i have been asked my view on whether there is ever a biblical justification for war. after all, it seems that Jesus, at least in some people's view, was a pacifist. how could one possibly be a follower of Christ, yet maintain that there are times when war is an appropriate, if not necessary, option. first, a disclaimer: i am in no way a fan of war. i hate death in all forms and at all times. i wish there was a way that war and suffering of all kinds could be completely done away with (someday it will), but the fact is we live in a fallen world in which sin dictates the actions of many people and nations and death is a part of life. to believe there can be absolute peace on a utopian earth in which war is unnecessary is naive at best. war is inevitable until the return of Christ.
perhaps a second disclaimer should be issued as well: i make no claim of this being the authoritative, final word on the subject. i am simply advancing an idea of a christian's view of war from my perspective drawn from Scripture. i make no claim that this view could not be honestly debated. however, i do think that biblical data is so full of references to war, the burden of proof for pacifism is really on the part of the pacifist.
the "guidelines" for christians engaging in war have often been based on what has been called the "just war theory." this theory goes all the way back to st. augustine. i won't take the time to go through the just war theory here. there are plenty of documents available on the web so that a quick "google" search will lead to more detail than i can go into here.
most importantly, for me, is how Scripture handles the subject. can we know the mind of God related to His attitude of war? the best i can do in my feeble attempt to understand the mind of God (if that's not a tall enough order!) is the general teachings of Scripture. i'm going to try and briefly explain my understanding while my son's television show plays in the background (!)
i hear so often of the pacifism of Jesus. was Jesus really a pacifist? did he really declare peace at all times and at all cost? to me, the answer is yes and no. certainly he did speak of turning the other cheek and loving your enemies. he also lived a peaceful, non-violent life. but does that mean he ever addressed or taught on the subject of whether or not it was right for nations to declare or take part in war? i think it important to make sure we differentiate nations going to war and teachings on individuals taking matters into their own hands. to my knowledge (and please, someone point out the verse if i missed something, because it is certainly possible, but nothing comes to mind), Jesus never instructed on the moral values related to warring nations. however, in discussing some of this with my friend, alex forrest, he reminded me of romans 13, where paul instructs the roman Christians: “for he [the ruler] 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.” pretty strong language. obviously, possessing the sword implies the use of that sword when necessary. Jesus certainly addressed the attitude of individuals in dealing with other individuals. however, are there exceptions even in that? alex raised some important points regarding exceptions to turning the other cheek: “this can be interpreted as not seeking personal revenge. but should a Christian turn the other cheek as his wife is raped or his children slaughtered? to say that Christians should be total pacifists is to make an all encompassing statement that would have to include the extreme cases.” i agree with that and dare say most fathers and husbands, under normal circumstances, would agree…even the pacifists.
i make the distinction between the individual and the state for a very important reason: if Jesus is God, then it is important for us to look at both the New Testament (Christ's life in particular) and the actions and instruction of God in the Old Testament in order to get a fuller view of what God's attitude is. yes, Jesus lived something of a non-violent life, though when He cleansed the temple we can hardly say He was a pacifist. a pacifist would never demonstrate that kind of assertiveness for fear of inciting a riot or a fight. Jesus never backed down from a confrontation because He didn't want to "start something."
i believe it is hard for us to look at Jesus' life as an example on this. "Whoa, there, Cowboy! Jesus' life is not an example? what are you, nuts?" before I'm tarred and feathered, hear me out. i think we need to keep in mind that God, the Son, had a VERY specific mission when He came to earth. Because He came to die as a sacrifice, it can be argued that to declare the unjust rule of the romans or to cause a violent uprising among the jews, or to claim any political leadership whatsoever would have threatened His mission. clearly, the jews wanted a military leader to overthrow the roman oppression, but that was not the reason Jesus had come to earth. at least once we know that Jesus had to leave the crowd in order to prevent them from forcing Him into the role of a military-style leader. Jesus came to die and He would allow nothing to thwart that mission. another specific time related to this was in the garden of gethsemane when peter attacked the soldiers and cut off the ear of a servant. Jesus restored the ear. pacifism? teaching against war? i don't think so. again, Jesus was preventing His mission from being mis-interpreted. He was a sacrificial Lamb, not an over-thrown leader of an uprising. Jesus approach in this particular mission was crucial. however, i don't think that can be applied to whether or not warfare is just or not.
