"Darkness cannot drive out darkness"

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A light on a hill? The salt on your potatoes? (Photo by Maryvel Friesen)
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It seems almost absurd to apply Martin Luther King’s words on the futility of violence to current affairs. For instance, could it be possible that bombing ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria is a strategy of futility? A game plan that is patently part of King's “downward spiral” leading to ever-increasing violence? That love applied in that case constitutes the only option with any hope of ending the hate and the brutality characterizing this conflict?

And if love were to be the allied strategy, what would that look like? Would it mean convening a face-to-face conversation with ISIS leadership to listen to their complaints, their vision of what the world ought to look like? Would it include withdrawing all military intervention and replacing it with material aid? And if that were to be done, would it guarantee a reduction in hate, a de-escalation of violence? Is this a case where—figuratively—light would be able to drive out darkness?
Even the most verbally-ardent of Christians have a hard time embracing central tenets of the gospel when violence erupts. Moderate Christians are equally hard-pressed to embrace a strategy of love when their lives or livelihoods appear to be threatened. The temptation to depend on missiles and guns to protect us and ours is strong, but a central tenet of the gospel is that the kingdom established by Christ is not a kingdom like any other on earth. Certainly, we can find excuses for shoring up our defenses and arming ourselves in the interest of our physical safety, even in the New Testament. But to say that Luke 22:38 or Romans 13:3-5 trump Matthew 5:38-42; 43-48 is to engage in proof-texted defense of an already-held position. And this position might be grounded in fear . . . an attribute that a sincere rebirth should have extinguished in us.

That the Gospel Christian is called to dedicate his very life to the building of the kingdom of peace and love is indisputably central to Jesus’ teaching as recorded in the Gospels. I can’t see Jesus dropping bombs on ISIS or anyone, or supporting those who do; I can’t see him building defense fortresses to keep out the enemy; I can’t see Jesus despising anyone trapped by a label: gay, black, Muslim, Indian, materialistic, arrogant, dishonest, avaricious, Buddhist, Chinese, poor, Latin, whore, soldier, man, woman, disabled, Jew, Baptist, Russian, fundamentalist, liberal, etc., etc., etc. Like a hospital does not turn away people because they’re sick, a true Church knows itself to be a place of healing, not a comfortable refuge for the already-well, the already-blessed.

And the only treatment this healing church knows or trusts is the ointment of love given in the name of Christ. A balm that would by now have revolutionized a sin-sick world if we had not time and again resorted to self-defense as our most urgent need, to turning away the sick in order to keep the hospital clean, to diabolical alliances with the kingdoms of this world. (Think residential schools, for instance.)
 
To losing our lives in fearful attempts to save them.
“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people.” Matthew 5:13



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