by Reinzie Perera

Rather than make a systematic presentation of our theme, I have set out certain facts and placed the theme within the Asian context in order to help us grapple with the theme and draw itiplications from it for Christian mission in Asia.

ASIA: Asia is the world’s largest continent with the largest population living in this continent.

It can be said that all the major religions of the world were born in Asia and continue to influence the lives of the majority of the people there. Religions in Asia do play a liberative role as well as an oppressive one. Asia is also going through major transformations in the areas of politics, economics and culture, which can be viewed from a positive as well as a negative perspective.

In spite of economic transformation in some parts of Asia, the gap between rich and poor is still widening in Asia, within as well as among nations. Because of the vast changes taking place in Asia, many have become refugees, in other countries, or even in their own.

On the one hand we can speak about rapid development models as well as technical advancement on the Asian scene. On the other hand these advancements have also margmalized the vast majority of people.

VIOLENCE: In general terms violence is described and identified in the following manner:

Our immediate response to the word “violence” is to think of it as describing an overt physical act of destruction: Someone is roughed up, pushed around, hit, stabbed, shot raped or in some other way made the object of physical abuse. When such violence occurs, we can see it or feel it. We may also describe violence as “physical force resulting in injury or destruction of property or person in violation of general moral belief or civil law.” Violence is also described as “acts which kill or injure persons or do significant damage to property.” Such descriptions make instances of violence tangible and clear-cut. The question is not whether they are true as far as they go, but whether they go far enough.

A pointer towards an expanded definition can be found by noting that one of the Latin roots from which we get our English word is violare, which means “to violate.” Whatever “violates” another, in the sense of infringing upon or disregarding or abusing or denying that other, whether physical harm is involved or not, can be understood as an act of violence. The basic overall definition of violence would then become violation of personhood. While such a violation can involve the physical destruction of personhood in ways that are obvious, personhood can also be violated or denied in subtle ways that are not obvious at all, except to the victim. The point I want to make is that there can be “violation of personhood” quite apart from the doing of physical harm.

The term personhood is important. When we talk about a “person” we are not talking about an object but about a subject. We are describing someone who is not quantifiable or interchangeable with another. Each person has unique worth. There is no legitimate way to assert that one person is “worth more” than another person, since the worth of each is infinite. Let us now examine some of the ways in which violation of personhood can take place.

(a) The clearest instance of violence is, of course, personal, overt, physical assault, in which one person does physical harm to another.
(b) When overt physical assault is practiced in corporate terms it becomes institutionalized overt physical assault. The clearest example is war: a society mobilizes its resources specifically for corporate acts of killing and destruction. This kind of violence is also present when a government maintains its own domestic power by a police force or army that liquidates the, opposition through an on—going reign of terror.
(c) Personal covert violence takes place when one individual violates the personhood of another in ways that are psychologically destructive, rather than physically harmful.
(d) Personal convert violence can become convert violence. This occurs when the institutions or structures of society violate the personhood of its members. As an example one could take a situation where children brought up in situations of substandard housing and inferior schooling with consequent limitations of available job openings, are victims of institutionalized covert violence.

Now I wish to draw your attention to can be termed “institutionalized convert violence” which is also described as “structured violence”: the most difficult (and the most crucial) to discern in the contemporary world. Dom Helder Camera, former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, has offered an illuminating discussion of the social dimension of violence in a small book called Spiral of Violence.

Dom Helder feels that the basic form of violence, which he calls Violence No. 1 is injustice. This is similar to what we have described as the hidden or covert violence that does not necessarily do direct physical harm, but is nonetheless a “violation of personhood.” It is the subtle, institutionalized destruction of human possibilities, present whenever the structures of society act so as to depersonalize people by making them objects rather than subjects.

When the injustice of society becomes too oppressive, Violence No.2 which Dom Helder calls revolt, bursts forth. Those who have been the victims of injustice finally decide that they must throw off the shackles of their oppression and end the massive injustice they have suffered. Such violence usually involves physical destructiveness, sometimes on a massive scale, depending on the number and efficiency of those who revolt. Violence as revolt is directed against the status quo, against those who have the power and are responsible for the injustice, by those who feel that they have been denied power and justice and personhood.

Just as Violence No. 1 (injustice) leads to Violence No. 2 (revolt), so does Violence No. 2 lead to Violence No. 3 which Dom Helder calls repression. Confronted with revolt, those who hold power put down the revolt by whatever repressive means are necessary to ensure that their power is not threatened. In the face of the revolt, token concessions by those in power are sometimes sufficient to defuse the revolt and persuade the revolters that they have achieved sufficient gains. This is known as “repressive tolerance”; a tiny spearhead of revolt will be legitimized within the system, and certain expressions of revolt will be tolerated so long as they are kept within clearly defined boundaries. But the “tolerance” is “repressive” since no widespread change is allowed.

