[Dialogue] Something to consider

Thu Nov 22 13:10:17 EST 2007

Roger,
    This is the best-written piece I have seen in a long time.  It is consistent with a talk I gave to our church men's group last week, although I went into more detail about the history of the church (see attached).
        Darrell
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: KroegerD at aol.com 
  To: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net 
  Cc: nspmn at googlegroups.com 
  Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 6:32 AM
  Subject: [Dialogue] Something to consider

  See How They Love One Another

  By Gary G. Kohls, MD

  "See how they love one another" was the phrase used by outside observers
  of the early Christian house church communities. There was something
  about the followers of Jesus back then that attracted the attention of
  gentiles, Jews, Roman soldiers, and others that set them apart from the
  rest of society. It was something so unusual that it prompted strong
  reactions, ranging from brutal persecutions to an eager rush to join the
  movement.

  It was something special that hadn't been tried by the people of the
  ancient world prior to the ministry of Jesus. It was something radical,
  but it worked to heal many of the ills of the world and brought inner
  peace to an oppressed people. 

  That something was called the unconditional love of friend and enemy.
  It was the essence of the message and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, and
  it soon became known by his followers as "The Way."

  Jesus preached, and he modeled, a new peace plan for humankind. All
  through the history of the chosen people, God, through various prophets,
  tried to teach the chosen people the way to peace and justice. The
  successes and failures came and went. Finally God sent his son with the
  ultimate peace plan. Here was the simple formula: Love the Lord your
  God with all your heart, strength, mind and soul. Love your neighbor as
  yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Become
  peacemakers. Do good to those who persecute you. Refuse to retaliate
  for evil done to yourself. Treat the "least of these" as you would
  treat me. Teach all that I have commanded you. Love your enemies. And
  the really hard one, the only commandment that is original with Jesus,
  his New Commandment: Love as I have loved you.

  Why is that one so tough? Jesus, the ultimate manifestation of the holy
  spirit of God here on earth, loved all of God's creatures and creation,
  but he had a special affection for the outcasts, the "sinners" and
  oppressed of society, the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the
  homeless and the imprisoned. These were the hardest ones to love but he
  focused his ministry on them. His mission was to relieve human misery.
  The miserable ones were the ones ignored by the religious leaders at the
  time. But Jesus cared for them just as a loving father would do. He
  didn't check first to see if they were deserving of his mercy or
  healing. Jesus was indiscriminate with his love, and he taught his
  followers to do the same. 

  Jesus also showed us how to live nonviolently, an important part of the
  teachings of the early Christian church. One of the early Fathers of the
  church, Tertullian, said, "When Jesus disarmed Peter in the garden, he
  disarmed all Christians." Thus, the early church regarded itself as a
  pacifist community, with baptized members consistently refusing to serve
  in Rome's military until the Emperor Constantine stopped the
  persecutions and "blessed" (or cursed) the church with property, power
  and prestige (that then had to be defended) around 313 AD. Justification
  for the participation of the professed followers of the nonviolent Jesus
  in the mass slaughter of Rome's wars soon followed with the Just War
  teachings of Augustine of Hippo co-opting Jesus' teachings about
  Christian nonviolence for the next 1700 years.

  The love that Jesus loved was merciful. Prior to Jesus' time, the Jews
  had been taught to love their neighbors but hate their enemies. They
  were taught to return evil for evil, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for
  a tooth. But Jesus turned those pre-Christian teachings on their heads,
  even commanding his followers to love their enemies! 

  Besides being unconditional, nonviolent and merciful, another important
  quality of Christ-like love is the willingness to sacrifice. Jesus
  obviously refused to resort to homicidal violence, but he was willing to
  courageously suffer for the cause. He told Peter in the garden of
  Gethsemane at the time of his arrest, "Put up the sword. The one who
  lives by the sword dies by the sword." And then he reached down and
  healed the ear of the one who was going to take him to his death. 

  Jesus asks us to do no less. We should be unwilling to kill, but we
  should be willing to suffer in our acts of resistance to evil. That was
  the way of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Leo Tolstoy,
  Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Dan and Phil Berrigan and a host of other
  pacifist heroes of the faith who have positively influenced the church
  and the world, and it was the way of Jesus. 

  An insightful critic of the Christian church once said, "Christianity
  hasn't succeeded because it was tried and then failed, it has failed
  because it hasn't been tried." There is a lot of truth in that. The
  clear commands from Jesus to his followers to practice Christ-like love
  are difficult to obey, especially at the institutional level. But the
  original form of Christianity experienced amazing success in the first
  two centuries after Jesus by being obedient. Despite terrible
  persecutions, the church flourished, but the measurements of success
  back then weren't membership roles or money in the bank or a beautiful
  temple or well-done worship services. The measurement of success back
  then was the presence of love, not just between the believers but for
  all the children of God.

  There are very few modern churches that are totally committed to
  teaching AND practicing the Christ-like love that was modeled by Jesus,
  nor are there many churches that prepare and then send forth into the
  world their members to be conscientious objectors to war and violence,
  as Jesus and the early church did. There is however, a small minority of
  individual believers in and practitioners of The Way of Jesus.
  Unfortunately, many of them have already fled the Just War and pro-war
  churches and, finding no churches to join that practice the teachings of
  The Way, find themselves with no power to influence the church. I
  choose to believe that if enough Christians would see the practicality
  of such faith-based nonviolence and then stay within the churches, they
  could transform their churches and the churches could then lead the
  world toward peace.

  And if such a Christianity would ever emerge from its 1700 year absence,
  curious people outside such communities, especially altruistic young
  people, would marvel and say, "See how they love one another," and then
  rush to join the movement.

  Gary G. Kohls. MD, for Every Church A Peace Church (www.ecapc.org)

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