A Long, Long Post About Religious Violence

This morning, I intended to write a light fluffy post about my hometown fire department. Instead, I came up with this — which is long, and neither light nor fluffy:

A long line of men shackled by their left wrists to a heavy iron chain trudged up the mountain. Guards armed with crossbows and blunderbusses prodded the line along. One of the prisoners stumbled. Sick, he dragged on the chain delaying the forced march.

A sergeant examined the sick man, found him unfit, and ordered a soldier to release him from the line.

The soldier didn’t trouble to look for a key to the shackles.

He drew his sword and hacked the sick man’s hand off.

Free of the hindrance, the line moved on to the mine leaving the sick man to bleed out beside the path.

I vividly recall this incidence from William Prescott’s monumental book The Conquest of Peru. The men in chains were Inca Indians, heathen sun worshipers; the guards were Spanish conquistadors, Christians under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro.

Although frequently in history books, and more recently in the news, for their violence, Mohammedans have not cornered the market on evil, inhumane treatment of people whose beliefs differ from theirs.

On Christmas Day, 1657, as John Evelyn and his wife worshiped in Exeter Chapel, a Church of England church in London, his diary records that the church was surrounded by non-conformist soldiers (Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Puritans). The soldiers interrupted the service and took the names of all in attendance. They allowed the service to continue but when each worshiper went forward to receive communion, a soldier pressed a musket to the back of his head “as if they would shoot us at the altar… I got home late the next day; blessed be God,” Evelyn wrote.

Yet, when the Anglican church returned to power, they persecuted the Puritans so intensely that many boarded the ship Mayflower and fled to the unsettled American colonies to escape religious persecution.

Yet, on June 1, 1660, in Massachusetts, those same Puritans who had sought religious freedom hung Mary Dyer on Boston Common for being a Quaker. Among the evidence presented against Mrs. Dyer was that she had given birth to a deformed baby; it had four horns, thus proving her wickedness. But they hung her not because of the baby but because she was of a different religion.

No one faith corners the market on violence against those of a different faith.

The pattern seems to be that when a group is weak, they are persecuted; but when they become strong, they persecute others.

The Egyptian Pharaoh persecuted the Jews ordering midwives to strangle all newborn Jewish males. The Jews entered the Promised Land conducting a campaign of genocide against the heathen already there. In New Testament times the Jews stoned Stephen to death, beheaded James, and hounded Paul the length of the Roman Empire.

In turn Christians persecuted Jews. The Spanish Inquisition. Auschwitz. Bergen-Belsen. After World War II, Jewish patriots assassinated British officials and carved out a new homeland ousting Palestinians.

In the 1500s, astronomer Johannes Kepler in Austria tells how Lutherans hung scores of Catholics from the same tree.

In China, Buddhists pitch-forked medical missionary Eleanor Chesnut to death then went on to slaughter hundreds of Christians in the Boxer Rebellion. And Tibetan monks murdered Dr. Petrus Rijnhart.

(My book Strangers On The Earth tells their stories along with the stories of several other Christians killed for their faith).

And suicide bombers are nothing new, remember the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of World War II who crashed their planes into American ships.?

And in ancient times when the Shinto’s of Japan and the Buddhists of China went to war, captains of returning Japanese ships nailed naked Chinese or Korean women spread-eagled to the prows of the sailing ships as living figureheads.

The Hindus of India killed their share of Christians and their long-term war with Moslem Pakistan threatens to turn nuclear.

Mormons were persecuted and in thru persecuted others; one of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (I forget which one) is based on this phenomenon. American Indians staked out preachers on ant hills; and our ancestors in turn deliberately gave blankets and clothing from people who died of small pox to Indians in biological warfare.

Advocates of no religion at all claim that religion generates violence, war and untold human misery.

They have a point.

From whence come cross burnings, abortion clinic bombings, exploitation of immigrants, snide remarks and haughty looks, gay bashing, job discrimination?

“From whence come wars and fightings among you?” the same James who was beheaded asks, “Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”

From my own lusts.

From my own internal frustrations.

It’s easy to say that the people who committed all the historic atrocities I mention were not REAL Christians. It’s easy for me to say that they were not Christians like I am.

But they were.

At least a lot of them were.

I want to distance myself from such creeps. But I can’t. Not really.

How could a Christian, a follower of the Prince of Peace, the Lamb of God, resort to violence?

To see, all I have to do is look at my own heart, look at my own intolerance, my own narrow-mindedness. My own fear.

I think the root cause of religious violence is a low view of God.

A view that believes that God Almighty is too weak and namby-pamby to defend Himself. Therefore the true believer feels compelled to step in and do the job.

That’s because such a person is not a true believer in anything —. He dares not hear a dissenting opinion because he fears truth.

A person who is comfortable with God feels no need to discomfort others even when he feels they are wrong. God is perfectly capable of correcting wrongs in His own good time – in His Time. He is not without strength. He is not dependent on me for anything.

Another dynamic works when I feel violent — my own lusts which war within my members.

If I recall correctly, the most violent thing I have ever done was grab one of my teenagers and try to shake some sense into her.

I was wrong.

I apologized to her later, but I am heartily ashamed that I resorted to such violence even when provoked by a typical teenager’s behavior.

I’m probably the only parent in history to do this.

Mea Culpa.

I am a dad.

She survived and I survived but I was 100% wrong.

And, what’s worse, I knew it at the time. But I shook her anyhow.

On a deep level, that violence had little to do with her inane behavior; it had everything to do with my frustration and lack of trust in God to guide her.

She forgave me and we are best of friends now in spite of my pig-headedness then.

So, the question is: Am I, a man who calls himself Christian, capable of religious violence?

I certainly hope not.

There have been a few times in the past when irate people have threatened my life because of my being a Christian. In each case, the danger passed not because of anything at all which I did, but through outside circumstances intervening. I reacted calmly and with reason to make peace with the street thugs, mental patients, mob, or whoever. I did not resort to any violence myself.

But maybe these folks just didn’t push the right button to get me going.

I wonder.

I know of only one Scripture (Matthew 5:29ff) where Jesus advocated violence:

“If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee… If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is more profitable for thee that one of they members should perish…”

I am permitted the violence of self-discipline when needed.

And that violence only!

None other!

Can’t say I’ve exercised that discipline, or any other, much. Still got both eyes and hands. When it comes to my own members, I’m not easily offended.

But, Lord, what about them? Those other guys? What about all those violent, mean, nasty, bad dudes? What should I do about them?

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy, But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven…”

Those are hard words, Lord.

Hard words.