Love vs. Retaliation

Last night in our home group we had a great discussion on this idea that comes back over and over again in I Peter:

"Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation." 2:12

When we are wronged in some way (as the early Christians Peter was writing to surely were), it is almost natural to want to lash out or retaliate. We have been taught that we have rights and we should fight to the death for our rights to be honored! When we are wronged, sue! When we are cut off in traffic, go into a rage! When we are slighted by the boss at work, let bitterness stew up within us! But that is not the way of Jesus, and not the way Peter directs us.

Again Peter says, while talking to servants, "What credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God." 2:20

When I think of this verse (other than Jesus as the prime example) I think of Martin Luther King Jr., although not a perfect man, he was a man who lived by this motto and changed thousands and thousands of minds through his non-violent resistance. He was beaten, he was shot at, his home was bombed and he never retaliated!

As Philip Yancey says in his portrait of King:
"The civil rights movement gave King many opportunities to test his nonviolent philosophy. A deranged woman stabbed him in New York, her weapon lodging a fraction of an inch from his aorta. A white man in Birmingham rushed the platform and pummeled King with his fists. (Don't touch him! King cried to his supporters, who surrounded the attacker. "We have to pray for him.") Southern sheriffs delighted in roughing up their famous adversary as they handcuffed him and hauled him away in paddy wagons. They clubbed his marchers with nightsticks, sicced German shepherd dogs on them, blasted them with water cannons that cracked ribs and sent bodies sprawling on the streets."

When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King referred yet again to the principles he has learned from the Sermon on the Mount: "When the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization, because these humble children of God were willing to 'suffer for righteousness' sake."

I have a whole new respect for Martin Luther King Jr. and am challenged by his godly example.