Violence Begets Violence

“On their own heads violence descends.” Psalm 7:16

“Do not fret because of the wicked, … it only leads to evil.” Psalm 37:1,8

“Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.” Psalm 127:1

These lines from my Psalm Prayers this morning bang right into the current news out of Syria and North Korea.

To be sure, the regimes in Syria and North Korea are real violent threats. The popular wisdom that they only seem to understand violent force is at least partly accurate. However, threatened and actioned violence has not deterred them either. Beyond this practical reality, is a much deeper moral reality. Using violence to curb violence loses the moral advantage and brings both down to the same level. Violence begets violence, as I recall this truism from the anti-war movement of the Viet Nam era: using violence to get peace is like raping to promote virginity.

The lines from the Psalms that stood out to me this morning also witness to an even deeper reality deeply embedded in the moral fabric of the universe. The Psalms are replete with what I call boomerang images – violence returns to its perpetrators. The imagery in the Psalms is often of getting caught in the net or falling into the pit intended to catch someone else. Whether yesterday’s bombing of Syria or other uses of violence for presumed just purposes, those who use violence can expect to pay dearly for doing so.

One of the great conundrums of the current violence in and around Syria is that this is a conflict with no “good guys.” The US public likes to believe their country supports the “good guys” in our violent world. To be sure, the greatest suffering now (and probably always) are innocents who do not participate in the violence. In our time, even wanting to protect these innocents seems to inevitably mean supporting perpetrators of grossly unjust violence. The unintended consequences of these alliances, and I would include believing violence can be a tool for peace and justice, is not only more suffering for those trapped in these conflicts, but pain for those who use violence in such a self-contradictory way.

The risk of the actual and threatened interventions in Syria and North Korea are gigantic. Having gotten chummy with Russia, poses a strange contradiction in attacking their ally in Syria. The possibility of US and Russian planes, missiles, or ships attacking each other is real and increasingly likely as they converge on a relatively compact area of the world. Even without provoking China over North Korea, that regime seems paranoid, irrational, and aggressive enough to release a nuclear attack, even with all the problems they seem to have with their technology, even if China opposed it.

Make no mistake, standing by and doing nothing is practically and morally unacceptable. For those who are reading this and already arguing against the implicit pacifism of my train of thought, please understand that pacifism does not mean doing nothing. Pacifism is not passivism. I would say also, that you do not need to be a philosophical or religious pacifist to recognize that the present strategies are both morally bankrupt and ineffective. The world needs leaders and voices that advocate and explore alternatives of moral strength that nations who love peace and justice can adopt and practice in our very dangerous world. I know that is not easy, and I do not have a simple formula to propose. However, not to seriously look at other ways to approach these threats is lazy or worse.

If you have hung with me to this point in my thinking and not angrily dismissed me as a dangerous idealist, I come back to my Psalm Prayers for this morning. I have no illusions of the leaders or even the people of the United States building international policy on overtly biblical foundations. I do not even think being (or imaging) the United States to be a Christian country is a good or biblical idea. However, I would like to think those of us who aspire to follow Jesus could be a voice calling for the hard work of seeking alternate ways for pursuing peace and justice in our world that would be both more effective and moral. And so, as I prayed these Psalms this morning, I cried out to God not only for that voice from fellow followers of Jesus, and not only for openness to engage the challenges of seeking alternatives to ineffective and immoral conventional wisdom, but for God to plant ideas in the minds of the leaders of our country and others that in vigorous dialog would lead to the promotion of peace and justice. I believe in God’s common grace enough to be confident that even people who do not acknowledge God could receive God’s thoughts without knowing where they came from.

I have no illusions of how many people will even read this far much less give serious protracted thought to my suggestion, or the much more demanding call to join me in praying for the people and leaders of the nations of the world to recognize and embrace viable alternatives to the violence that is boomeranging on all of us. Sure, this sounds like the Eternal Kingdom of God that will only be realized in the parousia, but can we not in faith seek to have at least a little more of the “not yet” of the Reign of Christ in the “already” of our hurting world?