Our Violent World
We can’t change the world, but what about our own violent hearts?
Note: It is beyond my capability to carefully and accurately apply the words below to global politics. I have thoughts, but those thoughts lack vital information only available to insiders in the various governments of the world. I am never comfortable speaking about things if I cannot do so with intellectual honesty. So, this article is not pointing at any particular government or people group now employing violence to get their way or enforce their will on others.
I’ll settle for what I write to be ever truer in my own heart, and in other contexts about which I do know a good bit: families, friendships, places of work, schools, neighborhoods.
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Violence is more widespread today than it has been in decades. At least 50 different countries have been hit by armed conflict in the past year. Experts estimate that at least one in every six people is exposed to some level of conflict…Between 2010 and 2019, the global death toll resulting from armed conflict was more than 953,000. In only half the time, between 2020 and the end of 2024, the number of fatalities has exceeded 1 million. [Furthermore], most people who are affected by conflict are not killed. They lose health facilities, they lose schooling, they live in fear, they suffer food insecurity.
Violence is as old as Cain and Abel, as universal as gravity, and as current as the devastating bomb or destructive tweet dropped in the last hour. Violence is fomented in the human soul dominated by disordered desires and the willingness to do anything to get one’s own way.
Jesus, because he had to deal with a Jewish sect called the Zealots, knew all about social violence as the overflow of private hearts.
The Zealots passionately believed that God was the exclusive ruler of Israel and therefore that any amount of Roman authority in Judea was a violation of God’s sovereignty. Given their worldview, they believed that the best way to be faithful to God was to violently oppose Roman power. The Zealots made the news and showed up in coffee shop conversations because of strong characteristics like preparing for holy war, for attacking Roman officials, for harassing those they deemed complicit, and even threatening other Jews who seemed to be being too nice to the Romans.
Jesus pointed out that the worldview and ideology of the Zealots did not harmonize with his movement. The Jesus Movement is a Kingdom-of-God movement, and the characteristics, the DNA of the kingdom, are righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17).
Righteousness is right being and right living that is the overflow of being rightly related to God. It is characterized by seeking amendment of life as we discover more of God’s will. It means seeking growth in the Spirit. As we think about this, it is enlightening to note that the Spirit is visually memorialized by a dove carrying an olive branch, not a machine gun carrying ammunition.
Sadly, we live in a culture of violence that normalizes harming others to get what one wants. It desensitizes us to the image of God in others. It numbs us to the normal empathy that would stop us from causing pain in others. We lose sight of Christian basics like The Golden Rule and Imago Dei. Do you think anyone has ever used these basic Christ-centered virtues as the moral lens for destroying a nation, devastating a spouse in court, verbally abusing a child, or demolishing a fair agreement with a business partner?
James, noticing the omnipresence of violence, wondered: What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? Using those rhetorical questions as revelation, he said: You desire but do not have, so you kill (James 4:1-2).
Killing is the public peril that is a shot from the gun of disordered private desire.
Dallas Willard coined and introduced me to the word wanter. In trying to describe the centrality of human desire (will or volition) in human action and thus in spiritual formation, Dallas would teasingly say, “We need to deal with our wanters; We need to bring them under the Lordship of Jesus and have them transformed by the Spirit.”
The Living Bible translation of James 4 says [there is] a whole army of evil desires within you. When we add that inner army to souls containing squads of anger and platoons of hatred, they form a powerful coalition that moves our hearts toward conflict, vengeance, and war.
How do we deal with an army of evil desires within us?
We call on the Holy Spirit to do the work we cannot do ourselves.
We need the Spirit in our hearts, homes, and holy places producing fruit only the Spirit can produce: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is not merely a recognizable list, but the antidotes to everything violent, destructive, and evil within us which is contrary to the Spirit of God.
The transformational work of Jesus in a human life is gentle. It is always invitational. Jesus never bullies us to get his way in us.
We cooperate with Jesus’ invitation by praying: Come, Holy Spirit. Come defeat the army of disordered desires in my heart. Drive them away and replace them with love for my neighbor and my enemy.
Thank you for these thoughtful words. They are greatly appreciated. I'm curious if you have ever had the chance to read Nigel Biggar's, In Defense of War which theologically explores the just war thesis. I have read several of the non-violence authors, and Biggar seems to offer the most academically and intellectually compelling counter argument I have come across.