Marching as to war
Numbers 21: 31 – 22: 3
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 02 February, 2003

THE WORLD is poised for war. The world powers which think they can fight terror the way they fought the Kaiser in 1914 could easily draw the world to Armageddon. What should we do?

This is not an easy topic. Some Christians believe that war is part of life and we should get on with it when we must; others believe that we should never fight, but choose peaceful resistance instead. I am somewhere in between.
But we are Christians, and we have to be able to make a worthwhile response to what is happening around us.
I have been thinking about Christians and war for a long time, and I still don't have all the answers.
When I was 20, I had to enter in the Vietnam Conscription Lottery. If your birthday was on a certain date, you got called up; if it wasn't, you weren't. Only thing the winning birthdays were classified information, so you never got to know if the ballot was fair. I didn't get called up, but I knew people who were.
A Christadelphian I knew told me I should register as a conscientious objector. I told him that I couldn't, because I objected to that war, not to all war. I’d have fought the Nazis.
With Vietnam, I was prepared to do anything humanitarian, but I wouldn’t fight. The Vietnamese didn't threaten us. The South threatened the North, and the North threatened the South, but they’d have settled it more easily if we hadn't poked our noses in.

DON’T KILL
The Christadelphians told me, “The Bible says,

Thou shalt not kill,

and that’s all you have to consider.”

I disagree.

It is the first thing to consider, but it isn't the only thing.
God gave that commandment to the Israelites through Moses on Sinai.
It is the most foundational of all the general social commandments.

The first commandments tell how to relate to God, then there's how to relate to parents, then there are the general social commandments about how we are to live in our society. The first is,

Don’t kill.

In many societies, killing is basic.

When a missionary in a tribal country killed a child in a car accident, the tribe decided to kill him and everyone with him in retaliation. They barely escaped.

In such societies, an argument that started over who owns which pig often ends in inter–tribal murders.
The Israelites were the same. So God gave them a command not to kill. That command is still very serious. It places a limit on killing.

SOME KILLING ALLOWED
But the Bible does not ban all killing without exception.

We just read that God permitted the Israelites to fight against the army of Bashan and kill them all. I could find 50 or more examples where God permitted killing in war.

You can add to that the circumstances where God permitted killing for certain crimes. Sometimes he even commanded it.

"Thou shalt not kill"

is not a blanket answer. Some interpreters say it should be translated,

Thou shalt do no murder

because that’s basically what it is about.

We must not murder. We must not take the law into our own hands and kill people we dislike or those we feel might threaten us. Society has to decide who lives or dies, not you and me as individuals.

Just as a side issue, although I think that abortion is one of the great scourges on our society, you can’t just ban it on the basis of

Thou shalt not kill.

Not even an unborn embryo has an absolute right to life.
So where does that bring us to, so far?

• Respect human life.
• Don’t kill randomly or on personal whim.
• But sometimes killing is justifiable, and specially, killing in war.

WAR IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: JESUS’ ROLE
But there’s so much more that we Christians need to consider about war. What God taught Israel doesn’t always translate exactly into the modern world. When there's a difficult passage we need to ask, "What would Jesus do?"

Some Christians think that everything that can be said about war was said in the Old Testament. Political conservatives love the Old Testament, because, if you don't read it carefully, it’s easy to think it’s only about winning and losing, and about controlling society. Conservatives like to use it for proof texts on mercilessly harsh punishments, while its general tenor is to limit violence and express grace.

We are Christians. We are not political conservatives or political radicals. Jesus is out Master, not George W Bush or John Howard or Tony Blair.

I got very tired of all the e-mails from religious conservatives last year, urging me to vote for political conservatives in the US congressional election because that is what any good Christian would do.

I e-mailed some of them back and told them
(1) I am not eligible to vote in US elections and
(2) Making evangelical beliefs and political conservatism the same amounts to exalting politics above the Lordship of Christ and
(3) I didn’t want their spam.
They didn’t stop sending the e-mails, though.

What is the one criterion for Christians? Isn't it, “What is the mind of Christ?"
Paul wrote,

PHP 2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
2:6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
2:7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
2:8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

This is a formula for the end of aggression. This is a formula for a world of peace.

• Don’t grasp for rights -- even those that are yours
  by charter.
• Don’t seek position or power.
• Don’t aim for rulership: aim for servanthood.
• Don’t grasp for life: go the way of the cross.

Jesus told his disciples,

MT 26:52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

Yes, Jesus also said that he came to bring not peace, but a sword. He was warning of the conflict that his message would stir up, not calling us into some Christian jihad. It's the peacemakers who are blessed.
Even when he said that it was time for anyone who lacked a sword to go out and buy one, he was speaking of the need to be prepared for conflict and oppression. There was no plan to take up arms against the Romans.

