Centerfield

Powerful picture. Thanks

Well... I think they're both missing the point of what it means to be a Christian, as revealed by the New Testament and particularly the Gospels.

The "Great Commission" at the very end of the Book of Matthew is very concise and completely lacking in ambiguity. It is quite simply the marching orders for all Christians straight from the mouth of the God-Man they claim to follow. I don't see anything in there pertaining to just or unjust wars between civil governments. What I do see is a focus on one thing and one thing only - saving souls.

I would give the young Quaker props for being closer to what Jesus taught. But, getting hung up on spreading peace is every bit as much a tangent from the explicit marching orders as is getting hung up on whether this human government or that human government has a right to wage war. Both are completely irrelevant to the entire point of what Jesus taught.

rick - thank you for this picture! this is the kind of stuff i hoped to see out of you convention bloggers. =)

Kevin,

There are plenty of theologians out there that would disagree with you. I don't think this is the place to have a religious debate but there are two schools of thought on Christianity and war: Pacificism and Just War Theory. There are merits to made for each case, and I'd be really hesitant to call one school of thought more or less authentic than the other.

I understand that, Will.

:::shrugs:::

I didn't bring up what is or isn't "the essential message of Christ." Nor did I bring it over into the realm of politics. I simply responded to the content of the post.

I don't see why a certain subclass of posts on an overtly political weblog should be off limits from a free exchange of ideas. Particularly when the free exchange of ideas reflects directly back on the political reality around us.

:::shrugs again:::

It's ya all's weblog. You can run it any way you like. I don't begrudge you that right at all.

All things work together for good for those who love God. The Old Testament tell stories of wars in which God was directly involved in there outcome. Jesus encourage us to love our enemies. In between both points there is a perfect balance, and after lots of prayers and reading of the bible you should come up with the answer for you as an individual.

I would dearly love to debate the contextual merits of the issue because I believe that the Biblical New Testament is far from ambigious on the subject . But, I'm a guest here and will defer to the wishes of the bloggers in residence.

Hi Kevin. You should feel completely free to share your views on this, or any other matter we discuss.

You've noticed, of course, that those of us who blog here tend to have a dialog with each other. But I think we all hope for broader participation with all kinds of folks from all sides of issues.

In other words, fire away!

One of the reasons I've been talking to people about religion is because that is where their basic values come from, and political preferences follow. Left and right shout at each other with little understanding, and that is sometimes because they don't get the philosophical or religious stance of their opponent.

So lets talk about religion, as long as it relates somehow to politics.

"Thou shalt not kill."

Not sure there's really a lot of ambiguity in that simple statement, although folks will try to weasel out of anything they disagree with. Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.

"Thou shalt not kill."

I used to tell my students that there's a period at the end of that statement. We would discuss the pacifist and just war theory. There are a lot of qualifications for a war to possibly be just.

Many - if not most - mainline Protestant churches and the pope did not feel the current war in Iraq met all those qualifications for a just war. It wasn't just the Quakers who opposed it on moral grounds. And that was before we found there were no WMD's.

At the time Jesus walked the earth everyone expected the messiah to lead the faithful in a war against Rome. He didn’t.

In fact he deferred to Rome’s authority.

This is also a very unambiguous fact.

If Jesus leading the Jews against Rome doesn’t count as a just war what does?

It seem to be in the nature of all religions to eventually take the teachings of its leader and create a theology that allows them to justify any action.

Just witness the current Muslim jihad and the historic Christian crusades.

The Jewish rebellion against Rome in 70 AD turned out to be suicidal. So clearly, wisdom was on the side of the peace party in that situation. But I don't think it can be universalized to say that war is never just.

Bob nails it. Hectorrican does too, but more obliquely.

Of course those wishing to use the teachings of Jesus to justify a formal "Christian" position for national pacifism are merely on the flip side of the very same coin as those wishing to use them to justify war as Christians. Both are attempting to co-opt a spiritual document for their own reasons. The attempt only serves to cheapen the document's reputation in the eyes of man. And that ultimately subverts the marching orders contained in the Great Commission.

As the old saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Rick, it's not that war is never justified. Nor is it that pacifism is never justified. It is that the teachings of Christ are mute on the subject. Presumably because it represents a diversion from the entire point of His message.

Obliquely! that's a good oner...
I'm a Christian, and my point is that no verse in the Bible is an "island" and Christians should be at peace with their decision once they have studied the issue as a whole, e.g. if the death penalty was not in place in the time of Jesus then the prophecy found in Old Testament Isaiah 53 and the words in Psalm 22:16-18 would have not been fullfilled! Does this mean that the death penalty today is OK! Again, people can use the Bible can be used to argue both sides as well as the issue of war.
"We the people" should know what the candidates true and honest beliefs are, and if they have a religion of choice they should let us know as well. Peace & Love to all!

Kevin,

I apologize for my comment; I wasn't trying to stifle debate and I'm a "guest" here as much as you are.

I just find debates in regards to religion generally unproductive because they rest so heavily on assumptions and beliefs, although I understand the intersection between religion and policy worth discussing. It's hard enough trying to find common ground on basic tenets (eg is the bible the absolute word of God or a document written by people describing the Christian tradition), let alone get any kind of consensus on what it means to be a good Christian.

Will, you touch briefly on an important point regarding the noting of several here that the bible is unambiguous on certain points, such as "thou shalt not kill."

Not everyone believes the bible is best understood as an infallible horse's mouth transcription of divine instructions. As a textbook editor, I look at it foremost as a book, and I think of books as being constantly revised, and the older they are, the more printings and revisions they have.

So for those who don't regard the bible as the infallible word, the fact of its relative ambiguity on certain matters doesn't make nearly as much of an impression as it does on those who trust its absolute authenticity as God's word.

I've always wondered about this idea of the absolute word vs the people's transcription, so I was fascinated (and also amused) when I read the introductory parts of the Koran, which came later. The Koran starts with a clever device that declares that the words in it were dictated to Mohammed directly from Allah and that there's no chance that at any subsequent point they could have been altered. When I read this as an editor, I couldn't help but think "hmm, someone got tired of hearing the faithful wonder about this business of absolute word vs. transcription, and so when they wrote the next text, they included something specifically designed to short circuit the argument."

Now everyone's mileage is bound to vary by a LOT, but I found this hysterical. Because it's so blatant as to be transparent. OF COURSE you'd feel the need to say such a thing if you'd found doubt regarding authenticity to be tiresome static from the faithful.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone. The thing that I think is so funny is that IMO someone writing the Koran tried to suggest that the truth of the content was objectively verifiable and therefore beyond reproach. But it's not (again only IMO) objectively verifiable, its a matter of faith. If it were objectively verifiable, you wouldn't NEED faith.

As an atheist, I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think it is fairly well accepted by biblical scholars that the word 'murder' is a more correct translation of the original Hebrew version of the Commandment than is 'kill.' That certainly makes more sense in context considering that the Old Testament is full of mandatory death penalties.

The shoe display gets a mention in today's Best of the Web column in the Wall Street Journal Online.

We approach a middle-aged man of ample girth, who seems to be in charge. "How many shoes do you have for Saddam Hussein's victims?" we ask.

He stands silent, facing us. He seems to be staring us down, but we have no way of knowing for sure, as he's wearing sunglasses, even though the day is overcast. Finally, after perhaps 15 seconds, he breaks the silence:

"Shame on you," he says.