lifeasmission

A War Over War

May 8, 2006

A few days ago I posted a link to a short video clip which noted the unhappy tension between our Presidents claims as a prophet of God called to exercise judgment upon terrorism and tyranny in other nations by making war on them and the fact that many innocent people have suffered (this word is an incredible understatement) as a result.

I had two friends who made comments. One reminded me that the loss of life, any life, not just children’s as depicted in the clip, is horrible. He’s right. All kinds of people suffer as a result of war. The innocent who are killed and maimed, the survivors who lose loved ones, the soldiers (both ours and theirs, though I am not convinced this is even a helpful distinction) who lose their lives, and the whole of the rest of the world who is progressively desensitized to the unbelievable way in which the sheer reality of war dehumanizes us.

Another friend reminded me that there are indeed many leaders and groups in the world who seem hell bent on achieving their own ends at the expense of others through violence, oppression, and injustice. These atrocities need to be addressed as they themselves war against God’s intention for humanity.

Ironically, I just finished reading a paper by one of my professors, John Goldingay, entitled, “The Man of War and the Suffering Servant: The Old Testament and the Theology of Liberation” for my class on the Pentateuch. I wanted to offer some of Dr. Goldingay’s insights on the issue at hand.

The OT periodically both condones, indeed demands, violent action in war and in revolution, and also indicates that the way of violence is a dead end… We are at the frontiers of the church here, within the sphere of a world not yet redeemed. To live in this world and to obey God in it means, indirectly or directly to take part in the exercise of violence.

The church is called to live by the Sermon on the Mount, but it cannot expect the world to: OT laws speak more to the world’s situation. Violence can sometimes be the only possible action. But it can never be the right one, it can never be safe, and it can never bring ultimate achievement. There remains an ambiguity about violence.

Theology is indeed called to a ‘transition … from the role of baptizer of the world as it is, to prophet of the world as it will be’; but if we find ourselves giving unqualified support to any human vision, we have probably only changed the conditions for baptism (to include the left rather than the right, for instance). We need to beware of being a chameleon, always assimilating to our surroundings.

The qualifications the church brings to the world’s desires may not be welcome. But those are the insights; crucifixion may be the price of bringing them, and indeed the response which suggests that they are authentic. For the world has a way of recognizing the truth by crucifying it. Yet God has a way of making even that contribute to the purpose of liberation.

You can read the whole article here – Man of War.

And so where does this leave us? War is horrible. It is never the right answer and always contrary to God’s ultimate will. War is never finally justifiable as it is always finally dehumanizing. All that being said, until the return of Christ and the final establishment of God’s Kingdom, war will remain. Should Christians go to war? No, but then that’s not because they are Christians as much as it is because they are humans made in the image of God and called to live in the kind of relationship with both God and fellow humans of which killing can never be a viable option. Yet, the fact remains that people, Christian and not, will continue to go to war. But for God’s sake, we better go crying and torn over just how ridiculous the whole enterprise is. Shame on us if we ease our consciences with the lie that in the end there really are good guys and bad guys and that one side is always right and the other always wrong.

Hopefully there is something left inside all of us, even those who think war is the best/only answer to some of the worlds ills that will still look at a picture like this and cry.

Posted in: church, culture, decisions, theology