Yesterday's Gospel reading at mass was the section of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount on non-retaliation and love for the enemy. I preached on this text using some of Gandhi's insights on nonviolence along with Thomas Merton's reflections on Gandhi. My principal concern was to say that Jesus makes it clear that love for enemy is key - 'The only real liberation is that which liberates both the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time from the same tyrannical automatism of the violent process which contains in itself the curse of irreversibility' (Merton, Gandhi on Non-Violence p.14, emphasis original). We share a common problem with our enemy, who is also our neighbour and one like us. For Gandhi, nonviolence is not a political tactic but a way of life, a religious commitment and the fruit of a mature spirituality.
Inevitably, one or two people challenged me afterwards with the 'hard cases' of threatened genocide and with references to current conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. The problem behind these objections to the commitment to nonviolence is the assumption that nonviolent approaches 'don't work' and that the use of force does. I think this is a highly contestable view and I think there are very many examples of situations where the use of force has made as many problems as it appears to have solved. But this is not really the point. In Jesus teaching - and Gandhi followed him in this - the issue is not whether or not love for enemy produces a satisfactory outcome. We love our enemy not to get one over on him, but because we have recognised him as a child of God, a fellow human being. Nonviolence is the refusal to justify the means by the end. It is a commitment to live life free of the impulse for revenge because to do otherwise would be a dehumanising enslavement.
Merton summarises Gandhi's teaching like this:
'The evils we suffer cannot be eliminated by a violent attack in which one sector of humanity flies at another in destructive fury. Our evils are common and our solution of them can only be common. But we are not ready to undertake this common task because we are not ourselves. Consequently, the first duty of every man is to return to his own 'right mind' in order that society itself might be sane.' (ibid p.16)
Christianity does not have political solutions of its own to offer a violent world, but it does have spiritual responses. Penitence, self-control, love for enemy, love of God, recognition of the unity of all things and a steady commitment to truth-telling are daily disciplines that make transformation possible.
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