if we look to the Old Testament, we see numerous accounts of warfare. most instances actually seemed to blow the "just war theory" out of the water. there were times when God (the same God that was Jesus, incarnate) directly commanded his people, the jews, to attack and destroy a people for what appears to be the acquisition of land! of course, i think we often miss the point that God sometimes used warfare for a duel purpose: to provide for His people but also to bring about His judgment upon other nations, as i believe was the case with instances like the fight with the philistines. we usually look at it from the perspective of how the destruction of other nations was beneficial to the jews, but fail to see how God brought about judgment on the other nation because of their own sin towards God. i don't believe it was ever as much a case of God playing favorites as much as God being the just God who punishes the sins of any nation...often, it seems, through war. that was certainly the case when God used other nations to bring judgment on the jews.
frankly, the Bible is full of instances of war and in most of those instances, God is either described as commanding the war or bringing it about for His good purposes. in a perfect world void of sin, is warfare necessary? no, but again, that is not the one in which we live. there is injustice and suffering that comes upon the innocent along with the evil, but that appears to be the way it has always been. war is ugly and should not be embraced, but it must not be outright rejected as ungodly or wrong. it seems that unless God is unjust and evil (again, He often used war for His purposes), it is a dangerous thing to call all warfare unjust or ungodly. clearly, the Bible shows us examples of times when nations MUST fight.
as i said at the beginning, i wish the current war could end today and no more loss of life had to occur. but the reality is that it most likely won't. i believe that what we're doing right now is just on two accounts: first and most importantly, the suffering in iraq went on far too long. though it would not have been a good political move, i personally thought the right thing was for us to have removed Saddam back in '90 because of the injustice he was bringing upon the people in his country. i thought that was just warfare and as the older brother of the world (for better or worse), we had a moral obligation to protect the people of iraq the way we protected the people of kuwait. i believe defending the defenseless is a just cause of war. that is what we are doing now.
this is not a politically motivated post, but i think the talk of war for oil is irresponsible and short-sighted. i would not be so crass as to accuse any american president of sending u.s. soldiers to their deaths for something so trite, regardless of whether i liked the president or not. it is speculation based on partisan attacks using weak evidence. even if that was one reason that some of those within the government (which is debatable and i really don't care to debate it), that doesn't negate the fact that, as a christian, i believe the fight was justified based on the other reasons.
i think that based on saddam's thirteen years of violence and defiance and having been attacked on 9/11, we were justified in pointing the finger at iraq and demanding he relinquish his weapons, even if it was based on nothing more than our belief that he had wmd or had the capability and/or intention to build and use them (which we know was the case). he didn't comply and rightfully, in my opinion, faced the consequences. again, based on the examples we see in Scripture, i think we were justified in carrying out the actions we carried out, AS A NATION, and are biblically justifiable.
Labels: David C. Price
5 Comments:
man, sorry for all the typos and grammatical errors...i ran out of time and missed a lot before i posted. i think i fixed them all. i made you work too hard trying to make sense of what i was saying...sorry.
no need to apologize. after reading your post and thinking about my response, i realized that there's probably way too much substance in our minds to be expressed in a single post/comment, regardless of how it is.
that being said, this is what i think. i voted for bush in 2000 on the single issue of abortion. in his first few months of office, i was a bit embarassed, as he seemed like a little child in a big man's job. when 9/11 happened, i wasn't quite sure what to think. however, when he made his speech a few days after the attacks, i was so impressed that all those doubts about him were wiped away.
i completely supported the offsensive the military took in afghanistan following the attacks. it was necessary, and given that osama bin laden was the most likely suspect at the time (we still didn't quite know), i believe it was the right thing to do. i still believe this.
my attitude, however, started to change in late 2002 when we began to hear mentions of iraq in the administration's speeches. i was cautious, but i still supported their case because 1) they were the peopl in power and presumably knew a *lot* more than i did, and 2) i had a hard time imagining that they'd choose to go to war unless the case was *very* strong. in other words, i trusted the administration, because i believed that they had the interests of our nation in mind.
during the spring of 2003, when the US was preparing to invade iraq, there was a protest at my school against the war. i didn't participate, and even thought it a bit silly, because i saw all these people as individuals that made rash presumptions about the case for war (like "war for oil", etc.) without ever seriously considering the need for saftey of our nation. at the same time, however, i came to realize that the case of going to war over WMDs, was a crock. the evidence given was just too flimsy to justify the invasion and takeover of another country. i believed that bush must know what he was up to in order to take such a big political risk over this war.
over the course of the following year, i began to read as we were informed of the ideologies and such that were existing in the administration, as well as how the case for going to war in iraq was present long before 9/11. around a year ago, in late 2003, i finally came to the conclusion, after much reading and research, that bush's decision to invade was a very bad choice for the US in this time, and was not a crucial part of this war on terror.
