FOREWORD

Our world is plagued by violence. You’d think those of us who follow the Prince of Peace would be the hardest people in the world to convince that violence is necessary—but that hasn’t always been the case. Often Christians have been the ones leading the charge to war rather than the ones standing in front of the tanks. What’s more, as we look at history, we see that some of the ugliest violence imaginable has been done by folks with the Bible in hand—from the KKK to Hitler’s Germany. It’s been said that no one kills more passionately than those who kill in the name of God. People have used the Bible to justify terrible evil … and often the rest of the church was silent.

But the times, they are a’changing. The cure to bad theology is not “no theology”—but good theology. There is a growing movement in the world of folks who want a Christianity that looks like Jesus again. We want to be known for life rather than death, for love instead of hatred. And there are many on the fringes of faith who know that those who kill and hate do not represent Jesus well … and the good news is that Jesus has survived the embarrassing things we have done in His name. Nevertheless, we have to sing a better song—we have to live out a more compelling faith than the haters who hijack the headlines.

To that end, Preston Sprinkle has written a monumental book. Fight fills a major gap in our discipleship and plugs up a glaring hole in our gospel.

He is not interested in stale debates, endless rhetoric, or polarizing political camps—he is interested in a truth that has the power to set us free from all things that hold us hostage, including violence. He is interested in a Christianity that looks like Jesus again. He is in love with a God who wants to set us free from the things that destroy us, a God who has conquered death itself and who invites us to live differently from the patterns of death that are destroying the world we live in.

Preston loves Jesus, and that makes him suspicious of violence. He believes Jesus meant the stuff He said, which means asking tough and honest questions like “Can we love our enemies and at the same time prepare to kill them? Can we carry a cross and a gun?”

But Preston is not satisfied with bumper sticker clichés and arguments that dodge the hard questions. He takes tough questions like “What about Hitler?” head on with grace and ingenuity. Preston loves Scripture and is not scared to dive into the “texts of terror” that have often been ignored or glossed over by Christian pacifists. Nor is he scared of the question of evil, which is something every one of us must wrestle with—especially as we consider the destruction that one person hellbent on evil is capable of. Preston makes a courageous claim in this book that he backs up brilliantly: it is possible to combat violence without mirroring it. We can fight evil without being evil.

Preston surveys the debate over war and violence across the centuries of church history. He looks at the early church in word and practice. He points to some of the greatest thinkers on ethics in the church. But in the end he reminds us that we are not called to follow Augustine … we are called to follow Christ. The question Preston poses is bigger than “Is violence ever justified?” The question Preston asks is, “What is God like, and how do we become more like God?” After all, we can look at history and argue that violence has worked at times and failed at times. Likewise, we can look at history and argue that nonviolence has worked and that it has failed. In the end, the question Preston poses is, “Which of these looks most like Jesus?”

Even if we do not all read this book and come out on the last page ready to protest in the next war, perhaps it will at least move us all toward a healthy suspicion of violence. Maybe we will be a little slower to beat the drums of war. Maybe we will find other ways forward than drones and bombs and other ugly things. Maybe we all won’t agree in disarming the world, but maybe we can agree that a country that has the capacity of nearly a hundred thousand Hiroshima bombs and spends over twenty thousand dollars a second on war can do better to align with the Prince of Peace.

Maybe even a generation from now, those of us who follow Christ will be the hardest folks in the world to convince that violence is necessary. I sure hope so. Thank you for reading this book—especially those of you for whom these ideas might be new or challenging or even disturbing. And thank you, Preston, for this marvelous contribution to the library of resources that are helping us follow Christ in this generation.

—Shane Claiborne