Those aren’t exactly situations that call for violence. Look to my examples again, they all involve attacking aggressors (be it a country or a person). Reading kinja’s post seems to promote the idea of preferring to kneel down and pray lightning will strike your assaulter than shooting him.
Deflection again.
Both my and kinja’s responses were to your accusation that, "Pacifism is a joke. All it does is promote weakness and cowardice. (See your post umber 36 of this thread)
What we are asking is, does the responses of these people to dangerous and life threatening situations bespeak of weakness and cowardness or strength and courage?
To me, and I have some experience, it takes more courage, more strength of will, to hold back, to forgive, and to respond with Christian Love than to strike out in violent attack.
Perhaps you should try it. Perhaps you should stand still and allow someone to verbally abuse you, or take a poke at you and refuse to respond in kind. Instead offer to pray for them and then do it. See how they react, but more important see how much strength of will it requires to NOT respond to violence with violence.
You don’t see Japan attacking anyone else have you? And from what I heard, its military is more defensive now than one geared for an invasion.
It is obvious that you do not know WHY this is so though.
The Reason is that, at the end of the war, when the Japanese constitution was being drawn up, the Japanese government feared the “militarist element” in their society so much that they insisted on a clause renouncing war as an option of national policy. Thus their “national defence forces” are very restricted.
They learned the lesson that the “Evil” that is war is no good and have taken peaceful steps to prevent it.
I never said violence was the solution to all evil you know. I said that it’s a great tool for fighting injustices (like defending oneself against aggression).
I will agree that it is a tool. Not a great tool.
I am greatful to our military men who have defended our rights (and yours).
Yet the greatest pacifists of all time such as MLK Jr., Mother Theresa, and Ghandhi have not defeated evil either. Those people called for non-violence and peace yet all the evil you speak of still happen.
I don’t really think that this is true. The great good that came from MLK’s and Ghandi’s Peaceful Revolutions gave far greater strength to their movements than any violent revolution could garner.
In both cases, while there was undoubtedly violence perpetrated on both sides, it was the peaceful demonstrations and the willingness, the courage and strength, of these peaceful demonstrators to accept injury and punishment and arrest, in nonviolent defence of the Christian Ideal of Love for you fellow man that showed up the violent responses for what they really were - evil wrongs.
If both sides subscribed to evil, violent methods, the result would have been greater bloodshed, and greater evil.
Actually in the case of India I could show how, the most fundemental of Christian values, humility and service, gave the Indian people a HUGE “weapon”, greater than any gun, greater than any nuclear bomb, to use against the British.
Having said all of that, we can be sure that we will never fully defeat evil in the world until the return of Christ. The thing here is not a matter of defeating evil at large in the world but of defeating evil in ones own heart.
All that we see with our eyes is finite and temporal. It is our eternal soul that is real and eternal. It is how we fulfill the great commandments of Love that will determine the final destination of that soul. Are we training ourselves using the weapons and armor of Prayer, Honesty, Humility,
My real concern is not so much about what effect violence has on specific events in the world. For the world is entirely temporal and finite. What really matters is the state and condition of the soul. In my opinion then, playing videogames that glorify “blasting others” is a bad thing.
(cont)