there are two reasons i have come to believe that we invaded iraq. the first is stabilization (and control) of the mideast. on this point, I think the administration is correct in their intentions, although they carried out the operation extremely poorly. the fact that has emerged from 9/11 is that this whole war on terror is in many ways a war between the western world, led by the US, and the muslim world, led at the moment by al-qaeda. therefore, the thought of making a "first strike" of sorts, by taking out a region in the middle of the muslim world, seems like a strategically good choice.
the second reason, i believe, is for oil. i know you might think this argument is liberal rhetorical crap (as i did not too long ago), but when you actually think through it, it makes quite a bit of sense. from a fiscal viewpoint, the price of oil has a tremendous impact on our economy. in fact, one of the goals of al-qaeda, both in the 9/11 attacks, and in the future, is to devastate our economy. they partially did this pretty well with 9/11. so much business in the US is tied to oil prices (pretty much any business that uses transportation and heat), that a large increase in the cost of a barrel would surely affect our economy in a drastic way. from the viewpoint of a nationalist (i.e. *not* from a christian viewpoint), i don't think that invading a nation for control of oil is all that bad of an idea. if all that i care about is the health of my nation, and i understand how the price of oil affects our health, then this seems like a pretty good idea.
regardless of those two reasons, however, the fact remains that al-qaeda is the group that attacked us, and iraq is not al-qaeda. furthermore, our invasion of iraq has cost us so much money ($5 billion/week) and pigeon-holed us into a military situation that we won't be able to get out of for some while. the invasion has also caused so much muslim hatred towards the US, that our soldiers are now facing a growing insurgency of terrorists in the country we invaded, plus increasing the amount of recruits available to al-qaeda outside of iraq. and when it is all settled, we learn that the two main reasons for going to war: WMDs and ties between iraq and al-qaeda, weren't ever true reasons.
the bible IS full of accounts of war, and i don't expect our world to be free of war. also, i don't think Christians can just stand by and not do anything when atrocities are happening around the world (how about darfur?!?). but, the bible is also full of accounts of war where God backed Israel going to war. and we consistently see in those wars where God is behind the nation, that the nation is *extremely* successful in their offense or defense. now, look at our current situation. i find it hard to believe that this is an example of a God-backed war, because of how crappy our surrent situation is.
anyway, i'm out of time, as well. i realize that this subject is *way* too big for a single post/comment. hopefully we can continue to discussion.
Thank you for your very thoughtful comments. I respect your points of disagreement and think they are worth serious consideration. I can easily see how someone could take those positions. As such, I'm not going to strongly argue any point you made.
Certainly it is feasible for anyone within the administration to view the oil thing (from a nationalist perspective only) as a good reason to invade. That being said, without very strong evidence, I don't want to be guilty of accusing anyone of sending troops to certain death on those reasons. I haven't seen strong enough evidence for that and choose to give the benefit of the doubt. There are much stronger reasons that I think justify what has been done. Again, I think the decision to go to war is grave enough that I would charge no commander-in-chief with that serious of an accusation. Along the same lines, I choose not to be as critical with the way the war has been conducted as many because it's easy to play "Monday morning quarterback" and criticize from hindsight. Perhaps I wouldn't have made some of the decisions that have been made, but by the same token, I wouldn't have made some of the good ones either!
It seems pretty clear that Bush was convinced by many different sources that WMD were present within Iraq at the time of the invasion (frankly, I think the jury is still out on much of this, prompting, in my opinion a premature judgment--that's a big country...so is Syria). He was not present in Iraq and, therefore, any president must be able to trust the intelligence he receives. The Brits, the Russians, as well as our own intelligence agencies were telling him they were definitely there. What possible reason could there have been under those circumstances for him not to believe it was a certainty? Keep in mind that Congress (both sides of the aisle) was convinced as well, including Mr. Kerry. To pile that on Bush as a blunder, I think is unfair.
To your point about Iraq not being Al-qaeda (the one who attacked us). I won't repeat my point in detail about Iraq being a reasonable target in the war on terror, but I think there has been at least enough circumstantial evidence that Saddam's hands were not clean in all of this and his desire and efforts were to get involved (IF he wasn't already). There seems to be some pretty damning evidence coming out of the oil for food scandal as well as the weapons that were moved from that bunker in order to stage an attack on American forces when they invaded.
Clearly, Iraq has been at war with us for the last thirteen years. Just because we called a cease fire, they continued to fire at our planes everyday (if the reports are to be believed) and continued hiding their weapons from the inspectors who were there for several years (authorities seemed to be in agreement over that point). Before we invaded, most people agreed that Saddam should have been removed when we had the chance. Besides, in World War II, Japan was the one that attacked us. using your reasoning, should we not have declared war on the Germans who didn't attack us?
