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Any
thoughts? ... Tell us what you think here |
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ALOVE
writer Aaron White expresses his views on
why war should be killed and invites you into
the debate.
In my last year of high school I had to take
a final exam in History. One of the main essay
questions on the exam asked us to explain
how a war could be justified, and to give
an example of a war that was justifiable.
I got very high marks describing how one war
in particular was an example of a justifiable
use of military force.
I don’t think I would do so well on
the exam at this stage in my life.
Christians throughout the last two millennia
have gone to great lengths to explain war
and to justify its continued use as an instrument
of the state. St. Augustine, writing from
inside a besieged city, did not find it too
difficult to come up with reasons why Christians
should fight and kill. Characters like Hugo
Grotius developed theories of Natural Law
that put limits and rules on warfare, but
still assumed that nations, Christian nations
clearly included, would always find the need
to go to war. Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great
Christian Humanist, made a strong argument
that Christian nations should never go to
war against each other, but allowed that it
was still ok for Christians to slaughter Muslims.
The debate continues into our times. At the
Second Vatican Council an attempt was made
to propose that warfare as a tool of the state
– in particular unlimited, nuclear warfare
– was immoral. The proposal was severely
watered down in order to continue to allow
states to engage in war when they found it
necessary.
And even now with wars raging around the world,
and two of the major participatory countries
being lead by professing Christians, we face
the debate. Is it ok for Christians to fight
and kill other human beings in war?
In the past the responsibility for deciding
whether or not a war was just lay with the
“prince” – the sovereign
of the nation. The prince would bear the moral
responsibility of the war, and therefore an
ordinary Christian soldier could presumably
engage in warfare without worrying if he was
sinning by so doing. We do not have that moral
luxury now (and it is questionable whether
anyone really had that moral freedom). In
a democracy we must bear responsibility for
the leaders we choose and the actions our
nations take.
So how can we decide if a war is just, or
if any war can be just? Traditionally people
have looked to see if a war met certain requirements,
two of the most important of these being the
separation of combatants and non-combatants,
and the ensuring that any military response
is both appropriate and limited.
It is important to note that there is now
no real ability to differentiate between combatant
and non-combatant. Wars are very infrequently
fought in our age between two armies in a
field. More often it is trained soldier versus
unofficial insurgent (or revolutionary, or
freedom fighter), or even civilian against
civilian. Those who deal in terror see civilians
as primary targets. National militaries say
they are able to avoid bombing hospitals and
schools (though evidence proves otherwise);
but sometimes even nation-states don’t
try. It is hard to forget the infamous saying
that came out of the Vietnam War: “Sometimes
you have to destroy a town in order to save
it.”
When biological, chemical, nuclear weapons
or other weapons of mass destruction are used
or threatened, there are no civilians or combatants.
Only victims. And then the notion of appropriate
and limited response is also done away with.
The Old Testament principle was eye for an
eye, tooth for a tooth. This was a limitation
on retaliation. If someone knocked out your
tooth, you were not allowed to go out and
kill him or her in revenge. You could only
take their tooth. This is the basis behind
appropriate and limited response. It is not
considered “just” to go out and
kill 10,000 people if your enemy has only
killed 100 of your people. Of course, modern
weapons take us into the possibility of indiscriminately
killing millions at a time, of destroying
entire cities with a missile, even of the
elimination of all human life from the planet.
We really have moved beyond the realm of measured
responses.
But even this is not the real issue for Christians.
Jesus took us away from the “eye
for an eye” formula. He took
us to radical forgiveness and love. The real
question for Christians is, how do we justify
taking a human life, a life for which Jesus
died? And why have we tried so hard to justify
it? Why have we spent so much mental energy
attempting to prove why it is acceptable to
destroy the life God created?
The issue is clearly not clear-cut. Strong
arguments are made in behalf of self-defense,
or better still, defending the innocent from
aggression. And it is easy enough to talk
about non-violence when no one is threatening
the things you hold dear, quite another to
refrain from violence when the threat is in
your home. Still, should this not be our aim?
Just because it is extremely difficult to
practice non-violence, it does not mean we
should not try, if this is what Jesus has
called us to. And I believe it is. Jesus calls
us to a place of no rights, no retaliation,
and no security except what he gives us. His
teaching on revenge and suffering and the
example he gives of self-sacrifice seem pretty
clear, though they do not say what we really
want to hear. Justice will be done, and aggressors
will be held accountable, but we can trust
that this final judgment will be in the hands
of the Lord. Whenever we try to execute that
kind of judgment, too much that is good is
destroyed along with the bad (just as Jesus
said it would in the Parable of the Wheat
and Weeds Matthew 13:24-30).
So if I had to take that test again, I’m
not sure I could give a satisfactory answer
on how one can justify a war. I’m just
not sure that any arguments for war can stand
against Jesus’ arguments for forgiveness
and love. |
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