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On Syria: Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

By Shane Claiborne
Hand holding the world, Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock.com
Hand holding the world, Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock.com
Sep 9, 2013
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Right after 9/11, I asked a kid in my neighborhood what we should do in response. His answer: “Those people did something very wrong ...” He thought pensively and continued, “But two wrongs don’t make a right.”  

As Martin Luther King taught us, you cannot fight fire with fire, you only get a bigger fire. You fight fire with water. You fight violence with nonviolence. You fight hatred with love.  

As a Christian, a follower of Jesus the Prince of Peace, I am deeply troubled about the possibility of a military response to the violence in Syria. Jesus consistently teaches us another way to respond to evil, a third way – neither fight nor flight. He teaches that evil can be opposed without being mirrored, oppressors resisted without being emulated, enemies neutralized without being destroyed.  

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Hand holding the world, Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock.com
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