Excerpts and thoughts from Rethinking Life by Shane Claiborne. Currently available on Amazon

What does love require of us? Ideologies do not demand much of us, but relationships do. “what does love require of us?” is a lovely question because it is a call to action.

Asking that question changes everything for me because what love required of me was more than a saying or a bumper sticker, a T-shirt, or a yard sign. It required proximity and relationships. It required drawing near and leaning into those who have been impacted by the issues.

In our neighborhood in north Philadelphia, gun violence is more than statistics; It has names and stories and tears. We have murals and memorials on nearly every corner to honor the lives lost to guns. Gun violence is about the three-year old hit with a stray bullet on Malta St. It’s about the mother who collapsed onto the sidewalk when she got news her little boy had been killed.

Being in proximity makes a difference. Relationships make issues real and complicated and personal. Relationships move us from ideology to compassion. We can’t love our neighbors if we don’t know them. And once we are approximate, love requires us to take action, to stand up for life in tangible ways.

A Consistent Ethic of Life

Back when I was trying to sort out the contradictions of what it means to be pro-life, I eventually bumped into the idea of a “consistent ethic of life,” the conviction that all of life—from womb to tomb—matters. To have a consistent ethic of life is to be comprehensive in our advocacy for life and to refuse to think of issues in isolation from each other.

It is a fundamental conviction that every person is sacred and made in the image of God. It requires pursuing whatever allows people to flourish and fighting everything that crushes life. That means that all these difficult issues—the military, guns, racism, the death penalty, poverty, and abortion—are connected, and we need a moral framework that integrates them. That’s what it means to be pro-life for the whole of life.

The early Christians had a consistent ethic of life. They were a force to be reckoned with, speaking out against every manifestation of violence in their society. They spoke against war, domestic violence, capital punishment, and they spoke against abortion.

An Appreciation of Life

The more out of touch we are with the earth and the creatures of the earth, the easier it is to devalue or even destroy life. When we are no longer awed by the miracle of creation, it gets harder to believe in the goodness and beauty of life —and the good and beautiful Creator behind it all. That’s why gazing at fireflies and sunsets is a holy and spiritual practice.  It not only fills us with wonder but also strengthens our foundation for life.

As incredible as all the creatures are, nothing is more sacred than human beings. Looking into the eyes of another person gives us one of our clearest glimpses of God. And the closest we can get to killing God is to kill or crush a child of God. Every single one of us bears the image of our Creator.

God Sees Each of Us

God sent an angel to a woman named Hagar, Abraham’s mistress, whom Abraham had forsaken into the desert with her son, Ishmael. She names God as, get ready for this, “the one who sees me” (Genesis 16:13). That’s what she names God: “you-are-the-one-who-sees-me.” it’s a stunning reflection of God’s desire to know and be known. The God who saw Hagar and Ishmael is the God who sees us and longs to be known by us.

Finally, God puts on skin and comes to us with a name and a face in Jesus. But here’s the part we sometimes forget. Just as we see God in Jesus, Jesus tells us that God lives in us (John 14: 17). We are God’s sanctuary. God does not dwell in temples made by human hands (Acts 17: 24), but God lives in you and me (1 Corinthians 3: 16). Every person on the planet is the holy of holies. That should cause us to treat other people, every person, as if they are God’s temple—because they are.

We are as wild and spectacular and diverse as is God. No DNA is the same. No fingerprint is the same. But every human being bears the image of God —no exceptions.

What will the world look like if we truly believed, as the apostle Paul figures out, that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 2: 20)? Faith is not just about having new ideas. It is about having new eyes. We see the image of God in every person. We see our own brokenness and our own belovedness reflected in the eyes of those we meet.

We can see our own brokenness, our own violence, our own ability to destroy, and we can see our own sacredness, our own capacity for love and forgiveness. When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.

Murder in the Bible

Murder is the first thing that happens outside the Garden of Eden. The Lord confronts Cain, saying, “what have you done!?” And then God utters one of the most profound statements in the entire Bible. “your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” (Genesis 4: 10).

Looking at the original text, dam, the Hebrew word translated “blood,” is plural. Plural. And the verb sa’ ak, translated “cries,” is in the present tense.  It wasn’t that the blood of Abel cried out just in that moment of the past, it cries out in the present. It is crying out to God. Anytime blood is shed, it cries out to God and continues crying out.

God is making a statement that the blood of all people who are killed cries out. We miss this when we read “blood” as singular and limited to the murder of Abel. The bloods of all individuals, tribes, and peoples who have been killed cry out to God from the earth. God’s profound statement reflects the knowledge that this would not be humanity’s only murder. This would not be the last of the shed blood. Killing and violence do not stop in Genesis 4. That’s where they begin. The murder of Abel is simply a precursor to the murders and violence that will follow.

Abel’s blood cries out to God. So does the blood of the martyrs, the Saints, and all the freedom fighters over the centuries—it all cries out to God. The blood of Native Americans slaughtered on their own land cries out to God, and the blood of enslaved Africans who were whipped, raped, and lynched cries out to God.

I invite you to think about historical depravity in this way: humanity was essentially on a suicide course and God intervened to save us from ourselves via the flood.