It is this movement from injustice to revolt to repression that Dom Helder calls the “Spiral of Violence.” And the Spiral continues as repression breeds even greater injustices, which in turn invokes more militant revolt, thereby leading to uglier repression than before.

Now the question before us is: How do we stop the Spiral of Violence? Is it not true that we generally focus our attention and moral outrage on Violence No. 2-- revolt? This is where we see the threat to the order, peace and stability of society. Therefore we justify repression (Violence No. 3) as the only appropriate way to put down revolt (Violence No. 2). But surely this misses the point. It is because of the injustices of our society that the spiral of violence is initially launched, and until and unless we get at the roots of injustice, we will be dealing in only a superficial way with the problem of violence. As Dom Helder puts it. “The only true answer to violence is to have the courage to face the injustices which constitute Violence No. 1.

There is a great deal about violence in the writings of the Old and New Testaments. But we must first guard against an oversimplification that often intrudes in Christian circles, to the effect that the God of the Old Testament is a God of violence and vengeance, while the God of the New Testament is a God of love and peace.

But if there are passages which seem to support this view, there are also passages that witness t the surpassing tenderness of God’s love for his people, and the peace that he will bring. Here is Prophet Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Is:2:4; see also Micah 4:3). Few pictures of the world at peace are more exalted than that contained later in Isa: 11:6-9.

Another crucial emphasis in the Old Testament is the stress on the justice of God, justice that is combined with mercy. Again and again the Prophets spoke against injustice, and when its excesses become sufficiently exacerbating, injustice is always challenged and God is found to be on the side of the oppressed.

In the New Testament there are various attitudes as well. Jesus says, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt: 10:34), which even though it may be only a metaphor is nevertheless a particularly military metaphor. He further says, “If my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight” (John 18:36). There is no clearly recorded opposition on Jesus’ part to the fact that some of his disciples took swords when they went to the Garden of Gethsemane, although he told Peter, when that impetuous follower used his sword against a soldier, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mt: 26:52).

But even if we take such scattered verses as these and add to them the incident of Jesus clearing the money-changers out of the temple, the overall picture that emerges clearly puts the burden of proof on those who would use Jesus’ life or teachings in order to justify going to war. Not only is it wrong to kill the enemy -- even hating the enemy is proscribed. Supporting the notion that Jesus requested his followers a legacy of opposition to violence and warfare is the fact that, of the three basic positions on war that emerged in Christian history, the earliest was a stance of pacifism. The early Christians, who took very seriously the injunction that they were not to take up the sword, refused to serve in Roman armies for several centuries. Early literature gives ample evidence of the pacifist position of the Christian Church.

Later, when the peace and stability of the Roman empire was threatened by the invasion of the barbarians from the North, Christians began to argue that there might be times when they could be justified ‘going to war, if certain specific criteria were met. this position came to be called the doctrine of the just war. A third position that emerged still later was the theory of the holy war or crusaders, which involved an acceptance of whatever kind of force or violence was necessary to secure a given end, and the unquestioning participation of the Christian on the assumption that God’s will was being served.

PEACEMAKING IN A VIOLENT WORLD: If the discussion of peace is to be realistic in the contemporary world, then it must be related to the changing realities of the contemporary world and human beings’ search for social and economic justice. Otherwise it will remain a romantic hope and idealistic dream. Peace has to be understood not in terms of absence of conflict or war but as a struggle for justice. In other words peace will have to be understood not as a static condition but a dynamic reality intimately related to human beings’ constant search for human dignity. There are several reasons why we cannot talk about peace in traditional language and connotations. For the vast majority of the human race, peace is synonymous with the exploitation, oppression and subjugation of one people by others. Peace is identified with injustice and inequalities in the contemporary world.

Another reason why our generation finds talk of peace rather frustrating is that “peace is often the cruel ideology of the privileged.” These privileges have been institutionalized into structures of domestic and international societies in such a manner that they help to create more privileged individuals and societies. Therefore, the world in which the demand for peace is made, is a deeply divided and polarized world. It is divided between the rich and the poor nations in the international sphere. The rich nations are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. In such a dehumanizing world, peace means a sinister conspiracy of the rich and the privileged against the poor and the underprivileged. Therefore, the struggle for peace cannot be separated from search for the right kind of structures both domestically and internationally.