Yes, there is a mean, violent streak in the true Christian life! But violence against whom, or what? Not other people!
It’s a violence against all the impulses in us that would be violent to other people.
It’s a violence against all the impulses in our own selves that would make peace with our own sin and settle in with a peacetime mentality.
It’s a violence against all lust in ourselves and all enslaving desires
- for food
- or caffeine
- or sugar
- or chocolate
- or alcohol
- or pornography
- or money
- or the praise of men
- and the approval of others
- or power
- or fame.
It’s a violence against the impulses in our own soul toward racism and sluggish indifference to injustice and poverty and abortion.
Christianity is not a settle-in-and-live-at-peace-with-this-world-the-way-it-is kind of religion. When Jesus said, “the truth will set you free”, he didn’t mean without a battle. He meant that truth would win the war of liberation in the soul.
Christianity is war. It is a declaration of all-out combat against our own sinful impulses. The apostle Peter said, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul”. To become a Christian is to wake up to the reality that our soul – the eternal joy of our soul – is at stake. Therefore, Christianity is mortal combat for true and lasting joy.
– John Piper, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight For Joy
