Stand Your Ground By Turning Your Cheek

Toni Morrison, 1953
Howard University
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Over fifty years ago, a future Nobel Prize winner thwarted a potential attack by simply standing her ground. In a recent essay in Reader’s Digest, internationally acclaimed author Toni Morrison described the harrowing incident, which occurred when she was in college.

The year was 1953, a time when African-Americans such as Morrison lived in constant fear of violence from the white majority. As she walked home late one night through a dark neighborhood, a lone car drove slowly past and she glimpsed a blond man behind the wheel.

She heard the car slow behind her. Then it stopped. A car door slammed. Footsteps approached.

Vividly imagining all of the terrible things that might happen next, and feeling exhausted, she decided she wasn’t willing to experience such trauma.

So she calmly turned and waited.

When the man was close enough to see his eyes, she spoke to him in a low and conversational tone: “Will you please leave me alone.”

The man paused.

“I’m not going to bother you,” he whispered, then returned to his car and drove away.

Thus Morrison learned the power of standing your ground – gently but firmly refusing to be intimidated.

The notion of “stand your ground” has received a lot of attention because many states have passed self-defense laws that use this phrase. Such statutes allow individuals to use lethal force to defend themselves without requiring them to avoid or retreat from a threatening situation.

While the legal right to “stand your ground” is relatively new, some of its key principles – especially the ones demonstrated by Morrison – are quite ancient.

In fact, one of the most stunning descriptions of “stand your ground” principles was articulated nearly two thousand years ago by a simple Jewish carpenter who taught his followers, “whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

If you don’t recognize this as a “stand-your-ground” statement, you’re not alone. Perhaps no biblical precept is more misunderstood.

Over the centuries since it was first expressed, the phrase “turn the other cheek” has come to epitomize meekness, even submission, in the face of violence and aggression.

In the memorable words of biblical scholar Walter Wink, many Christians have come to associate turning the other cheek with being a “doormat” – letting other people simply walk all over them.

But nothing could be further from its original meaning.

While Jesus was certainly counseling his followers to avoid violence, he was also teaching them how to use weapons of love to resist violence – to gently but firmly “stand their ground.”

This may seem counter-intuitive, but the secret lies in the historical context. Consider, for example, a seemingly insignificant and often overlooked detail – “whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek.”

In ancient Palestine the distinction between “right” and “left” was important, for both symbolic and practical reasons. The right hand was pure, while the left hand was unclean – both figuratively and literally.

To this day, in many cultures, people eat only with their right hands, because touching food with their left hands is considered unsanitary. Likewise, to strike someone in ancient Palestine, a person would only use his right hand.

But how could someone use his right hand to hit someone else on the right cheek? Only by using the back of his hand.

Of course, using the back of one’s hand was a way of asserting authority and superiority. It was intended to demean or dehumanize the other person, to make him or her submit, or accept a position of inferiority. Even in our modern culture, a backhanded slap carries a similar connotation.

Now consider what would happen if a person who had been struck on the right cheek simply offered the other – the left cheek.

Offering the left cheek would creatively complicate the situation – at least in ancient Palestine – because the only way to hit someone on the left cheek (again, with the right hand) was with an open palm or fist. But in that ancient culture, only people of equal social standing used an open palm or fist with each other.

Let that sink in for a moment.

By turning the other cheek, an intended victim could gently but firmly stand his ground – refusing to cower or submit – and lovingly assert his dignity, equality, and humanity.

His abuser would then face a choice. He might stop his abuse, as he recognizes the equality and humanity of his intended victim (and the injustice of his own behavior). Or he might strike again with a palm or a fist, and likewise acknowledge a shared dignity and equality.

Either way, he would be forced to come to terms with the humanity of his intended victim.

This is similar to what happened with Toni Morrison. She didn’t exactly turn her cheek, because the cultural context was significantly different. But she did apply the basic principle – gently but firmly standing her ground and forcing the attacker to confront her humanity.

Perhaps the man in the car initially saw her as an easy target – someone who was inferior, maybe even less “human” than he was, and thus vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. And if she had chosen to struggle or strike out at him, he might have been able to use her violence to justify his own.

But when she simply turned, looked him in the eye, and calmly asked him to leave her alone, the fallacy of her inferiority dissolved away.

She transformed the situation.

Confronted with her quiet dignity, her humanity, and her equality – perhaps even the greatness of her character – he could no longer justify his attack and he slipped away.

Toni Morrison thus demonstrates that the ancient teachings of Jesus, understood in their full historical context, remain remarkably relevant in our modern world.

Faced with someone who is trying to demean or humiliate us – to aggressively assert his or her superiority and our own inferiority – we can learn to creatively stand our ground by turning a metaphorical cheek.