Dr. Martin Luther King lays out six principles for resisting evil nonviolently.

In his book The Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King lays out the six principles for resisting evil nonviolently.

1.      Nonviolence is resistance not passivity: It is the courageous, active confrontation of evil by the power of love.
2.     Nonviolence seeks an end to hostilities by winning a friend: The end result should be redemption and reconciliation.
3.     Nonviolence attacks injustice not people: It recognizes that evil doers are also victims and not evil themselves.
4.     Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate: It avoids both physical and internal violence.
5.     Nonviolence believes suffering is redemptive and transformative: Like Christ on the cross, it takes on suffering without retaliation. It is the willingness to take on suffering in order to right wrongs.
6.     Nonviolence believes the universe is on the side of justice: God is the God of justice and the sacrificial cross of Christ has already defeated evil.
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Active peacemaking is not the absence of conflict, but rather the practice of confronting evil by forcing it out into the open in the hope that one’s adversary will repent. From this perspective, peacemaking is no longer passive, but active.

​Ask your son or daughter if they have any enemies, and why? Have they mustered the courage needed to face them, and if so, how? What would it look like to apply Dr. King’s principals to that relationship? Because if we’re honest, retribution is easier than reconciliation. Christ’s command to love our enemies isn’t simple, but it is a liberating action for both the oppressed and oppressor.

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