War
WAR
Another Cause of Sin: War
Psalm 68:30; Isaiah 2:4; Matthew 26:52
Another phase of selfish competition is war. Selfish competition moves into international relationships and then war!
Even with the clouds of war in the sky and the world filled with increasing armaments, I am not hopeless about getting rid of war. Look where we have come from! In 2 Samuel 11:1, we read: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go forth to battle, . . . David remained at Jerusalem.” Kings went out to battle when the springtime came, exactly as a farmer goes to spring plowing, and as regularly. It was news when David stayed at home. . . .
If the very center of life could be changed from competition to cooperation, then war would drop off like a dead leaf. But war is almost inevitable in a world based on competition.
Victorious Living
(Week 22, Wednesday)
My Attitude toward War
Exodus 20:13; Isaiah 9:6; John 18:36
During World War I, preached on these two texts: “Herod and his soldiers treated Jesus with contempt” (Luke 23:11 CEB) and “When the mob saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul” (Acts 21:32). Militarism treated Jesus with contempt, but then it does defend the weak and defenseless. That was my theme. Of course German militarism was treating Jesus with contempt; and we were on the defensive protecting the defenseless. How blinded I was! Every nation felt the same.
The distinction between the offensive and defensive war has for all practical purposes broken down. There is nothing left to do but to renounce all war. And that I do. And I’ll tell you why. My chief reason is that war causes people to sin. People caught in the war spirit do things they would not dream of doing otherwise. It causes us to sin in the following ways:
1. It poisons the air with lies. The first casualty in war is Truth. You cannot fight your enemy unless you make the enemy out a devil. Lying propaganda attends to that.
2. It poisons the air with hate. If the first casualty is Truth, the second casualty is Love. Bitter, burning hate settles into the breasts of millions. The very air becomes poisonous with it. You cannot breathe without breathing it. Hellish hate.
3. It makes people sin economically. [At the time of World War I] a shot from a big gun cost $500, the equivalent of 20,000 loaves of bread. . . . War is economic sin—a sin against hunger.
4. It causes us to sin against persons. One estimate of the indirect and direct loss of life from World War I reached 40,000,000 lives, so that if these dead could march past us 10 abreast, it would take 184 days for them to pass. And they the flower of our race!
Victorious Living
(Week 22, May 31)
Micah 4: 8; Mathew 5:21-22; James 4:2
5. [War kills] the conscience. . . .
6. It lays hold of the finest virtues and prostitutes them. It lays hold of patriotism, heroism, self-sacrifice, idealism, and turns them toward destruction. . . .
7. It sins against the helpless. War protects? When? Where? . . . Protect the helpless? It produces them.
8. It stands against everything that Christ stands for. It sins against Christ. If war is right, Christ is wrong; and if Christ is right, war is wrong. . . .
Christ and war are irreconcilables. . . . If I must make my choice, I choose Jesus. Therefore I renounce war.
Victorious Living
(Week 22, Friday)
We Face the Question of War
Romans 14:4; 1 Peter 3:12-17
What shall be my attitude toward war? If we do not face that question and find abundant living through, and not around it, we shall have abundant living that is unreal. It would be easier not to face this question, for equally good people are on both sides of it; it would be easier and more deadly. Sometimes in our discussions, I have used the pronoun “I” in a representative capacity; but here I must use it in a strictly personal way, and tell you how far I have gone in my thinking and attitudes.
(1) I have determined that my attitude toward war shall not break my fellowship with those who differ from me. I believe in liberty of conscience so much that I must give the other person liberty of conscience to differ from me without inwardly de-Christianizing him or her, even in thought. The fellowship must not be broken.
(2) I am completely disillusioned about the war method. During the first world war, I preached on two texts: “Herod and his soldiers set Jesus at naught” (Luke 23:11 KJV)—militarism sets Jesus at naught. “But when they saw the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul” (Acts 21:32)—military power can be used to protect the innocent. This last text allowed me to approve of the war. Since then I have been completely disillusioned about the ability of the military method to accomplish what its advocates believe it can.
(3) The military method cannot and does not protect the innocent. It protects the guilty, who are behind the lines, and involves the innocent, both civilians and soldiers alike, in insensate, useless slaughter. To compare the military method to that of protecting your wife or daughter from a ravisher is a false analogy; for war exposes wife and daughter—in fact, all innocents—to ravishment: spiritual, mental, and physical.
Abundant Living
(Week 44, Thursday)
Romans 12:17-21; Philippians 2:5; 1 Peter 3:8-12
War is a means out of harmony with the ends it hopes to accomplish. People everywhere acknowledge that the war method is wrong, but they hope to use it to accomplish good ends. This is a fond and futile hope, for “the means preexist in and determine the ends.” You cannot dismiss the means before they have shaped the ends. They go straight into and determine the ends. Evil means produce evil ends. If good has ever come out of war, the reason was that other constructive influences have been introduced into the process and have produced constructive ends in spite of the war method.
To liken war to a surgical operation is a false analogy. A surgical operation posits an immaculately sterilized surgeon with immaculately sterilized instruments, or else it will do more harm than good. I know this from my own experience, for I was infected with tetanus when operated on for appendicitis. What nation as it goes to war can claim immaculate sterility for itself and its instruments? If it did, then the first germ that would infect the body of humanity would be hypocrisy. War cannot be carried on in an immaculately sterile manner—its weapons are lies, deceits, and hypocrisies. “The first casualty in war is truth”; the second is love, for it is absurd to say that you can go to war loving your enemies. If you loved your enemies you would be very poor soldier.
Abundant Living
(Week 44, Friday)
Using Cyclones
Isaiah 51:7-8, 12; 54:17
The war [World War II] has left a harvest of devastated homes, hearts, and hopes. “Why didn’t God stop the war?” is the anguished cry. How could God do so without taking away our wills, depersonalizing us, making us things? The war was of our making. We produced the conditions out of which [totalitarism flourished]. The soldiers at the front were not dying for us; they were dying for our sins. The only good that will have come out of this war is what we rescue in making a new world for everybody.
The Way
(Week 35, Sunday)
Worshipping Gods Conquered in War
Isaiah 8:9-15
The method of war is incapable of producing the results expected of it. The means are out of harmony with the ends sought. For getting rid of evil by evil means you infect yourself with the very evil you try to get rid of.
The Way
(Week 47, Tuesday)