War

No good comes in war. When the good wields evil to overcome evil, the good suffers from the evil the good let loose. Spend a day at Gettysburg or several hours at the cemetery above Omaha Beach. But wars continue to happen, and our own country engages in them. Does the Bible help us understand how we are supposed to behave and reconcile these events? I offer the following perspective to ponder.¹

The Old Testament is replete with stories of God backing his Chosen in war for centuries, beginning with Abraham and including Joshua and Gideon to name just a few ( Gen.14:11-15:1; Josh. 5:13-6:5; Judg. 7. 1-25). But for over 700 years God witnessed God’s Chosen turning to evil ways notwithstanding the victories God provided. Finally, as God’s prophets warned, God turned on the Chosen, aiding the Assyrians in 722 BCE to conquer the Northern Kingdom (2Kgs. 17: 7-23) and the Babylonians in 586 BCE to destroy Jerusalem and scatter the Chosen into exile (2kgs. 24:18-25:21). After that, biblically speaking, God as agent was finished with war. In fact, God seems to have stood pat on the matter for over 2,500 years, abiding the most hideous atrocities humanity has seen fit to inflict on one another. So, has God gone AWOL on us? Not at all!

God just changed God’s tack. About 600 years after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, God sent His Son, Jesus Messiah, who distilled all of God’s Will for human behavior down to one single commandment of love with two objects of that love: God and Neighbor (Mt. 22: 37-40; Mk. 12: 30-31). This development was a sea change in God’s effort with humanity. God no longer seemed interested in a Promised Land, a nation of the Chosen or the Temple where God would lend God’s name. God would save human souls for all eternity on a personal basis, one soul at a time. Jesus made no promises except personal salvation, an eternal life with God. He did this because God his Father sent him to do so (Jn. 12:49-50; 14:24). Jesus warned the rich and those who failed to repent, but he did not condemn because he was not sent to do so (Jn.12:47). All things remain possible with God (Mk. 10:27). God’s relationship with humanity was no longer in the collective (group, people, nation, tribe), but wholly personal through the presence of God’s Spirit in each of us. Ours is to kindle the Spirit by following the pathway through the narrow gate of faith and obedience to God’s single command of love for God and Neighbor (Mt. 7:14).

Since Jesus, it’s all changed, and it’s all quite simple; and that’s the rub. God has shown us the path to eternal life as God’s gift to us whom God loves. God does not seem very interested in how long each of us enjoys the gift of mortal life, nor the circumstances, pain and suffering, that we experience along the way. These sufferings or inconveniences do not even remotely compare to the weight of glory awaiting each of us (see Ro. 8: 16-18; 2Cor. 4:17). No whining. And as for our enemies, God said long, long ago that it is God’s prerogative to avenge, not ours (Lev. 19:18). Overcome evil with good (see Ro. 12:19-21). No wiggle room. It is our role as individuals to pray for all, including the Ukrainians and the Russians. We are to feed the refugees, clothe them and care for them, accept them into our homes (Mt. 25: 34-40).

The rub is that the world is not simple; nor has the world changed much for the better. God changed in God’s relationship with humanity by moving from support for a nation of Chosen to salvation for individual souls, but the world did not change. Our rulers are charged with protecting us from destructive force, and from time to time require us to fight evil with greater violence, while God has taken another tack. As Christians, we are called to respond to God’s tack through Jesus, while our rulers advise us to fight evil with more effective violence of our own. What to do?

Jesus refused to resist his captors, and he instructed his disciples to stand down. Jesus would have us love our enemies (Mt. 5:44) and turn the other cheek (Mt. 5:39), but he did not advocate rebellion against ruling authorities. Jesus also knew that while He was sent by the Father, we are born of mortals and conditioned by our mortal nature with a will to survive and defend ourselves. The clearest direction we have from another mortal is Paul’s twin admonition to live in peace with everyone if it is possible as far as it depends on you, but to remain subject to the governing authorities (Ro. 12:18-13:5). So, as responsible free men and women who have elected their rulers, when called upon, we serve. And when directed to fight, we fight. We take up weapons with a small NT in our breast pocket, not because we believe we are doing God’s will in opposing evil, but because we believe in a God who will forgive us and console us for becoming sinners in that bold venture, sharing God’s suffering at the hands of a godless world. ² Thanks be to God.

1. All this is way beyond my pay grade, but I felt it was perhaps called for in these times.
2. As the brilliant theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, awaited his execution by the Nazi authorities for treason in opposition to Hitler, he wrote letters from prison. God summons us in our secular lives to share in His sufferings at the hands of a godless world, taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of God in this world. Eberhard Bethge, ed., Letters and Papers From Prison, New York, Touchstone, 1997, 361,370.