The 48 hours around my birthday were intense this year.

• South Korea stopped a coup attempt in six hours. Tens of thousands in the streets at 3:48AM. Impeachment and criminal charges inbound. The Korean Church strongly condemned the coup.
• The French government collapsed. This is the same government that was lauded earlier this year for staving off the far-right through individual politicians sacrificing their seats.
• Amnesty International issued a report outlining all the evidence confirming that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. 
• The CEO of one of the US’s most exploitative health insurance companies was assassinated in broad daylight with shell casings that read “deny”, “delay”, “depose” referencing common insurance company strategies to deny claims.

In Myanmar, there were widespread non-violent demonstrations and general labor strikes protesting the February 2021 coup d’état. The military junta responded with brutal force. They turned guns and grenades against the peaceful protests. They forced Doctors and Teachers to go to work at gunpoint. Doctors treating protesters have been shot or beaten. The funerals of protesters were targeted for bombings. They have arbitrarily detained over 11,000 activists, politicians, journalists, and others. 84 people have been sentenced to death by military tribunal and hundreds of the detained have disappeared. Myanmar was not at peace before the coup but post-coup the scale of displacement, death, and human suffering within the country has been horrific.

So it should come as no surprise that many people have scoffed at our partners in Myanmar when they resumed their peacebuilding activities (they temporarily shifted to humanitarian relief and continue to provide critical aid alongside conducting community level peacebuilding). I’d paraphrase the people’s response as, “Non-violence? We tried that. The only answer for the sword is the sword. It is kill or be killed.” As in Syria, the brutal crackdown on peaceful protest has been used as a recruiting tool by the various armed opposition groups in Myanmar. In the north of the country, an alliance of armed groups known as Three Brotherhood Alliance has driven back the junta and claimed significant territory. As in Syria, many of the armed opposition groups in Myanmar are known for their own human rights abuses and extreme agendas.

In the United States, the targeted murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO was largely not met with sympathy or outrage, but instead with an outpouring of fury towards the insurance industry and a flurry of insurance horror stories. The Network Contagion Research Institute, which tracks online threats, found that the mainstream response to the murder “either expressed explicit or implicit support for the killing or denigrated the victim.” The reaction online that I’ve personally seen has almost universally ranged from “murder is wrong and this CEO was responsible for a lot of deaths” to “good, they need to fear us again.“

Now that the perpetrator has been arrested it seems clear that this was the response he was hoping for. He shared the following quote on a online review of the Unabomber’s manifesto, “Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn’t possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense. These companies don’t care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive? ‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.“

How do we – as Anabaptists – answer this challenge in a genuine way? In the United States and many other contexts, it’s become common for peaceful protesters to be charged with terrorism, so why shouldn’t they take up the sword? The law has been weaponized against them to silence their concerns. Does our society need the threat of a Malcom X in order for the powerful to listen to the words of a Martin Luther King Jr? In other contexts like Myanmar, it’s become common for peaceful protesters to be beaten, maimed, and killed, so why shouldn’t they take up the sword? It is killed or be killed. Is the philosophy of non-violence antiquated? What is our answer to this?

That’s not just rhetorical. I’m asking. Please let me know your thoughts on this challenge. I’ll continue on to share my current reflections.

I think one answer is to deepen our commitment to the old Anabaptist belief that human oppressors are not our enemies. We should be trying to save them too. When we – quite naturally – focus on human oppressors as our enemies I think we ignore the forces that scripture identifies as our enemies. I’ve noticed that many Churches in North America rarely talk about spiritual enemies but I wonder about this as the Early Church and the early Anabaptists took these forces very seriously. As I’ve written before, they’re also taken very seriously by most Cambodian Christians and by many of our YAMEN participants.

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12, NLV

Like Saul of Tarsus, human oppressors are also trapped in the abusive cycles of what Paul in his letter to the Galatians called this “present evil age“. Last month, one religious leader from Myanmar told me, “All sides want an end to fighting but often our trauma controls us.” The leader of one of our long term partners in Myanmar told us, “I hate the military. They kill. They rape. They torture. But if they come to my house I will offer them something to eat. Not because I like them. But because we must have forgiveness in my country. There is no peace possible if we do not choose what is best for all of us, instead of doing what we feel.” Many partners have told us that violence provides an immediate solution but that it just splinters the society further and results in more violence. “If we continue like this it will not end until this entire country is dead,” one partner staff told us, “We have to break this pattern somehow or there will be no future here, just graves.” The quote that comes to mind is one that’s attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “Force is all conquering, but it’s victories are short lived.“

I think that we, as Christians, should not be build our hope around the expected results of zero sum political calculations. There have been many times, including in Cambodia during the 1980s, where Mennonite Central Committee was able to open doors that political consensus said were walls.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:17-19,20 NIV

I realize that this line of reasoning is why Karl Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses” but I’m not advocating that we disengage from the work of emancipation. We should be following Jesus in declaring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed. Committing ourselves to not having human enemies should not mean that we stop calling out oppression. As it is written in Proverbs, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” Instead, following the example of Martyrs like Dirk Willems and Óscar Romero, I believe we need to do what is right on a personal level and release the results to God. Even when the situation seems hopeless. Mennonite Central Committee’s work in North Korea, Palestine, and Myanmar continues despite the discouragement and hopelessness that we can feel at times.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV

I want to circle back because I think it’s extremely important that we as Christians take the allegation that “‘violence never solves anything’ is a statement uttered by…predators” very seriously. I know that many vulnerable people – especially women and children – have had scripture focused on peace and forgiveness weaponized against them to protect predators within the Church. I also know many young people who have left the Church because they see our faith as being complicit with oppression and even genocide. Many Christian organizations have become Christian-adjacent or secular due to some of the violence done in the name of the Church. For instance, Christian Peacemaker Teams organization, which was founded on Ron Sider’s call that “Jesus vicarious death for sinful enemies of God is the foundation of our commitment to nonviolence“, changed it’s name to Community Peacemaker Teams in recent years. Instead of feeling defensive or revisionist, I think we need to work to be a people who love justice and truth as much as God loves these things. Even when that means clearly acknowledging the violence that we have actively participated in or passively enabled.

I try to remember that Jesus came during a time like this. When power was concentrated in the hands of a few and the people cried out for a messiah who would overthrow the political order by force. It’s hard not to feel weary and discouraged when I think about issues like growing political polarization, wealth inequality, or the Climate Crisis… I worry about the kind of future that my children will have. I worry about the kind of future the communities we’re working in will have. What will be the results of our work? I also feel the temptation to turn away from Jesus and turn to Barabbas, the human criminal who inflicted violence aganist the oppressors.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2 NIV

In closing I want to share an excerpt of a 1966 letter from Thomas Merton to Jim Forest, who was a young peace activist at the time, which I think captures what I’m trying to convey better than I can.

So the next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work and your witness. You are using it so to speak to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration, and confusion.

The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. 
–Excerpt of Letter to a Young Activist, Thomas Merton 1966

I often remind myself that God didn’t call us to save the world. We were called to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We’re the helpers, not the lead.