Tuesday, March 24

Means and Ends

A reflection from Dan Snyder

The violent "Powers" live by the belief that "the end justifies the means," and that "peace" can come through domination. Jeremiah (6:14) calls them out saying, "They cry 'peace, peace,' where there is no peace." Nonviolence exposes the lie of such "violent peace," and acts by the principle that "the end is already inherent in the means." One cannot sow violence and reap peace. Only nonviolent action can bring a nonviolent peace.

I love this passage from Jonathan Schell's remarkable book, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (NY: Henry Holt, 2003):

What Gandhi, Havel, and most of the others who have won nonviolent victories in our time believed and made the starting point of their activity was a conviction—or, to be exact, a faith—that if they acted in obedience to certain demanding principles, which for all of them included in one way or another the principle of nonviolence, there was, somewhere in the order of creation, a fundament, or truth, that would give an answering and sustaining reply (p. 92).

Like Gandhi, Havel, King, and many others we must be careful strategists; we must maintain fidelity to moral principles, and sometimes it can seem like the best we can do is simply to bear witness. But underneath all of our careful thinking, planning, and action, we can take courage in this kind of faith, that however unseen, and however much we struggle to find for it adequate words and ideas, we are met by this "fundament, or truth," and that it lives "in the order of creation." It is a core principle of nonviolence that if we act in alignment with this truth, it will "give an answering and sustaining reply." The "Kin-dom of God" is not only a distant hope; it is also the means by which that hope is realized.