For 300,000 children around the world, war is not a game.
Tag Archives: war
Guns at the Playground
This was written by my good friend, Karma:
Imagine you are the most popular kid on the playground. Also, your mom lets you take a gun to school with enough clips of ammo to go Columbine on the whole school. This isn’t something that you are thinking about doing but because you’re the most popular, you get into a lot of fights sticking up for your friends, doing what you think is right.
Its soccer practice one day and you’re talking to two of the neighborhood kids. They have figured out where their parents keep their guns too. The first one, little Suzie, is friendly, nice and fair to everyone she meets. Everyone likes her. She doesn’t get into arguments on the playground but if there were a conflict she would resolve it without violence. She respects other peoples beliefs and is willing to compromise. She says she is planning on bringing her gun and collecting some ammo next week.
The other child is Marcus. Marcus is not very popular. He is always getting into fights with other kids, sometimes he gets hurt; sometimes the other kid gets hurt. He’s also very stubborn. Usually Marcus disagrees with you about everything and he tells you so, rudely. Some of his friends are bullies and many of the kids are afraid of him. He’s planning on bringing a gun next week too, but he hasn’t figured out how to get any bullets. During the conversation with Marcus and Suzie, Marcus promised that he wouldn’t hurt anyone with his gun. Suzie kept silent.
1. Who are you more worried about, Suzie, or Marcus?
2. Do you try to convince either of them not to bring a gun to school? How do you convince them? Do you ask nicely, kick their ass, get the other kids to gang up on them, or something else?
3. What about your gun? Are you willing to stop bringing the gun to school if it means that they agree not to? Do you trust them? Is it fair to continue bringing a gun, if you convince them otherwise?
My little metaphor may seem silly but think about it seriously, as you would in such a ridiculously scary situation. Please think about your answers before you continue…
…Maybe discuss them with someone in the room, what the heck, see what they think…
… Or post them in the comments box…
Okay, so here’s the deal.
You are the U.S. Suzie is India and Marcus is Iran. Both countries are close to producing nuclear weapons. Iran has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty; India has not. On the other hand, India is a democratic nation while Iran is expansionistic. They’re harboring Al Queda. Everyone pretty much agrees that though they comply with the treaty and India has not, it is Iran that is a danger to the rest of the world. So the debate seems to be, who should we go after, why and how? India is one of our allies but some people think that we shouldn’t be letting them play with plutonium.
Does anyone else see the hypocrisy here? Remember when all of the nations got together and voted to stop producing nuclear weapons? I’ll remind you: The vote was in favor of reducing nuclear armament 147 to one (UK and Isreal abstained). The vote against was yours truely, the good ole’ U. S. of A. How long do we think we can keep producing nuclear weapons and telling other people its not okay to produce nuclear weapons? According to a speech by Noam Chompsky, a recent study showed terrible errors in the security or our nuclear weapons. On top of worrying about other countries making them or our country using them, now we have to worry about terrorists stealing them.
Its happened before and it came close to happening again in the 1960’s. Russia was literally a phone call away from giving the Okay to strike the U.S. Is this frightening to anyone else out there? Sometimes I don’t feel like this is a safe country to live in. Everyone has their crosshairs pointed at us.
How long will these children play with guns before someone gets shot?
Conscientious Objector
I’ve been checking out Voxtropolis recently (a blogging community of sorts), and had the amazing privilege of running across the blog and recent story of Jake.
For most of the past five years, Malloy, an MU graduate, was a cook stationed in Washington, Mo. But, in July, when he learned his unit would begin training for probable deployment to Iraq, Malloy suffered a crisis of conscience. Unable to reconcile Christ’s teachings with the use of lethal force, Malloy filed a claim with the Army, asking that he be classified as a conscientious objector.
(via. Columbia Missourian)
Jake story is amazing to me. Very rarely do we allow our convictions to challenge us to do something outside of the realm of what is normally acceptable. I am often guilty of being convicted of things, but not willing to follow through on them because they are not socially acceptable. I fear that if I was in his shoes I would find myself justifying my current position and disregarding the clear convictions of my heart.
Here is some of what Jake wrote in
his claim as a conscientious objector:
I am in doubt as to the rightness of taking a human life primarily because of the nature of our loving God. He is patient with us, not wanting any to perish (2 Peter 3:9); I believe those having the Spirit of Christ should be likewise patient. Further, we see that God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked but rather desires them to repent and be saved (Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11). We also are fallen and evil (Romans 3:23), and as such should not think our sins any less heinous than the most vile of offenders (James 2:10-11). In fact, while we were enemies of God ourselves, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). This is the foundation of Christianity. We do not take life, but give life, just as Christ gave his as an expression of his love for us (1 John 4:10) and as an example to us (Ephesians 5:1-2). While we were enemies of God, we also were inclined toward every evil practice. Our hope must be to bring an end to evil by filling souls with the love of Christ. Weapons of death cannot solve this problem. When we kill an individual, we add fuel to the fire of hatred within that person’s family. The God of love and the sacrifice of His Son is the hope for peace among nations and in our very lives. Knowing God has redeemed me from death, I could not put another to death for any wrong (John 8:7, Matthew 18:21-35).
A week ago Jake learned his claim was denied.*
The Pacifism discussion begins.
This discussion is sure to create some interesting feedback and debate. Zach brings up some questions about Pacifism, which Ariah tries to address. No script, no agenda, so it get’s a little off on tangents.
This is only half of the show, the second part of this discussion will air next week. And then we’ll continue to discuss pacifism and the Bible as long as there is interest.