Jesus’ message was never a message of war; it was a realistic warning of conflict, of war and of distress for good people as well as for evil people.

PAUL ON WAR
Paul didn't say anything directly about Christians and war, but he advised the Corinthians,

1CO 7:17 Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. 18 Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. 19 Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts. 20 Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. 21 Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. 22 For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. 23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. 24 Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to.

Similarly, a soldier who became a believer was not obliged to cease being a soldier. But many Christian soldiers suffered for refusing to sacrifice to Caesar.

Actually, what Paul said there quietly encouraged soldiers to leave the army if they got a chance. In the army they were almost slaves, controlled by unbelievers. Surely that would interfere with their Christian freedom!

Paul often spoke in military terms about our Christian duty, but never taught any Christian duty to serve in the military forces.

JAMES ON WAR
James has a reputation for wisdom, but he says little about war and Christians either.
The NIV translation says,

JAS 4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

The KJV of this passage talks about wars and not just fighting. This suggests that wars also arise from the same motives. While that translation goes a bit further than James probably intended, it holds a truth. Covetousness, greed and evil desires lie behind wars.

Hitler wanted Czech and Polish coal; the Japanese wanted to control Asian markets, England and Germany were in a naval arms race to control the Atlantic for five or six years before the Great War broke out.

There were always other motives, but, somewhere, covetousness and greed always rear their ugly heads. That's why I keep thinking, "Oil" when George W Bush talks about Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraq.

Isn't it ironic. We think Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction, but we know the US has them; we think Iraq may use them; we know the US does use them; and, above all, the US is planning to unleash smart bombs on Baghdad, while Baghdad is thinking about how to use small bore rifles to resist with. Something isn’t quite right...

CHRISTIANS AND WAR IN HISTORY
Until around 315AD, Christians kept out of army service, apart from Christians in the army when they were converted, who stayed on. Remember that the Roman army was as much a police force as an army in our sense.

But change began. The emperor, Constantine, won a battle after he prayed and saw a vision of a cross in the sky with the words, In hoc signe vincit: Conquer In this sign!
From then on, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, and ended most persecution of Christians.
The pay off was that Christians had to support the Empire, including service in the army. It wasn't long before the idea of a “Christian army” developed, and it sometimes almost seemed that any war had to be good, because the Roman State was a Christian State. Except it wasn’t, of course. No state is ever truly Christian. That's a basic Biblical principle.

From time to time, Christian groups arose, and adopted pacifist ideas. The Anabaptists in Europe generally were and still are pacifists. So are the Quakers. Of course, so are some Anglicans and Catholics and Presbyterians and Baptists... the list is endless.

But what Christians have done is much less important to us than why they did it. At the bottom line, most have become pacifist because they wanted to resist killing, and they wanted to witness to the fact that this world is not their home, and they had decided to follow Jesus to whatever cross lay ahead.

BAPTISTS
We Baptists have a lot in common with the Radical Christians of Germany, Switzerland and Holland. But we differ in one respect at least, and that is that Baptists have never been totally committed to pacifism.
We agree that this world is not our home. But we also argue that we have a long–term lease here, so we have a responsibility to care for the place.

Do you remember when a man came in one night, drunk and abusive? It wasn't all that long ago.
I tried negotiating. I tried being persuasive and firm. It worked. But he threatened several of you without actually touching anyone.

I’m sure he is stronger than I am, and he's certainly more aggressive. I would certainly not like to take him on if he was sober, because I wouldn't have wanted to take him on drunk.

But I can tell you this: if he had touched a single one of you, I'd have made a good attempt to knock him to billy-oh. You are my family and friends, and I will not stand for someone invading and abusing you.

And, if I’d do that with a drunk in the church hall, I can’t say that I would not fight if the Jemaa Islamiya tried to invade us and abuse my fellow Australians, of if they invaded East Timor or India or anywhere else.

THE CURRENT CRISIS
Most of us are probably safe from having to go to Iraq. But, if things got bad enough, John or JR or Eric or Emerson might get called up. This crisis is not just hypothetical. What do we do?

I suggest that there are a few simple principles.
First, no matter how much we dislike either Saddam or George W, we must respect the sanctity of human life and not attempt to assassinate either of them. Nor should we attempt to invade either country without a clear reason, endorsed by a free decision of the UN. Anything else is illegal anyway.
Second, just as I didn’t punch that chap who invaded our hall, so we must not punch Saddam or the Iraqi people until they are clearly moving to attack an identified target. Otherwise we are the aggressors, and Christians ought never to be the aggressors.
Third, we must work and pray for justice for the Iraqi people and for peace in the region, because Christians must have a high commitment to those values.
Finally, if we must fight, we must do it faithfully and with the knowledge that to go to war is to admit defeat.