We have as a nation entered into yet another war, this one in Iran.
War places special stresses on the Christian conscience, especially when the war is defended as “preemptive,” that is, a war in anticipation of an attack, to prevent such attack. Our war in Iraq in 2003 was so defended.
Once again, preemption was the first of many shifting reasons for the latest war from our president and political leaders this week. A lawless president has led us into an illegal war and, as has been rightly said, the first of the many casualties of war is the truth.
Stephen Shoemaker
When can we call a war a “just war”? The Christian church in its first few centuries largely took a pacifist stance toward war and violence. We would not take a Roman oath to serve in the military or to testify in court. This stance was taken up in Reformation times by Anabaptists and other “peace churches” like Quakers and Mennonites.
But when we were made the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christian theologians took up the matter of when a war is just and when unjust so to aid the Christian conscience. We were not the first to take up the matter of just war theory. Cicero tackled the issue in the century before Christ. Just war theory is part of the moral reasoning God has given to all peoples to curb the barbarism of war.
So let me take you to a quick examination of Just War Theory. Historically, for a war to be just it must meet two major criteria: There should be a “just cause” for war and there must be “just conduct” in war.
“Just cause” in war has generally meant:
- It must be a war of self-defense; that is, to defend against attack or immediate threat of attack.
- It must have “competent authority”; that is, be legally constituted by action of a nation and/or “league of nations.”
- It must be a “last resort” entered into when all other measures have been exhausted.
Most Christian ethicists believe “preemptive war” is always unjust. And many prefer the phrase “justified war” instead of “just war” because “just war” can too easily become “righteous war,” and these wars always are the most deadly.
Our secretary of defense is telling troops this war is a Christian war as part of God’s plan of the end times. Mike Huckabee, our ambassador to Israel and former Southern Baptist preacher and governor of Arkansas, said last week Israel has a biblical warrant to take possession of the whole Middle East, citing Genesis 15:18, where God said to Abram: “To your descendants I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river of Euphrates.” Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must have smiled.
Now we move to “just conduct” in war. This usually has included two main criteria:
- The law of proportionality; that is, the means of the destruction must be proportional to the ends being sought. We must not become more evil than the evil we fight.
- Protection against civilian and noncombatant deaths.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 were created after World War II to prevent conduct in war that is morally unacceptable. So also with what is called military “terms of engagement.” Our secretary of defense has scoffed at such constraints this week. Previously, President Trump has acted in concert with the secretary to pardon war criminals. We shudder at such morally unrestrained political and military leadership in war time.
“I move more deliberately into a conversation with Jesus about war, with his words and his life.”
I do not think it hard to discern that our attack on Iran has not met the criteria for just cause of war. Moreover, our American Constitution has been violated by this precipitous beginning of a war. The bombing of a girl’s elementary school and killing of 50 children on the first day of the war already has failed the test of just conduct in war.
The Just War Theory outlined in brief above has over the centuries helped nations and peoples as they consider the agonizing moral issues of war.
But having written all this, I move more deliberately into a conversation with Jesus about war, with his words and his life. What might an earnest conversation with Jesus look like? Philosopher George Santayana wrote: “Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and surprising message and the bias it gives to life.”
What is the special and surprising character of the Christian revelation and the bias it brings to life in regard to war and peace? It is not just in the careful application of just criteria for war, as important as that is. Such advocacy is part of our mission as stewards of the moral tradition of humanity. But this is not the most powerful and unique witness we make as followers of Jesus.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus deepened the meaning of some of the teaching of the Torah. As to the law of retaliation, he forbade “an eye for as eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Turn the other cheek when one has struck you on your right cheek, he said. Carry a Roman soldier’s gear for a mile when he conscripts you to do. Carry it two miles.
Then that hardest of all commandments, the extending of the love of neighbor to encompass the love of one’s enemies: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be daughters and sons of your Father in heaven.”
And then he says why: “For he makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and unjust.” Reinhold Niebuhr called this “the impartial goodness of God” beyond our human categories of good and evil.
“As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he rode not a war horse but a lowly donkey.”
As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he rode not a war horse but a lowly donkey, coming as a servant Messiah, not a conquering king. Then he wept over Jerusalem and said: “If you, even you, had only recognized the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes!”
He was addressing the religious and political powers-that-be ready in every age to collaborate to hurt the people they are called to care for.
And then we move to his execution on a Roman cross. He prayed for God to forgive his killers and chose to die the victim of violence rather than live as a perpetrator of violence.
However we deal with the questions of war and peace and our everyday violence, we have to deal with Jesus and his records, his words and how he lived and died. In American Christianity today there is virtual eclipse of the historical Jesus. We have today a Jesus-less Christianity lusting for political and military power and gaining it. But it is with Jesus we must start.
In Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow, young Jayber enters college as a ministerial student in Kentucky then later drops out and becomes the town barber. When World War II begins he says: “I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies.”
Then he adds, “I was glad enough that I had not become a preacher, and so would not have to go through a war pretending that Jesus had not told us to love our enemies.”
“The other cheek,” he says to me as he passes with a slight smile, to see if this time it will take.
Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.