Martin Luther King, Jr had the courage to choose nonviolent action to change the social order. He dared to speak of compassion in the face of hate, to preach love in a time of fear, and to call for reconciliation and peace in a time of war. He raised his voice in truth and called for justice. He confronted violence and the price of that was his life.
Our violence is unnecessary. It comes about as the result of human choices. The way of peace that Jesus speaks about is not just the absence of war. It’s the absence of any and all violence. It’s shalom, the peace of love and justice in which all people can live without fear, without rejection, and without any form of violence. Sometimes we are the victims of the violence of others but we still have a choice in how we will respond. If we follow the way of Jesus, each act of non-violence we choose will make our world and our lives extend a little more beyond injustice and oppression to dignity and unity.
Action
Do you condone violence by your silence? What are your feelings about the violence we experience in our society, our national policies, our personal interactions? How can you make your life more nonviolent?
Prayer
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
Matthew 5:9
Suggested ReadingDo not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways.
Proverbs 3:31
When reviled, Jesus did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued to commit himself to him who judges justly.
1 Peter 2:21-23
“In our complex and violent world, it is truly a formidable undertaking to work for peace by living the practice of nonviolence.
Pope Francis
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.
Martin Luther King Jr
There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.
Mahatma Gandhi
One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.
Daniel Berrigan
The greatest challenge of the day is: How to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.
Dorothy Day
The first thing to be disturbed by our commitment to nonviolence will not be the system but our own lives.
James Douglass
Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means. In such a relationship, dominator and dominated alike are reduced to things- the former dehumanized by an excess of power, the latter by a lack of it. And things cannot love.
Paulo Freire
Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.
Leo Tolstoy