Explain Like I'm 5: Was Jesus A Wimp?

Matthew 5:38-41

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” Matthew 5:38-41, NASB

I’ve heard many non-believers say, “I like Jesus, but I’m not fond of Christians”. I understand that sentiment (and that’s a topic for another day), but I have a confession to make. Before I had a Jesus experience…

I didn’t like Jesus.

I wasn’t fond of the large swath of Christians I had met, and the only thing I knew about Jesus was that He had told people to turn the other cheek. Bad fanbase and a weak team? Nah, that wasn’t going to work for me.

I suspect that you aren’t as harsh on Jesus as I was, but I also suspect that even if you never came right out and said it, that you wondered if Jesus was a wimp.

C’mon, be honest. This “turn the other cheek” thing has stuck in your craw as well.

Especially in the muscular strain of American Christianity where we trot out “GI Jesus” whenever we go to war somewhere around the globe.

But even in mainstream Christian academic circles, where I’m more likely to encounter a less muscular, but nonetheless courageous Jesus, I have found a theory of non-retaliation that turns my stomach.

Theologian Craig Blomberg writes in his commentary on Matthew, “Each of these commands requires Jesus’ followers to act more generously than what the letter of the law demanded. ‘Going the extra mile’ has rightly become a proverbial expression and captures the essence of all of Jesus’ illustrations.”

Theologian R.T. France argues that non-retaliation “involves acceptance of ill-treatment, even, as the following examples will show, willing compliance… These verses are not, therefore, a prescription for non-violent resistance (as they are often interpreted), but for no resistance at all, even by legal means.”

This Jesus isn’t just passive, He’s enthusiastically so.

I don’t like this Jesus. And frankly, this version of Jesus never meshed with the Jesus I had an encounter with.

Fortunately, early in my walk with Jesus, I came across theologian Walter Wink.

The recently departed Walter Wink was renowned for his advocacy for non-violence and interpreting Jesus thru that lens. He is best known for his “Powers Trilogy”: Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, and Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.

He also wrote a compendium of the trilogy called The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium which is what I will be referencing in this post.

The trilogy and compendium discuss our societal systems that are fallen and have become corrupt; what Saint Paul in Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) called the “powers and principalities” and what Wink called the “Domination System”.

And this “Domination System” is fueled by violence; it teaches it, governs it, and, grotesquely, welcomes it as a response.

That response can be found in the heart of the Old Testament in Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-20, and Deuteronomy 19:21.

But Wink theorizes that Jesus came to offer a different response than repaying violence in kind. And Wink didn’t think that was the passive, wimpy response that many academics had pinned on Jesus.

No, Wink posited that Jesus offered an alternative.

But before we discuss that alternative, let’s get a little background on 1st Century Judea.

The Jewish world that Jesus was born into was starved for a hero. It had been under the boot of neighboring empires for hundreds of years with the Romans as their current master and the corrupt King Herod as their Jewish puppet ruler.

They were looking for God to send a muscular Messiah in the vein of King David who would go “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” and throw off the bondage they were under and restore Israel to its glory.

Alas, Jesus had a different plan.

As Jesus makes abundantly clear in the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), the inauguration of a new Kingdom is coming and underway in Him, but that isn’t going to change the present circumstances of the Jewish people. Verses 3 thru 10 (ESV) has two “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” statements bracketing six “they shall” statements. And Verse 11 & 12 (ESV) conclude the Beatitudes with, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Clearly, Jesus isn’t swaggering in like the new sheriff in town. This is all Lamb and no Lion, and its not what people were looking for from their Messiah.

So, what are you to do if you are common Jew in the 1st Century? Should you ignore Jesus and rebel and be crushed? Or should you take his words to mean that you should roll over and be dominated?

No. Jesus offered what Wink described as a “Third Way”:

Jesus is not telling us to submit to evil, but to refuse to oppose it on its own terms. We are not to let the opponent dictate the methods of our opposition. He is urging us to transcend both passivity and violence by finding a third way, one that is at once assertive and yet nonviolent.

And that Third Way is seen perfectly further into the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38-41.

(Note: I’m going to quote Wink liberally from Chapter 5 of The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium throughout the rest of this post as his description is a tour de force. Sometimes, its better to get out of the way and just let a genius speak!)

But Wink has his hands full right off the bat where in Matthew 5:39, Jesus says “do not resist an evil person”. Perhaps theologian R.T. France is right when he says Jesus isn’t offering a prescription for resistance?

As is often the case with the translation of the Greek, what we perceive an English meaning to be is not what the Greek meaning “might” be.

(Sidebar: I’m highlighting “might” because I know R.T. France to be a phenomenal scholar, but I believe one’s theology comes into play when translating and doing exegesis. So, we have a case of Wink and France interpreting the Greek differently with me not silly enough to claim that Wink must be right and France wrong)

Wink writes,

The Greek word translated "resist" in Matt. 5 :39 is “antistenaz” meaning literally to stand (stenai) against (anti). What translators have overlooked is that “antistenai” is most often used in the Greek version of the Old Testament as a technical term for warfare… In short, “antistenai” means more here than simply to "resist" evil. It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an armed insurrection.

And Wink wraps up his thoughts on resisting by stating,

Jesus is not telling us to submit to evil, but to refuse to oppose it on its own terms.

