Chapter 3 leaps right into a very very difficult question: “What would you do if someone were attacking a loved one?”
I have a wife and a child. I love them and want to protect them from evil. Because of this, many things in this world are unsettling to me even more than they would be were I single and childless. Whatever I believe and do, I must live like Christ. Continue reading →
In chapter 2 D. Stephen Long deals with the difficult question “What About Protecting Third Party Innocents? Can we just let our neighbors die?”
Long doesn’t pretend all this is easy. He’s a reluctant pacifist who came from a military family. He doesn’t let us choose pacifism for some bogus reason. He rejects that liberal pacifism where we just say we hate war but perpetuate the conditions that make war “necessary”. He rejects the notion that war is bad because all soldiers are bloodthirsty savages. Many soldiers are and have been decent, loving, exceptional, faithful people who seem to be incapable of harboring hate, and what we call good soldiering requires “self sacrifice, disciplined community, and moral attentiveness.” He rejects the notion that pacifists are better because they don’t like war and everyone else does. Practically nobody loves war (except immature American boys who play Call of Duty all day and think war would be fun). Even the most battle-hardened want to avoid it, with few exceptions. So we can’t reject violence for cheap reasons. Continue reading →
When you think of people who believe in nonviolence, what image comes to mind? Is it someone you find distaste in? Is something about them other than their commitment making you dislike them? Now picture someone who is like you or someone you admire in every way. Then imagine them truly believing in nonviolence. Would you call them a sissy? Coward?
In my last post I introduced the chapter-by-chapter review of A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, a collection of essays on Christian nonviolence, specifically questions often asked about it by skeptics, or just curious seekers.
The first chapter opens with a common misconception worded in this question: “Isn’t Pacifism Passive?”
We come to see that this argument against peacemaking has not roots in logic or theology, but comes from what I’ve found is a mixture of semantic misunderstanding and aesthetic distaste. In her essay C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell addresses this question very well.
[note: for the sake of clarification when I speak of pacifism I will speak of it in broad terms, meaning a commitment to nonviolence, which we will see is based on the word for “passion”. Whether that means a decision never to use violence ever, we shall see as we read along.]
As with the rest of the book, Ewell leads the discussion based on five assumptions for Christians:
1) Jesus and his story are real
2) We are to be witnesses of Jesus
3) We “see thru a glass dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12), but “we do see Jesus” (Heb. 2:9)
4) Faith is a journey in which we question ourselves and shine our light for others
5) It all goes back to the life (and death, and re-life) of Jesus Continue reading →
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will command peace to the nations.
-Zecheriah 9:9-10
I’ve been looking forward to reading a certain book for a while, now that I’ve had some friends recommend it to me. The book is called A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, a collection of essays about Christian nonviolence. It is a book that I already know will challenge me, will set the voice of scripture up against some things people sometimes tell me who also read that scripture a lot.
I’d like to thank Carl Jenkins for really getting me interested in the reading, and for giving me bits and pieces of his reading along the way. He did a book review. I’m doing a full chapter-by-chapter throughout the next month or so.
The Hunger Games movie is coming out on DVD tomorrow. I remember first hearing about the book. I’m like, “neat teens book idea. A little violent sounding.”
The idea sounded silly. Then I saw the movie. Then read the book. Then the others.
On the surface, the idea seems very profane. Kids killing each other. For entertainment. What has society come to? But if you read these books what you soon realize is that the book is using such a profane thing to ask questions about what entertains us, and what we are willing to embrace and accept, what we are passionate about changing and what lengths we will go to to make that happen, and what the consequences are of those lengths. And if you think that was a run-on sentence, then you see how oppression and violence can likewise run on and on and on, if we don’t do something to stop it.
Says Empire: “Doing something to Syria would be a big blow to Iran.” Except that Iran hasn’t threatened us. We are more of a threat to them.
Obama wants to invade Syria. The reasoning: it will weakin Iraq. Because killing people in one country to make another country weak when it’s already too weak to even think of attacking us is logical in any playing field. Ron Paul could talk him out of it, if he would just listen.
What ‘s happening in Syria is none of our business. What happened in Libya is none of our business. In fact, what happened in Iraq was none of our business.
I echo the video: this whole invade everybody who we think might get a nuke in the future or something is bad politics, bad policy, bad economy. Oh, and it’s morally corrupt.
You want to change things for the better in a country? Send in doctors. Send in teachers. Send in carries of gospel.
Missionaries, not missiles.
The prophets of Israel called for quietism abroad. That means you don’t go invade other places. Oh, and America’s founders also didn’t want to go “monster hunting” abroad, for those of you who claim to follow Jesus but care more about America. So, no matter how you cut it, this invasion would be wrong.
over the last 50-80 years America’s history of preemptive war, covert destabilization, foreign occupation, nation building, torture and assassination have accumulated a vast hatred of American presence in the Middle-East and other places in the world. It’s time for this to end.
Swords into ploughshares. Ron Paul is the only politician I know who seriously quotes it in his use of policy rhetoric. Start listening to him.
CALEB COY 