Violence & Shalom

Not sure where to go with my thoughts today. They stem from some reading of 2 Kings 9-10 and some commentary. This portion is about a bloody revolution by a man named Jehu who has been anointed king over Israel. He with his followers go on a rampage of bloodshed to purge Israel from the impurities of the house of Ahab & Jezebel and their succeeding families. Many are killed, to the extent of completely wiping any family off the face of the earth. In the end it is said, "the LORD said to Jehu, 'Because you have done well in executing what is right in My eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in My heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel."

The commentary had some good insights. "Modern readers need no reminder of how easily high-principled revolutions deteriorate into bloodbaths. Jehu impresses us as one of the Old Testament's most modern characters. What is harder for us to come to terms with is the claim that God was behind all this bloodshed and betrayal and that God's intention was to reinstitute shalom by means of violence. Is it really possible to create peace with violence? On the human level we know that his will not work. Peaceful ends can never justify violent means, because in our world the means inevitably contaminate the ends. Our ethical decisions about violence (war, revolution, capital punishment, abortion) are always a matter of compromise, leading at best to partial shaloms, thoroughly leavened by the violence we must employ to achieve them." (Interpretation, Richard D. Nelson)

Nonviolence, and even more, the pursuit of true shalom is really overlooked by Christians. I don't understand why the Christian agenda has revolved around the use of violence for so many years (SO many years). Where the OT is involved, there is much to be said about culture and other issues around worldview & violence (Read Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy for great thoughts about this, especially ch. 10). But in today's world and sadly even the church one is seemilgly exiled and painted with the liberal brush if nonviolence is made an issue. Sure we need to be nonviolent in our every day lives, but on the national scene it's a different story. Iraq is a perfect issue with this. I claim no grand opinions or expertice, but with a coming shift in government I really don't see nonviolence being as much an issue as promised. Pulling out troops and finding other ideas to pass the buck seems to be the agenda. What would happen if we truly took a Biblical stance of shalom and made true peace, not just for Americans but for Iraqis, Iranians, Palestinians, Israelis as well? This is a big issue and it's not going to work to just say "Hey, let's all just hold hands here and be friends," but where has violence ever gotten us? It's deepening hatreds on all sides.

It's all easy to say, tough to do. I'll be the first to say that. It's easy to sit here and write this from my comfortable home. All I'm wondering is this: What would it look like if we made true shalom for all the focused agenda and thought violence to be a non-means?

People might suffer. Christians certainly would if we tried to be peacemakers on a bigger scale. Many already are. Seems to me like we'd be living out the Kingdom as Christ did and taught us to do.