When the flood receded and things started afresh with Noah and his descendants, God issued a new command, one we had never heard before: don’t kill each other.  God says, “and for your lifeblood I will surely demand at accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being” (Genesis 9: 5).

For the first time in human history, “thou shalt not kill” became a thing. And if perchance we decide not to listen to God and we do kill each other, God will demand an accounting.

God hates sin not because we are disobeying commands but because God cannot bear to see us hurt one another or ourselves.

The Texts of Terror

When it comes to having a consistent ethic of life, we still must wrestle with some difficult questions about Jesus, God, and the Bible

• How do we make sense of all the violence in the Bible, especially if we believe that all scripture is “God breathed” (2 Timothy 3: 16)?
• Does God use violence, and is there ever a time Christians can use violence?

Without a doubt, there are some brutal scenes in the Bible, terrible violence. Entire passages are often called “the texts of terror.” Passages detail how entire populations are wiped out, and the Bible depicts God as orchestrating, condoning or even ordering the bloodshed.

It’s not hard to see why some Christians have used such stories as justification for heinous violence, even to defend genocide and other atrocities. If we believe that God resorted to violence to solve problems, then it becomes much easier to justify resorting to violence ourselves.

So how do we make sense of violence in the Bible? The simplest answer is this: violence is the product of sin.

We must acknowledge that, over the centuries, Christianity has accommodated itself to the logic of empire —specifically, to the idea that violence can bring peace, or that wealth will make us happy. As Jesus told Peter at one point, we are still thinking with the mind of this world rather than having the mind of God (Matthew 16: 23).

Another thing we need to be aware of is the human tendency to project onto God our own motives for violence and vengeance. We often do what makes sense to us and assume God would want the same thing. We assume God blesses whatever or whomever we bless and curses whatever or whomever we curse. As the old saying goes, “God created human beings in His own image and human beings decided to return the favor.” When we win the war or lose the war, we interpret the outcome as God’s will rather than recognize that God didn’t want a war at all.

When we interpret inexplicable violence in the Bible as “justice” or “God’s mysterious ways” rather than calling it what it is —a consequence of sin—we are projecting the human logic, that makes sense to us, onto God. But God is like Jesus, and Jesus ruled by the law of love.

As love makes room for freedom, God allows us to hurt ourselves and others. But God is always working through the cracks, healing us of our violence and showing us another way. Even in tragic events such as the flood, where God basically starts over because the world was “full of violence” (Genesis 6: 11), we can see a God who is “grieved” by the suffering of the world (Genesis 6: 6). We see a God who is working with us to make sure that life wins, that love wins, that death and violence don’t destroy all the beauty God has made.

For all the incredible and holy things he did, the prophet Elijah also called down fire from heaven to incinerate 100 Samaritans whom he mistakenly thought had come to harm him (2 Kings 1: 9-12).

We might conclude that God approved of such behavior since the text doesn’t condemn it. And yet, when Jesus’ own disciples suggest doing the same thing to some Samaritans who didn’t welcome Jesus, Jesus does not approve. James and John, known as the sons of Thunder (which sounds like a pro-wrestling duo), ask Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Luke 9: 54). Instead of taking them up on their offer, Jesus steals their thunder (pun intended) and rebukes them in a way that makes it very clear God isn’t a fan of bringing down fire on people.

Just because characters in the Bible have God-given positions or gifts does not mean everything they do is ordained or blessed by God.

Sometimes they rationalize or justify their own need for violence by projecting it onto God as if God were somehow responsible for their actions. For example, animal sacrifice became a kind of penance, another example of the misconception that violence can heal our violence, that blood will atone for bloodshed.

But God blows up the sacrificial system once and for all in Jesus. Throughout the Bible, God is working through the cracks of broken humanity, moving us away from violence and the original sin of Cain killing Abel, and moving us towards the beautiful time when we will beat our swords into plows and our spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2: 4).

Centering Jesus

It became more than just a debate for the early Christians; it was one of the first things they deemed heresy. The idea that Jesus was different and better than God, and not at all the same character as the God of the Old Testament, was rejected as a heresy.

Let’s reflecting a little on Jesus. I want to invite you to consider these 3 truths: Jesus is the lens through which we understand the Bible, Jesus is the fulfillment of a better ethic of life, and Jesus is the ultimate disruptor of violence and death. Jesus is consistently for life and consistently subverts death and violence. So, whenever one passage of scripture seems to conflict with another passage of scripture, Jesus gets to be the referee.

Violence is the problem, not the solution. Violence is the disease, not the cure. Any of us who dare follow Jesus must also learn, that we cannot carry a cross in one hand and a weapon in the other. We cannot serve two masters. Jesus teaches, and the whole New Testament affirms, that we should not return harm done to us.

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Relevant Scripture:

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now see the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. (John 14: 17)

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. (Acts 17: 24)

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (1 Corinthians 3: 16)

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2: 20)

The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” (Genesis 4: 10)

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, (2 Timothy 3: 16)

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16: 23)

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. (Genesis 6: 11)

He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore. (Isaiah 2: 4)

Reference:

Rethinking Life by Shane Claiborne. Available on Amazon