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Sometimes adherents of non-violence 'cheat' just a little bit; Gandhi
did, as did Martin Luther King: 'I'm non-violent, but see that mob
gathering? Oh, I hope and pray they will be non-violent, too!' There's an
implied threat. States with the self-confidence to mow down columns of
non-violent protestors beneath the tank treads need not always fear
non-violence. However, those states which claim an implied consent of the
governed, can find their pretensions exploded when enough of the governed
gather in the streets to say, 'No.' This kind of 'non-violence' is like
saying, 'Me, I'm non-violent, but my big friend Hugo here, he can be
violent. I hope you do not make Hugo angry, because I may not be able to
calm him down.' Is that non-violent? Certainly the violent person hopes
that he can attain his goals by the mere threat of violence, requiring
less effort on his part. Non-violence, genuine non-violence, can work, and Christians
can rejoice when it does, because it is a better way than violence. It is
possible that both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X saw themselves as
participants in a 'good cop/bad cop' routine. Certainly Malcolm X took
every opportunity to remind whites that, if they could not reach a
bargain with the 'non-violent' wing of the movement, he was waiting in
the wings: "'Whites better be glad Martin Luther King is rallying the
people because other forces are waiting to take over if he fails.' By
threatening whites with his presence, Malcolm believed that he was
helping Martin." (quoted p. 210, James H. Cone, Martin
& Malcolm & America). Is it not obvious that threatening violence
is not non-violent?
On whatever basis he himself adopted non-violence, Martin Luther
King often sold it to others from the standpoint of pragmatism. He
praised, on occasion, the architects of slave revolts, who resorted
to violence as an antidote to oppression: "During the first stage of
his civil rights activity, in sharp contrast to Malcolm, the only
occasion on which King deviated from his standard list of Negro
excellence was in an Atlanta address where he referred to David
Walker, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and 'other
unsung heroes [who] plotted and planned and fought and died to make
the American dream a reality for their people.'"
(James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare,
pp. 73-74). Though these leaders of abortive slave revolts
brought nothing to their people but doom and disaster, they are
"heroes," presumably because their intentions tended in a different
direction from the actual results they achieved. What options for
obtaining success from violence are open to an oppressed minority
numbering only about 12 percent of the population, lacking any
defensible geographic redoubt? One suspects even Carl von Clausewitz
would counsel peaceful, non-violent resistance if the odds of
military success are negligible. War favors the combatant with the
numbers and with the tanks. Counter-instances can be found:
Alexander the Great with his band of Macedonian soldiers defeated
the mighty Persian empire, which at least on paper was far more
powerful. But, like they say, though the race is not always to the
swift nor the fight to the strong, still that's the way to bet. It's
not altogether irrelevant that a given approach is not likely to
work: "'The reason I can't advocate violence is because violence
ultimately defeats itself,' he told Negroes who had experienced the
brutality of Bull Connor's dogs and water hoses."
(James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, p. 78). He said,
of the oppressor, "'They control all the forces of violence.'"
(James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, p.
77). While Christians cannot make expediency their principle
of action, neither is it virtuous to ignore the fact that a given
approach will inevitably lead to abject failure. By contrast, people
often just don't understand how much can be achieved by
non-violence. But whether their commendation of a good and godly
approach catapults them into heaven is another story, either for the
theosophist Gandhi or the liberal King.
Mohandas Gandhi often said things which make Christian hearts beat in unison, because these are familiar things, not
unfamiliar ones. If Gandhi had dug out these familiar things from
unfamiliar mines, that would be striking. But if he found
them where every Christian knows where to dig for them, in the
pages of the New Testament, that is less striking. With a little luck you can 'find' things even where they are not, provided
the New Testament has supplied you with the exact pattern and template of what
to look for.
The New Testament proclaims that God is love. Suppose you
wanted to find that God is love in Greek paganism. This is not
any harder than to find the same theme in Hinduism. The two are similar: both are
sprawling pagan pantheons which tend toward philosophical monism
at the high end, and toward unreconstructed idolatry at the low end. Can it be
done? Sure; at the end of his long, suffering life, Oedipus the unlucky king discovered
comfort in love:
"Children, this day your father is gone from you.
All
that was mine is gone. You shall no longer
Bear the burden
of taking care of me—
I know it was hard, my children.—
And yet one word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love." (Oedipus at Colonus, 1612-1618).
Or consider, "And perhaps looking to this Perecydes said that
Jupiter when he was about to fabricate, was changed into Love."
(Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, All Five Books, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book
III, p. 430). But this 'discovery' that Greek paganism only wants to teach that God
is love is hollow. In fact the Greeks profoundly distrusted their gods,
who by their low character had richly earned this distrust. Greek paganism is not
about love. Certainly, though, any man-made religion is what you make it,
and the Greek pagans would have done better to follow the advice of
Julian the Apostate and begin caring for the sick and the poor the way
the Christians did. Had they done so, it wouldn't have been a remarkable coincidence,
it would have been borrowing, though it would have been an improvement. So
would it have been an improvement if the Roman Governor Maximus had followed Pliny the Younger's advice and
cast off brutality and oppression:
"To put affronts upon others is an ill way of testing
the force of your authority; ill-gotten the homage inspired by
terror; and love will help you to gain your ends far more
effectually than fear. For while fear departs the moment you
withdraw your presence, love abides! and as fear turns to hatred, so
does love to respect." (Pliny the Younger, Letters, Book Eight,
Letter 24, To Maximus).
But the Roman Empire was not an empire of love, any more than
Hinduism is a religion of love. The Hinduism of the Theosophists was a sub-set of the real
thing, purged of those elements which offend, like the caste
system, or widows immolating themselves. Is it not the most
subtle form of imperialism, for the conquerors to make over the
religion of the conquered into some noble, and familiar, form which they,
too, can admire?
Some might say stew is the ideal food because all the
different food-stuffs combine within it, and so thus it
incorporates the excellences of all. Others might point out: but that's
just the problem. Stew-meat is 'read' by the tongue as a
solidified portion of the stew-matrix rather than as meat. By
being thrown in promiscuously with other ingredients, the meat
has lost its texture and flavor. Perhaps Christianity did not
really benefit by being purged of its prudish personal
morality, which encumbered and inconvenienced the Theosophists in
the pursuit of their personal lives.
Perhaps Hinduism has not benefited by being purged of its dark side. Perhaps this
happy-face, smiley Hinduism which only wants to tell people that
God loves them is not the real thing, not the true self of this
life-hating religion. Perhaps after all the ingredients are best
left separate, free to be themselves. Did the chefs expect whatever saving virtue
each faith might have would snow-ball together into one explosive
combined salvation bomb? What a disappointment to see instead the disparate pieces, forced together, cancel each other out. Christianity is a
religion with two eternal destinations: heaven and hell. Gandhi would have done better to embrace the preacher along with
the sermon, and follow Him to a certain destination. The church must not neglect
to remind the world who still holds the copyright on the Sermon on the Mount;
when Gandhi sounds the theme of turning the other cheek, he
found that tune at first where everyone else finds it, in the New
Testament.
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