Stand for Something

While recently listening to a Christian speaker who stated that he was a pacifist due to his adherence to Jesus’ command to love our enemies, he pointed to the story of the Good Samaritan as a demonstration of how we should show love to strangers and to whomever is in need. He spoke against the idea that any Christian should use force in defense of himself or others. My question for people who state this viewpoint, especially since he brought up the Good Samaritan story (and this story is often used to validate the idea of loving one’s neighbor), is, What if the Good Samaritan had come up on the scene a little sooner, while the victim was being assaulted? What would have been the best way to show love then? His pacifist philosophy of showing love to his neighbor would surely have been challenged, because it would have been difficult to show his version of love to both parties (the victim and the assailants). If he does nothing and waits for the assault to be over, and then like a loving neighbor, hauls the nearly dead victim to the hospital, is that really showing love? But, he might say, “I wanted my enemies to know that I loved them, too, so I let them finish their assault on Joe and then took care of Joe.” Hmmm. Did he offer to step in and take the beating for Joe? That would surely have been demonstrating love toward Joe. Very rarely do I think that this is the case. From my standpoint, waiting for them to finish beating on Joe would really and truly be showing “love” to the wrong party. Sometimes you have to make a choice. Sometimes you have to stand for something. And, in so doing, by default, you must therefore stand against something else (the wrongdoers). But, even today, our churches fail to stand on many issues because they don’t want to appear that they are standing against the holders of opposite viewpoints regarding those issues. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t stand for something without standing against the opposite side. In the story of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan, if he had happened upon the assault in progress, would have had to make a choice to whom to “show love”. Or, he would have to really show love to neither party. He would either have to enter the foray on one side or the other, whichever he deemed right or wrong, or he would have to withhold help to either party; or, I guess, theoretically, there is a third option that doesn’t make much sense, but he could have helped the assailants for a while, then he could have helped the victim for a while, out of fairness, showing “love” to them both. Hmm. The third option doesn’t say much for the Good Samaritan, does it? Sometimes, people, you just have to stand for what is the obvious right thing to do.