Bombs Away!

The Favorite US Solution

The "humanitarian" bombing in Iraq that our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has declared is an obscenity. Of course, the US is not going to bomb anybody for any other reason but a noble one. Right? In this case it's to save a hapless group of people who practice an ancient religion that predates both Christianity and Islam from the murderous Islamic State militants who are overrunning parts of Syria and Iraq. They are bad people. They do terrible things, hateful things. And in this case they've run these people out of their town and up onto a nearby mountain. They are threatening to wipe them out, every last one. And the people are helpless without weapons or even the necessities of life.

The question confronting the Christian, the follower of Jesus, is what do you do? Well, you offer the suffering all the aid you can. But you do not wield the sword against their enemies. If you are going to be faithful to the gospel, you cannot do violence against another child of God. The command is love your enemies, not kill your enemies. If there's one truth that's been established by the history of our species on Earth, it's that violence begets violence. Always. It never solves a problem. It always spawns new problems, usually worse problems. Killing spawns more killing. War and its hellish fruits must be opposed. All war. Always. There's no other way I can think of that we will ever have peace. Violence must cease.

This is hard stuff. Real hard. It's impossibly idealistic, isn't it? And given our species's love of blood and war, seemingly insane. You would not have trouble finding a lot of people to agree. Pacifists and conscientious objectors are almost universally despised people. They are so far off the reservation, so at odds with the huge majority of humanity, that for that reason alone--they are that different--they must be spurned. But it seems to me there's no other way if you're going to try and model your life of the way Jesus lived his. I'm sorry. There is injustice and suffering the globe over. People are being killed everywhere because they are the wrong color, the wrong religion, the wrong nationality, have the wrong political beliefs, follow the wrong ideology, leader, or movement. Is more killing going to put an end to killing and injustice? Humans have been killing people who are different for centuries on end . . . and has it made us happier, more prosperous, more secure? If you can answer yes to these questions, then stand up a salute our reentry into war in Iraq.