By Dr. Joel Fetzer
Natural Science Professor
The violence that George W. Bush is currently inflicting on the people of Iraq cannot possibly advance the cause of Christ and is completely contrary to Christian ethics.
First, we have the teachings of Jesus. Trying to show that this war is compatible with the Gospels is like trying to prove that adultery is consistent with one’s marriage vows. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls “peacemakers” especially “blessed” (Matthew 5:9) and commands us to “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). He further admonishes his followers not to resist a person who hits them in the face: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39).
True love is inconsistent with burying people alive (a U.S. tactic during the first Gulf War) or bombing homes into piles of rubble.
Some Christians such as Reinhold Niebuhr read these verses as only constraining individual behavior, not the actions of nations.
But this argument is like saying that while a single murder committed by one person is immoral, there is nothing wrong with several hundred thousand people going out together and each doing exactly the same thing. Murder — whether in retail quantities or in bulk — is still a grievous sin.
Next, the example of the early Church shows that those closest to Jesus understood his uncompromisingly nonviolent message.
During the first two centuries of the Church’s existence, Christian leaders and laity almost universally condemned such gross violations of the sanctity of life like war and abortion.
Justin Martyr, for example, declared “We who were filled with war and mutual slaughter and every wickedness . . . have changed our weapons of war . . . into agricultural implements . . . We who formerly murdered one another now not only do not make war upon our enemies, but that we may not lie or deceive our judges, we gladly die confessing Christ.”
Not until the reign of the “Christian” Emperor Constantine in the third century did many Christians begin trying to rationalize “killing for Christ.”
Third, this war will set back by decades, if not centuries, efforts to bring Christ’s love to Muslims. If we take our faith seriously, we must obey Christ’s directive to go “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).
“All the world” certainly includes Indonesia, Iran, Albania and Algeria, just as “every creature” undoubtedly includes Arabic, Farsi and Urdu speakers. Yet Muslims will now write off the “Christianity” of Bush just as easily as Christians dismiss the “Islam” of Osama bin Ladin.
Thanks to the war in Iraq, more American Christian missionaries and medical workers will be assassinated, more indigenous Christians in the Middle East will become martyrs, and fewer Muslims will hear the Gospel in a way that they can understand.
Finally, supporting the war in Iraq is idolatrous. The first of the Ten Commandments reads, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Jesus likewise reminds us that no one “can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).
That many American Christians support the Bush regime’s aggressive war instead of obeying Christ’s clear call to nonviolence suggests once again that their primary loyalty is to the American flag, which inevitably adorns the inside of their churches, instead of to Jesus, the suffering servant.
They cannot bring themselves to admit that the U.S. government might sometimes commit or even become evil. Almost all Christians outside the United State’s borders find such extreme “Christian” nationalism scandalous.
In a biography by Nell Kennedy, the noted Korean pastor Paul Yonggi Cho describes life in World War II Korea during the Japanese occupation.
Japanese authorities ordered the Christians in one church near Cho’s home to hang a portrait of the Japanese Emperor above the pulpit, to bow to the Emperor’s picture every Sunday, and to pray to the “Christian God” for a Japanese military victory.
True to their faith, the Korean believers flatly refused. In retaliation, Japanese soldiers surrounded the church building, forced the Christians inside, and burned them alive.
One soldier even forced a baby back into the flames after his mother tried to push him out an open window to safety. This story should give us in America something to ponder.
Are the attitudes and actions of today’s American Christians closer to those of the Korean believers martyred for their faith or to those of the Emperor-worshipping Japanese persecutors? I wonder.
March 27, 2003
