When I read this passage from Camp’s book, I was reminded of the Derek Webb song “A Love That’s Stronger Than Our Fear,” particularly the line which says “tell me, since when do the means justify the ends and you build the kingdom using the devil’s tools.”

Here’s the quote from Mere Discipleship:

After the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, an angry letter to the editor appeared in one of the Nashville papers:

To the Editor:

Once again, we experience the tragedy of a mass shooting at one of our schools - [this] time in Colorado. The news anchors and President Clinton wring their hands and say, “What shall we do? What shall we do?”

The standard knee-jerk reaction is to try to pass more laws restricting gun ownership, but that is not the answer. The answer is simple: Execute the little bastards.

Texas has the highest per-capita rate of executions in the country, and you don’t hear about school shootings there. Maybe when we start punishing criminals, we will see a reduction in the crime rate. It’s time we realize that turning the other cheek doesn’t work.

In spite of the writer’s confidence about the efficacy of the Texas death penalty, within a number of months a gunman entered Wedgewood Baptist Church in Forth Worth, and killed seven of the Christians gathered for a youth prayer service.

In any case, the letter-writer’s logic merely updates the logic and faith employed by Charlemagne centuries earlier: certain things work, and certain things don’t. “Turning the other cheek,” it is claimed, “doesn’t work.” And in our concern to accomplish certain noble ends, we must make sure to be “effective.” How shall we convert the masses? Or how shall we accomplish a “reduction in the crime rate?” “The answer is simple: Execute the little bastards.”

Instead of grappling seriously with what Jesus could have possibly meant by “turning the other cheek,” the letter-writer’s crass reflex provides yet an updated example of the old Constantinian reflex to be “effective,” to “get the job done,” and do “whatever it takes.” Such a reflex appears deeply indoctrinated with a faithlike trust in the radical impracticality of Jesus’ teaching: if one wants to maintain culture, maintain civilization, maintain any good within the community, the assumption goes, one must utilize means that “everybody understands.” In this way, “discipleship” gets castrated, or at least sharply curtailed in its assumed rightful place. “Following Jesus” becomes something one does on Sundays and in one’s quiet time in order to “go to heaven,” but the way of Christ has no place in the real world of violence, injustice, and greed. “Church” becomes an institution necessary to instill “moral values” in the citizenry of a democracy, but the fundamental teachings of its Messiah are taken to be irrelevant to the way the world “really works.”

“If we have struggled to bring about a kingdom of heaven on earth, we have been willing to borrow our tools from the kingdom of hell.” Or so a contemporary philosopher described the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But might his words aptly describe not only the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, but significant components of Christian history? - that in the name of the kingdom of God, we have made use of the tools of hell?

Our Sunday morning class is working through Jesus’ sermon on the mount right now, and this past Sunday covered “turning the other cheek.” Questions were asked involving various scenarios in which it just didn’t seem possible that turning the other cheek would possibly work. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment among many that I see discussing such issues of radical discipleship - Jesus’ way just won’t work.

I understand that feeling. But do we dismiss certain things which seem impractical, simply for that reason - that it “won’t work,” without actually trying it? The problem with Jesus’ way is that it won’t work the way we want it to work. The outcome may not be what we desire, and so move on to something that makes more sense to us. Something that will, as Camp says, “get the job done.”

I don’t doubt that Jesus’ way of operating in this world will, in fact, work. The problem is that sometimes we just won’t allow it.