At some point in the last four years I made the decision to fancy myself a Pacifist. Those who know me well might find this strange as I tend to be a violent person. Not that I go around physically assaulting people, although I come close to it far too often, but I almost never shy away from confrontation. The moment I feel wronged or mistreated it is not abnormal to respond violently even if the person is a complete stranger. The worst part of all of this is that even when it’s over I usually feel justified. I feel as though it were my responsibility to bring justice to the individual in question. They needed to get what they deserved. So to anyone who has doubted my claim to pacifism, you were not off base.

It is easy to abuse a theological text in order to support a claim. Especially when that claim is not based out of sincere conviction but out of a juvenile desire to be controversial. Bastions of wisdom and intelligence are not required to criticize the U.S. for having a politics based on death, all the while, in my own life, mimicking the same morally bankrupt idea of justice that constitutes the very ideas I am criticizing.

I have found that my insincerity is largely due to a shallow understanding of Christian pacifism. This became evident to me when reflecting on conversations between myself and others who do not adhere to Christian nonviolence. I have defended the idea that Christian nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war. I have thought of it as a response that should alter the way the world does politics. My problem was that I confused the idea of pacifism with Christian pacifism. However, Christian pacifism is not a better way to do worldly politics but instead it is the way that Christ’s bride should live in a world of violence. Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way. “In short Christians are not nonviolent because we believe our nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but rather because faithful followers of Christ in a world of war cannot imagine being anything else than nonviolent.”

Far too often I have thought that being a pacifist means always having something to say in the face of violence, terrorism or war. When discussing events like 9/11 I thought it was my responsibility to make an argument defending pacifism as the proper response. I see now though that in the face of such tragedies my commitment to Christian nonviolence does not require me to say anything but rather demands my silence.

I am discovering more and more that in the face of violence the Christian pacifist’s response should not be a ready polemic or explanation but rather to be silent. This is the mistake I make far too often and it usually has the same result. I find that whenever I am quick to speak it is harder to speak honestly. For me this usually means speaking as a person intrigued by the controversial idea of pacifism and wanting to shock others with how different my response is from the American evangelical majority. This gives birth to a sort of competition of ideologies in which both sides are put to the test of violently overcoming the other. At this point I am no longer participating with anything like Christian nonviolence. These moments are not motivated by a conviction.

Christian pacifism, however, creates a a silent space and in this space there is room for a community to develop whose response is something other than revenge. This is the response of a person moved by the Spirit with the conviction of Christian pacifism.

While I still find no better ideological position to support than Christian pacifism, I seriously doubt whether or not I can say that I am truly committed to Christian nonviolence. However, I can say that I am becoming sensitive to the Spirit stirring within me the weight of this conviction.

Through John Howard Yoder’s book The Politics of Jesus I have become convinced, as Hauerwas put it, “that if there is anything to this Christian ‘stuff,’ it must surely involve the conviction that the Son would rather die on the cross than for the world to be redeemed by violence.” And it is through words like this that I feel the prodding of the Spirit, the conviction, to truly believe that “the defeat of death through resurrection makes possible as well as necessary that Christians live nonviolently in a world of violence.”

This does not just mean that I have a license to criticize the powers; rather this conviction means that the way I live my life must change. The way I see the world and others must change. The response that this conviction demands of me is one that I know I cannot develop on my own. I cannot cultivate a lifestyle in which I fulfill the conviction of Christian pacifism. It is only through the Spirit and through the community of believers also committed to overcoming by the cross instead of the sword that I find hope to live out this conviction.