Tag Archives: war

Deadly mirage

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It came out in a paper in the U.K. last month. I didn’t see much coverage here, but I thought the news to be rather significant. Let me quote a couple of paragraphs from the article:

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

How many times will history have to repeat itself before we are convinced? When humans go to war, we don’t have all the facts. The citizens, those called upon to lay down their lives, don’t have all the facts. In this case, even those calling for war didn’t have the correct information.

I continue to marvel that people who complain about putting their tax dollars in the hands of the government seem so willing to put the lives of their sons and daughters in the very same hands. We don’t trust them with our money, but we trust them with our children.

Even when time and time again we find out that what we thought we knew about the reasons for fighting turns out to be a mirage. A deadly mirage.

Wars are fought on lies and deceit. I for one want to have no part of it.

Maybe the early Christians got it wrong

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Photo by Ove Tøpfer; from Stock Xchange

I just don’t see it. I’ve read through the New Testament multiple times, and I just don’t see it. I don’t see any evidence of Christians using power, power as the world defines it, to shape their world. Yes, they used the power of the Spirit, the power of words, the power of prayer, etc. But where are the examples of the use of physical force, for example to advance the Kingdom or even to protect Kingdom followers? Where is the political maneuvering to achieve their goals?

“Well, there just weren’t enough of them.” Are you kidding me? If you haven’t done so, read the last post. God prefers to work with the minority.

“Well, maybe they did that, and we just don’t have record of it.” That’s possible, although it seems strange that something that has become such a central part of Christians’ lives today could have been so unimportant then that it wasn’t recorded.

Or am I missing the examples? I read Acts 12 and try to imagine how it would have played out today. James is arrested and killed. Peter is arrested. And the church is just praying and “singing Kumbayah” while Peter is in prison. That’s ridiculous. Storm the prison. Kill the guards. Free the Christians who are held unjustly. Set an example so that Christians in the 21st century will know what God expects of them.

Instead, they depended on God. Wimps. Weaklings. These are the people that one prominent brotherhood speaker says he has no use for. Pick up a sword and fight, you cowards. If God could use Samson and Gideon to win battles against extraordinary odds, He can help you defeat the evil Herod.

Or do you mean to tell me that with thousands of Christians in Jerusalem, they couldn’t take over the Sanhedrin? Or form a rival Sanhedrin to make just decisions? If they’d done that, rather than focus on prayer and the Word, we’d have the examples we need to know how to conduct ourselves.

What am I missing here? Some of you know the writings of the early church better than I. Maybe the church in the second and third century began to use the tools of the world in a way I’m not aware of.

Or do we seriously think that our lives should be so focused on power issues like war and politics when those things are absent from the early church? Does pragmatism trump spirituality?

Maybe you can convince me.

They will no longer train for war…

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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.  (Isaiah 2:4)

A while back, I posted about the U.S. involvement in the Soviet-Afghan war, how ex-government officials have admitted to funding Islamic extremists in order to suck the Soviets into a prolonged war in Afghanistan. We knew that their 10-year war in Afghanistan would destroy their economy and eventually bring down the Soviet Union. (We didn’t realize how much we would suffer for funding these Islamic extremists. Fortunes of war and all that…)

The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is at 9 years and counting. While fighting that war, we also began another war in Iraq. And everyone says, “I wonder why our economy is in such bad shape.”

Admittedly, the U.S. has often found war to be profitable. But at some point, a nation that continually chooses war over peace will suffer the consequences.

If I didn’t oppose war from a Christian point of view, I’d be forced to oppose it from a logical point of view.

When the fighting will stop

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“He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.”

That’s the first part of Isaiah 2:4, the verse I quoted from yesterday. It’s interesting to me that even in this view of the Messiah’s kingdom, there will be disputes between people and a need to mediate between nations. I don’t know that Isaiah is literally saying that people will continue to find reasons to fight in the realized kingdom, but it does show how deeply ingrained in the human psyche is the desire to fight.

I’m frankly pessimistic about the possibility of human beings to eliminate wars, particularly disputes over territory. There are few places left on earth that don’t have multiple groups that can claim historic rights to that territory. Texas boasts of having existed under six different flags (though that’s only because the Native Americans didn’t use flags!). If you think about it, any of those groups can say, “This land used to belong to us; it is still rightfully ours.” (Well, I don’t know that the Confederacy would do that) That happens time and again in our world, with war being the result in most cases.

Those who have what they want insist that the status quo should be preserved. Those that have lost territory ask that historic ownership rights be preserved. And I don’t see any end to this.

Until one day, when the Lord will judge between the nations and settle disputes for many peoples.

Photo from Wikimedia

To kill Christian enemies

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Since yesterday’s case study was so much fun, I thought I’d expand on it. Let’s imagine that we are in the midst of a new civil war here in the United States, like what I described yesterday. A Christian soldier learns through intelligence that a large group of enemy soldiers will be meeting for a Christian worship service at a site that is poorly defended. Not a church building, mind you, because everyone knows that killing people is okay, but damaging important buildings is a no-no.

The soldier has the opportunity and means to call in an air strike that will kill all those participating in the worship service. They, like he, are soldiers, military targets. Fellow Christians, but fighting for the other side.

Is there any reason why this soldier wouldn’t call in the strike and kill those gathered for worship?