Tag Archives: pacifism

Good men doing nothing

7 Replies

I’m wanting to spend some time this week with a much-repeated phrase: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I mentioned yesterday that the quote has been used ad nauseum to promote this action or that one (often conflicting actions, with both sides claiming to be the “good” side). I say that not in condemnation of the quote, but as justification for spending several days looking at it.

While I’m still unconvinced of the worth of the saying itself, I will admit what others have said: much of my angst in this situation comes from the misuse of this quote, particularly by Christians. Vern commented yesterday: “It’s probably better to limit the quote to the political/social arena and not apply it at all to the living of Christians.” Much of my distress comes from the fact that the “all that is necessary” saying is frequently used to move Christians into the political/social arena! The quote is used to say, “If you aren’t active in this arena, you aren’t doing anything.”

And, in the midst of our prolonged back and forth, Nick made a couple of key statements:

However, (and I’m certain Tim will talk about this later in the week), the quote is rarely used to criticize people who are, in fact, doing *nothing*. Literally, truly, nothing.

It is used to criticize people who aren’t following the quoter’s recommended course of action. Ask any pacifist how often they’ve been rhetorically bludgeoned with this quote. Anyone who thinks that pacifism (or even QUIETISM, for crying out loud) is doing nothing has a painfully shallow view of spiritual warfare.

Sometimes, doing nothing is precisely what is necessary for one person. But that’s completely different from the idea that all men and women made good by the blood of the cross and the power of the Spirit should choose to do nothing against the forces of evil.

What I look forward to in the coming days is the shredding of the assumptions typically driving its use. Not a call to ACTION, but a call to a specific – typically nationalist – course of action. Actually, I find that is isn’t typically used as a call to action at all, but as a pejorative against indirect action, compassionate responses, and non-violence.

Nick could see where I was headed with some of this. Tying in with yesterday’s post, I want to talk about the idea that “merely” praying is “doing nothing.” (Just typing the phrase “merely praying” makes me gag a bit) That’s definitely our culture talking. Dan Bouchelle posted something the other day, quoting an African Christian who said, “You Americans sure can sing, but you don’t know much about how to pray.”

In general, we don’t believe in the power of prayer. I saw an extreme of this a few years ago. I was participating in a Church of Christ Internet group, and one member wrote something like: “We pray because God commanded us to. We know that it’s not going to change anything.” Wow! How sad.

Those who don’t believe in the power of prayer will often use phrases like “sit around singing Kum Ba Yah.” Don’t know why that poor song carries the brunt of their wrath, but it’s come to characterize someone who believes that God can and will intervene in this world… even if it’s not in the way we would want.

Maybe that’s why I’m troubled by the lack of God in this quote. It feeds that worldly mindset that says, “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done. God certainly isn’t going to do anything.”

Prayer is doing something. It is action. The problem is, relying on prayer takes more courage than most of us have. It requires a loss of control. It requires patience… some prayers in the Bible weren’t answered for decades. Decades! It requires us to accept God’s plans, rather than stepping forward and shaping our own story.

Prayer is not the only action Christians should take against evil. But it is by far the most significant. When someone says, “All we can do is pray,” it doesn’t mean all hope is gone. It means that we still have our greatest weapon.

All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to stop relying on God’s power.

Does Just War Theory bring peace or just war?

15 Replies

I saw a question asked online the other day which I found to be quite compelling. I read Rex Butts’ blog post on “The Evangelistic Scandal,” which led me to Scot McKnight’s discussion of Lee Camp’s new book.

