Journal: Faith and Mission
Volume: FM 04:1 (Fall 1986)
Article: The Old Way And The New Way Matthew 5:36–48
Author: Richard Groves

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FM 4:1 (Fall 1986) p. 83

The Old Way And The New Way
Matthew 5:36–48

Richard Groves

Pastor, Wake Forest Baptist Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Hey, Dad,” one of the boys called out, “We’ve just bombed Libya! The President is on television right now.” Dumbfounded, I sat and listened as the President explained ,how and justified why he had done what he had done. It was, he said, sort of like self-defense, a combination of a retaliatory strike and a preemptive strike. A retaliatory strike is like this: “I hit you because you hit me, but I hit you harder than you hit me so you won’t hit me again.” A preemptive strike is like this: “I hit you first because I think you are thinking about hitting me first, and I want you to think twice before you do it.” It was a combination of those two, President Reagan said.

The raid was the only topic of conversation the following morning wherever two or three were gathered together over coffee. The dominant theme of those conversations seemed to be that at last we had done something; at least we had done something. The unspoken assumption was that doing anything is better than doing nothing when doing nothing seems inevitably to lead to more and more innocent people being killed in terrorist attacks. The feeling that doing anything is better than doing nothing was so strong that if you voiced any objection or had any reservation about what our government had done, you were immediately put on the defensive. You had to present a better plan or you were not allowed to speak.

The bombing of Libya and the public and private discussions which followed bothered me deeply, though several days passed before I figured out what was really troubling me. It was that there had been such an immediate and unquestioning acceptance by Christian people of what our country had done, with no effort made to justify that acceptance in light of the teachings of Jesus regarding the way we ought to relate to our enemies. The response was so uniform that I began to wonder: is there any way to apply Jesus’ teachings, which clearly had their origin in an interpersonal context, to the complex situations which develop in international affairs? Could it be that Jesus has no word for us as we contemplate the horrors of terrorist attacks? Are we simply dismissed into the world to find the best secular advice available?

FM 4:1 (Fall 1986) p. 84

I am the first to admit that it is exceedingly- difficult to move from the Sermon on the Mount to the Gulf of Sidra, but if Jesus is to have anything to do with anything that matters in our time, we must try.

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