According to Wikipedia, "turning the other cheek is a phrase in Christian doctrine that refers to responding to an aggressor without violence." The intended result is to blunt the aggression of your adversary.
It has been my experience that this doctrine is patently false which probably explains while so few Christians actually put this teaching into practice.
It is not just that violence is often necessary to stop violence--no amount of preaching or reasoning would have convinced Hitler to call for an end to his Blitzkrieg.
Rather, as Eric Hoffer noted, it is because when others have a just grievance against us, we have a more potent reason for hating them. It is a guilty conscience that drives us to mistreat others.
An aggressor will attempt to silence his guilty conscience by insisting that those he has harmed were worthy of the abuse. The inevitable result is that more violence will be aimed at the non-violent in a desperate effort to shift the blame and to prove this perverse theory.
In hindsight, it is easy to see that when Christ turned the other cheek, He almost guaranteed his own crucifixion.
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