Read ahead to explore this commandment and how leaders have enacted peaceful methods to inspire the masses to effect equalizing, lasting change.
All major religions around the world generally denounce the killing of people. The well known biblical commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill", seems fairly self explanatory as there's no caveat or addendum to this commandment from God. It simply states that we should not kill, period. Not for war, not for self defense, not for any reason should we take another persons life.
However let's be honest- nobody truly believes that this should extend to ALL circumstances. If we are physically threatened or attacked, most would naturally defend ourselves and families in whatever way possible. If that involved killing the perpetrator, we would feel completely justified. Yet God did not instruct, "Thou Shalt Not Kill unless attacked". We are simply instructed not to kill. That's a difficult one to swallow.
Personally, I couldn't just stand by while someone threatened the lives of my children. Mama bear instincts are very strong and most mother's would naturally do anything to protect their children. I myself am no exception, and there's no amount of reason or threat of an after-life in Hell that could convince me out of fighting for my daughter's lives.
So when is it okay to kill and when is it a crime? At first glance our definition of murder seems fairly arbitrary. Convicted killers fill our prisons, but if we are at war with another nation we can slaughter those people all we want, and even end up a war hero for our bravery. If alien beings came to earth and saw this...they might be a bit confused.
The commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Kill", however most of us interpret this to mean, "Thou shalt not kill unless attacked or in a life threatening situation." Christians believe we are either given a pass to heaven for our bravery or must accept the cost of our transgression and go to Hell.
This is not a judgemental endeavor, but rather a thought exercise in an effort to reveal how and why we justify taking another persons life. I owe my current liberty and freedom to the many Canadian and American soldiers who laid down their lives for me and every one of us. I absolutely respect their sacrifice and am extremely humble and grateful.
However our laws can seem fickle if today it is illegal to kill a person, but tomorrow during war time it is encouraged and even admirable to do so. I'm not sure what the answer to war is, but we can all agree that simply laying down to be trampled is not an option. There's got to be a middle ground solution.
Knowing we can't truly follow the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill", perhaps we should at least take pause and be careful not to instigate war. Once that first trigger is pulled, both sides feel completely justified in killing. The ensuing fight ultimately overflows into the inhumane realm of mistreatment and torture whether we care to admit it or not. Our decision to engage in war must be the absolute last option because its reality is more twisted and vulgar than we can imagine.
We need to seek out and learn from natural leaders, both at home and abroad, that have effected real change in the world through peaceful means. This is the admiral high road we need to follow when at all possible. It isn't the easy way, and can involve persecution, and unjust treatment of peaceful protesters. However it can, and has worked for many situations throughout the world.
When brainstorming the leaders to research for this article, my first thought went to Mahatma Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela were my next immediate choices. As I researched further, it was clear that King had been inspired by Gandhi. Then when I delved into Gandhi, it was clear that Leo Tolstoy's writings had originally inspired him. Finally I looked into Tolstoy and found a neat statement clarifying that indeed Tolstoy had inspired both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr! The famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was in fact the originator of the pacifist movement.
In 1828 Leo Tolstoy was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Russia. He wrote many famous works including the well known novels War and Peace, and Anna Karenina and is known today as one of the great literary giants. Despite the fame these novels brought, his most personal and exploratory writings dissected the moral and spiritual tenets of Christianity.
At 50 years of age, Tolstoy experienced a profound spiritual crisis followed by an awakening, in which he investigated the very origins of Christianity through the New Testament in an effort to tease out Jesus' true teachings. He went so far as to learn Greek to fully understand the biblical writings as originally intended. Tolstoy developed a reflective process known as "the dialectics of the soul" during this time, procuring the writings Confession, The Gospel in Brief, and What I Believe.
Tolstoy was disenfranchised with his former life of fame and wealth and looked to eternal guiding principals and universal morals to live by. He was an ardent critic of the Russian Orthodoxy church which he blamed for promoting cruelty, militarism, violence, conscription, and corruption through state mandate imposed by Peter I.
Tolstoy wrote many church and state authorities, condemning their self serving corruption for the suffering of the Russian people. He steadfastly deferred to the unadulterated words of Jesus as his guiding authority in life, trying to realize the Christian edict "Thy Kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven".
