Convicciones

A Call to Resist Violence

Peter Hartwig

1. Unwavering Nonviolence

Every speaker affirmed an explicit, emphatic commitment to nonviolence. This was the unwavering consensus.

Recall the grim context. We heard again and again about Israel's devastation of Gaza, including the killing of around 20,000 Palestinian children and the destruction of Gaza's hospitals, schools, and homes. But I didn't hear a single call for violence. I didn't hear a single attempt to justify violence, whether with the Bible, theology, or political philosophy. I didn't hear a single defense of Hamas's violence on October 7th.

Again and again, all violence was condemned as a betrayal of Jesus' teaching and our shared hope for a better future. Several speakers went out of their way to condemn the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was a prominent supporter of Israel’s war against Gaza. A full workshop was dedicated to helping attendees wrestle with violent passages in the Bible and to disarm these verses as followers of Jesus – not to deploy them.

To be clear, this was no tame nonviolence. We repeatedly heard the call to condemn injustice, to disrupt oppression, and to struggle for our shared flourishing, even if it gets us into "good trouble" as John Lewis said. The drumbeat was to claim our responsibility and act. But violence had no role in this vision of liberation. None.

The BitterSweet of us wants to resist this. To reject cynicism. To defy apathy. To celebrate good. To be a refraction of Uncreated Light in a shattered world of restless terror.

There is a lovely little verse in a letter written by Jesus’ half-brother. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 4.7-8) There is our answer. Resist.

All we have to do to defeat the Accuser is resist. We do not have to accomplish the Accuser’s defeat ourselves. We just have to stand at the gentle place that is God.

The danger with thinking too myopically about resistance in any form is that we become reactionary—only critical, never constructive. It seems rather wiser, healthier, holier to think about resistance on behalf of something, resistance from somewhere. That is what James’ letter suggests.

First, be for God. Be in God. Be with God. Be under God. Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.

Where is God that we might draw near to him? I think that’s the question we are all asking, and if there is anything difficult about answering it, it is that God “plays in ten thousand places” to quote Gerard Manley Hokins.

These are the faces of thousands of hours of conviction in action. Of audacity. Of hard work. Of hope. Of pain, brought to speech and turned to energy—to quote the late Bruggeman. They are the droplets that together form a wave, the individuals who together make a movement tidal. The collective, taking action, cascading over the world.

They are the resistance.

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God is in Kiev and somehow also in the Kremlin. God is in the places that God is famous for being, and also in other places too.

But maybe God is most of all in the desire to be near to God. So it is that our resistance begins in love, in the Safety who has made our world, and in the Passion that seeks to redeem it.

So if you want to resist, remain for something. Our spiritual enemy is only emptiness. Instead, seek the good, draw near the Warmth, hold yourself to the blessed fire. Refuse to leave people alone, even the worst of them. Refuse to settle for anything less than God’s Kingdom, and embrace the lament that keeps us sane.

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