Politics and Fragile Society: A plea for pacifism.

Politics represents a curse for modern society.

According to Hannah Arendt, society suffers from its own laborious violence. Simply put, humanity in its beginnings housed families who worked to sustain basic, intimate functions needed for survival. (i.e. growing crops, making shelter, etc) However, whenever the families and communities became mobilized into a society their work became a matter of political importance. Furthermore, political use of people and their labor involved classifying the worth or goodness of a person based on their public performance of certain labors for the benefit of the whole. Basically people were instrumentalized based of their worth to the polis.

Granted I assume that it is not wrong for people to live socially, to work for the good of others. However, when a polis can define a person without intrinsic worth it means people are mechanized, recycled, and then ultimately discarded. The goodness of a person according to their worth must include the acknowledge that there is nothing special about labor. As previously mentioned, labor is a natural part of human existence post-Fall. Thus, a person is capable of work done by another.

This cycle wherein people can be easily recycled makes violence the central narrative of political authority. The constitution may claim for equality of all sentient beings, but in practice the dispensability of individuals is normative. This thought then names the struggle at the base of War, Capital Punishment, Poverty, Political Division, and Other Linguistic Forms of Violence.

As Christians, violence is unacceptable. The beatitudes for many show the central emphasis on peace as the first act of Christian response. However, this is an uneasy notion for Christians. The world seems to deny the possibility, but what does it say to at once say 'Jesus is Lord' and 'If you want peace prepare for war.' If one thinks about these two statements, they do not match.

Killing people and discarding them because of their use or non-use for a polis is violent in a way unintelligible to the Christian faith. Violence with respect to either means choosing to deny the worth of an individual. Furthermore, rights based politics makes a rebuttal seemingly absurd. But eventually the Christian must admit violence is incompatible with the faith.  

However, what does this mean for the protection of the innocence. As a Pacifist, I acknowledge that I do not know what I would do if I had the opportunity to protect the innocent. But violence for the sake of political peace and protection of the innocence results more in the death of innocence than their protection. Christ's victory represents the definition of peace. The Christian Politic must reckon with this mystery that the peace of the Christian Story of a man who was confronted with the choice to either continue his mission peacefully or to raise a sword. It was impossible for Christ to continue his mission without the cost of his life, but even stil he kept loving. This ability to love to the point of death for the hostile people is largely unmatched in history, but it is the essential Christian political confession.

Thus the Peaceful life of Jesus stretches what modern humanity thinks possible. And certainly not easy, but one which is meant to be followed. The world is on the fragile edge of destroying itself because it cannot sustain peace due to the fear of difference. Politics claims the ability to solve this problem, but Christ actually has.