The interview refers to “Just War Theory.” If you’re not familiar with Just War Theory, the idea is that there should be a set of criteria to apply to any conflict to determine if it is just or not. Proponents argue that Christians may participate in a just war, but not an unjust one. As far as I know, Augustine borrowed the principles from some Roman philosophers, then Thomas Aquinas further refined Augustine’s work. (Someone please correct that in the comments if my history is wrong; this is off the top of my head)

The basic principles of just war, as commonly expressed, are:

  • A just cause is basically defensive in posture, not aggressive.
  • The intent must also be just—the objectives must be peace and the protection of innocent lives.
  • War must be a matter of last resort when all attempts at reconciliation or peaceful resolution are exhausted.
  • A just war must be accompanied by a formal declaration by a properly constituted and authorized body.
  • The objectives must be limited. Unconditional surrender or total destruction are unjust means.
  • Military action must be proportionate both in the weaponry employed and the troops deployed.
  • Non-combatants must be protected and military operations must demonstrate the highest possible degree of discrimination.
  • Without a reasonable hope for success, no military action should be launched.

There is nothing set in stone as THE Just War Theory, but those principles are widely used.

Or are they? The question that was asked in the comments section of the McKnight article was this:

Has there ever been a war that Christians were considering entering into, but applying the criteria for “just war” talked them out of?

That’s a great question. I can’t think of an example. Can you? Has “Just War Theory” ever been used for anything other than justifying participation in conflict?

Does Just War Theory bring peace or just war?

Sleight of mouth

2 Replies

When I was a kid, I really enjoyed magicians. Even though I knew it was a trick, I still became a part of the illusion.

Sleight of hand, or prestidigitation for those who like using big words, is usually a big part of any magician’s act. A lot of it depends on getting people to look at the wrong thing, on distracting your audience with a diversion while you are doing something else.

I think that we need to create a new term: sleight of mouth. To really catch what’s important, we often have to look at what people don’t say, rather than what they do.

One place where I think this is true is war. There is a natural fog of war that clouds the information process; even those involved don’t know everything that’s going on. There’s also a manmade fog of war, where those involved practice sleight of mouth, saying only what they want people to hear.

One of my language teachers in Argentina was able to illustrate this for me. She was living in Los Angeles during the 1982 Malvinas (Falklands) War between Argentina and Great Britain. She said that she heard news from three sources: the United States (which she could hear for herself), Argentina (which she heard from friends there), and Germany (thanks to a neighbor). The U.S. news consistently presented the news from the viewpoint of Great Britain. The Argentine news was slanted toward Argentina, so much so that when Argentina surrendered, her friends wouldn’t believe her when she called them. (“How can that be? We’re winning.”) In the end, it was the German news that seemed to be the most objective.

What makes me wonder is why it’s so hard to find out civilian death totals from Iraq and Afghanistan. I can understand the difficulty in knowing how many enemy fighters have been killed, but it seems like our government could present a clearer picture of how many bystanders have been killed. Actually, we know that they can: the Wikileaks documents confirmed the numbers that non-government sites have reported.

So why doesn’t our government talk about this? Sleight of mouth. Nobody wants people thinking about the tens of thousands of people who have died. Let’s focus on the three thousand or so that died 9/11 or the four thousand or so U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Talking about the deaths of over one hundred thousand civilians might dampen the enthusiasm for the war. Let’s talk about something else.

We should mourn those one hundred thousand as strongly as we do the ones who died 10 years ago in the terrorist attacks. That needs to be said time and again. Let’s not be children who are deceived by a magician’s tricks. Let’s not just look where they tell us to look. Let’s look at the whole picture.

There’s a reason why we keep saying we want to “fight them over there.” Because if those one hundred thousand dead were American citizens, this country would look at things in a whole different light.

Honoring the sacrifices of war

4 Replies

There’s an aspect of the U.S. military’s actions overseas that is continually hidden by proponents of military participation: the cost in human lives in other countries. When discussing the sacrifices of war, so many Christians in America focus on our soldiers and their families. They are to be considered, naturally, but so are the tens of thousands of people affected by those wars we fight. (It’s extremely difficult to get good numbers on that. I have been chastised for referring to the site Iraq Body Count, but the material released by WikiLeaks has shown that, if anything, that site is conservative in its counting.)

