How should a Christian assess war?
Of course our history is full of the oxymoronic "Christian wars" - but we aren't going on precedent here.
It seems to me that how Christians should view war, falls right on that line between the way things are supposed to be, and the way things are.
The problem, even when it comes to a war like this awful thing imposed on Ukrainians who were just living their lives, is that Jesus gives us no example at all of ever defending himself.
Nope, not even in that table-turning incident.
Jesus of course instructed us, when assaulted, to "turn the other cheek," as in offer the other side of one's face for a second shot. Prodded to carry an oppressor soldier's backpack for a mile, Jesus told us to offer to carry it for a second mile. He told us to love our enemies.
If we are his followers, that sets us up badly for how our hearts really want to respond to Putin's aggression against Ukraine.
And for those Jesus-followers who lead countries - what should they do?
These are very hard things to think through. But one response we should reject right away is one I've heard many times: it's NOT that "Jesus didn't really mean it."
He meant it quite sincerely, in that this is exactly what he himself was about to do for us. When he was (wrongfully, unjustly) arrested, he could have called down a legion of angels to stop it and protect him, but he didn't. He wouldn't even let his disciples fight for him.
No, he did his fighting before those soldiers ever arrived. In the Garden of Gethsemane, on his face before his father, tempted not to go through with what he was sent to do: to die on the cross He decided then and there, "Not my will, by yours (God's)." So Jesus set his face toward taking whatever they were going to dish out, including an execution for a crime he didn't do, including all the humiliation that they packed into it - even a crown of thorns.
Did Jesus really want us to do the same, under all circumstances?
Jesus did know that his followers would be persecuted for being his followers, and yes - he expected them to "take it" in the same way - because it was a demonstration of who really wins.
Jesus didn't stay dead, right? Those who wanted him dead, wanted him gone - but he was raised from the dead, in a redeemed body, which he took to heaven with him. His resurrection was the beginning of a whole new way of being, one that is promised to us, too, in our own resurrection.
It was a lot of things, that event, but one of the things it was, was a repudiation of death. Death didn't get to win, and they didn't get rid of him, and they didn't win, either.
And among many other things we are to learn from Jesus' death and resurrection, we who are his followers are meant to take a very different attitude towards death as a result. It isn't what it looks like: it isn't the end, it doesn't win and even when we die in this old body, we aren't finished. The victory over death has already been won.
Jesus calls us to live a life that reflects that knowledge, so that those who may oppose us, who threaten us with death, would know it has no power over us. They are disarmed.
Now, does that help us when it comes to war being waged on our planet, witih all kinds of possible implications for us all? Not directly Not right away. But we need at least that much of a background to begin to consider it.
Because it also figures into whether Jesus-followers ought to be "waging death" toward others. Should we be using death as a weapon, when we have been delivered from it ourselves? Should we be trusting in death's power, when Jesus went to the cross to reveal it defanged?
I'm thinking about that question today.
