What if? What if Obama’s speech had not simply referenced Gandhi and King but followed them in following the way of Jesus? I have a number of friends like Nobel Prize nominee John Dear and Ken Butigan who has articulately raised concerns about Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr’s teachings and example being admired while simultaneously sidelined as impractical in Obama’s Nobel speech. As Obama stated, “But as a head of State… I cannot be guided by [Gandhi and King’s] examples alone.”

Which raises an interesting question for me, “Can we as Christians be guided by Christ’s example alone?”

Is Jesus’ example enough? Is Jesus’ Way realistic? For both Gandhi and King it was central to their program but is Jesus example alone enough for a President? Or does our hope, our example, our salvation, lay elsewhere?

My concern is not just for Obama as someone who shares these philosophical influences of Gandhi and King with me, but for Obama as a brother who in the Nobel speech sidelined the teachings and example of Jesus as Lord. While this is not any different from any other world leader, it might be worth pointing what many might have missed; Obama in this respect has not been any different to any other world leader. Cornel West and Travis Smiley continue to remind us of Obama’s need for us to hold him accountable. Desmond Tutu said this week about Obama, “You are now a Nobel laureate—become what you are.”

This got me thinking “what if”. What if instead of Reinhold Niebuhr being Obama’s favorite theologian it was Martin King, Dorothy Day or John Yoder? What if Obama like Gandhi and King looked to Jesus’ example not as an ideal but a practical program for transformation?  What if Obama had made a study of the few places nonviolence was tried against Hitler (like in Denmark) and did successfully halted Hitler’s armies and save the lives of 7 thousand Jews? What if Obama instead of merely quoting the Balkans made a real study of the nonviolent movement “Otpor!” that brought down Slobodan Milosevic? What if Obama took real action at COP 15 and lead the world in a binding treaty that was just for the Global South? What if Obama fought terrorism by take the billions in his war budget (which exceeds that of George W. Bush), and invested it in grassroots community development, health care and education in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq (and at home?). What if Obama saw what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the love ethic of Jesus” as the pragmatic and realistic way forward? What if as a head of State could risk being guided by Christ’s example embodied by Gandhi and King?

What if Obama had not taken a step back from the Black Churches (in which he had come to faith) because their impassioned prophetic rhetoric became a liability in cultures were we like God to bless our agendas, not challenge them? What if Martin Luther King Jr. had lived to preach his next sermon, which he had titled “Why America May Go to Hell”? Would Obama still have referred to him? It would be hard for any President to be part of King’s congregation that day, let alone respond “amen.” How much harder to not just claim King as a hero but Christ as Lord? Yet in our sinfulness we seem immensely skilled in sanitizing and sidelining examples that show us that Jesus’ Way of costly love and risky nonviolence is not just practical, it’s the narrow road that will lead out into life. There is a danger in quoting King and Gandhi as embodiments of abstract ideals to admire rather than fiercely pragmatic examples to follow. Instead of following them as they follow Christ we might just end up “believing in him” while playing chaplain to Empires the likes of which put him on the cross. Instead of living Martin King’s dream we might find ourselves collaborating with the nightmarish forces that assassinated him a year to the day he publically called for an end to the war in Vietnam.

Since Augustine drew on pagan philosophy to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely the Kingdoms of this world and their ‘way of the sword’ with the Kingdom of God and Jesus’ ‘way of the cross’, Just War Theory has replaced obedience to the commands of Christ with Christian ‘ideals’.

I know it’s not cool to mention the word “commands”. It’s about as cool as referring to Jesus as Lord instead of ‘my spiritual guide’ or something else equally insipid which allows the fundamentalists to high-jack biblical language. ‘Command’ doesn’t sound very 21st century. We like “ideals” or “principles” but commands seems so, well, authoritarian. You won’t find a book on commands in the self –help section. It sounds… militant. It sounds confrontational with other orders and other rulers. It sounds like something you wouldn’t hear in a talk from Ken Wilber. Contextualized it sounds like something you’d hear in the mouth of a grassroots radical like Fred Hampton, not in the mouth of a spiritual guru, a wisdom teacher, or a philosopher. ‘Command’ doesn’t sound very tolerant. Command sounds more like something which challenges and clashes with authorities that issue other commands be they political, religious or economic.

Yet at the heart of New Testament ethics is not a safe spiritual guru teaching us privatized enlightenment, nor merely a wisdom teacher offering us pithy points for contemplation, nor merely a mystic philosopher or theologian offering elaborate systems of thought or abstract ideals. At the heart of New Testament ethics is the teaching and example of the nonviolent Messiah Jesus who commands we put down our swords and pick up our cross in imitation of his militant nonviolent love. In the New Testament this is unavoidable in the grace of discipleship.

Obama is right in saying “For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world”. But it is dangerous and in no way faithful to the New Testament to talk of evil unless he also states evil is NOT located in our enemies but that any “axis of evil” runs through the heart of us all. (Romans 3:9). And that biblically the only way God and us can overcome evil is with good! (Rom. 12:21)

But none of this need concern us if Jesus is only a guru, or a philosopher, or wisdom teacher, or incidental means of atonement. But if Jesus is Lord, then Biblically the only way to overcome evil is the kind of costly Calvary-shaped ‘good’ that Christ embodied and Gandhi and King followed. If Jesus is Lord, then ‘loving your enemies’ is not an abstract ideal that you can work toward with bombs, rather a concrete practice and program for overcoming evil by imitating the transformative nonviolence of Christ, as Gandhi and King did. If Jesus is Lord, then the way of the cross, the way of militant nonviolent love even unto death, is our only “realpolitik” (despite the brilliant theology of Niebuhr) and may cost us our lives like it did Gandhi and King.

I almost want to joke if taking up the cross costs Obama his job, he, Michelle and the kids are welcome to move out of the White House and into our house and do their organic gardening in our community garden. But we are talking about life and death if Obama was to follow the example of his heroes (even if he doesn’t because of the intensity of racism from extremist groups he is still facing death threats). This is no laughing matter. If the nonviolent way of the cross becomes only a “north star that guides us on our journey” we will always cast off the commands of Christ as unrealistic when it might cost us our popularity, our careers or even our lives. We must pray for our brother Obama, we must provide him with accountability and we must refuse to cooperate and collaborate with any ‘realism’ that undermines what is most real for us as Christians, our Lord Christ Jesus and his nonviolent example.

This Christmas let’s pray that the way of Christ not be lost in rhetoric as an ideal but be found in practice in our communities as we live the grace God has shown to us. The nonviolent power and wisdom of God seen in the manger, in the life, in the teachings and ultimately in the cross and resurrection is not merely our “highest aspiration”, it’s our salvation.

About Jarrod McKenna

Jarrod McKenna is seeking to live God’s love. As a Vine and Fig Tree Planter, he plants ‘signs’ on military bases that draw the connections between God’s kingdom, militarism and climate change. He is a co-founder of the Peace Tree Community serving with the marginalised in one of the poorest of areas in his city, heads up Together for Humanity in Western Australia (an interfaith youth initiative working for the common good), and is the founder and creative director of Empowering Peacemakers (EPYC), for which he has received an Australian peace award in his work for in empowering a generation of peace evangelists and [eco]prophets.