One reason that 9/11 impacted this country in such a strong way was the fact that it happened on American soil. We’ve worked hard throughout the years to keep all fighting limited to somebody else’s home, not ours. This morning on the news, as the proposed reduction of troops in Afghanistan was being discussed, people expressed the fear that the fighting might come here. “Better to fight them over there” has always been a popular slogan.

As Christians, I think we’re obligated in such a situation to consider those who live “over there.” Consider the Afghani people. In the late 1970s, the Soviets became involved in Afghanistan as military advisers. The U.S. saw the chance to lure the Soviets into a military quagmire, so operations were undertaken to escalate the fighting in Afghanistan. Once the Soviets invaded, the U.S. began arming Afghani warlords to fight the Soviets (When asked about the dangers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, responded “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”). When that war came to an end, these armed strongmen continued to dominate the regions where they lived. Then after 9/11, the United States invaded, fighting against many of the same people we had helped arm and train. And throughout it all, the civilian population suffered destruction of property, serious injury and death.

When we speak of sacrifice, do we think of those people? Do we consider the mothers who lost sons, the children who lost parents, the villagers who lost everything? Where are their parades? Who raises memorials in their honor? Where are the churches that send them care packages and stand and clap for them during worship?

But they’re not “our people.” No, of course not… unless you’re a Christian. Unless you believe that there is no “Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free.” Then, of course, those people are as much “our people” as any freckle-faced American soldier.

On Memorial Day, I was accused of not honoring the sacrifice of those who have lost loved ones in war. I respond that I honor many more of those people than do those who march down Main Street and salute the flag.

When we count the costs of war, let’s count all the costs of war.

The Case for Non-Participation: Deceit

19 Replies

This week I’m laying out a case for Christians not participating in war nor in the military. I had laid out the basic reasons a couple of weeks ago and am now analyzing the four principal ones that I mentioned.

One big reason I see for not participating in war is the deceit that surrounds it. Wars are complex things with multiple causes and myriad effects. There’s hardly anyone that fully understands all the reasons for a war when that war begins. Even when leaders have nefarious goals in view, they always present their wars as justified reactions to some wrong. Every nation is waging a just war; every country has God on their side; every arm fights for the side of justice.

Talking about this point is always a bit delicate, because we prefer the edited-for-public-consumption view of history. We want to look back at history in simple terms, like the inspiring stories taught to school children. Any attempts to pull back the curtain on the ruse is quickly labeled as “America bashing.” But we need to be able to discuss realities, not just popular lore.

Almost every war that the United States has been involved in has had a dark side to it. (I say almost because I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak of all of them.) People manipulated that conflict for their own ends. Soldiers were sent to fight based on a misconception. These men responded with courage and sacrifice. Most of them joined for honorable reasons and honor marked their time of service. It’s not the common soldier that is to blame.

It’s not always the leaders, either. They can also be duped into believing falsehoods regarding a war. The U.S. government was fooled into thinking Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, for example. But I’m cynical enough about government to think that those moments are the exception. Too many times, wars are fought for political or economic gain, and the leaders are well aware of that. It’s the general public and the common soldier that gets manipulated into thinking the fighting is for a higher cause.

It’s amazing to me how Americans can distrust their political system on so many levels, yet place blind faith in the very same leaders when it comes to sending our young people to kill and be killed. Just as the powers seek their own ends, so the servants of those powers become a part of the system, justifying the deaths of innocents for the “greater good” of the preservation of the machinery.

The United States is not unique in this. This country is no worse than other nations of this world. We just need to drop the myth that we are somehow exempt from the ills that plague the others. We need to accept the fact that our nation seeks its own good above all, and the leaders of our nation sometimes act seeking their own goals. Politics, personal ambition and the quest for pre-eminence in this world; all these things play a part in the decisions made to unleash the horrors of war.

I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want my children to be sucked into that. I don’t want to see the church saddled with the weight of using valuable resources to support a web of deceit and lies. We are the church, and when we give our young people to the military, when we support the military system, we take from the Kingdom of God and give to the kingdoms of this world.

It’s time to say: no more.