We’ve also added to exciting parts to our show: Myth of the Week and the Friend Spotlight!
You could be the Friend of the week and if you are, you’ll win a BIG prize! Listen in and see if your this weeks big winner!
Please send your feedback and thoughts to ariahfine@gmail.com or call and leave an audio message at (615)349-1210
Or Download Here. (right click and choose Save link as…)
Brief shownotes:
-Ariah and Zach discuss Pacifism
-Myth of the Week: ?
-Friend Spotlight: ? Could you be our big winner?!
Disclaimer: No animals where hurt in the making of this podcast
Some great Answers to the “What Would you Do…” Question
I thought it would be worth mentioning a collection of essays from people who do a FAR better job then myself of answering the question “What would you do if someone attacked your loved ones?”
John Howard Yoder collects essay’s from a number of people, as well as personal stories that attempt to address this very question. It’s thoughtful and thought provoking and will give you some insight into the pacifist view. It’s also very easy to read and you’ll be through in no time. If your genuinely interested let me know and I can loan you my copy.
What would you do if…
It’s the typical question that get’s asked of anyone who declares themselves a “pacifist.”
What would you do if someone was attacking your family (loved ones)?
It’s the magic card up someones sleeve to stump that said pacifist into agreeing that sometimes violence, and war, is okay and necessary. I’ll be honest this was a difficult question to handle when I first started thinking about pacifism. What made it difficult was the passage we talked about previously, “Love your enemies…” What suddenly happened was that now both the attacker and the victim are my loved ones. It’s like having to change the question to:
What would you do if your wife was attacking your father?
(or pick the two people closest to you)
Now I’m not so sure killing the attacker would be my pat answer. If I love that person I certainly wouldn’t want their death. I love the victim though as well and I don’t want them to die, so the situation is now far more complex then the original question presented.
For me, this question simply confirms to me that thinking as a pacifist, or rather, thinking about what to do with ‘killing’ not being one of the options.
So, What would you do if…
Love your enemies
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.
Coverage of death in the Middle East
I have BBC news as my homepage on Firefox. It helps keep me aware of what’s happening in the world. Today the frontpage news is the Hajj Stampede. I don’t have much commentary on it specifically. I do know that there have been stampedes like this in the past, and it was never frontpage news, at least it wasn’t before 9/11.
This could be my own bias perception, but I did a quick search on CNN and here’s what I found: Between April 97 and December 99 (3 years) there where 19 stories about the Hajj Pilgrimage in general (searching for ‘Hajj Plgrimage’). In the past year (from Jan 05) there have been 27 new stories and most of them have to do with deaths, crime or weapons of some kind.
I know our interest in the Middle East has increased, but I fear our news coverage of it has leaned more towards the negative and violent coverage. I’m not trying to throw out any government conspiracies, but I worry about how convienent and desensitizing it is to us to hear that those our country seems to dub our “enemies” are killing each other anyways. I worry our negative coverage of Arabs in general is going to make our continued war on “terrorist” easy and cloudy; All Arabs are not terrorist.
do not resist…
(note: I’m skipping passages I’d like to come back to later, and trying to hit the ones that most affected me, and ones most people usually reference and want to talk about first).
38″You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'[g] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. -Matthew 5:38-42
The idea of not resisting an evil person has got to be the most counter cultural concept I had heard in a long time. We’d certainly heard the “turn the other cheek” passage, but usually it’d been flaunted as a weak and cowardly thing to do to avoid further punishment. Growing up I can only think of one example of this being carried out in real life: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. I later learned about Gandhi, Mandela, and others, but initially I had heard of nothing but the occasional reference to the Civil Rights movement. It’s no wonder I and many others didn’t take this passage seriously at all.
But, upon reading it one summer I was struck by the fact that a literal interpretation of it seems incredibly inline with what Christ message is. Self-sacrificial love seems like the only compelling force to this type of action. I later was enlightened by Walter Wink’s insight into this passage and I think it coincides with what I said. Christ calls us not to resist the person, but rather to show them love, and at the sametime maintain our humanity in the person’s eyes. Evil has no power over that kind of love.
(please let’s not discuss other things that Wink says in that article here. I’d rather just focus on the passage mentioned.).
Starting with Jesus
I’m not exactly sure where to start, so I hope this works. As a Christian, my faith, my belief system, is centered around Jesus. Without question, the Old Testament and the rest of the New Testament are valuable and also God’s Word, but without Christ and his teachings, our faith is meaningless. My journey began the summer before my freshman year of college. I was reading through the gospels and also happened to be reading C.S. Lewis’ ‘Why I’m not a Pacifist’ essay in The Weight of Glory at the same time. I’ll be honest with you, Lewis’ essay was compelling, and had I not gotten a large amount of grant money to pay for my tuition, I probably would have joined the ROTC program. I had just cracked open Matthew at the same time and I ran across the Beatitudes.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Well, that didn’t seem to conflict too much, I mean we would say our military in a time of war are there to do exactly that, to bring peace. But do this with me for a moment a little visual lesson. We are going to read through the beatitudes and I want you to picture in your mind what that person looks like:
3″Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I don’t know about you, but the song, “One of these things is not like the others,” starts to run through my head when I picture a soldier decked out in military gear and a gun in his/her arms. I start to wonder if maybe a Gandhi like figure doesn’t make a little more sense.
(Please remember, I’m going one thing at a time. This isn’t my whole case for why I’m a pacifist or anything like that. If you want to comment please limit it to addressing this passage only. Thanks for understanding).