Brain researchers tell us that the limbic system, the part of our brain that we share with reptiles, causes us to either fight or to run away when faced with a threat. This is commonly known as the fight or flight response. It makes sense. You come around the corner and there’s a predator. You have to decide rather quickly whether your best odds are fight or flight.

Human beings, however, have developed another part of their brain called the neocortex. This part of our brain distinguishes us from other animals. It is our center of reasoning. It gives us a decided advantage over our predators, for obvious reasons.

When Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, tells his followers, when someone strikes you on one cheek to turn the other cheek, I believe he is appealing to higher thinking. He is inviting us to stand up to our enemies, to not hit back, but not run away, neither fight, nor flight. He is inviting us into neocortical activity.

This passage often gets interpreted as a kind of cowering or passive response to violence. It is anything but. Jesus challenges his listeners to try a third option: Stand up to enemies without embracing their level of hostility or violence. Perhaps he understands that peace relies on someone breaking the cycle of violence, someone being willing to take a few blows without hitting back, but also without backing down or running away.

This is not easy work. When hit, I want to hit back. Hard. If I can’t win, I’m liable to run. Live to fight another day. It takes a unique person to take a blow and stand firm, belligerently, neither hitting back, not running away. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there is no time for force. If someone is harming a child, you will use whatever force it takes to stop it. But all too often we respond to personal attacks, physical or verbal with a blow back, or sometimes even with a greater level of physical or verbal violence, escalating the conflict. Being a peacemaker is an art.

This is not easy work. It takes discipline and courage – more courage than mindlessly fighting back, actually. This is not passively cowering before bullies. This means thinking through things fully, developing a plan, not just lashing out. It means insisting and persisting relentlessly on a righteous course of action, even when the bully bellows and threatens. It is Martin Luther King instructing peaceful demonstrators to take their blows, go to jail, but not to strike back. When this happens, it is much easier for outside observers to determine who the aggressor truly is. In a cat fight its hard to tell.

This is not easy work. What would it be like to have a military strategy based on Jesus’ idea? It might mean every attack need not mean responding with disproportionate violence, like a crazed reptile. It might responding to our neighbors with compassion, food, health care. Some will no doubt say this is idealistic, but we might just be surprised at how global attitudes would change if we dropped more care packages than bombs. (And by the way, care packages cost less.)

This is not easy work, but blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are those who check their reptile brain from time to time, and live in their neocortex, for they shall be called thoughtful, strategic, generous human beings.