Turn the other cheek – what gives? Is it really the best way?

Have you ever been confused by this saying of Jesus? It literally means that if someone has hit us on the left cheek, we should instinctively (meaning heart response) offers them the other cheek so they can hit it if they wish, not out of spite, but out of love. This sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Why didn’t you defend yourself?

The way of the world is definitely not to look the other way. When I moved from my parents’ house to shared accommodation when I was 21 years old, I moved into a house with two other young men my age, both “friends”. I mean because I had quite a bit of respect for one of these guys, I had doubts about the other, but we always spent a lot of time together. I soon found out that my distrust of this guy was well founded: he was a biblical “lazy man”, always shying away from his responsibility to provide his part or do his chores, and worse, picking fights. . Turning the other cheek was never going to work in this situation.

However, to turn the other cheek, to grant grace to the other person, which is an “undeserved favor”, was the life edict of the legendary writer Leo Tolstoy. Here was a man who had struggled his whole life to find meaning in it. He is genuinely someone who ‘went to hell and back’ to find it.[1] Being involved in the fundamental pacifism on the back of the words of Christ ironically made him a Christian anarchist: because the Church supported the State, and the State went to war, Tolstoy came into conflict with the Church to the point of his own excommunication. It looked like Tolstoy vivid “turn the other cheek” to the best of your ability. On the back of Schopenhauer[2] influence lived the rest of his life, by choice, in abject poverty. He always had the firm conviction that the message of the Sermon on the Mount could be lived literally, a realization that perhaps led to a rather torturous life in the end.

Frank people always have critics, and Tolstoy was no exception. In the mid-1940s, Eric Arthur Blair, also known as George Orwell, wrote of Tolstoy’s philosophy: “If you turn the other cheek, you will receive a stronger blow than the first. This doesn’t always happen, but it’s to be expected and you shouldn’t complain if it does.”[3] Orwell suggests in his essay, Lear, Tolstoy and the Foolthat Tolstoy’s philosophy was defective in that “The distinction that really matters is not between violence and nonviolence, but between having and not having an appetite for power.”[4] hinting that pacifists, like Tolstoy, could very easily be power brokers. While I suppose this might be true, I find it hard to follow the “why” logic. An additional quote from Orwell probably demonstrates his penchant for proof the power of justice, as seen in those whom Orwell considered “saints”, is not so fair:

Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which on the surface appear to imply a total relinquishment of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. you yourself cannot hope to gain any material advantage, surely that proves you right? And the more he’s right, the more natural it is for everyone else to be intimidated into thinking the same thing.”[5]

The point of this, when it comes to turn the other cheekwhere do you draw the line? Tolstoy may have been guilty, ironically, of failing to apply pacifism when he was in conflict with the church. Anarchism is, in itself, a fight against the “powers”. Perhaps what Jesus exhorts his disciples to do is engage in pacifism for themselves (don’t fight back), but be the advocate for the weaker member, in the Tolstoy situation, for the oppressed and helpless victims of war, of which there are many. In this context it can be shown that Tolstoy was actually doing God’s will, as many of his time did, standing against the powers–view anarchism-of-darkness.

The theologian Helmut Thielicke sees that on a mundane level it is impossible to find the logic to turn the other cheek. He says, if you’re sharing a room, and the other person doesn’t do the dishes and leaves your work messy, you’re obligated to treat them the same and leave the dishes for them, right? This is so that they can appreciate for themselves what it’s the treatment feels like…yet, on a higher ‘heavenly’ level, it is possible to turn the other cheek when we acknowledge the spiritual truth that all are serving grace: Christ died for the ungodly. This is shameless respect that goes with each person you know and with whom you relate; it is seeing them through the eyes of God.

Furthermore, Thielicke says that no one is beyond the sonship of God, and that it is the “gift of funny who gives me new eyes, so that with these new eyes I can see something divine in others”.[6] And we [are to] help by placing ourselves under the mercy of God and [allow that to] irradiate others so that this unhappy world can be sanitized.”[7]

It’s about seeing the need in others who might offend and intimidate you. It is about seeing their fear and returning love through mercy, based on the grace of God.

It helps open up the offender to the freedom of “why did you treat me so nicely when I did something despicable to you?” It is in a sense a miraculous response to a miraculous action. He recognizes that what it means for anyone to turn to God, no less repentant, is a “revaluation of values.”[8] In fact, that has happened to anyone who genuinely turns the other cheek, in love, without fear.

It is only the miracle of grace that allows the authenticity of the process to occur. Turning the other cheek is simply a better way. It is a better way because whether the person who hits or offends us returns or not is negligible. In fact, it is thanks to the Orwell quote that we should expect people to strike back, but in ourselves we should stand firm in our (or God’s) stance of love and grace.

You see, we must see the son of God in them; the child who has been bought by love, and given the gift of life, whether they choose it or not. Seeing this miracle of turning the other cheek in action is the very vision of Jesus himself, with a look that he could say, “You can’t make me love you less, no matter what you do.”

Do you think it’s possible?

© Steve J. Wickham, 2008. All rights reserved worldwide.

[1] Mr Eaton, The path that leads to life, The radical challenge to the church of the Sermon on the Mount, (Christian Focus Publications, Geanies House, Great Britain, 1999), p. 95.

[2] Tolstoy’s life changed forever after reading the following: But this same need for involuntary suffering (of the poor) for eternal salvation is also expressed in that expression of the Savior (“Matthew 19,24”): “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich enter the kingdom of God”. Therefore, those who were very concerned about their eternal salvation, chose voluntary poverty when fate had denied them and they had been born into wealth. Thus Sakyamuni Buddha was born a prince, but voluntarily took up the beggar’s staff; and Francisco de Asís, the founder of the mendicant orders who, as a young man at a ball, where the daughters of all personalities were seated together, was asked: “Now Francisco, won’t you soon choose between these beauties?” and who replied: “I have made a far more beautiful choice!” “Whom?” “La poverta (poverty)”: whereupon he abandoned everything soon after and wandered the earth as a beggar.
Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Flight. II, §170.

[3] G. Orwell, “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool”, Polemic No.7, Great Britain, London (March 1947). Available: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

[4] Orwell, Op cit.

[5] Orwell, Op cit.

[6] H. Thielicke, Life Can Begin Again: Sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, translated by JW Doberstein (Fortress Press, Philadelphia), p. 74-5.

[7] H. Thielicke, Ibid., p. 74-5.

[8] H. Thielicke, Op cit., p. 77.