But if we cannot resist evil on its own terms then how are we to do so?

Jesus in the same verse gives us the first of His three examples answering this question (the same example that turned me off to Him):

The practice of turning the other cheek.

Wink gives a great summation of what turning the other cheek really means:

The examples that follow confirm this reading. ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ (Matt. 5:39b). You are probably imagining a blow with the right fist. But such a blow would fall on the left cheek. To hit the right cheek with a fist would require the left hand. But the left hand could be used only for unclean tasks…To grasp this you must physically try it: how would you hit the other's right cheek with your right hand? If you have tried it, you will know: the only feasible blow is a backhand.

The backhand was not a blow to injure, but to insult, humiliate, degrade. It was not administered to an equal, but to an inferior. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; Romans, Jews. The whole point of the blow was to force someone who was out of line back into place.

But by turning the other cheek, you are now forcing the “superior” to strike the “inferior” in an equal manner.

Wink notes that

Such defiance is no way to avoid trouble. Meek acquiescence is what the master wants. Such "cheeky" behavior may call down a flogging, or worse. But the point has been made. The Powers That Be have lost their power to make people submit. And when large numbers begin behaving thus (and Jesus was addressing a crowd), you have a social revolution on your hands.

The actual power may not shift but the dynamic of power has been altered.

So, let’s now look at Jesus’ second example: give them your coat as well.

According to Wink,

Jesus' second example of assertive nonviolence is set in a court of law. A creditor has taken a poor man to court over an unpaid loan. Only the poorest of the poor were subjected to such treatment. Deuteronomy 24:10-13 provided that a creditor could take as collateral for a loan a poor person's long outer robe, but it had to be returned each evening so the poor man would have something in which to sleep.

Those debtors find themselves in debt not because they resemble the credit foolhardiness of the 21st Century but because the structural world of the 1st Century is rigged against them. Wink sees Jesus telling them “who have nothing left but the clothes on their backs, to use the system against itself.”

But how does that turn the system against itself?

Wink writes,

This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell less on the naked party than on the person viewing or causing the nakedness (Gen. 9:20-27). By stripping, the debtor has brought shame on the creditor.

Imagine the debtor leaving court naked. His friends and neighbors, aghast, inquire what happened. He explains. They join his growing procession, which now resembles a victory parade. This is guerrilla theater! The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution. This unmasking is not simply punitive, since it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause, and to repent.

But where Wink really hits the nail on the head is here,

The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing deflates them more effectively than deft lampooning.

Again, actual power may not shift, but those wielding power can be deflated.

Jesus final example is to walk another mile.

Wink explains:

Going the second mile, Jesus' third example, is drawn from the relatively enlightened practice of limiting to a single mile the amount of forced or impressed labor that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples. Such compulsory service was a constant feature in Palestine from Persian to late Roman times. Whoever was found on the street could be coerced into service, as was Simon of Cyrene, who was forced to carry Jesus' cross (Mark 15:21).

What isn’t said in Jesus’ words is that carrying a soldier’s pack for more than a mile was an infraction of military code. Wink explains why that is important:

Jesus was surely aware of the futility of armed insurrection against Roman imperial might; he certainly did nothing to encourage those whose hatred of Rome would soon explode into violence…The question here as in the two previous instances, is how the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar's, but how one responds to the rules is God's, and Caesar has no power over that.

So now when the Jew volunteers to carry the pack for another mile, the soldier’s head is spinning. As Wink states,

Why would he want to do that? What is he up to? Normally, soldiers have to coerce people to carry their packs, but this Jew does so cheerfully, and will not stop! Is this a provocation? Is he insulting the legionnaire's strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to violate the rules of impressment? Will this civilian file a complaint? Create trouble?

And now for a third time, actual power hasn’t been transferred, but the dynamic of how that power can be applied has been altered.

These words from Walter Wink sum up that shifting dynamic well:

He is helping an oppressed people find a way to protest and neutralize an onerous practice despised throughout the empire. He is not giving a nonpolitical message of spiritual world transcendence. He is formulating a worldly spirituality in which the people at the bottom of society or under the thumb of imperial power learn to recover their humanity.

My cup has runneth over for this post, but I thought it important to run on long so I could share the words and reasoning of this great theologian. His theology has had a HUGE IMPACT on my ideas about Jesus, and I think it could really reshape yours as well.

I strongly recommend that you do yourself a favor and read The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (I’ll give it to you if you can’t afford it; that’s how strongly I feel about this book). Wink’s thesis about Jesus’ Third Way is merely one chapter in the book, and he spends the rest examining how human nature is attached to violence and how we can overcome it thru Jesus.

Jesus is inaugurating something new, but we who have been nursed on the teat of violence just can’t wrap our heads around it. He has decided to start a game of chess on our checkers board, but we just can’t fathom playing a new game.

But seeing you have a problem is the first step to addressing it.

And thanks to Walter Wink, I no longer struggle with shoehorning the Jesus I know from experience into this wimpy character that He is often portrayed as.

Amen.

References:

Blomberg, C. (1992). Matthew (New American Commentary). Broadman.

France, R.T. (1985). Matthew (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries). IVP Academic.

Wink, W. (1998). The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. Doubleday.