Week 47 Sunday
Week 47 Sunday
What Can We Believe about War?
Romans 12:17-21
We come now to face a question we were bound to face sooner or later: the question of the Way and war. We cannot bypass this question and keep our moral integrity. For war does not bypass any of us, anywhere. All of us are affected by war. But not all are affected in the same way.
There are those who say that when we are involved in war, we are all involved in the same way. Those who approve of war and those who do not are all equally involved; therefore, there is no moral distinction. This is shallow. We are all involved, but those who approve of war and those who do not approve of it are involved in morally distinct ways. One gives inner moral assent and the other withholds moral assent. The moral results are very different. Can approval and disapproval produce the same moral results? Then what kind of a moral universe is this?
While giving freedom of conscience to others and refusing to de-Christianize those who differ from me, I must give the reasons why I have had to withhold inner moral consent to war. I believe that the Way and war are incompatible. If the Way is right, then war is wrong. If war is right, then the Way is wrong.
It is largely your beginning place that determines your conclusion. If you begin with the Way and then look at war, you will probably come out to one conclusion. If you begin with war and then look at the Way, you will probably come out to an entirely different conclusion. Your starting point will determine your ending point. Some theological students asked a prominent Christian why he abandoned his former position against war for one of moral approval. In reply, he unfolded a map of Europe, pointed to it, and said, “That map is my reason.” He got his morals from his map, instead of from his Master. He looked at the Nazis instead of the Nazarene. And that is essentially the wrong starting point. The Christian begins at Christ and works from him out to problems.
O Christ, I know where I should begin. I should begin at you. Like Peter, when I take my eyes off you, I sink into the moral morass of the hour. Help me to see you; then I shall see clearly the moral issues of the passing hour. Help me to see war clearly. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall not begin with a problem. I shall begin with the Person and work from him down to my problems.
Week 47 Monday
Raises More Problems Than It Settles?
Isaiah 11:1-9
Yesterday we saw that we must work from Christ to the problem of war. The objector replies, “It’s all very well to talk about getting your eyes on the Nazarene instead of the Nazis, but what are you going to do with Hitler?” The answer is a simple one, “He and his brood were not my babies; they were yours. You produced them out of your method, then laid them on my doorstep and said, ‘What are you going to do with them?’ I wouldn’t have produced them. If you had taken my method and program, Hitler and his kind would not have arisen. You produced them out of your method, and then say we must get rid of them by the same method. It won’t work; it’s a vicious circle.”
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, just back from the war in Europe, said a significant thing, “You cannot produce peace by hate and a club.”* But hate and a club are the stock in trade of war, the very essence of it. According to Eisenhower, you will have to abandon the mentality and the method of war if you are to have peace. I would suspect a mentality and a method I have to abandon at its moment of greatest triumph. The mentality and the method must be wrong.
At the close of the war, I have not had to abandon either my mentality or my method to have peace. My moral universe was the same before the war, during the war, and at the close of the war. And I’m certain that if people will apply the mentality and the method of the Christian, there will be no more war. “But if people will not respond to the Christian way?” Then the answer is, “Increase the dose.” Because the patient doesn’t get well when we give small doses of the Christian spirit and big doses of the war spirit, we should not abandon the giving of the healing Christian spirit and give nothing but the poison of the war spirit. It doesn’t make sense. Increase the Christian dose.
A soldier fresh back from devastated Europe said to me, “We’ve raised more problems in Europe than we’ve settled.” What a verdict! After pouring out the blood of millions and expending billions in money, we come out to that result—more problems raised than settled!
O Christ, forgive us that we have missed the Way. For we know that this is not the Way. The sense of futility that settles upon us as we begin to see the results makes us sure that this way leads away from you. Then put our feet again upon the Way. For we perish. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Nobody wins in war. Everybody loses. It is only a question of the degree of the losses.
*No published source for this quotation was found.
Week 47 Tuesday
Worshiping Gods Conquered in War
Isaiah 8:9-15
Yesterday we saw that 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. It is written, “It was after his return from the massacre of the Edomites, that Amaziah brought the gods of the men of Seir and set them up to be his gods, bowing in homage before them” (2 Chron. 25:14 Moffatt). We worship the gods of those whom we conquer in war. We adopt their ways. In getting rid of militarism by military methods, we are militarized. One of the evil results of this war will probably be peacetime conscription. In getting rid of military nations, built on universal conscription, we end up in adopting the thing that led to their militarization and to their downfall. We do the thing that was their undoing. We end up in worshiping the gods of the nations we conquer. We thus take the slippery road down which every military nation has slid to its doom.
We build a structure for peace, and at the center of that structure we put force, lodged, not in collective security, but in five nations as the final authority of the world.* We adopt Hitler’s principle as the center of a world structure for peace. His principle wins. We become infected by the thing we try to overthrow. No wonder the prophet cries, “The toil of the nations ends in smoke, and peoples wear themselves out for naught” (Hab. 2:13 Moffatt).