Tolstoy was a humanitarian long before the term was ever coined, even working a soup kitchen when famine struck. He was drawn to other groups whose highest ideals crisscrossed with his own, including the Doukhobors, and the Salvation Army.
Tolstoy much admired the Doukhobors for refusing to bear arms when commanded by Imperial Russia. Russia needed access to the Black Sea and tried to force the Doukhobors to fight. The Doukhabors suffered, enduring violent persecution after burning their weapons in 1895 to uphold the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill". What a striking example of sacrifice, choosing death over taking another persons life!
Tolstoy was an ardent believer in Jesus and his tenets toward nonviolence. He inspired many future leaders through his writings, and can be acknowledged for his contribution to the modern peace movement.
The famed Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi had read Tolstoy's writings expounding pacifist ideals, which were the inspirational root of Gandhi's future life and effort. It is one thing to KNOW AND SPEAK of right action, and quite another to ACT on it. Gandhi rose to the next level, effectively practicing peaceful resistance to tyranny, known as the principle of Satyagraha. He led his people through the enactment of mass non-violent civil disobedience, in an effort to change the unfair treatment of Indian people.
In 1893 Gandhi, at age 23, had purchased a first class train ticket while in South Africa. He was subsequently thrown off the train for sitting in his first class seat because it was designated as whites-only. This was the moment that inspired Gandhi to enact his unique and effective method of non-violent protest.
Gandhi staged a non-violent protest campaign to challenge the biased laws against Indians in South Africa. At that time India was still a British colony, so Gandhi argued Indians should be privy to the same rights afforded their British counterparts. Many Indians were arrested, but the peaceful protest campaign was eventually effective at earning them some rights.
This situation could have gone sideways most violently with the resulting deaths easily justifiable. Fighting back is our quick and natural response to unfair treatment. Gandhi demonstrated an alternative to knee jerk violence, spurring significant law and policy change in a refreshingly peaceful way.
Fighting is our natural response to persecution
Non-Violence takes concerted, conscious effort
South Africa was only the beginning for Gandhi and he returned to India in 1915 to take on more non-violence and non-cooperation campaigns to earn India's independence from Britain. The scale of his campaign was unprecedented, including millions of Indians that could not be ignored by the British Empire. After many years of protest, intermittent imprisonment, and the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Gandhi and his followers helped India finally gain her independence following the second world war. Gandhi ultimately showed the world that massive political change is possible without resorting to violence.
Across the pond on American soil, Martin Luther King Jr. was very much inspired by Gandhi's methods. King organized and lead many nonviolent civil rights marches for black Americans from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King is most famously known for his "I Have a Dream" speech of 1963, spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of 250,000 civil rights supporters. Martin Luther King was the most prominent and iconic leader of the Civil Rights Movement, advocating peaceful protest and civil disobedience in an effort to obtain equal civil rights for all black Americans.
This code of nonviolent resistance sounds wonderful on paper but is extremely difficult to execute in real life situations. Many of King's followers actually trained by enacting probable scenes where they would be harassed, and even physically assaulted in preparation for real encounters with aggressors and police.
Nonviolent resistance is extremely difficult to execute in real life
It takes a very strong character to endure verbal and physical violence without retribution. Protesters were spit on, sworn at, and otherwise denigrated without responding in kind. What an immensely difficult feat! Those peaceful men and women deserve recognition for their bravery in practicing non-violence because,
RESTRAINED ANGER is so much more ADMIRABLE and POWERFUL than weapons and violence
If violence is the result of our genes- which have evolved us towards survival of the fittest- we need to be cognizant of this fact. If our natural instinct is physical retribution after being attacked - we need to consciously temper our response appropriately. God's commandment,
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" should always be our highest goal.
Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King ultimately dreamt of a fair and peaceful world, and laid a nonviolent blueprint with their lives for humanity to follow. Pie-in-the-sky dreams may feel like fantasy at first, but great advances aren't born from realistic dreams. If we shoot for the stars, we might make it to Mars. Then Mars can be the next launching point for the next generations unrealistic dreams. This is how progress inches towards our dreams ultimate realization. This is how humanity inches towards our eventual day of peaceful coexistence on Earth-with people of all colors, cultures, backgrounds, and religions living in harmony. Imagine all the people...
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