It’s time to resurrect the “Thoughts on War” topic and address the passage that began my turn to pacifism.
I’d read it before, but not until the days after 9/11 did it hit me with such a radical challenge.
But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.*
I was so challenged, and so struggled with what those words meant in our world and for us. I ran into the dilemma that no matter how I looked at it I couldn’t come to a conclusion that killing my enemy could be loving.
So, brother’s and sister’s in Christ who support war, please help me with some explanation of this.
I think it’s possible to love my enemies, pray for them, do good to them, and yet – when all other options fail – to go to war with them.
Another thing to think about…What does it say about those who hate loved ones, innocents? I’ve tried to raise the issue of the Old Testament before with no luck, so let’s concentrate on the New Testament. Jesus clearly advocates helping those who don’t have the ability to help themselves. This includes the poor and unfortunatem but it also includes the Kurds, suffering under years of tyranny and genocide and others in similar situations.
Along the same lines – I would never kill to save my own life, but I would kill in a heartbeat to save the lives of my family.
I’m re-thinking my claim about never killing to save my own life. Fortunately, I’ve never been in that situation, so I can’t say for sure what I’d do…
I don’t support war in general. However, I agree with Brian’s statement
[Along the same lines – I would never kill to save my own life, but I would kill in a heartbeat to save the lives of my family.]
It’s a government’s responsibility to protect the weak. When those who threaten the lives of the weak refuse to do so unless they are threatened with death, then the government has the right, and possibly the duty, to use lethal force to protect the innocent from those who have chosen violence and oppression (see Romans 13: 1-7, but specifically verses 4 and 5).
“I’ve tried to raise the issue of the Old Testament before with no luck”
Now Brian, I’ll try and say a little something here but this probably deserves a post of it’s own.
I hope you don’t think I’ve avoided addressing the Old Testament, or avoided points you’ve made concerning the Old Testament. Here are my two brief hesitancy’s concerning jumping to the Old Testament. One, As a Jew I think the Old Testament is HUGELY important, and at the same time as a Messianic Jew, I think the Old Testament can ONLY be looked at in light of the New Testament. Two, the rules and laws, as well as the wars, we see in the Old Testament were from a very different period of God’s involvement in the world. What I mean by that is the rules where for Israel, and it was when they where running as a Theocracy. Applying those rules to the church, or the governments of this country is a little uncomfortable for me.
I’m reading Jim Wallis’ brilliant book “The Soul of Politics” and came across some thoughts I found very compelling and relevent to this topic, so I wanted to share.
On page 224 he says:
“My mind was filled with images of soldiers who had for centuries braved the elements, endured hardship, risked injury and death, and indeed given up their lives in order to wage war. Then it dawned on me. Why should we expect the cost of peace to be less?”
He goes on to say:
“Peacemaking is much more than resolving conflicts; it is the commitment to overcome the injustice that creates conflict…
Peacemaking requires action, courage, commitment, sacrifice. It asks us to persevere in energy and creativity until we can resolve our conflicts. It invites us to search ourselves as well as our enemies for the sources of our confrontations. It means regarding our enemy’s well-being as highly as we regard our own….
Trained and disciplined, but unarmed, people could be deployed in sufficient numbers to make a strategic difference in many situations of both domestic and international conflict- but only if they were prepared to make sacrifices and suffer casualties just as soldiers are. It is a profound challenge, but only the strength of such an alternative has any hope of replacing the system of war.”
Anyone care to discuss this idea? I know it lines up with what I believe, and with what Gandhi and King did back in their days. Can we imagine together what this sort of idea would look like in our current struggles…let’s say Iraq for instance??
Let’s talk! 🙂
Peace,
Jamie
Jamie,
Good stuff! I’ve discussed this ton’s of times with my more conservative friends, obviously with returned crazy stares and harsh comments.
It’s like Christian Peacemaker Teams times 100x! They are doing great work, but what if planes by the thousands arrived in a war torn area and just went around caring and loving people, and standing between the violence. I think I’ve written on this before on the blog, I’ll have to dig through my old posts. Otherwise I’ll definitly be posting a what if? next Friday.