Alright, I'm almost done polluting you with my hippie ideals of actually loving people. The next two posts will be the last, and they will be primarily used to tie up some loose ends.
I would like to spend some time talking about the divine image in everyone. In the book of Genesis, it gives the account of creation. It's (at least to me) a fascinating Hebrew poem describing the origin of life. It says that when God creates people, he breathes into their nostrils and they become alive. Ancient rabbis believed, in fact, that because of this, every time a person breathes, they say the name of God. What all of this says to us is that every human being (Jew, Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, etc.) carries with them the image of God. We are told in Genesis that humans were made in the image of God. We all carry with us part of God. It's my belief that if people would truly internalize this and understand it, conflict would cease. If you view every person as an image-bearer of God, then enemies fade away. In the same way that you can't kill someone that you really love, you can't kill someone if you see them as bearing God's image. At least you shouldn't be able to do that. If you can, then it is my opinion that you are something less than the human you were created to be.
What about WWII? This is a question posed to me by my dad. It's a fair question and a good one. He was saying that because we were attacked on our soil, we had to do something about Japan and about Hitler. My response to the question is this: we'll never know if anything else would have worked because we only pursued one course of action against Japan and Germany, and that was violence. Because of this, we can't really answer this question fairly.
It needs to be stated that we've lost our creativity and imagination in this country (and maybe the whole world). When an enemy arises, instead of looking to God to find a peaceful and creative solution, we instead look to Toby Keith for the latest redneck anthem of why we should kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out, and we rename our french fries, "freedom fries." We're so steeped in violence that it seems like the only way to go. That's why the issue of pacifism makes most people squirm. It's a totally foreign concept to a world that is saturated with violence. If you don't believe me, look at what happened when Obama announced that he would try diplomacy with countries like Iran and North Korea. Republicans went berserk. How can you be diplomatic with our enemies?
Could a peaceful solution have been found to stop WWII from happening? Who knows. We'll never know because we never tried. Maybe it's time to try something different. All of our wars have failed to bring about real peace anyway.
Here's another thing I don't understand. Most of the pro-war Christians that I know are also militantly pro-life. Does anyone else see a problem with that? The claim of all pro-lifers (of which I'm one, but I need to explain my stance one of these days) is that God prizes every life. So my question is this, does God only prize life until they leave the womb? Countless people have been killed as "collateral damage" (that phrase makes me want to puke) in wars. Does God not care about them? Or is it just Americans who count (technically speaking, the policemen and firemen who died during 9/11 could be considered collateral damage as well because they weren't the primary targets)? If you're going to be pro-life, then you can't be pro-war, because it takes away life. This is a ridiculous inconsistency that no one seems to be pointing out. Pro-life can't just mean fetuses, it has to count for all human beings. The stance by most American Christians in this is the definition of hypocrisy.
3 comments:
STINKY HIPPIE.
let me just quote for you a nice little bumper sticker i found:
to hell with our enemies. god bless america!
there's a tolstoy book you should read. the kingdom of god is within you.
Better check your facts on WWII. Prime Minister Chamberlain signed a peace accord with Hitler who in turn continued his conquest of Europe. At the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japaneese diplomats were in the office of the Secretary of State waiting to discuss peace. I agree with your other comments. WWII was unavoidable. History has proven that Hitler's and Japan's aims were World domination. There was a strong isolationist movement in the US prior to Pearl Harbor. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, etc were avoidable.
Ok, I stand corrected. But just because they tried one avenue and it failed doesn't mean that the only other option was firebombing Dresden. And here's the bigger question, did it lead to peace? Real peace? Whether it was unavoidable or not really isn't even the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that there has never been a war that has lead to true peace. Look at the history of the US. We've pretty much been at war since before we were a legitimate country. It is working? That's the point I'm trying to make.
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