Why this isn’t a “Hippie Movement” (Part 2/2)

Author: Stef Miles

But Surely Some Violence Is Necessary?

This is normally where the conversation gets difficult.

“But surely some violence is necessary?”

“What about protecting the innocent?”

“Surely violence can sometimes be justified?”

These aren’t silly questions, and I don’t think we should pretend they are easily answered. We live in a world shaped by war, abuse, terrorism, exploitation, systemic oppression and fear. People really do hurt one another, sometimes terribly. Most people don’t defend violence because they enjoy cruelty. More often, violence is defended because we believe it will protect the innocent, preserve order, prevent greater harm or stop someone who is genuinely dangerous. But I think there is a deeper question beneath all of these.

It isn’t simply whether violence can sometimes appear effective. It is whether violence reflects the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

And this is where the gospel becomes profoundly uncomfortable. Jesus doesn’t simply tell his followers to avoid unnecessary violence. He challenges the whole logic of retaliation, the endlessly repeating human instinct that says, “You harmed us, therefore we are justified in harming you.” Instead, Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, pray for those who persecute them and put away the sword. These teachings confront some of our deepest assumptions about how the world works. We have become so accustomed to the idea that peace is ultimately secured through force that alternatives can sound naïve before we have even considered them. Jesus invites us to imagine something different.

What if peace doesn’t finally come through defeating our enemies, but through transforming the relationships that create enemies in the first place?

That doesn’t erase moral complexity, and it certainly doesn’t give us a simple answer to every political dilemma. But it does mean that Christians cannot begin with the assumption that violence is necessary and then work backwards to find a way of fitting Jesus around it.

The New Testament begins with Jesus and reimagines everything from there.

I think that is a very different starting point.

The Logic of Sacrifice

This is where René Girard has been particularly helpful for me. Girard gives language to something that I think most of us recognise once we begin to see it: when communities become anxious, divided or overwhelmed by conflict, we have an extraordinary ability to find someone to blame. We look for a scapegoat, someone who can carry the responsibility for the disorder around us and whose exclusion or punishment promises to make things right again.

Girard describes this as sacrificial logic, and the unsettling thing is how adaptable it is. The scapegoat and the language surrounding them may change, but the underlying pattern remains remarkably familiar. When things go wrong, we look for someone who can carry the blame, someone who can be removed or punished so that the rest of us can feel that order has been restored. And Christianity has not been immune to this.

Over time, the church became entangled with empire and with what we might call the myth of redemptive violence, the belief that violence, if directed towards the right people for the right reasons, can ultimately save us. This is one of the great ironies of Christian history. We can proclaim a crucified Messiah while simultaneously adopting the very sacrificial logic that put him on the cross. The cross began to sit alongside the sword rather than over against it.

And perhaps this should make us uncomfortable, because the cross exposes precisely this pattern. A community gathers around a victim. The victim is blamed, condemned and killed, and everyone involved is able to convince themselves that the violence is justified. Then God raises the victim. The resurrection exposes the lie at the heart of the scapegoating mechanism. The victim was not the problem after all.

And what is perhaps even more remarkable is that God does not respond to the murder of Jesus by simply finding another victim. There is no divine counter-scapegoating, Instead, the risen Jesus speaks peace. This is why the cross and resurrection are so central to a nonviolent understanding of the gospel for me. They reveal not only something about what happened to Jesus, but something about what God does with human violence. God exposes it, forgives it and opens the possibility of something new.

The Constant Temptation

Of course, seeing this pattern doesn’t mean we suddenly escape it. The world remains shaped by fear, violence, rivalry and scapegoating, and Christians remain just as capable of being drawn into these patterns as anyone else. We still find ways to make our enemies less human. We still convince ourselves that retaliation is justice or that domination is necessary for peace. And perhaps most dangerously, we are capable of giving all of this a Christian vocabulary so that our participation in violence can begin to feel righteous.

Girard understood that sacrificial systems are remarkably adaptable. Human beings continually discover new moral, political and even theological ways to avoid the full implications of Jesus’ teaching while still imagining ourselves faithful to him. I find this deeply challenging, because it means nonviolence cannot simply be another Christian position we adopt. It has to involve the transformation of our desires.

Following Jesus means becoming the kind of people who no longer need an enemy in order to know who we are, who can confront evil without simply reproducing it, and who can pursue justice without allowing vengeance to determine what justice looks like. That is much harder than simply deciding that violence is bad. It is the formation of a different kind of humanity.

So, Is This Really a “Hippie Movement”?

So when someone asks whether all this is just a bit “hippie,” I understand where the question comes from. If by that they mean a vague optimism that everyone should just be nice to one another and everything will somehow work itself out, then no. That isn’t what I’m talking about.

Nonviolence isn’t pretending evil doesn’t exist, refusing to confront injustice or imagining that human conflict can be solved with positive thinking. It is something much more demanding. It is the conviction that God is fully revealed in the crucified Christ, and therefore that the way Jesus confronts violence, enemies, power and forgiveness actually tells us something about God. It means believing that divine power looks like self-giving love rather than coercion, that forgiveness can interrupt cycles of retaliation, and that the gospel is not simply about escaping judgement after death but participating in God’s restoration of humanity here and now. At the centre stands not a warrior crushing enemies, but the crucified Christ forgiving them.
Martin Luther King Jr. understood just how much was at stake when he said:

“The choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

And this is ultimately why the vision behind the Nonviolent Gospel Network matters so deeply to me. I’m not interested in creating a softer version of Christianity. Nor do I want a Christianity that simply talks about peace while avoiding the difficult realities of violence, injustice and suffering. I want to take Jesus seriously. Because if Jesus really is the fullest revelation of God, then his enemy-love cannot remain an interesting ethical footnote to an otherwise unchanged Christianity. His way of peace has to reach into how we understand God, salvation, justice, power, our enemies and ultimately what it means to be human.

That is not sentimental. If anything, it asks far more of us.

So no, this isn’t a “hippie movement.”

It is an attempt to take Jesus seriously.