Take another picture, “Then Abner said to Joab, ‘Let the young men get up and have a fight before us.’ ‘Very well,’ said Joab. So the young men got up. . . . Each caught his opponent by the head and stabbed him in the side, so that they all dropped together. . . . That day the fight . . . was most fierce. . . . Abner called to Joab, ‘Is the sword to devour forever? Do you not know the outcome will be bitter?’ ” (2 Sam. 2:14-17, 26 Moffatt). This is war. Leaders start it; young men and women fight it; even the leaders get sick of it and cry, “Do you not know the outcome will be bitter?” Outcome bitter? Yes, and the process too is bitter. And nothing good comes out of it, except that which could have been accomplished by other and better means.
O God, forgive our stupidity and our perverseness. We try to make life work in unworkable ways. And we get hurt. We have been hurt, terribly hurt. And now help us to begin again. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: It is a new world for everybody or a new world war for everybody.
*At its founding in 1945, the Security Council of the United Nations had five member nations: France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Currently it consists of fifteen members, with the original five (Russia rather than the Soviet Union) serving as permanent members.
Week 47 Wednesday
The Steps Down
Acts 12:18-23
A vivid illustration of how militarism, after initial successes, defeats itself and becomes worm-eaten is seen in the case of Herod. Acts 12:1 says, “King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church.” Now note the steps down, “He killed James . . . with the sword” (v. 2). Seeing this succeeded, he goes a step further, “he proceeded to arrest Peter also” (v. 3). Peter was imprisoned (v. 4). Herod begins to be disconcerted over Peter’s deliverance and so asserts his peeved authority again, ordering the guards be put to death (v. 19). He retreats to Caesarea, baffled (v. 19). Arrayed royally, Herod talks big, “The voice of a god, and not of man!” (v. 22). Eaten of worms, Herod dies, a worm-eaten god (v. 23).
These are the exact steps down for militarism. It succeeds, goes further, overreaches itself, can’t understand the imponderables, retreats baffled, talks big, rattles the sword, and becomes worm-eaten, dies! War is a worm-eaten god. A Time magazine article says, “It is a law of history that power, even the power of evil, eventually produces the power that supersedes it.”*
Science, in the service of war, discovered the ultimate power at the base of the universe, the power wrapped up in an atom. We were triumphant, and frightened. A commentator said that for three days following its first use, he didn’t see a smile on a single face on the streets of Washington, and that a wisecrack would have been as much out of place as at a funeral. We discovered the ultimate power, grew frightened, saw that war dare not handle it, for it would ruin the used-upon and the user. We knew that it would have to be surrendered into the hands of goodwill to use constructively—or else! In other words, war, which depends on power, got power, grew frightened of the thing it was after, turned to goodness, and said, “Save us, we perish.” Did a method ever reveal its inner bankruptcy so absolutely? It got what it was after and then begged someone else to take it over. I am against a method that, when pushed to its conclusion, means universal ruin. Something is fundamentally, basically, wrong with it.
O Christ, help me to see clearly this evil that has gripped the world in its tentacles. It uses so many good things—patriotism, courage, self-sacrifice—and yet it itself is evil. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If war is right, Christ is inherently wrong. If Christ is right, war is inherently wrong.
*This quotation is likely from “Germany: The Betrayer,” Time (May 7, 1945), which is quoted in Sergie Waisman, Cycles of Destiny ([S.I.]: Trafford, 2011), 141.
Week 47 Thursday
Which Jesus Bar-Abbas?
Galatians 1:6; Philippians 1:15-16; 1 John 2:9-11
A year before the end of the war, I passed by on the train the New Mexico desert with its wired-off area, and I knew they were searching for superpower. I knew not what, but I wrote in my notebook, “Paul went into the desert of Arabia to learn the secret of power, emerged to transform the world; the United States military forces along with science have gone into the desert of New Mexico to learn the secret of power—will they emerge to destroy the world?” Little did I know that I framed a question that is haunting many minds.
These powers must be handled according to the Way—or else! The words of Lew Ayres are true. “And when the peace table comes up again, if God grants us another crack at it, Christ has to sit there. Or else—rubble!”* But the Christian Way must cease alliances that weaken and absorb its strength. It must be itself. Clemenceau said, “When a Christian decides to live his Christianity, then a real revolution starts.”**
But the Christian must discover the real Way and cease to take a camouflaged thing. When the moment of the world’s great choice came, two figures came before the Jewish leaders to choose from—Jesus and Jesus (Matt. 27:17). They both had the same name, according to Moffatt, and the same title: Jesus Barabbas (literally, Jesus, son of the father) and Jesus Bar-Abbas (literally, Jesus, Son of the Father). Jesus means “savior” in both cases, and in both cases, they were sons of the father (Father). The difference was the capital F and the small f. They both came as the savior of the nation—one taking the method of force for deliverance from the Roman yoke; the other, the method of dying to reconcile people to God and one another. They were so alike, the nomenclature of their names the same, the purpose the same. But the content was utterly different. The nation chose Jesus Barabbas, the man of force, and in choosing perished. Roman power destroyed their city. They took the sword and perished by the sword.
