Pragmatic Test

At some point the pragmatic test deserves its day in court. Usually its leveled against the pacifist - i.e., How can we live in a world without war? And that deserves an answer. But there is a more potent practical question the pacifist can ask: Has there ever been a just war?

Both questions appropriately demand livability, an essential component of any conception of Christian life. Something may look great on paper, adorned with proof texts and Luther quotes, but does it work? Can it be lived?

If a pair of scissors was used in a brutal murder, no one would call into question whether or not we should continue to manufacture and use them for their other effective purpose. Just because something is abused does not undermine its validity. But what if we lived in a world where scissors were only ever without exception used not for cutting paper but stabbing victims? Every single time any well-meaning school teacher sought to conduct an art project, she ended up with a room full of bodies. We might begin to wonder if scissors were such a great idea after all.

Enter "just war". Has there ever been a just war? Even if you support war without the "just" part, has there ever been a war for which a Christian could fully support its cause and fully support its means?

This might sound like an unfair test. It might sound like asking, Has there every been a completely untainted democratic process? But that's not what I'm asking. I'm not saying that we throw out democracy because its always tainted. I'm saying we throw out communism because we always end up with totalitarianism.

Enter "war". We don't abandon war for the Christian because it involves non-Christians and its always tainted by evil on both sides. We abandon war because when we set out for justice on paper we always end up with injustice. We fight for unjust reasons, with unjust means, and get unjust results. Sure there might be some mixed blessings in there. I could name a few mixed blessings under Mao or Stalin or Hitler. But collateral blessings are cause for abandonment not embodiment.

And so the pragmatic challenge stands: Has there ever been a just war?

Why Christians Make Bad Soldiers

Stanley Hauerwas' short article "Why Homosexuals (as a Group) are More Moral than Christians (as a Group)", written during debates surrounding admitting homosexuals into the military, made a great point - the real debate should be over whether to let Christians in. True ones make dismal soldiers. He could have gone much further.

First, the more Christian soldiers espouse just war theory, the more likely they may begin thinking through what they mean by it. Sooner or later protecting oil fields or killing Muslims is going to come up short. What are you going to do with a massive standing army who keeps asking, Should we be doing this?

Second, if a soldier obeys orders and kills civilians there's the nasty business of church discipline, handing them over to Satan. That's terrible for morale.

Third, Christians will (counter-intuitively) pray for their enemies. They will demonstrate mercy over justice. They will turn the other cheek. In fact, they may get confused and accidentally do corporately what they vigorously practice privately. Or they might just realize that's a stupid distinction anyway.

Fourth, they share a commission greater than capitalism. What happens when they begin to lose gospel credibility because they keep shooting everybody? They might be forced to choose baptizing over bombing, witnessing over water boarding.

Finally, Christian soldiers are ultimately under not the commander in chief but Christ. And worse, they are striving to become more and more like him. Which means they are becoming decidedly less and less what they are defending. Old wine skins can't hold the new wine.

Pacifism

In the springtime, when kings go out to battle, it is worth pleading with Christians to reconsider our prevailing ethos of war. I might as soon question the ethics of oxygen than the American military juggernaut. We have so deeply cast our lot with our armed forces that it is difficult to locate where the church ends and Americanism begins. But the Scriptures clamor to be heard on this very point and to them we must go.

There are basically two categories of warfare in the Old Testament. First, God used his covenant people Israel as an instrument of judgment on surrounding nations. It was generally total warfare, a nasty business of razing cities to the ground, sowing salt, executing survivors, kidnapping virgins, collecting foreskins, and dashing babies to bits. The second category of war was that of secular nations used by God to judge and then were judged by God for judging. It was live by the sword and die by the sword - no sooner did God judge Israel with Assyria than he judged Assyria for her wickedness in the matter (Is 10).

Contra wishful thinking, America is not the new Israel. In fact, Israel is not even the new Israel. If you are looking for support for a secular government to be used by God to judge another nation and in turn be blessed for her efforts you won't find it in the Old Testament. Try Greek mythology. If you are looking for a "just war theory" - taking the word war from the OT and baptizing it in some of the humanitarian kindness from the New - you won't find that either. Try Augustine or Geneva.

There's no space to cover Romans 13 here. Suffice to say that it would take some fantastic hermeneutical gymnastics to balance America's worldwide jurisdiction over sovereign states on the point of the sword mentioned there.

Generally a defense for warfare is drawn not primarily from the Bible but our predicament, concerning Hitler, Al Qaeda, Darfur. At best this is thinly veiled scorn for the naivety of our Lord who failed to foresee this. At worst its blatant disregard for everything he said about laying down rights and taking up the cross.

Jesus said "blessed are the peacemakers" and Paul, "for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh"; and yet somehow we've spiritualized the peacemakers and materialized warmongers. Its long overdue for the burden of biblical proof to reside with the war makers.