Friday, May 07, 2004
War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity.
Pope John Paul II
I was considering the latest news about the fighting in Nigeria shortly before I read this quote. There, the war is between groups of Moslems and Christians. Only a few days before there was a headline of how the government there was going to tear down all non-Islamic houses of worship, and then came the news of a Christian militia that has killed over 500 people there.
So much blood has been spilled, for so many causes that are typically based on one side saying "You have what I want, " or "I am afraid you will hurt me, so I'll hurt you," or "You are so subhuman, I will eliminate you." Religion, philosophy, fear, greed are so often used to justify these acts. People pump up the hate, spread the gospel of why my group is more deserving, or why your group deserves to be punished, until the last bridges between groups come down and all that's left is the hatred which erupts into shattered lives.
When this anger explodes into open combat, lives are shattered. And it's more than just the lives of the direct war casualties themselves. The first casualties are the lives twisted by hate, the corruption that allows a person to suddenly see the neighbor he has lived next door to for years as the enemy, someone to be hunted down. The hatred that allows people to slash and hack people to death with machetes, that thinks its fine to kidnap children to turn them into sociopathic child soldiers or sex slaves. The hatred that allows us to see people as the other, not a neighbor, not a child of God but as a thing to be used, tortured, coerced, destroyed, eraticated.
Even peoples who feel they are above this type of behavior find that the waging of war wreaks havoc with their normal beliefs. Look at My Lai during the Vietnam era. Look at the recent pictures of American guards doing atrocious things to coerce information out of prisoners. Each one involved, victim and perpertrator corrupted, tainted by the acts, to carry scars visible or invisible all their lives.
Each death shatters not only the life of the casualty, but the life of his or her family. A parent not there. A spouse bereft. A child missing forever. Every act of violence witnessed by the non-combatants a new wound to the psyche. Moreover the practical considerations. Fields not planted. Munitions left behind to maim, poison and destroy.
There is no victimless war. There are times wars are justified, there is the right for a nation to defend itself, but all war comes with great price. Mark Shea, a writer whose work I appreciate, made the analogy that war, even when just, is like a patient needing a triple bypass heart operation. It is serious, dangerous, not without grave consequences, and takes a great deal of recuperation...and almost always the situation could have been prevented long before the trouble reached that point.
As Christians then, our response should be that of our Lord, to bridge the walls of hate and fear, to work for the justice that is so often lacking in the situations where trouble is brewing, to be peacemakers. In Jesus' parable of the leaven, he likens us to the yeast that makes the hard bread that is life on this weary world light and airy and worth having. We need to take our responsibility of being light and salt and leaven seriously. The stakes in this poor world are very high:
He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8: RSV)
Pope John Paul II
I was considering the latest news about the fighting in Nigeria shortly before I read this quote. There, the war is between groups of Moslems and Christians. Only a few days before there was a headline of how the government there was going to tear down all non-Islamic houses of worship, and then came the news of a Christian militia that has killed over 500 people there.
So much blood has been spilled, for so many causes that are typically based on one side saying "You have what I want, " or "I am afraid you will hurt me, so I'll hurt you," or "You are so subhuman, I will eliminate you." Religion, philosophy, fear, greed are so often used to justify these acts. People pump up the hate, spread the gospel of why my group is more deserving, or why your group deserves to be punished, until the last bridges between groups come down and all that's left is the hatred which erupts into shattered lives.
When this anger explodes into open combat, lives are shattered. And it's more than just the lives of the direct war casualties themselves. The first casualties are the lives twisted by hate, the corruption that allows a person to suddenly see the neighbor he has lived next door to for years as the enemy, someone to be hunted down. The hatred that allows people to slash and hack people to death with machetes, that thinks its fine to kidnap children to turn them into sociopathic child soldiers or sex slaves. The hatred that allows us to see people as the other, not a neighbor, not a child of God but as a thing to be used, tortured, coerced, destroyed, eraticated.
Even peoples who feel they are above this type of behavior find that the waging of war wreaks havoc with their normal beliefs. Look at My Lai during the Vietnam era. Look at the recent pictures of American guards doing atrocious things to coerce information out of prisoners. Each one involved, victim and perpertrator corrupted, tainted by the acts, to carry scars visible or invisible all their lives.
Each death shatters not only the life of the casualty, but the life of his or her family. A parent not there. A spouse bereft. A child missing forever. Every act of violence witnessed by the non-combatants a new wound to the psyche. Moreover the practical considerations. Fields not planted. Munitions left behind to maim, poison and destroy.
There is no victimless war. There are times wars are justified, there is the right for a nation to defend itself, but all war comes with great price. Mark Shea, a writer whose work I appreciate, made the analogy that war, even when just, is like a patient needing a triple bypass heart operation. It is serious, dangerous, not without grave consequences, and takes a great deal of recuperation...and almost always the situation could have been prevented long before the trouble reached that point.
As Christians then, our response should be that of our Lord, to bridge the walls of hate and fear, to work for the justice that is so often lacking in the situations where trouble is brewing, to be peacemakers. In Jesus' parable of the leaven, he likens us to the yeast that makes the hard bread that is life on this weary world light and airy and worth having. We need to take our responsibility of being light and salt and leaven seriously. The stakes in this poor world are very high:
He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8: RSV)
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