A Viewpoint on War

Here is a well written and articulate perspective on war written by the pastor of the church I attended while growing up. With everything happening in the Middle East, and Iraq especially, it's good reading.

Enjoy!!!

Should Followers of the Prince of Peace Go To War?

“They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” That verse from the book of Isaiah is prominently displayed in the foyer of the United Nations Building. For many it represents nothing more than a wild hope, a religious aspiration, or a million-to-one shot in the dark. For Christians and Jews, however, that verse has always represented the way things shall surely be when God’s will is fully done on earth as it is in heaven.

Christians almost universally affirm that that day won’t arrive until Jesus comes back. The matter on which Christians have not always found consensus, however, concerns what followers of Jesus ought to be doing between now and the Second Coming. Is war ever a Christian option? Can we imagine a scenario in which fighting and killing other people would be carrying out the will of God?

Christian traditions have come to dramatically different conclusions about these matters. For several centuries during the Middle Ages the Church endorsed the concept of a Christian holy war, which resulted in the launching of multiple Crusades aimed at liberating Palestine from Islamic rule. Much of the Middle East’s present-day ill will, which is directed toward America as a “Christian nation,” arises from 900 years of Muslim resentment concerning those attacks.

The great majority of those fighting in the American Civil War believed that God was on their side; after guns, Bibles were the second most common items removed from the dead. In the mid-1990s the Hutu people of Rwanda, who had widely embraced the Christian faith, slaughtered their Tutsi neighbors, whom they had hated for generations. At the other extreme we find the Quakers and the Mennonites, Christian groups who have unfailingly taught the ideal of pacifism. Faithful Quakers and Amish refuse to take up arms even against those who attack them.

These issues are once again before us on Memorial Day 2007. We pause to honor those who surrendered their lives for our freedom. Some of the graves have been dug within the past week. The pain and sadness for those families is overwhelming. What complicates their grief is that many Christians publicly clamored for the war in Iraq, while others worked frantically, and vainly, to prevent it.

Should Christians fight? In this rather lengthy blog, let me share some thoughts that I originally expressed back in March 2003, shortly before America and other countries invaded Iraq.

Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek when personally assaulted. Paul declares that we are in a never-ending battle against spiritual “principalities and powers.” We speak of prayer warriors. We sing Onward Christian Soldiers. We weigh in on America’s ongoing culture wars. Various Christian groups fight for the unborn; for Congress to fund the needs of the poor; for the Supreme Court to return prayer to schools and Christian symbols to the public square; for appropriate authorities to quash corporations that promote unfair trading practices around the world. If Jesus is the Prince of Peace, why is there so much for which we feel compelled to fight?

For reasons known only to him, God refuses to overrule most of our terrible choices, and permits a significant amount of evil, pain, and suffering to exist in his world. God permits war to happen. But how can a God of love bear all this suffering in the world? The Christian answer to that question is that God did bear all of it – through his Son on the cross. Jesus didn’t come to explain our pain, but to share it – and to be present with us in the midst of our suffering. Furthermore, God never wastes pain. Suffering in and of itself is never a good thing, but God is able to take terrible and painful realities and use them for good in the lives of those who trust him.

One day all that will come to an end. The book of Revelation foresees a day when there will be “no more tears.” In the meantime we are living between a Paradise that humanity used to enjoy at the beginning of history, but which has now been lost – and a Paradise that we know is waiting for us when Jesus returns. In this in-between-time in which God has given us his commandments and allows us to suffer the consequences when we break them, what is our responsibility concerning the sword?

Consider the account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. When one of the disciples steps forward to defend him from the very people who are about to lynch him, Jesus declares, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Furthermore the gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus reaches down and picks up the ear that has been cut off the servant of the high priest, and then he reattaches it. Even in the midst of personal disaster he is compassionate. There is no question that imitating Jesus’ response to personal insults or personal rejection means that we cannot have a sword in our hand. No wonder Jesus became the living model for both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., the twentieth century’s two greatest revolutionaries of non-violent resistance.

But the Bible tells us something else about the sword. Speaking of ruling authorities in Romans 13, Paul says, “For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” According to the Bible, governments are divinely empowered to enforce the law. Police need to bear arms, because in a fallen world there are criminals out there. Soldiers need to carry weapons, because in a fallen world armies will be required to stand against evil. Most Christians have never seriously questioned the morality of fighting a defensive war to protect human life.

We know that when people look at the Church, God’s ideal is that they would see, in us, a model of the next world. Some Bible students have concluded that that settles the issue – we need to beat all of our swords into plowshares right now. Others, however – and I am among them – have concluded that in a fallen world, it is sometimes necessary to wage “a just war.” No one would ever say that war is God’s perfect will. Fighting and killing could not possibly have been part of his design for individuals, or households, or tribes, or nations. But in God’s permissive will, war may sometimes be determined to be the best among many heart-breaking options. With immense sorrow, war can indeed be a Christian option.

