I am not a radical pacifist. There are times, it seems, in which Christians (and others) are called to defend the rights of the most vulnerable. Were somebody to try and hurt my wife or children or other loved ones, I suspect I would react violently in their defense.
But, as Ghandi supposedly said, 'An eye for an eye will leave everybody blind.' Violence (and the treasuring of the weapons that enable it) is far too acceptable for many Christians today. Most of the wars that we have fought in our national history should never have been fought; WWII might be one exception, though it seems to have sprung out of the soil of the wholly unnecessary WWI.
I have been re-reading David Harrell's book 'Quest for a Christian America, 1800-1865', which is about the social forces shaping the restoration movement in the early 19th century. This morning I was reading about the effects of the Civil War upon the movement, how it helped cause many of the cracks that would later rupture our movement. There were two passages that stood out.
The first was a quotation from a writer named William Baxter, concerning a man named BF Hall, who had been a gospel minister for years and thought to be a godly man. Upon seeing Hall again after he had gone off to war with a Texas regiment, Baxter writes "I had known him (Hall) in former years and was not prepared for the change, which a few hours' intercourse was sufficient to convince me had taken place. He boasted of his trusty rifle, of the accuracy of his aim, and doubted not that the weapon, with which he claimed to have killed deer at two hundred yards, would be quite as effectual when a Yankee was the mark....I ventured to ask what were his views concerning his brethren with and for whom he had labored in other years in the North and West. He replied that they were no brethren of his, that the religionists on the other side of the line were all infidel, and that true religion was now only to be found in the South....Once during the evening he wished that the people of the North were upon one vast platform, with a magazine of powder beneath, and that he might have the pleasure of applying the match to hurl them into all eternity."
I confess that I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s, and while I have seen how wrong he is on many things, one thing he said still stands out to me, that the military has two purposes: kill people and break things. He's absolutely right...at its core, the military is designed to be a killing machine. Over the years the question of how Christians can get behind this has long confused me. Again, while radical pacifism might not be realistic, and a strong military may be necessary as a deterrent against violence, how can people who desire to follow the Prince of Peace be so happy to engage in warfare?
In a second passage in which Harrell was analyzing the effects of the conflict on the unity of the church, he considers the writings of H Richard Niebuhr, and concludes that "Never before in American history had churchmen been so willing to renounce long-held convictions, rationalize fragile and unconvincing arguments, and spring to the defense of the socio-economic interests of their section-'the kingdom of Mars had conquered the kingdom of Christ.'"
Warfare and its godfathers nationalism and patriotism have a way of making people crazy. It makes them forget about the cross of Christ because they are too busy pledging allegiance to the flag. On Sunday I preached from Deuteronomy 12, in which Israel was reminded to put away idols and worship the one true God. I used the modern example of patriotism as perhaps a great danger, that it can become an idol that we allow to merge with our discipleship of Christ, a 'syncretism' that is akin to the idolatry that became prevalent in Israel's worship. I was nervous about using this as an example, and many of those who normally comment about how they like my sermons said nothing to me afterwards. I'm sure I made a few people upset, but I think I'm right on this. Anytime we let our true allegiance to Christ be pushed aside for patriotic, nationalistic, or militaristic reasons, we have let idolatry into our camp. It creates wedges between Christians, it causes people to become hateful to those whom they once loved and cared for, and it distracts us from our discipleship.
May God forgive us when we make the same mistake again and again.
