In recent days, we have witnessed scenes which, though different in form and context, reveal a shared and troubling concern. What occurred involving Minister Ximena Lincolao at the Universidad Austral de Chile, where she was subjected to pressure and hostility, together with recent episodes surrounding Donald Trump, confront us with a question we cannot evade.
This is not simply about violence.
Violence has always accompanied human life. What is truly unsettling is something else: the way in which we are beginning to respond to it. Increasingly, one hears a phrase which, by its appearance of moderation, often passes unnoticed: “It is wrong, but…”.
That “but” is the real problem.
It is not an open defence of violence. Nor is it a clear condemnation. It is a form of moral suspension: a way of saying that something is wrong, yet not entirely condemnable. It is precisely within this ambiguous space that violence begins to acquire cultural legitimacy.
When this language takes hold, something shifts. Not on the surface of public debate, but at its very foundation. For the problem lies not only in what happens, but in what we begin to tolerate.
Disagreement, in itself, is not a threat. It is a constitutive feature of any free society. Where there is no disagreement, there is likely no real thought. Yet disagreement can take different paths: it can be directed towards the pursuit of truth, or it can degenerate into a struggle for imposition.
When the latter occurs, the other ceases to be an interlocutor and becomes an obstacle. No longer someone with whom one can speak, but someone who must be silenced. And when language loses its proper function, violence begins to appear not only possible, but understandable.
This is the point of inflection.
Not when someone acts violently, but when others, without doing so themselves, begin to explain it, justify it, or relativise it. Not with enthusiasm, but with hesitation. Not with conviction, but with that “but” which weakens everything.
“It is wrong, but…”.
But the context explains it. But the indignation is justified. But the other side has also done its part. And so, little by little, what was once a clear boundary becomes blurred.
A society does not deteriorate only because some cross certain lines, but also because others cease to name those lines with clarity. Moral ambiguity does not restrain violence; it normalises it.
What is at stake is not merely a matter of public order or political coexistence. It is something deeper. It concerns the way we understand the other, and the conviction that even in the sharpest disagreement, the other remains someone with whom it is possible to speak. When that conviction is lost, conflict ceases to be a tension that can be inhabited and becomes a rupture that seems resolvable only by force.
Violence, in this sense, does not erupt suddenly. It is the result of a prior process, often silent, in which language has been weakened, truth relativised, and responsibility diluted. For this reason, the problem does not begin when someone shoves, shouts, or prevents another from speaking. It begins earlier: when we are no longer able to say clearly that such actions are wrong, without adding anything further.
No evasive qualifications. No explanations that ultimately function as excuses. No “but” which, in the end, concedes everything.
Christianity, however, does not merely denounce this process. Nor does it propose a superficial harmony that ignores real conflict. It offers something more demanding and more concrete: a different way of responding when disagreement escalates into aggression.
Jesus Christ did not speak of this in the abstract. He lived it. When he was insulted, he did not respond with insult. When he was falsely accused, he did not resort to manipulation or force to defend himself. When he was struck and led to the cross, he did not legitimise the violence of his aggressors, yet neither did he return it. His response was not passivity, but a different kind of firmness: he upheld the truth to the end, without destroying those who attacked him.
This is not an isolated gesture, but a taught way of life. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:44). This is not prudent advice; it is a command. It does not eliminate conflict; it redefines it.
The Apostle Paul takes up this same line with unmistakable clarity: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” (Ro. 12:17). “Do not take revenge” (Ro. 12:19). “If your enemy is hungry, feed him” (Ro. 12:20). And he concludes with a statement that challenges every logic of confrontation: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Ro. 12:21).
This is not weakness. Within the Christian framework, to overcome does not mean to impose one’s will, but to refuse to be drawn into the logic of evil. Violence is not defeated by reproducing it, but by interrupting its cycle.
This, however, comes at a real cost. It requires renouncing the immediate satisfaction of retaliation. It requires upholding truth without resorting to the very means one rejects. It often entails being exposed, misunderstood, or even defeated in visible terms.
Yet it is precisely here that Christianity marks a decisive difference. The dignity of the other does not depend upon their conduct. It is not lost when they err or when they aggress. For this reason, the Christian cannot justify their destruction, even when there are grounds to condemn their actions. This does not mean relativising truth or tolerating injustice. It means confronting both without abandoning the moral framework that prevents conflict from becoming dehumanisation.
A healthy society is not one in which there is no conflict, but one in which conflict does not destroy the possibility of recognising one another as persons. Christianity goes further still: it affirms that such recognition is not optional, but obligatory, even in relation to an enemy.
When violence no longer shocks, we have not only lost peace. We have begun to lose something deeper: the capacity to distinguish clearly between what must be rejected and what may be opposed without ceasing to be human.
And at that point, the Christian alternative is not a distant ideal, but a concrete path already walked: to speak the truth without violence, to resist evil without reproducing it, and to refuse, even in the hardest conflict, to reduce the other to anything less than a neighbour, even if the whole world has chosen to treat them as an enemy.