Today two different religions stand before the world, both with the same name: Jesus Barabbas and Jesus Bar-Abbas. One relies on the method of war for the deliverance of the nations; the other relies on basic goodwill and justice for all. Which Jesus are we choosing?
O Jesus, to give you your names of Savior and Son of the Father and then to put another content into them—that for you must be the ultimate crucifixion. Save me from that. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall have a Christianity that is Christian.
*Lew Ayres, quoted in Walter Winchell column, St. Petersburg Times (December 27, 1944): 12. Lew Ayres was serving as a chaplain’s assistant at the time he wrote this letter to war correspondent Mark Hellinger.
**No published source was found for this quotation.
Week 47 Friday
Let the Church Keep Its Message
1 Corinthians 2:6-10
We saw yesterday that there are two religions, both using the same names, declaring the same ends, but with utterly different contents. A devotee of the one faith said over the radio, “We must breathe a prayer of thanks to the Ordnance Department for the weapons provided.” A prayer to the Ordnance Department—to his god! If we look to the Ordnance Department as our “god,” and pray to it, then we turn pagan, no matter what Christian names we may still use. It is another Jesus, with another content.
Let the church keep its own message and pray to its own God. In front of the First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia, stands a great church bell that was taken down to be melted into shot and shell for the Confederate Army. A man bought it at a good sum to redeem it from the intended purpose and to save it so it could continue to toll out, “On earth peace, goodwill toward all.” If we allow our organization and influence to be melted down into shot and shell, then who is left to proclaim the only thing that can heal, “On earth peace, good will toward all”? Nobody. In that case, we take our place among the high priests of whom it was said, “Swords and cudgels . . . from the high priests” (Matt. 26:47 Moffatt). What an output from religion—swords and cudgels! Love and sacrifice from Jesus, swords and cudgels from the high priests. These died; the Other lives on. If the church becomes the religious impulse for swords and cudgels and baptizes them with its blessing, then the church too will die as the high priests died. They belonged to the not-the-way.
If the church will not stand for this message, then secularism will be bound to, for life demands it. On the base of a monument to a celebrated Brazilian, Marshal Manuel Luís Osório, are these words, “The happiest day of my life will be that day when they bring me the news that the civilized peoples are celebrating the festival of their brotherhood by burning down their arsenals.”* A cartoon in a daily newspaper depicts a bloody sword, and under it these words, “This might have been a scalpel.” We must make it one.
O Christ, I know that you have a better way—your will. If this way of hate and war is right, you are wrong. If you are right, then this is wrong. I choose you. For you shall be standing on the horizon as the smoke clears away—our one hope. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Atomic energy knows neither friend nor foe. It is primeval force. It is a new beginning, a new world; or it is the end.”**
*This quotation could not be confirmed.
**Marquis Childs,“Atomic Bomb Marks Beginning—Or End,” The Miami News (August 7, 1945), 10.
Week 47 Saturday
A Personal Word
Matthew 26:51-52; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; Revelation 13:10
In closing this week upon the Christian attitude toward war, I want to add my personal word. Better people than I have approved of war. I respect their consciences while disagreeing with their attitudes. I do not judge them. But I must register my own convictions.
During the First World War, I got as far as this in my thinking: I preached a sermon during that war on two texts, “Herod with his men of war set him at naught” (Luke 23:11 KJV)—militarism sets Jesus at naught. “When they saw . . . the soldiers, they left beating of Paul” (Acts 21:32 KJV)—militarism protects the innocent and the weak. Therefore, I can support this war. I got that far.
Then the period of disillusionment set in. I saw that the basis on which I could support war was flimsy and based on a fallacy: militarism protects the innocent and the weak. I saw that innocent and guilty alike were unprotected in war; it makes no moral distinctions. Further, I saw that war did not protect the weak; it involved them and hit them especially. Whatever power militarism has had in the past to protect the innocent and the weak, it has lost all such power. More civilian casualties took place in this war from wounds, famine, and disease than military casualties. War protects no one, anywhere. It does the opposite.
I saw that the whole thing was a vast waste of humanity and goods. Joseph M. Dodge, head of the War Department Adjustment Board, said, “Since war goods are being purchased with the taxpayers’ money and represent economic waste in their use, there is every reason for holding their price as low as possible and restricting profit.”* Economic waste! I saw that war was a vast illusion, a vast waste. It built nothing. It blasted everything. It built nothing beneficial that we could not have built without war.
Then I saw that not only did life not approve it but also Life. When I worked from Christ down to this business of war, it seemed so utterly incompatible with everything I knew about him that it just didn’t fit. So I repudiated it and determined I would give the balance of my days to finding a better way for myself and humankind.
O Christ, I thank you that the conflict within is over. No doubts remain. I am committed and committed forever to getting rid of this awful monstrosity. Give me courage to face misunderstanding and to love those who disagree. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Victory may be achieved through armaments, but not world peace.”
*No published source was found for this quotation.