Giving Up My Right To Violence

Giving Up My Right to Violence

Diana K. Oestreich

Former Combat Medic, Author, Peacemaker

“If you slow down or stop the convoy to avoid running over a child, you will be responsible for your fellow soldiers getting attacked. I hope you understand your duty,” the sergeant barked.

I’m twenty-three years old, in the middle of the invasion of the Iraq war. The commander’s words from the briefing were pummeling my insides. I believed in sacrificing to serve my country, even taking a life to save a life, but this? How could I choose between the lives of my fellow soldiers and an Iraqi child? Whose life would I protect, and whose would I take? I had one night to decide because the convoy was happening in the morning.

Back in my tent, laying on my cot, tears rolling down my face, my chest heaving under the tension, I whispered to God again, “I have to, Jesus. I have to take a life to save a life.”

If Jesus refused to pick up the tool of violence to make the world right again, who was I to use the tool he refused to touch?

Whatever he was going to ask of me, it was too late. I’d already given my allegiance to the uniform I was wearing. In that moment, a voice echoed back to me so clearly I froze. “But I love them, Diana. I love them too.”

Jesus’ words pointed to something unfamiliar: nonviolence.

The tension melted, and it felt like I could breathe again. I knew it was the truth. Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. He took the sword out of Peter’s hand, he disrupted every act of violence, and said, “This is not my way.” If Jesus refused to pick up the tool of violence to make the world right again, who was I to use the tool he refused to touch?

“But I have to, Jesus. I have to take a life to save a life.” This is what my little country Baptist church taught me, to take a life for my country is to serve God. Wearing the uniform was a family tradition and celebrated in my church and rural community. Why was God standing in front of my service, my loyalty to my country, and my “good works”?

In church I had been taught that Saul was zealous for the traditions of his forefathers. Saul believed he was making the crooked road straight by harming and killing followers of Jesus. He was admired and celebrated by his people and his faith. Likewise, my faith celebrated the uniform, being willing to sacrifice or kill for my country. I wore the uniform like my father and grandfather before him. 

God was stepping in front of what I believed to be righteous, what my faith believed was a necessary evil, and what my country required of me. He was demanding that I love the way he loves. God was asking me to give up my right to violence, because he loved those I saw as enemies the same way he loved and tenderly cared for me and my future.

I don’t know what it means to love my enemies, but refusing to harm them is a first step.

On the battlefield of the Iraq war, Jesus asked me to lay down my weapon and to love my enemy. He was inviting me to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven first and a citizen of my country second. The world tells us we can’t live without using violence. Jesus interrupted violence; he refused to use it. In Matthew 5:43-45 he demands that we not only surrender our right to violence but to take up loving our enemy: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

We can live like Christ, but we can’t take a life for Christ because he never did. Violence is our native tongue, it’s the tool the world wields and a tradition that is passed down to us. Jesus never touched violence to mend the broken things of the world. Human history tells us we can’t live without violence, that we need it, while Jesus tells us we won’t truly live until we can give it up.

I don’t know what it means to love my enemies but refusing to harm them is a first step. I don't know why simple truths are so blurry or why it took a war for me to hear the God of love tell me to love instead of kill. But it did.

Laying down my weapon that night was my desert baptism. It’s where I surrendered my rights and all my other allegiances. The right to put myself first, the right to kill to protect my life, my allegiance to put my country first at all costs--all of these rights went down under the water. God asked for my everything, even the things I believed were righteous, even the things I thought were good.  

Choosing nonviolence is costly, but what it gives us in return is priceless: the freedom to say yes to Christ's call to love our enemies.

To follow Jesus I gave up all my other rights. My citizenship changed when I said yes to Jesus. I traded my American rights in order to live the way of Christ. My only debt is to love like Christ, to serve like Christ. God used the self-sacrificing love of Christ on the cross to unmake all the brokenness of the world. That’s my only tool to make the crookedness of this world straight. To give my life away because that’s how Jesus did it on the cross and healed the whole world.

Nonviolence is what transformed me. It liberated me. It also cost me dearly. The morning of the convoy, I stood, trembling, next to my truck. I didn’t know if a child would get pushed in front of me that day, I didn’t know if a battle buddy would be ambushed. The only thing I knew was the truth that if God loves my enemy, then I had no other choice but to love them too. I wrapped my fingers around that truth and prayed I’d have the strength to hold on to it. No child was pushed in front of my truck during the convoy. But now I was a soldier in the middle of a war told by God to love my enemy? That obedience cost me safety, security, and belonging in places I love. It still scares me knowing I’m sending my sons out into an angry and hurting world armed only with love.

Nonviolence means my faith is no longer a weapon I use to divide “us” from “them.” Instead, it’s a blank check. It's the posture of Jesus’ self sacrificing love on the cross. Nonviolence is what I’m arming my sons with. This is the truest gift I can give them--an arrow to load in their bow and a solid bullseye to aim at. It’s a posture to live from and love from. The power to decide ahead of time how they will show up for the neighbor nobody likes and how they respond to the bully on the playground or to the violence and uncertainty this world is going to ambush them with.

Nonviolence means my children refuse to see anyone as their enemy, as disposable, or outside our jurisdiction to love. I’m not going to shield my children from the violence of this world, because I don’t want to shield them from an even bigger reality of a love that never fails. When violence is aimed at our neighbors, we stand in front of them because that's what Jesus did. When he saw the woman being stoned for adultery he interrupted the violence against her.

Choosing nonviolence is costly, but what it gives us in return is priceless: the freedom to say yes to Christ's call to love our enemies. I was preaching at a synagogue for a veterans' Shabbat service recently when the rabbi shyly approached me afterward and mentioned, “You know the call to love our enemies you mentioned? We don’t have it in Judaism. It’s only a Christian thing.” A  little embarrassed, as well as in shock, I let that sink in. Loving our enemies is what sets us apart and identifies us with Christ.

I went to war knowing what I would die for, but now I know what I’m living for. Jesus loves our enemies. Will we follow him and choose to love them too