[Peace-discuss] Revenge

[C. G. Estabrook]

Revenge is not the way
By John Dear SJ
Created May 03, 2011

I had just finished a weekend retreat on the Sermon on the Mount in Los Angeles 
when I heard the news that the U.S. had killed Osama bin Laden. Unlike the 
president, the U.S. military, and the hundreds who cheered and waved flags, I 
did not celebrate. I do not support or cheer the killing of anyone. As a 
Christian, I am not allowed to retaliate, seek revenge or to kill. I’m supposed 
to love enemies, do good to those who hate, and bless those who persecute. This 
news only leads me further into grief, prayer and repentance.

It had been a stimulating weekend. We spent three days reading the Gospel of 
Matthew, chapters 5-7, line by line. There we discovered that Jesus is clear, 
consistent and insistent about creative nonviolence: “Blessed are the 
peacemakers. Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil. When someone 
strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer the other cheek. Love your 
enemies and pray for your persecutors. Do not judge. Forgive and you will be 
forgiven. Seek first God’s reign and God’s justice.”

We could not find one instance where Jesus waffles on nonviolence. He never 
says, “However, if your enemies are particularly vile, kill them all.” He does 
not offer a set of conditions to justify warfare. He commands universal, 
nonviolent love. He goes even further in his politics of peace to argue for this 
unusual practice because, he says, it is the very nature of God. Then you will 
be sons and daughters of God “who makes the sun rise on the bad and the good and 
causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust,” he announces.

Many in our group expressed bewilderment at such teachings. It felt to some like 
a crash course in Mandarin. Too challenging, too hard, too impractical, too 
scary! they said over and over.

These are the basic guidelines for Christian conduct in the world, I replied. 
Following these teachings, Christians reject violence, vengeance, retaliation, 
war, and killing, and instead practice universal love, boundless compassion, 
generous forgiveness and persistent peacemaking. Even if other Christians reject 
Jesus’ nonviolence and parade around like wolves in sheep’s clothing, I 
suggested, we are still summoned to walk this narrow path.

Gandhi took these words to heart, I pointed out. He is one of those rare figures 
who read from the Sermon on the Mount every day for many decades to strengthen 
his nonviolence and satyagraha.

“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” Jesus told his disciples 
the night before he was assassinated. Violence in response to violence only 
leads to further violence, he taught. Retaliatory violence will not break the 
downward spiral of violence. It will only fan the flames of hatred and war. 
Active nonviolence breaks the cycle of violence. Nonviolently resist those who 
do evil; don’t become like them. Create justice for everyone and you will reap a 
great harvest of peace.

I think Jesus’ teachings on the futility of retaliatory violence and the 
possibilities of active nonviolence have long ago been proven true. Our wars, 
our weapons, our state terrorism have not brought peace. The U.S. assassination 
of bin Laden, like the death of Saddam Hussein, will not end terrorism or bring 
peace. It will only inspire further violence, and bring new terrorist attacks 
against us.

Bombing and killing civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan only fuels the 
spiral of violence and inspires a new generation to retaliate against us. Jesus 
was right. Stop killing people, treat people nonviolently, and you will have a 
better chance of being treated nonviolently too.

But who follows these teachings anymore? Very few. We have twisted Christianity 
so that God will bless our wars. If Osama bin Laden did not represent true Islam 
and the All-Merciful One, neither do George W. Bush or Barack Obama represent 
true Christianity and the nonviolent Jesus.

In fact, Al Qaeda and the Pentagon are two sides of the same coin. In the end, 
both spend their resources trying to kill, and end up killing innocent 
civilians. If Osama bin Laden was guilty of killing innocent civilians, so are 
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton 
guilty of killing innocent civilians. But the truth is that the U.S. military 
has killed many more people -- millions more -- than Al Qaeda. Both need to be 
stopped and dismantled.

The U.S. should immediately end its evil wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and 
Libya, bring all its troops home, dismantle its nuclear weapons, close its 
military bases, feed the world’s poor, and institutionalize nonviolent, 
non-military methods of resolving global conflict. Its method of global 
domination and imperial policing has utterly failed. The cheering crowds outside 
the White House after Obama’s announcement symbolize our failure to make peace. 
Instead, we too are caught up in the contagion of bloodlust, violence and revenge.

I urge Christians everywhere to repent of the sin of war, quit the U.S. military 
and return to the Way and Wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount. Just as many 
Muslims are reclaiming their call to practice nonviolence, so too we Christians 
need to reclaim the mission of creative nonviolence and peacemaking which Jesus 
demands.

As I write these reflections, I've been recalling my own experience with Sept. 
11, 2001. My parents were visiting me in Manhattan that weekend. We had planned 
to have breakfast that morning in “Windows on the World,” the restaurant at the 
top of the World Trade Center. A few days before, they changed those plans and 
we had breakfast instead at their hotel. That morning, I walked from the Upper 
West Side to Ground Zero to volunteer my services. Within days, the Red Cross 
asked me to help coordinate all the chaplains ministering to the grieving 
relatives at the Family Assistance Center. I also ministered to hundreds of 
rescue workers at Ground Zero. From day one, I also spoke out against U.S. 
warmaking in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In our daily briefings with hundreds of chaplains, I often asked if they heard 
any talk of vengeance. No, I was repeatedly told. Instead, we all heard words of 
sorrow and hopes for peace. “My son would never want anyone killed in 
retaliation for his death,” several parents told me.

One Catholic mother who lost her son told me that bombing Afghanistan would not 
bring her dead son back; it would only increase her grief. She said she had been 
pondering the sorrow of the parents of the hijackers. With the war in 
Afghanistan, she now felt new sorrow for the relatives of the people we killed 
in Afghanistan. That, for me, was the compassionate response which Jesus teaches.

“Live at peace with everyone,” we read in the letter to the Romans. “Do not look 
for revenge … Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give 
him something to drink, for by doing so, you will heap burning coals upon his 
head. Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.”

President Obama closed his Sunday night speech announcing the murder of Osama 
bin Laden by invoking God and God’s blessing. Do not believe him. God does not 
bless war or warmakers. If we want God’s blessing, we have to become 
peacemakers. We have to end our wars, dismantle our weapons, renounce state 
terrorism, and develop a new nonviolent foreign policy that reflects universal 
love and true justice for the world’s poor.

When we decide that retaliatory violence and war do not work, and finally take 
up the wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount, then the God of peace will bless us. 
Until then, we will remain stuck in the downward spiral of violence and war.

Let us pray to the God of peace for a new spirit of universal love and creative 
nonviolence, that the days of vengeance, assassination, drone attacks, nuclear 
terrorism and war will soon end and a new day of peace will dawn.

***

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