Believing Christ

I sometimes hear Christians say, “I am ready to fight for what I believe.”

Fight for truth.

Fight for righteousness.

Fight for God.

There is something stirring about that language. Scripture itself contains the imagery of soldiers and armor. Paul tells us to put on “the whole armour of God.” We sing hymns about Christian soldiers and spiritual battles.

But lately I have wondered whether we spend enough time asking what kind of battle Christ actually taught us to fight.

Because when I look carefully at His life, I find remarkably little that resembles the angry, combative Christianity we sometimes call “fighting for the truth.”

Jesus certainly was not passive. He confronted hypocrisy. He condemned exploitation. He challenged religious authorities. He overturned tables in the temple.

But even that remarkable moment is worth noticing carefully. Christ did not assemble His disciples into an army. He did not teach them to hate the people on the other side of the tables.

When Peter later drew an actual sword in Christ’s defense, Jesus told him to put it away. Then He healed the wound Peter had inflicted. See Matthew 26:51–52 and Luke 22:50–51.

That may tell us something important about the kind of kingdom Christ came to establish.

His revolution looked different.

“Blessed are the meek.”

“Blessed are the merciful.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

“Love your enemies.”

“Do good to them that hate you.”

“Pray for them which despitefully use you.”

When His disciples wanted to call fire down from heaven upon people who had rejected Him, Christ rebuked them. See Luke 9:51–56.

When a woman was dragged before Him to be condemned, He dispersed her accusers without throwing a stone.

When people were hungry after listening to Him teach, He fed them.

When someone was sick, He healed.

When someone was excluded, He approached.

When someone was considered unclean, He touched.

When someone was despised because of where he came from, Christ made a Samaritan the hero of the story.

And when He described the final judgment in Matthew 25, He gave us an extraordinary way of understanding our treatment of one another:

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

We understandably love applying that scripture to kindness.

When I feed someone who is hungry, I am feeding Christ.

When I clothe someone who needs clothing, I am clothing Christ.

When I visit someone who is lonely, I am visiting Christ.

But I wonder whether we sometimes forget that the principle has another side.

If the person before me can stand in the place of Christ when I serve them, what happens when I humiliate them?

What happens when I ridicule them?

What happens when I decide that their politics, poverty, nationality, mistakes, doubts, appearance, education, religion, or lack of religion makes them beneath my compassion?

If Christ asks me to see His face in “the least of these,” I do not get to decide that the principle applies only when I am being charitable.

That changes the meaning of fighting for Christ.

Paul’s description of the armor of God is especially interesting in that light. Our struggle, he says, is “not against flesh and blood.” See Ephesians 6:12.

Look at the armor he gives us.

Truth.

Righteousness.

The gospel of peace.

Faith.

Salvation.

And the word of God.

There is no armor of contempt.

No breastplate of outrage.

No helmet of superiority.

No sword of humiliating the unbeliever.

The people around us are not the enemy.

President Russell M. Nelson taught this with remarkable directness when he said that “true disciples of Jesus Christ are peacemakers.” He has warned that contention does not come from Christ and asked disciples to replace belligerence with persuasion, animosity with understanding, and contention with peace.

That does not require abandoning truth.

It may require something considerably harder:

Speaking truth without abandoning Christ.

There is an important difference.

We can become so determined to defend Christianity that we begin violating Christianity in its defense.

I felt that personally when I visited Istanbul and walked through Hagia Sophia.

I knew some of its history before I went, but knowing history and standing inside it are different things.

In 1204, soldiers of the Fourth Crusade attacked Constantinople. But Constantinople was not a Muslim city. It was Christian. Hagia Sophia was Christian. The people worshipping there were Christian.

And Christian crusaders sacked it anyway.

They looted churches and carried away sacred objects, relics, gold, silver, and other treasures. Standing inside Hagia Sophia and looking at the remnants of its extraordinary Christian mosaics, some made with gold, broke my heart. These were images depicting a faith sacred to me, in a Christian holy place that had been plundered by other Christians who believed themselves to be fighting a holy cause.

Centuries later, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Christian images were covered as the building was adapted for Islamic worship, and ironically that covering helped portions of those ancient mosaics survive to be uncovered centuries later.

