Can I be honest with you?
Every time a Christian responds to the numerous nonviolent teachings of Jesus by asking, “But what about … ?”, I cannot help but hear those objections as another way of asking: “What are the scenarios where I don’t have to obey Jesus?”
In other words, if our posture as Christ-followers was genuinely focused on how to best follow his teachings, then we wouldn’t spend our time trying to discover situations where we wouldn’t have to follow him.
It’s like if Jesus says, “You shall not commit adultery” and our response to that is, “Well, what if my wife is in a coma and we haven’t had sex for 5 years and her home care nurse is really beautiful and single and lonely? Can I disobey Jesus now?”
To me, this is exactly the same thing as hearing Jesus say “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, if they strike your face, turn
the other cheek … ” and our response is, “Okay, but what if there’s a guy in my house with a gun to my wife’s head? Can I
blow his brains out now?”
These imaginary scenarios are invented to either cast doubt on the practicality of Jesus’s teachings, or to find a loophole in the teaching where we don’t really have to follow what Jesus says is curious behavior for those who contend to be Christ-like disciples who are committed to following Jesus.
To this, I can only hear Jesus asking us, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, lord’ and yet do not do the things I say?”
Still, I get it. We are confused by this teaching. It goes against the grain of everything we’ve ever been told about good versus evil, right and wrong, and godly justice. So, we bristle at the idea of turning our other cheek to brace for the second slap. We shudder at the thought of enduring an insult with a smile rather than firing back a zinger of our own. It just doesn’t “feel” right to us. So, we struggle to follow Jesus into this nonviolent, enemy-loving territory because it simply does not compute.
Therefore, Jesus must have been speaking metaphorically. Or maybe he was trying to show us how impossible it is to keep his commands and that
must mean we shouldn’t even try. Or perhaps Jesus is the only person who could ever love and forgive this way—because, after all, he’s God in the flesh and I’m not—so it’s not really practical for me to try to love in such a radical fashion.
But, I am convinced that Jesus really did mean for us to follow his example of love for our enemies. In fact, doing so is the only way we can demonstrate that we have been transformed from the inside out into people who are—like him—empowered to love those who hate us and bless those who curse us.
Jesus said that to do so was to be like our Heavenly Father. So, refusal to do so is a denial of our true identity as children of God.
For many Christians, the scriptures themselves are what add to their confusion about Jesus’s nonviolent instructions. Since they’re already questioning whether or not Jesus could actually be serious about these ideas, when they run across a few verses in the New Testament that seem to confirm their suspicions that
Jesus wasn’t totally all-in on this “love your enemy” thing, they underline those passages and ignore the rest.
So, let’s look a bit closer at one of those scriptures that most often gets quoted whenever someone suggests that Jesus was a nonviolent Messiah who called us to love our enemies.
TURNING OVER TABLES?
For me personally, this is probably the most common objection I hear. Mostly because Jesus acts in a way that appears to be violent. Therefore, they conclude, violence is an acceptable option for Christians.
But is that really what’s going on? A closer look reveals otherwise.
In context, the act of overturning the tables in the Temple comes immediately after another Messianic event—the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey on what we commonly refer to as “Palm Sunday.”
This is significant. Because, as we’ve already explored, this entry into Jerusalem on a donkey was, in itself, an example of Jesus coming to his people as a nonviolent Messiah.
This is why he “wept over the city” because they “did not know the things that make for peace.” The people wanted a violent insurrection. Jesus wanted to bring them peace. He wept because they were impervious to his message and steadfast in their desire to shed the blood of their oppressors.
So, does it make any sense that, immediately after this scene, Jesus would stride into the Temple, fashion and whip and beat people over the head?
No, it does not.
His entire mission that day was to remind his people of the way of peace. He was heartbroken that they failed to see how they might obtain his peace. He was broken inside because His people rejected him as their Prince of Peace and clung defiantly to a lust for power and a desire for armed rebellion.
Trust me, Jesus does not turn from this scene to violently attack people in the Temple.
Let’s take a closer look at what it actually says in the Gospels about this event:
“In the temple courts [Jesus] found people selling cattle, sheep
and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he
made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts,
both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves, he said,
“Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a
market!” (John 2:14-16, emphasis mine)
Please note that it says Jesus used this whip to drive “all of them from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle.”
It does not say that Jesus used the whip to drive out any people. No human beings were whipped by Jesus. Not a single person. The whip
was specifically used to drive “both sheep and cattle” out of the temple.
So, the actions taken by Jesus on that occasion are not to be interpreted as violent. They are rooted in His desire to restore God’s Temple to its original purpose. He exercises His authority as God’s Son to chase the animals and the moneychangers out of the place of worship, but He does not act violently towards anyone in the process.
How can we be sure of this? Simply because scripture tells us explicitly that the Messiah to come would not be violent.
“He [The Messiah] was assigned a grave with the wicked, and
with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor
was any deceit in his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:9, emphasis mine)
Let me be perfectly clear: If Jesus did act violently, he was not the Messiah according to the scriptures.
So, that’s how we know that Jesus did not use violence when He cleansed the Temple. Because if He had, then those who crucified Him would have
been justified for crucifying Jesus as a violent man who assaulted innocent people in the Temple that day.
Yes, Jesus cleansed the Temple. He overturned tables. He chased animals out of the Temple using a whip he had fashioned.
But He did all of that without doing any violence to another person.
NOTE: This post is an excerpt from my book Jesus Unarmed: How The Prince of Peace Disarms Our Violence, [Foreword by John Fugelsang], available now on Amazon in Print and on Kindle [Audiobook coming soon].
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Keith Giles is the author of the 7-part best-selling “Jesus Un” book series from Quoir Publishing. His latest -and final book – in this series, Jesus Unarmed: How The Prince Of Peace Disarms Our Violence is available now. Keith is also the host of Second Cup with Keith [a new solo podcast available now on the Ethos Radio App, for Apple and Android and on Spotify; and the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast [along with co-hosts Matthew Distefano, Dr. Katy Valentine, and Derek Day], and the new Imaginary Lines YouTube Channel with poet Darrell Epp. He and his wife, Wendy, currently live in El Paso, TX and work with Peace Catalyst International.
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