Finally, I'm not sure I would use the argument about God's support of the war or not based on how well things are going. I'm not convinced that's a biblically sound argument. For instance, I happen to think our efforts in World War II were justified and would argue that God blessed that one in spite of the enormous casualties and the fact that the war lasted from '41 to '45. Something like 400,000 Americans died in that war (we've lost much less than 2,000 so far. Too many, yes, but not comparable at this point to the losses in WWII) and it took a whole year of fighting after the Marines landed on Normandy in '44 before winning the war after having fought for three years up to that point and losing thousands more afterward. I know there were many points during the years of that war where things didn't go well; where there were times of being "bogged down" and where people could declare it a mistake...except that they never lost heart and never forgot what had happened at Pearl Harbor, though I'm sure there were always the nay-saying skeptics.
There is no doubt this conflict is hard. I suspect there have been many mistakes along the way, but it is war which is never easy nor perfectly conducted and I don't think people should expect it to be.
We have not had a perfect president in the 200+ years of this country and I don't expect we ever will. I think we have a good one who wants to do what is right and is worthy of giving the benefit of the doubt until there is rock solid evidence that we can't. I don't think he should have been demonized by many people, including many Christians. I've heard lots of "evidence" of his criminal actions (ala Michael Moore type stuff), but I've yet to see anything rock-solid. Aparantly, a majority of Americans haven't either.
All that being said, I go back to my personal support for the war...I think fighting for the freedom of the Iraqis is just and right. My Iraqi friend who was in Baghdad during the first Gulf War thinks so, too. War is bad, but I think that people becoming free is very good. I already said I would have supported Bush 41 had he gone into Baghdad and I would have supported President Clinton had he decided to do more than send a couple of Tomahawks across the ocean after the previous terrorist attacks. I support the actions now.
OK, enough. Thanks, again, sir. Your perspective is very much appreciated.
It seems to me that the justification for the war in Iraq, to free the Iraqis, is an after the fact justification. It has been used as other justifications have lost some credibility (i.e. no WMDs, connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda seeming less likely). Freeing oppressed people is good, and in the best interests of the world in the long term. But why Iraq, why now? Iraq's military had been severely weakened, making it easier to defeat than, fo instance, North Korea. Also, certainly the oil present in Iraq must have been part of the calculation, but I would also not accuse the President of waging war for oil.
I think that starting this war was probably a mistake, but we have opened that door and gone through. We must do the best we can to put Iraq on a stable footing before we can leave. I don't know enough to be able to second-guess the prosecution of the conflict itself. Also, I cannot speak to the godliness of the war, but I did enjoy reading your thoughts.
David, in your earlier comment you said, "Besides, in World War II, Japan was the one that attacked us. using your reasoning, should we not have declared war on the Germans who didn't attack us?" Of course you will remember that our allies were already at war with Germany.
Thanks for your perspectives, gbear. In response, yes, I do recall that our allies had declared war on Germany. I would have argued that we should have attacked and defeated Germany on its own merits (i.e the terrible and murderous regime of Hitler) before we were attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Likewise, I think the attack on Iraq was justified on its own merits (i.e. the terrible and murderous regime of Hussein), regardless of the order of importance placed on the reasons for going to war (wmd, crimes against humanity, oil or otherwise), although there didn’t seem to be many voices in opposition to the "Bush Doctrine" soon after it was declared, following the bombing of the trade center. Bush was clear on his intentions that those who posed a threat would be viewed as terrorists as well. Sadam had several chances to come clean and remove any doubt so as to save his government and he refused.
Anyway, taking all of that into account, it seems using the logic of the previous point by kidpositive would have us refraining from attacking Germany in spite of the fact that our allies had declared war. Was anything hard and fast to keep us from fighting our own war with Japan until such time that Germany leveled an attack on us? Why didn't we wait for that attack to come unless we were certain that it would come based on actions previously taken by us and the nation that was sympathetic to the Japanese plight? Why not wait to see if Iraq would attack us as al qaeda had done? Primarily because we knew they were sympathetic to al qaeda and the taliban's efforts and, according to every significant intelligence agency including England, Russia, the u.s. (and Iraq’s closest neighbor on our side, Pakistan), they had the means and desire to attack us themselves. In my personal opinion, the Bush Administration would have been irresponsible not to do something under those circumstances, especially when refraining from doing so may have possibly led to a day far worse than september 11 ever was...we just simply did not know then what we know now.
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