which way is God’s way of dealing with such violence?  Which way should people like Lacksana choose? 

Peace and blessings

Lorin