When Force Doesn't Work

I didn't date at all until college, and up to that point I took my cues from movies as to what such close relationships would be like. My siblings are all quite a bit older than me, so I also didn't have the "benefit" of living with someone whose will was sometimes in tension with mine. So I used to dream of how conversations and relationships would go with whatever girl I had a crush on at the time.

But when I started dating... then after I got married... then after I had children... I came to realize--I know, what a deep and profound bit of knowledge--that other people just don't always talk and act the way you had them talk and act when you were in charge of the dream. When I ran the dreams, others did and responded how I wanted them to. In real life, they had their own personalities and dreams, and their own will.

As a parent, I have at my disposal a certain amount of force I can use to make or try to make a child do what I want him or her to do. There is the threat of a spanking, the withholding of a toy or video game, the ever present grounding.

On the other hand, there is also a point where the amount of force necessary to move to action has such negative repercussions it is not worth it. So, for example, normal people would not use a gun to try to move another adult to action. And there is a point where our children get so far into life that we cannot spank any more.

In short, there is a time when the right thing to do is to lose. If it takes a gun for force to work with other normal people, it's time to lose. Too many parents don't get that they must increasingly give autonomy to their teenagers--they're too used to the easier use of force in childhood--and they win a few battles but ultimately lose their children. If we have not managed to build a certain character into our children by a certain point, long after force works, then we have lost.

But all of this is of course a parable for more than parenting. I am really talking about the limited value of using force to achieve objectives. For whatever reason, much of our culture is oriented around the use of force to achieve our objectives as well as to punish for wrongdoing. I am not a pacifist, nor am I against consequences for wrongdoing. But force and punishment are not ends to themselves. They are very effective in the short term, and very ineffective in the long term.

We might force certain foreigners to act a certain way. But if we have not changed their attitudes, then we have only postponed the problem to the time when we are not able to reach or enforce our will. Building walls between America and Mexico or Israel and the Palestinians might have some value in the short term, but it represents failure if we can't quickly bring them back down. It was easy to bring down Hussein by force, but force cannot win the peace of Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia.

And Palestinians like Hamas will not win statehood by force. Force might get someone else's attention, but they will fail unless they learn how to make peace as well.

Here is wisdom. There is a time to admit that you cannot win by force. We cannot morally kill all Iraqis. Indeed, in the aftermath of Bosnia, Rwanda, civil wars in Sierra Leone and Somalia, it has been impossible even to bring to justice every individual who has committed an atrocious act--in some cases almost no one would be left if everyone who deserved punishment were punished.

There is a time to lose. This is one of the lessons of parenting that is so hard but so crucial. Something in the American heart wants consequences no matter what. We might be willing to reneg on punishment if repentance occurs. But there is a time to lose even when there is no repentance--because you are thinking of the long term. You are losing the battle so you can win the war, rather than winning the battle and losing the war.

I am not advocating for withdrawal from Iraq. I'm arguing for a major paradigm shift in our foreign policy, indeed in many, many areas. Kingdom building, they call it. Kerry called it having a plan to win the peace. I'm not sure that Kerry would have made much of a president, but he was right on with this comment.

It is empowerment of the weak and true "correction" of the criminal. No one said these things were easy. Force is initially easy--and thus is the first recourse for those who are not up to the bigger challenge. "It's their own fault." Yes it is. But it is foolishness to think it won't come back to bite us if we don't do something about it.

Of course there is simply no debate that a Christian will be concerned with poverty. I'm not even going to argue that one. But poverty is something an atheist should be concerned about, not because of values but consequences. That person without resources is going to be far more likely to do crime, to get into drugs, etc... Whether we like it or not, their problem is our problem too.

While some of the terrorists are spoiled brats like bin Laden, I bet you anything that most suicide bombers are dirt poor (not literally, Wesleyans don't bet). The fundamentalist Muslim problem has something to do with economics too. Just look at our most prosperous churches--neither a fat Christian nor a fat Muslim is bound to be very fanatical in their faith.

Make "no child left behind" about educating children from the inside out rather than by holding a stick over school administrators if they don't get "results."

There is a wholesale paradigm shift I am advocating here, a shift toward wisdom and real understanding. It is not "liberal nonsense"--there is a time for force, in my opinion. This is balanced wisdom that can see the long term consequences of short term solutions.