And This is Our Testimony to the Whole World

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”  Matthew 4:43-47

I’d like to dedicate this piece to a weighty Friend and former professor of mine, Ralph Bebe.  During this lenten season I read his book “A Garden of the Lord: A History of Oregon Yearly Meeting of Friends Church” and was so blessed by it.  His testimony deeply affected this part of my faith journey, and I will be forever grateful for that.  

"Jordans Quaker Meeting" by Ron Waddams

Pacifist is a term that I never thought I would use to describe myself, as there was a time not too long ago when I would frequently study war.

War was more than anything to me, interesting.  As a little kid it was kinda like a forbidden fruit, as I recall not being allowed to watch “violent television” (thats the Power Rangers for anyone who is wondering) and age requirements for games and media were to be strictly followed.  No bb guns allowed. Period end of story. Because I said so.

Even with that though, I was still fascinated by the many different aspects and facets of war when I was younger.  I loved learning about the major characters involved in it, the politicians and the generals, and the pivotal world moments that they acted in.  And oh man did I love learning about the technology of it!

Want to know the standard issue sidearm of the US army in 1890?

Want to know the first war where two jet fighter aircraft faced each other in combat?

Want to know which military was first to widely adopt a semi-automatic main battle rifle?

Indeed, I have no doubt that my early fascination with war pointed me to eventually choose Political Science and History as my majors. 

However, while I found the recounted history of war to be fascinating, I counted myself as a extremely conflict averse and gentle person.  I tried to mediate or avoid arguments, protect the feelings of others, and wouldn’t consider hauling off and hitting someone no matter how angry I get.  Hitting someone in anger after all, would have been a sin.

This was my mindset until well into my Junior year at Fox.  By the time I was a Junior though I had already decided that this new Jesus that I was learning about  and knowing more through Common Ground was personally worth following…which was a really strange place to be at.  I enrolled in a “War and Conscience in the United States” class, not because I was particularly interested in pacifism, but because I wanted to beef up my knowledge of the American Civil War.

The professors, Ralph Bebe and Cherice Bock, started off the class with theories about war, and they asked questions about war that bugged me.  They just didn’t seem to ever relent that there was a situation where war would be necessary, a position which I thought had very suspicious logic. Frustrating as it was for me to admit, it was an undeniable fact that I learned the early Church was pacifist. 

…But they could be wrong.  Thankfully we came to Augustine, oh thank God for Augustine!  My beliefs now had a strengthened intellectual buttress around them in the form of his “just war” theory for faithful Christians.  And so from that point on I called myself a just war theorist, which did not raise an eyebrow on the GFU campus.

What about Hitler? How would you stop him without war? No satisfying pacifist argument. I win. 

Some part of that buttress cracked one day while I was walking to class, a day with beautiful blue sky.

I felt the lovely warm sun rays on my skin, inhaled the fresh morning air, heard the birds song fill the canyon, and thoroughly was enjoying the experience of being human.  The thought occurred, what if right now, in this moment, it was over in a flash.  What if for a mile around me, everything was atomized inside the blaze of a sun.

All the dreams, all the hopes of so many people, gone in atomic fire.  It did happen on a beautiful day decades ago, a day with beautiful blue sky.  The injustice of that proposition appalled me, and I was anti-nuclear weapons after that day; surely they could not be justified in proportionality or military targeting.  Nevertheless, my belief in just war still stood.

There was a tiny splinter left over.

Shortly after my experience in the canyon, the Arab Spring began.  I watched on TV the destabilizing of Libya and the crackdown by Gaddafi’s government.  I started to advocate strongly for intervention, we were going to be enforcing a UN mandate, protecting life.

However, while I sat watching the footage of navy missiles beginning their arc up into the night sky towards distant targets, something occurred to me.

Something was not right.  I stopped speaking out in favor of the intervention.

The thing was maddeningly small, and I wanted it gone.

I started attending West Hills Friends before the intervention in Libya started.  I was reveling in the joy of belonging to a church community again.  No one sat me down to give the “peace talk”, which I half expected would be a requirement when getting involved in Quakerism.  Well what would would you do to stop Hitler? What they did do, was demonstrate to me the love of Christ, and I became even more interested in the Jesus I was experiencing.

One night I was lying in bed watching the movie “Downfall” which has been endlessly spoofed on youtube.  It depicted the final days of Adolf Hitler and his experience in the bunker.  When the end credits began to roll I noticed something about the man I saw, the one who necessitated the response of war and the destruction of his country around him. He was was at the end a pathetic, twisted, and angry man…but at his core I didn't see him as an evil thing.  Why are there tears in my eyes?

Maybe something else could have helped him…

My heart started to race, and a wildfire began inside my mind, why? My belief that I had clung to for my entire life, was crumbling, and fast.  I felt dizzy.

Hitler, in my mind, became a human.

A human with that same undeniable spark of God that I was learning I had in myself.  A human that my life has a responsibility towards. 

I hurried to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and heard the truth of God, that I was wrong.  I slowly sank onto the floor, and began weeping uncontrollably.  I felt the weight of what I had desecrated.

I was guilty of dehumanizing, seeing people being mutilated and blown to bits as figures on a page or simply collateral damage.

That tiny thing that had been driving me crazy, that I wished would go away, was the voice of God.

I had blessed the killing, and I had sinned. I. Had. Sinned.

I choked out on that bathroom floor, “I’m sorry!…I’m sorry….I’m so sorry”

I fully expected to remain crumpled up on that floor for hours immobilized in my grief.

Then an unexpected thing happened.

I felt, powerfully, the presence of God.

I felt, remarkably, held…and forgiven.  My weeping stopped, and I rested for a precious moment in the tenderness of a God who saw me, guilty of defiling Her creations for years, and still appeared to love me.

Grace lifted me up off the floor, and I have decided that grace will lead me home.

I will always remember that night, and how my heart changed.  The mercy and forgiveness that I received has made me more merciful and forgiving.  This heart change helped me immensely to only use non-violent action in my work at George Fox University.  I call myself a pacifist, which irritates and makes many fellow Christians uncomfortable.  I don’t judge them though, because I was there, and it is not my job to argue or attempt to force a change on their minds.

Jesus is the inward teacher. 

I don’t have a watertight intellectual answer for what I would do if confronted with a Hitler, but I have a testimony. To those who would have me dehumanize for a just cause, use the “other” to make my community stronger, or to concede that violence can be used for good I say…

I live in the power that takes away the occasion for all wars

As a Friend l will be trying to seek for and listen better to that small thing.