If we confess the God of Jesus Christ, a peace church is the only church we can be.

We are a peace church. That much is clear. The real questions are how long that will be true and how long we care.

Signs of drifting: Signs of drift in our commitment are appearing. Here is a short list. Because George W. Bush claimed Jesus as his personal Savior and favorite political philosopher, many Mennonites supported the past president in spite of his aggressive war policies and express little anger at the current president when he continues the same war policies. And the idea is gaining traction in the academic realm that since we are now culturally assimilated, we Mennonites should be willing to “get our hands dirty” to help with “security.” In this argument, helping with security means to support the use of guns in both local and international arenas as long as that use is limited and is called “just policing.”

These discussions mirror comments from Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA, in which Conrad Kanagy writes, “We have become less likely to resist military service and more likely to say that we would engage in war or carry a weapon.” Also there is the frequently voiced fear that too much emphasis on peace might detract from efforts at mission outreach rather than seeing the gospel of peace as an intrinsic and inseparable part of the good news about Jesus Christ.

Why be a peace church: The list of reasons to continue to be a peace church is longer. The most profound reason of all is new to our thinking about the peace church. It may even surprise. This list builds to that most profound of reasons.

1. Being a peace church is our tradition and our history. Not all Anabaptists in the 16th-century Reformation were pacifists. However, in contrast to the other Reformation groups, rejection of the sword was a central issue of discussion among Anabaptists. The enduring voices were the pacifist ones, and Anabaptists became identified as a pacifist movement. Maintaining Mennonite Church USA today as a peace church is being true to this heritage and tradition.

2. People outside Mennonites expect us to be a peace church. For example, more than half the members of my congregation in Madison belonged to another denomination before they became Mennonites. They sought out Madison Mennonite Church because of the Mennonite tradition of being a peace church. We need not to disappoint such seekers.

3. For many Muslims, Christianity is the religion that attacked Islam in the Crusades and the religion of the people behind the guns aimed at Muslims today. The world of Islam needs to see a peaceful Christian tradition and a denomination that respects the religion of Islam.

4. All the armed countries of the world need us to be a peace church. The world needs us to hold up an image of the peaceable reign of God in the face of seeming unending military conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The world needs to see and hear that retaliation only continues a cycle of violence and breeds more violence. There are more people angry at the United States now than there were before the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which had the purported goal of stopping terrorism.

5. Observing the disastrous effects of retaliation confirms the truth of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:38-48 and shows that being a peace church makes sense. Many commentators believe that Jesus’ saying “Do not resist an evildoer” means “Do not mirror evil” or, “Do not respond to violence with more violence.” Then the commands about turning the other cheek, giving inner along with outer garment and going the second mile are examples of responses that change the situation without mirroring evil. “Love your enemies” follows with another version of “Do not mirror evil.” It means, rather than responding with more evil or violence, do something to change the situation. Paul repeats that wisdom in Romans 12:17-21 and 1 Thessalonians 5:15, and it is repeated again in 1 Peter 3:9. When one sees the increase in the number of terrorist events after the U.S. invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth of Jesus’ words becomes apparent. Violence does not solve problems. Instead, it spreads problems around and breeds more violence.

6. Mennonite Church USA needs to be a peace church for its own health. For at least three decades we have been struggling with the seemingly intractable problem of the place of gays and lesbians in our congregations. There are concerned, committed people on all sides of this issue. If we could solve the question to everyone’s satisfaction on the basis of what we know now, we would have done so long ago. Showing how the peace church maintains itself in love in the face of seemingly intractable problems is part of our witness to the world, but it is also part of what we do for ourselves.

7. We are disciples of Jesus. Jesus rejected the sword. To be his disciples means to do likewise. Drifting away from the idea of being a peace church is to drift away from following Jesus Christ.

A nonviolent God

8. Finally, and most profoundly, being a peace church is the way to worship God. More specifically, it is the way to worship the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. Since this is a new discussion, it takes some explaining.

We believe God is fully revealed in the story of Jesus Christ, in his life, teaching, death and resurrection. Jesus rejected violence. If God is fully revealed in Jesus, then God also refuses to use or sanction violence. If God is fully revealed in Jesus, then God is nonviolent. We should cultivate nonviolent images of God. This may require rethinking some commonly held beliefs.

Images of a violent God: There is a long tradition of seeing God as violent or as a God who sanctions or exercises violence. When a man’s wife dies from cancer, well-meaning friends tell the grieving husband, “God had a plan for your wife.” Although strangely silent after the earthquake in Chile, a well-known religious broadcaster blamed the earthquake that devastated Haiti on a curse because “they made a pact with the devil.” A few months ago, ABC News reported that for several years the manufacturer Trijcon had been putting Bible verses, including New Testament verses, into the serial numbers of rifle scopes it sold to the military. In 1 Samuel 15 God commanded King Saul to “utterly destroy” the Amalekites, “kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” But Samuel spared Agag the king, as well as the best of the cattle and the valuable treasure. Because Saul had disobeyed and God was displeased, God removed the kingship from Saul.