Standing there, the contradiction was difficult for me to escape.

People whom Christians had called heathens became part of the long history through which this magnificent Christian building and some of its sacred artwork survived. Meanwhile, Christians had once entered that same city under the banner of a holy cause and carried its treasures away.

I do not pretend to know the heart of every Crusader. Some undoubtedly believed their cause was righteous. Others were motivated by politics, wealth, power, obligation, adventure, or some mixture of all of them.

And perhaps that is precisely why the story troubles me.

How easy is it to decide that because my cause is righteous, my actions must therefore be righteous too?

How easy is it to decide that because I possess the truth, whatever I do in defense of that truth becomes justified?

A person can carry the banner of Christ while behaving in a way that bears remarkably little resemblance to Christ.

Before I decide that God needs me to fight His enemies, I had better be extraordinarily careful that I have not simply decided that my enemies are God’s.

Peter thought he was defending Jesus when he drew his sword.

Jesus told him to put it away.

And then Christ healed the man Peter had wounded.

One disciple believed he was fighting for Christ.

Christ was busy healing the wound His disciple had made.

That image stays with me.

President Dallin H. Oaks has similarly taught that followers of Christ must reject the anger and hatred with which political differences are so often debated. Christ’s command was not merely to tolerate our enemies.

It was to love them.

That is considerably more demanding.

King Benjamin taught the same pattern centuries before Christ’s mortal ministry. After spending his life in the service of his people, he refused to make that service evidence of his superiority. Instead he asked:

“Are we not all beggars?” See Mosiah 4:19.

That question leaves very little room for spiritual aristocracy.

Those of us born into the Church should especially remember that.

Being born into a heritage of faith is a blessing.

It is not an accomplishment.

I cannot claim my ancestors’ sacrifices as evidence of my own righteousness any more than I can be condemned for Adam’s transgression.

Our second Article of Faith says that we believe people will be punished for their own sins and not Adam’s transgression.

Surely the inverse deserves consideration too:

Other people’s righteousness does not automatically become mine.

If my ancestors crossed plains, buried loved ones, built communities, sacrificed possessions, and endured persecution for their faith, those are their offerings to God.

My responsibility is to decide what I will offer Him.

And perhaps someone who encounters the gospel without generations of family tradition behind them and chooses Christ at great personal cost deserves not our condescension but our admiration.

They may be the pioneer.

We may simply be living in the house the pioneers built.

The Savior repeatedly overturned assumptions about who was closest to God.

The priest and Levite had religious standing.

The Samaritan stopped.

And Christ asked which one had been the neighbor.

The answer wasn’t the person with the superior religious pedigree.

It was the person who showed mercy.

Perhaps that is why discipleship cannot merely mean believing in Jesus Christ.

We must also believe Him.

Believe Him when He says the meek will inherit the earth.

Believe Him when He says blessed are the merciful.

Believe Him when He says blessed are the peacemakers.

Believe Him when He tells us to love our enemies.

Believe Him when He tells us not to condemn.

Believe Him when He places Himself among the hungry, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned, and the forgotten.

Believe Him when He says that the greatest among us should become the servant.

Believe Him even when those teachings collide with our politics, our pride, our tribe, our anger, or our certainty that this particular person deserves something less than mercy.

There are truths worth defending.

There are injustices that require courage to confront.

There are moments when disciples of Christ must stand firmly and say, “This is wrong.”

But perhaps the question is not simply whether we are willing to fight for Christ.

Perhaps the harder question is:

Are we willing to fight our own anger for Christ?

Our pride?

Our prejudice?

Our appetite for retaliation?

Our need to win?

Our temptation to divide God’s children into us and them?

Because the great battle described by the gospel may not be a battle against the people standing across from us.

It may be the battle within us that determines whether, when we encounter them, they encounter Christ.

A broken heart.

A contrite spirit.

Hands willing to serve.

Courage sufficient to forgive.

Conviction strong enough that it does not require cruelty to sustain it.

Truth spoken with love.

Strength disciplined by mercy.

Perhaps that is what it means to take upon ourselves the name of Christ.

Not merely to believe in Him.

But to believe Him.