A Few Weeks Till Election Day...DO NO HARM!

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement back in the 1700’s, once gave three simple rules for living a Christ-like life:  do good, do no harm, and stay in love with God.  If you think about it, these rules get to the heart of what it means to love God and neighbor (the two things that Jesus said are essential to obtaining eternal life).  These are also very practical rules for living as followers of Jesus today.  In this article, I want to look at the rule to “do no harm”.

As Christians, it is easy for us to think about doing good deeds to others.  I don’t know many who would argue that charity and kindness are not an important part of the Christian life.  Doing no harm, though, might be a different matter.  It is easy for us to think that we can do harm, especially if we believe that our cause is righteous enough, or at least justifiable.  That is why people in election years will pass along degrading and negative e-mails, jokes, and stories.  Yet, as Christians, Jesus taught us to love enemies, not to do harm to them.  We always have to wrestle with this truth.  We have to recognize it will be a challenge in a time when it feels more natural to defeat and destroy the enemy.

Further, we often think of doing harm as causing or doing physical violence; and this is certainly true!   However, violence is often more than causing physical harm.  A book that I was reading recently, The Power of Parable, by New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan, cites three forms of violence present in Jesus’ day (and ours):  ideological violence, rhetorical violence, and physical violence.  Ideological violence is thinking that “persons, groups or nations are inhuman, subhuman, or at least seriously lacking in the humanity one grants oneself”.  Rhetorical violence is “speaking on that presumption by dehumanizing those others with rude names, crude caricatures, and derogatory stereotypes or by calling them, say, political ‘traitors’, or religious ‘heretics’”.  Finally, physical violence is acting upon those presuppositions.  Violence is done long before any physical act of aggression.

This is important for us to remember as we follow Jesus Christ, particularly as he calls us to love our enemies and as his later followers (Peter and Paul) remind us to overcome evil not with more evil, but with good.  We are a people called to “do no harm”, to reject violence against others (regardless of the form of violence), and to view others by their basic identity as children of God.  As students of Jesus, we must be very conscious and aware of all the ways that we might cause harm and then take a different path.

This is really important for us as Christians to remember in this final month before our national elections.  We will be challenged in many ways to do harm, particularly to those that we disagree with; whether that is harm with our thoughts, words, or deeds.  We are called to something greater.  We are called to the path of love.  As you live out your politics in these next few days, I both challenge and invite you to do so with the heart of Jesus and to do no harm! 

You are the hands and the feet of Christ!

Rev. Brett