These stories have a common thread. All assume that God either sanctions killing—whether through Saul’s massacre of Amalekites with the sword or through Americans shooting at Iraqis and Afghanis with Bible-blessed scopes—or that God kills directly—whether one woman with cancer or some 200,000 Haitians with an earthquake. We need to abandon this view of a God who kills.

The omnipotence of God: The assumption that God uses and sanctions violence often goes hand in hand with the idea of God’s omnipotence. The idea that God is omnipotent—all powerful—is assumed to mean that nothing happens without God’s authorization and that in fact God controls all that happens. The implication is that God exercises evil and violence and sanctions violence as well as being a God of love and mercy. God can do anything and has no limits, the argument goes, so of course God must direct evil and violence as well as convey blessings and act mercifully. Thus cancer and earthquakes must be God’s doing, and Bible verses on weapons both bear witness to the God of Christians and bless the killing the weapons accomplish. Some version of these assumptions about omnipotence and divine violence have been the dominant and traditional view in Christian theology for much of Christian history.

Historical responses to the idea of a violent God have varied. One response abandons the idea of God’s omnipotence. This response assumes that God is loving and merciful, and on the basis of that assumption reaches the conclusion that a loving God is not all powerful. Wouldn’t a God both loving and all-powerful, the argument goes, have prevented the great misery caused by things like cancer and earthquakes?

A second response goes a step farther, to atheism. Those who take this step of belief refuse to accept the existence of a God who would cause the misery of an earthquake in Haiti and kill a man’s wife with cancer. Thus the idea of divinely sanctioned violence can actually promote atheism.

But if these three answers—God kills, God is weak and God does not exist—were a multiple choice test, the correct answer would be “none of the above.” There is a fourth, less well-known answer. This fourth answer requires rethinking sections of the traditional theological outline.

The problem of an omnipotent God who kills has two dimensions. One dimension concerns the image of God as a violent God and a God who sanctions violence. The other dimension concerns the understanding of omnipotence or what it means to say that God is all powerful. The following discussion addresses both dimensions.

A conversation about God and violence: There is no doubt that the Old Testament has images of a God who kills and sanctions killing. We saw one example in 1 Samuel 15. Others come to mind—the stories of a great flood (Genesis 6-8) or the killing of the Egyptian army in the exodus or the massacre of the inhabitants of Jericho and Ai in the conquest of Canaan. Understanding that God is nonviolent requires dealing with these.
Eric Seibert makes a helpful suggestion in his book Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God. He explains that we should distinguish between the “textual God” and the “actual God.” In other words, we can see that the text describes a God who practices or sanctions violence, but we can know from another source that God is actually nonviolent.

Beyond distinguishing the textual God from the actual God, there is more to say about the images of God in the Old Testament. This part of the Bible portrays a conversation about the character of God, and the God who practices and sanctions violence is only one side of that conversation.

Consider some familiar stories. Genesis 1 and 2 have two different images of creation. In Genesis 1, God is said to create by speaking. Genesis 2 projects a different image—God creates by kneeling on the ground and forming people and animals out of clay. Each of these images teaches that God is the origin of whatever is.

But something else becomes visible when these two stories are compared with another creation story, the Enuma Elish. This text is a Babylonian creation myth, contemporaneous with the time of Abraham. In the Enuma Elish, the earth, sky and human beings are all the product of violence. Marduk killed the female god Timat in a battle. Marduk then sliced the distended body of Timat in two and elevated the upper half to make the dome of the sky. After a search to determine who had inspired Tiamat’s rebellion, the guilty god was killed. His blood was then used to make human beings, who would act as servants to the gods. Against such violent stories, it should jump out that in the accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 we have images of a God who creates without violence. The Bible begins with nonviolent images of God.

Consider the account of God’s command to massacre the Amalekites against the story in 2 Kings 6 of Elisha’s solution to a threat to the Israelites posed by the king of Aram. Several times the king set an ambush for the king of Israel, but Elisha the prophet somehow learned of these encampments and warned Israel’s king to stay away. When he learned of Elisha’s actions, the angry king of Aram sent a large armed force to capture Elisha. In the morning, when Elisha’s servant saw this force, he was fearful.
However, Elisha prayed that his eyes be opened, and he saw an army of fiery chariots that was protecting them. Elisha then prayed that the king’s army be blinded—unable to detect where they were. Elisha told the army they were in the wrong city and that he would lead them to the place where they would find the man they sought. And he led them to Samaria and into the presence of the king of Israel. Here their eyes were opened and they realized where they were. And the king of Israel asked, “Shall I kill them?” (v. 21). And Elisha said, No, give them something to eat and drink and send them back to their master. So the king of Israel set out “a great feast.” And after they had feasted, he sent them back to the king of Aram. The story concludes, “And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel” (v. 23).

