From: jsax@igc.apc.org (Joel Sax)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker
Subject: Friendly Thoughts No. 2
Date: 21 Nov 92 05:49:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1744600035:000:3653
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jsax    Nov 20 21:49:00 1992


From: Joel Sax <jsax>
Subject: Friendly Thoughts No. 2

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FRIENDLY THOUGHTS No. 2                             Joel GAzis-SAx
20 November 1992                                    Copyright 1992
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What should a Friend do if an attacker threatens her or his family 
in the home?  Gandhi answers:  "He who cannot protect himself or 
his nearest and dearest or their honor by non-violently facing 
death, may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the 
oppressor.  He who can do neither of the two is a burden."  I 
think that what distinguishes Friends and other people of peace is 
that where others spend whole lives preparing for that moment of 
attack, we choose to abstain from self-defense as an addiction.  
Friends, I believe, should avoid buying guns and studying 
fighting, but be forgiving of those who, in that terrible moment 
when another comes to take their lives, act impulsively to stop 
the killing by any means.

We can say this for men of violence:  they choose to DO SOMETHING 
about hunger, about oppression, about killing.  It is not enough 
to object to their methods, then return to our silence.  We, too, 
must DO and we must DO so that the near occasion of violence may 
be avoided or we must be prepared to kill or to give our lives in 
witness to our beliefs.  Those are our choices.  There is no room 
for passivity.  Friends should never sit to remain spiritually 
motionless amid injustice.  

Most people would say without hesitation that they would kill if 
their families were threatened.  The Friend, who has reflected 
long on this subject, would seek to face the moment without 
violence.  The mark of the Friends in these matters is that we do 
not prepare to be violent or to help others to be violent.  I 
think the most honest thing any among us can say is that none of 
us knows if he or she would be violent if attacked:  we would hope 
not. 

I see no sin in this ambiguity about what we say we would do when 
a killer comes.  We should not proceed from this, however, to 
excuse ourselves for inaction or for participating in the 
preparations for war.  Again, there is more hope for the man with 
blood on his hands than the one who mindlessly does his part to 
perfect the instruments of destruction:  at least the first keeps 
the truth about killing always before him.  Many military men 
become ardent pacifists because of the firsthand knowledge they 
gained from seeing what guns and bombs do to cities and to people.  
Gandhi held out for more hope for the violent than the nonviolent 
who do nothing or just go along.  Denial is an essential part of 
an addiction and those Friends who come to Meeting just for the 
silence, deny the very voice of God, which comes to some of us as 
an earthquake, urging us to do something about the killing that is 
everywhere.  I have found sweetness in that still small voice:  
there is nothing about what I have heard, however, that calls me 
to be merely still. 

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Copyright 1992 by Joel GAzis-SAx.  This article is distributed for 
use of Friends through the Alliance for Progressive 
Communications.  Permission to download for personal or Meeting 
use granted.  If you use this in your Meeting or Church 
newsletter, please send a copy to me.  Financial support for this 
work is appreciated.  Send checks or money order to Joel GAzis-
SAx, 2727 Midtown Court #37, Palo Alto, CA    94303.
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