Christian and secular thinkers alike have classically identified six grounds for waging a just war. This is not a “Bible list,” but each of these conditions arises from biblical principles.

First, a just war would have to be fought to achieve a just cause – that is, something so worth fighting for that it is also worth dying for. Many believe that the most vivid example of a just war for a just cause happened just sixty years ago – the Allied effort in World War II to stop Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan from dominating the planet. That was the most costly and horrifying conflict the world has seen. But unless that war had been fought and those sacrifices made, a substantial amount of human freedom would have been lost.

I spent an entire day this spring walking the mall in Washington, D.C. Among the sites I visited were the Holocaust Museum, the FDR memorial, and the new World War II monument. I left those sites fully persuaded that Second Great War was a globally just endeavor.

The second condition for initiating a just war is that it be a last resort. For Christians, war must only be undertaken with extreme reluctance, and never as a means of accomplishing state policy. What about all the wars that happen in the Old Testament? On a number of occasions God directs his people to wipe out a particular city or nation. In each case, God announces in advance that this group of people has reached a spiritual point of no return. God assures Moses or Joshua or David that this is the only way. War will in fact constitute God’s judgment on this particular nation.

It’s important to note that in the New Testament, which corresponds to the arrival of Jesus, we find no more God-ordained wars. Few if any contemporary leaders would ever claim to hear a clear-cut word from the God of Jesus Christ to take up the sword. Today God’s voice is heard through the Church, as Christians everywhere help nations discern if and when we have arrived at a point where the only remaining option is war.

Third, a just war ought to be fought only if there is a pure motive. In a fallen world, pure motives are hard to come by. Consider the opening words of James, chapter four: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. Your quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

The fourth classic condition for a just war is the approval of appropriate authorities. For Christians, a widely embraced consensus is always to be preferred, although its becoming harder and harder in the post-modern world to identity who speaks for the earth’s population. The fifth condition is proportionality. This means that a war with a redemptive purpose must stay fixed on its specific aims, and not become a total conflict that tragically involves innocent people.

The sixth and final component is the probability of success. It would have been admirable if Guatemala had stood up in 1939 while Hitler was sweeping across Europe and said, “We’re not going to take it. We’ll put an end to these blitzkriegs.” That would have been a just cause but an impossible mission. Those who enter a just war have to be fairly certain that they can win.

In March 2003, America’s Christian leaders were divided concerning the status of a potential Iraqi conflict as a just war. Today, sadly (with the 20/20 vision of hindsight), a consensus has emerged. Very few disciples of Jesus – knowing now that weapons of mass destruction were not a global threat, and that other courses of action would have avoided the heart-breaking morass in which Iraq now finds itself – would venture the opinion that God ordained this war. God permitted this war. And great gain can emerge from great sacrifice. But after the saber rattling in many American pulpits four years ago, it’s not a surprise that Muslims worldwide feel they have fresh confirmation that Christians are combative.

So what should we do? First, let’s not despair. Jesus rules the cosmos. We are called to stand apart from those who are wringing their hands. Many things may or may not happen in the weeks and months ahead. But this we know: Nothing is going to change the fact that God’s ultimate will, will be done. Jesus and his kingdom are going to prevail.

Let’s not get drowned by the never-ending swirls of political turbulence, either. Our real master is Christ, not our favorite political party. America is a special nation only when it stands under God’s Word and God’s grace.

As odd as it sounds, we must choose to hate war. That includes refusing to accept violence as entertainment. Our culture has become so desensitized by movies, video games, and live television reports from police shootouts that we have lost our ability to grasp that armed conflict is one of the worst things imaginable.

Let’s pray, too. Pray for the soldiers and the leaders and the civilians on all sides of this conflict. God promises that our prayers are interwoven into the working of his will. He is asking us to participate in this drama. One of our greatest acts of faith is to take him at his work on this issue.

Finally, we must fulfill Jesus’ high call to love our enemies, the very thing that Bob Jordan proclaimed from our pulpit on Memorial Day weekend. Offering love as a response to hatred, misunderstanding, and assault is one of the hardest things that God asks of us. But Jesus has shown the way. He calls us to seek ways to bless others. Ask God for specific opportunities to show his love. When we ask, God is faithful. He will teach us what to do.

This must be our prayer: that God will not only give us the grace to show his kindness to those who hate us, but that he will begin to transform this world, through us, into the kind of place where swords are indeed beaten into plowshares.

written by Glenn McDonald