We need to put this story of nonviolent conflict resolution over against the story of the command for a massacre given to Saul. The Old Testament has a conversation about the character of God that we can only briefly observe in this space. The nonviolent God of the creation stories is pictured against the God who is said to use a great flood to massacre all of humanity except for Noah’s family. Further, in contrast to stories of military victories and assassinations is the account of Gideon, who routed an army of Midianites with 300 men armed only with trumpets, pitchers and torches (Judges 7:1-23). The book of Joshua pictures a violent and thorough conquest of the promised land, but along with the book of Judges, Joshua also displays an incomplete conquest and occupation of the land. The conversation includes the contrast between Nahum and Jonah. In Nahum, God is said to celebrate vengeance on Ninevah, whereas the later book of Jonah portrays God as merciful to the city. On the side of nonviolent resistance are the stories of Esther and of Daniel and his three friends.

What has been missing from much of our understanding has been the fact that the Old Testament contains a series of writings and stories that constitute a tradition of nonviolent resistance and a God who does not practice violence. In fact, these stories represent one side of a conversation about the character of God that goes on throughout the Old Testament. We have been familiar with the texts that portray a violent God but have been less aware of the nonviolent side of the conversation. The question for us becomes, Which of these stories and which side of the conversation best reflects the will and the character of God? The violent side or the nonviolent side?

The answer does not come by simply putting a finger on one or the other of the stories and reciting it in a loud voice. To decide which side of the conversation best reflects the character of God, we need a criterion outside these stories.

Perhaps the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 are the beginning of a clue. The fact that the Bible begins with a nonviolent image of God carries some weight.

That clue is followed by a stronger one. As Christians, our identity comes from the story of Jesus. It is obvious which of these paths through the Old Testament reflects the God revealed in Jesus and finds its fulfillment in Jesus. We know that Jesus rejected violence. And his story is a continuation of the history of God’s people that began with Abraham. Their God was the nonviolent creator God. Obviously the Israelites did not all understand God in the same way, and often they lost track of the nonviolent character of God. Nonetheless, that the God of Israel is fully revealed in the story of Jesus is a bedrock tenet of Christian faith. Thus if we truly accept the confession that God is fully revealed in Jesus, it should be obvious that God is not a God who sanctions violence or who kills. It is a misunderstanding of God to think that God commanded a massacre or deliberately kills a man’s wife with cancer or slays 200,000 Haitians with an earthquake.

The omnipotence of God again: The issue of the omnipotence of God remains. Is a nonviolent God truly omnipotent?

The violent God, the God who uses and sanctions violence, is a God made in our own image. This God has to punish evil and violence, and that punishment supposedly happens with greater violence exercised by God. It is like the child bullied on the school ground who threatens to get his big brother to beat up the bully. Violence is met with greater violence. And God then exercises the greatest violence of all, now and in the end. This is a God who mirrors human violence.

The God who reflects our image is obviously stronger than we are. As weak human beings, we can lift only small weights. God who is so much stronger can lift the ultimate weight. But again, this is just a God created in our image—a God who mirrors what we do, only more so.

But the God revealed in Jesus is not the God made in our image, not the God who responds to violence with more violence and lifts the ultimate weight. The God revealed in Jesus is the God who acts to change the situation.

How does God act to change the situation? The answer is the resurrection of Jesus. God responds to the violence of taking life by restoring life. When people used violence against Jesus, God’s Anointed One, God did not mirror their violence. Instead God changed the situation. God responded with resurrection.

The resurrection speaks to our understanding of the omnipotence of God. Resurrection shows us that the omnipotence of God is the opposite of the image of the God who uses the most violence and lifts the heaviest weight. The God revealed in the resurrection of Jesus is the God who responds to the taking of life by restoring of life. The God revealed in Jesus is not a God who responds to human violence by using more, sometimes infinitely more violence. Here then is how I would define the omnipotence of God: the ability to restore life where there is currently no life, and the ability to carry out the divine will in spite of human violence and disobedience. Rather than a definition of God’s omnipotence that is made in the image of humankind, that definition of omnipotence is the opposite of humankind.

The ultimate fulfillment of the divine will in spite of human violence and disobedience will occur at the final consummation with the return of Jesus. In the meantime, although evil has been defeated by the resurrection, it is still thrashing around and able to inflict suffering. It is as though we are playing in the middle of the fourth quarter of a football game in which the outcome of the game was settled at the end of the first half, when the winning team—our team—capitalized on the opponent’s errors and scored four touchdowns to put the game out of reach. That scoring spree is like the resurrection. The game continues, and we can be injured, but the outcome is determined. The reign of God is victorious, even as suffering and evil are still present.

The nonviolent and omnipotent God is the one fully revealed in the life of Jesus. This God restores life rather than taking life. This God gives us comfort and strength to endure and resist the ongoing evil that Jesus’ resurrection has already defeated.

The most profound reason of all to be a peace church is because the God revealed in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a nonviolent God. This is the God that we should worship at the center of our life as a peace church. If we confess the God of Jesus Christ, a peace church is the only church we can be.

Click here for an article response by Darrin W. Snyder Belousek