How do Christians reconcile Jesus’s command to “turn the other cheek” with going to war against an agressor?
“An adaptation of a command of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”; but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” 1
‡ To “turn the other cheek” is thus to accept injuries and not to seek revenge.”
What exactly did Christ say about the proper implementation of war?
Some Catholic will probably come along to cite the Church’s “just war” position and since that comes directly from Christ’s representative here on the earth we can presume its authenticity.
Alvin York, a consciencious objector, is alleged to have justified his participation in WWI by Jesus’ phrase regarding Roman taxes, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s.” [Matt 22:21 KJV]. He went on to singlehandedly capture over 120 Germans, killing others in the process. When asked how he, a CO, could do such a thing his answer was along the lines of - Them machine guns was killing our boys and they had got to be stopped.
As with many scriptures the interpretation of this one can vary. Note that the quote specifically mentions the right cheek. If I’m righthanded and I backhand you then my blow will land on your right side. That’s more of an insult then an actual attack. This interpretation is based on the idea that most people are right handed and when you intend to cause serious harm with a blow your right hand generally wouldn’t hit the right side of someone’s face. I’m not sure I really buy this one.
I honestly don’t know the answer. I can’t reconcile the two, even to the point of not being settled in the idea that I would use violence even in self-defense.
I can’t understand it when I see so many soldiers who identify as Christians; I don’t know how they reconcile it. Some of the rhetoric of God and country, and divine mission, played out as part of this latest US invasion, but darned if I understand it.
In Numbers chapter 31, the Lord approves of these instructions that Moses gave to the Israelite soldiers about how to treat certain women and children captured in war: “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
But Numbers is Old Testament, and the verse quoted in the OP specifically mentions an earlier verse (“an eye for an eye”) and tells the listeners to disregard it. Obviously, Jesus wasn’t concerned with consistency with the Old Testament; he was changing its philosophy for his followers.
Allow me to summarise C.S. Lewis’s position in his paper “Why I am not a pacifist”, which he read to a pacifist society in Oxford in 1940. I will quote liberally from the man himself.
Lewis argues that “the whole Christian case for Pacifism rests” on certain recorded sayings of Jesus, of which the one under discussion here is the one he cites. To the Christian who takes this literally (Lewis writes “without qualification”), Lewis points out that he (used throughout for “he/she”) must also take literally “all the other hard sayings” of Jesus. Since Jesus also said “Give to all who ask you” (ie give to all beggars), then if someone thinks turning the other cheek is a must, but giving to all beggars is not a must, then he is being inconsistent. And who would deem such a person worth answering, when they take “our Lord’s words a la rigueur when they dispense him from a possible obligation [i.e. fighting for one’s country], and takes them with latitude when they demand that he should become a pauper?”
Havign dealt with those Christians who would want to have their cake and eat it, Lewis says there are three ways to take the command to turn the other cheek.
“The Pacifist interpretation” - “[the text] means what it says and imposes a duty of non-resistance on all men in all circumstances”.
“The minimizing interpretation” - “it does not mean what it says but is merely an orientally hyperbolical way of saying that you should put up with a lot and be placable”. (Lewis rejects this view.)
“The text means exactly what it says, but with an understood reservation in favour of those obviously exceptional cases which every hearer would naturally assume to be exceptions without being told. Or to put the same thing in more logical language, I think the duty here is being stated as regards injuries simpliciter, but without prejudice to anything we may have to allow later about injuries secundum quid. That is, in so far as the only relevant factors in the case are an injury to me by my neighbour and a desire on my part to retaliate, then I hold that Christianity commands the absolute mortification of that desire [i.e. to retaliate]. No quarter whatever is given to that voice within us which says, ‘He’s done it to me, so I’ll do the same to him’. But the moment you introduce other factors, of course, the problem is altered.”
Lewis (with echoes of McAdder!) goes on to cite examples of a “homicidal maniac” whom you would let kill an innocent third party when you are in a position to stop him because he knocks you out of the way, and of a parent who lets his child hit him whenever it loses its temper. He then summarises his understanding of what Jesus meant: "I think the meaning of the words was perfectly clear - “In so far as you are simply an angry man who has been hurt, mortify your anger and do not hit back - even, one would have assumed that in so far as you are a magistrate struck by a private person, a parent struck by a child, a teacher by a scholar, a sane man by a lunatic, or a soldier by the public enemy, your duties may be very different, different because there may be other motives than egoistic retaliation for hitting back. Indeed, as the audience were private people in a disarmed nation, it seems unlikely that they would have ever supposed Our Lord to be referring to war. The frictions of daily life among villagers were more likely to be in their minds.”
Having stressed the need to interpret this text in the context of the time and place in which it was uttered, Lewis notes that it harmonizes well with other things Jesus said (e.g. to the Roman centurion), as well as with utterances by John the Baptist, Paul (Romans 13:4) and Peter (1 Peter 2:14). With a twinkle in his eye, he then writes: “If Our Lord’s words are taken in the unqualified sense which the Pacifist demands, we shall then be forced to the conclusion that Christ’s true meaning, concealed from those who lived in the same time and spoke the same language, and whom He Himself chose to be His messengers to the world, as well as from all their successors, has at last been discovered in our own”.
Having concluded that “Christian authority…fails me in my search for Pacifism”, Lewis writes that "it remains to inquire whether, if I still remain a Pacifist, I ought to suspect the secret influence of any passion [clearly he is referring to cowardice, although he does not use the word]. He notes how horrible war is for combatants (he himself had seen active service, and been wounded, in World War I), and that "those who bear it [the combatants] like it no better than the Pacifist would like it [i.e. war is more like Platoon than The Green Berets]. In contrast, “it is certainly a fact that Pacifism threatens [the Pacifist] with almost nothing”.
He ends his paper as follows: “This, then, is why I am not a Pacifist. If I tried to become one, I should find a very doubtful factual basis, an oscure train of reasoning, a weight of authority both human and Divine against me, and strong grounds for suspecting that my wishes had directed my decision”.
Someone once said, “Just because a mouse gets into the cookie jar, it doesn’t make it a cookie”. Just because someone says that they’re on a divine mission doesn’t mean that they are, and doesn’t mean that the divine one would agree with them.
Before I start let me say that I’m not a pacifist although I do think war is a stupid undertaking and should be avoided if at all possible.
It looks to me as if Lewis has put an awful lot of Lewis into the short passage in Matthew about “turning the other cheek.” From the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount the text speaks of speaks of “the meek” and “the peacemakers.” Lewis seems to have ignored that the thrust of the speech which I think is, obey God, trust in God, don’t be a troublemaker, be generous and kind with each other and things will go well for you because your house is built on a foundation of rock and not of sand.
Pacifism might be illogical in light of the text of the New Testament but I don’t think Lewis demonstrated why he is not a pacifist within the context of the Testament but rather he justified his position by dragging in a lot of Lewis.
Perhaps Lewis’s position may be better understood if one considers Popper’s paradox of tolerance, viz. “unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance” (from Note 4 to Chapter 7 of Volume 1 of The Open Society and Its Enemies). Popper goes on: “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant wll be destroyed, and tolerance with them”.
I believe that this is the spirit in which Jesus’s words should be taken.