Opinion: Reconnecting Love and Nonviolence: A Response to Obama's Nobel Lecture
Written by Joe Sawatzky
In his Nobel remarks of two weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama called for "the continued expansion of our moral imagination" in the cause of building a lasting peace in the world. Obama's words themselves, however, exhibited no such imagination. On the contrary, they outlined again the exhausted dismissals of nonviolence as the way to pursue peace. Nowhere was this more evident than in his assessment of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that African American Nobel laureate in whose debt Obama places himself.
Two passages in particular bear out the patronizing manner in which Obama handles King's witness. First, although he describes himself as a "living testimony to the moral force of [King's] nonviolence", Obama offers no substantiation; he proceeds to argue only why the supposed "moral force of nonviolence" is impotent. Indeed, though "there's nothing weak" about nonviolence, neither did it have the strength to "[halt] Hitler's armies." Likewise, though nonviolence is not "naive", neither apparently is it wise enough to perceive the total depravity of evil. Indeed, one can almost hear in Obama's words the gentle correction of a loyal son to an aged father King whose time has long since passed: "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world." Surely King--and those whose deaths through beatings, lynchings, and the assassin's bullet anticipated his own--would thank Obama for the reminder. Even more might King be grateful to now know that his nonviolence--which birthed the legal end to segregation in American society and eventually, the ascension of an African American to the nation's highest office--does not "face the world as it is", amounting to no more than an "idle" stance "in the face of threats to the American people."
If then, taking Obama at his words, the "moral force" of King's nonviolence is in reality "no force", what remains of King's legacy that is worthy to be praised? In a second statement near the end of his speech, Obama provides an answer: "The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love they preached--their fundamental faith in human progress--that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey [emphasis mine]."
With these words, Obama's deconstruction of King's legacy is complete, for Obama's distinction between nonviolence and love denies their essential unity. Indeed, while Obama views nonviolence as "not practical or possible in every circumstance"--a tactic to be discarded according to situation--love must always remain. That love remains is beyond dispute (1 Cor 13:13); that love "endures all things" is the salient point (1 Cor 13:7). That love which endures is nonviolence, the will not to do to others as they do to you (cf. 1 Pet 2:23). Stated in the positive, Obama recognizes this "golden rule" in his speech as "the very purpose of faith". Yet he remains unable to apply that rule in relation to those who violently oppose his vision of an American-led world.
That the commander-in-chief of a military empire does not live by biblical injunction is hardly surprising; Obama himself said that he "cannot be guided by [King and Gandhi's] examples alone." Yet so long as he invokes that faith, the people of faith will call him to account for his perversion of it. Such perversion is precisely what is found in President Obama's Nobel speech.
