War and the Kingdom of God

Ok I have been a bad blogger lately. I admit it, and that is the the first step to recovery.
On behalf of all of my blog readers (the two of you), I am sorry, and I will promise to do better.
Pheew, I feel better now that is off my shoulders.

Live 8 was just the other day. I didn't get to see any of it. We don't have cable anymore, so I missed it. But, I did hear U2 and Paul McCartney sing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on Rhapsody. AWESOME! I hear that the concerts were cool as well. I wish I could have seen the lead singer of the Verve play with Coldplay, that would have been cool.

Anywhoo.
Not long ago I wrote a post called, "I don't know stuff" or something like that. Within that post I mentioned I am not sure if war is ever the right answer. Since then I have had a few friends and readers of my BLOG want me to talk more about what I mean, or at least what I am thinking. Donald Miller states in his book "Searching for God Knows What", that if you were to take a timeline of all of history, and place a red dot on every century that a major war occured somewhere on earth, you would not be able to find a spot where there wasn't a dot. War is something that sadly enough has been prevelant for many of years.
And even more sad is that most of those red dots were justified by its participants as being divinely ordained. From the crusades, to spanish inquisition, from the civil war to Operation Freedom, we like to have God on our side when we choose to fight. I wonder though, how many times God actually ordained a war.

I know there will be people who answer this question by pointing us back to the Old Testament. I know that God told the people of Israel to go to war at times, and that he told them to totally anihilate the Canaanites. (Women, children, and all...which always kind of bothered me to tell you the truth). I can hear you now, "SEE, God isn't against war, he ordains it at times." Well, before you go any further, let me say a few things. First, those stories all come from a time period when Israel was a theocracy. That means that they were a state run by God. From the time of the nation of Israel's inception to the time his spirit left the Temple in Ezekiel, they were a nation run by God. (Although they didn't accept that many times). When God told them to go and destroy the people of Canaan and take the land, they were actually ordained to do so. I will never understand the brutality in light of God's goodness, but I trust God and believe that he ordained their actions. As a side, I do believe that the Canaanite destruciton points towards the final judgement of those who reject God. Anyways, they were acting out of direct orders from God, for they were his nation.

There are no more theocracies, and there hasn't been since the people of Israel's disobedience caused God's spirit to leave their presence. Let me say that again. There are no God ordained nations. I know, that is hard for us "American-Conservative-Evangelicals" to handle, for we have bumper stickers that say, "God Bless America", and we hold to "One nation Under God." Many of us believe that we are "God's Nation", bringing freedom and the "American way to the world" in the name of God.

Not long ago I recieved a flyer in the mail from my denomination advertising district camp meeting. As a promotion they are having a singing group open the camp meeting schedule. This singing group added their bio to the information and in it had this statement about what they saw their purpose as. "We are group of who love God, and love our country and travel all around the world, not afraid to let others know." I don't know why, but that bothers me. Why are we travelling all around the world to tell others about America? Why do we so closely relate our relationship with God with being an American. Did you know that for a middle easterner, the words American and Christian are the same? We should be doing things to help people see that you can be citizen of any nation and be a follower of Jesus. That to be a follower of Jesus superseded any national citizenship.

God is no respector of nations, and through Jesus Christ, his revelation and redemption spread from being through one nation (Israel), to being offered to peoples of all nations. God's kingdom has no boundaries and no geographical limitations, and is made up not of "nations under God" but of people who have placed faith in Jesus of Nazareth. We are citizens first of God's kingdom which transcends borders.

I am getting a little of subject here, but it is important to know that our nation is not ordained by God, and run by God. We are no more special in his eyes than any other nation on earth. So we can't hold to the fact that the wars we decide to invent or participate in are God's plan. That is not a valid argument.

With that said comes the question, "Are there any wars that are right, and that we should support?" I don't know. You have our brothers and sisters in the Anabaptist movement that will say no. That war is never in God's will for this world being redeemed by Christ through the church. I still am wrestling with this, and it is very attractive to me. It fits my understanding of God's love and grace.

Then you will have those who like Martin Luther, seperate the present existence into two seperate spheres. The Sphere of the world and the Sphere of the Kingdom of God. Luther went so far to say that these spheres don't connect and should be kept seperate and he ordained wars that were totally unjust. I have come to see that this is mindset of many of our evangelical christians today, whether they want to believe it or not. They might in their morning devotions read the sermon on the mount, hearing Jesus talk about love of enemies, and at lunch time discuss the need for more troops in Iraq. Seperation is there.

There are also those who consider the idea of Just war. This theory proposes that war is just and needed at times, but only when the effects will be worse if war is not entered into, than if it is. This is the theory held to be by propopents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which I have a hard time with. I don't believe that the killing of innocent women and children at anytime is just. However, there is a case for WWII being just. When looking at what Hitler and the third reich did, it is hard for me to say that we didn't need to intervene. So, I have a reluctant connection with this theory.

In the end I believe I want to be a pacifist, but don't know if it is possible. If someone was hurting my wife or child, I would defend them and hurt back. Most would do the same. So is true pacifism atainable. I don't know. I do know that I hate war. And the present war we are in is a good example of a war that is not just.

This didn't clear anything up, I know, but maybe it spurred a conversation among some of you.
I am open to your thoughts, and actually look forward to them.