Category: War

What? A three-part blog? Yes, it’s true, even though I had promised my blog titled “War and Peace” was not going to be as long as Leo Tolstoy’s work of the same name. His book was 1400 pages long, so I have a way to go before breaking my promise. But I do promise there will not be a Part 456 to this topic.

So, why a third part? I had a few more things to say about the topic, and I saw that Part 2 was approaching the length of the Hundred Years War, so I needed to close it up. I hope that the following thoughts will complement what I already said, and provoke some thoughts on your part. Also, no more Latin phrases; I would hate to create a casus belli (reason for war) for you to raise up arms against me.

In no particular order, here are my additional thoughts on warfare:

1. What about a one-on-one battle? Imagine how many lives and resources would be saved if warring nations each chose one champion to fight his or her enemy counterpart. This is actually biblical: the Philistines sent out their champion, Goliath, to fight the champion of the Israelites. He challenged the Israelites, saying, “Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” We know, of course, that David arose as Israel’s champion and slew Goliath, winning the battle (1 Samuel 17:1-58).

This idea was portrayed in a 1970 movie called The Challenge. The story is about a confrontation between the U.S. and an unnamed Asian country over recovering an American jet that crashes in the other country’s waters. Rather than fight a war over the jet, the countries agree to implement a plan called “Surrogate” in which each country will land one soldier on an uninhabited island to fight it out. Whoever kills the other, wins the “war” for his country. Needless to say, both countries cheat and land a second soldier to improve their chances of winning. And that’s the problem with the idea of a champion; the stakes in real life are too high to risk the outcome of a single battle.

2. Is a war just if you fight to defend only your material possessions? At the personal level, can you use force to defend your home or car if someone breaks in to steal but does not threaten to harm you? The law says that the person’s life is more valuable than your material objects, so you can’t harm them to make them stop. But what is left out of that view is the fact that your property is important for your survival and well-being. Your possessions cost part of your life to acquire, and will cost more to replace. If someone steals all your food, what will you eat? If someone takes your home, will you survive on the street? If shoplifting goes on unchecked, can the affected stores survive to provide jobs and needed goods and services? If society devolves into chaos, everyone’s life is at risk.

At the international level, few wars are fought to kill all your enemies in a genocide. Most have been to seize resources the other country has and you want, such as farm land, water, oil, or valuable minerals. When the Ostrogoths invaded Rome, it was because they needed farmland for their people, since they in turn had been driven out of their former lands by other invaders. They needed land to survive. Without it, their people would die as surely as if out to death by the sword.

James 4:1-3 tells us the reason we fight and war with each other: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

3. What about preemptive attacks? Is it okay to attack an enemy before they attack you? Obviously, if you are both at peace, and the other country shows no sign of preparing to attack you, such an attack on your part would not be just. But if war is inevitable, a first strike to diminish their war-making ability may shorten the war and save lives. This is what Japan tried with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 – to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prevent us from stopping their conquests. America has not considered that attack as “just.”

But what about Israel committing cyber-attacks to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons, when Iran has sworn to wipe Israel off the map? What about with drones, missiles, or aircraft? Or does Israel have to wait until Iran strikes first to make their own attacks legitimate?

On a personal level, do you have to wait until a home invader hurts you before you can fight back?

4. Is it morally okay to “bear false witness” (lie) in a war? During World War II the British conducted two hugely successful “disinformation” operations that completely fooled the Germans regarding invasion plans. In the first, they planted false invasion plans on a corpse which they dropped in the sea near Spain. The plans were for an allied invasion of German-held Greece, though the real invasion was set for Sicily. The ruse fooled Hitler, who ordered most of his troops in Sicily to defend Greece instead. Likewise, the Allies created a fictional army led by George Patton, comprised of rubber inflatable tanks and false radio traffic, stationed across from Calais, France, to fool the Germans into thinking Calais was the intended invasion target. The ruse worked, and many lives were saved in Normandy, the true invasion destination.

More recently, in its war against Israel, Hamas claimed that Israel bombed a hospital, killing 500 people including many children. It turns out that the hospital was not hit at all, and the only damage to its parking lot was caused by an errant rocket from a Hamas ally. This lie is representative of disinformation (lies) spread by many groups and countries today wherever conflicts occur.

It seems that the propriety of lying in war depends on the justness of the war. If a country is just in fighting the war, it should use means to shorten the war and achieve victory, even through lying. As the Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, wrote in his book, The Art of War, all warfare is deception.

5. How much force is appropriate? In today’s conflicts, you hear the call for the more powerful party to use “proportional” responses, meaning they should not use more force than necessary to achieve their goals. This is a principle of just war doctrine, but the definition of proportionality can vary. On the one hand, it would be unjust to nuke a country if one of their ships strayed into your territorial waters, or even if they shot down one of your planes in disputed airspace. On the other hand, you are unlikely to win a victory if you send only as many forces as the enemy has available; the result will likely be a stalemate and a bogged down war of attrition, like World War I, causing much more death and misery than if you had been more forceful in the beginning. The principle calls for using only as much force as needed to bring the fighting to an end and save lives in the long run – but enough force to achieve that end.

This pertains to societal and personal levels of conflict as well. Police are constrained to use non-lethal means when possible, but to use sufficient force and numbers to take control of situations and perpetrators. In personal self-defense, potential victims are allowed to use only as much force as is needed to defend themselves; they cannot shoot someone who only shoves them, for example. In this way the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” in Leviticus 24:20 is fulfilled.

6. How is peace ever possible? Humans’ capacity and desire for war are a great scandal. We should be sustaining and helping each other; instead, we fight and kill, justifying our actions with the flimsiest lies and rationalizations. In the name of national honor we kill and destroy. We want and kill to take what we want. We cause desolation, suffering, and loss, and consider every war as “just.” From the beginning, when the first human born on earth killed his brother, to the future end of time when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride (conquest, warfare, famine, and death), there have been, and will be wars and rumors of war (Matthew 24:6). Only when the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) returns will we finally be at peace. Only then shall we “beat [our] swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Micah 4:3). Only then will we find true peace at every level: personal, societal, and between nations. Only in Christ will we find true peace.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you,the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: 1 Samuel 17:1-58; Isaiah 2:1-5; Revelation 6:1-8.

In my previous blog, I presented biblical passages and teachings regarding matters of war and peace. A short summary of those teachings is that God both desires us to be at peace with each other and abhor violence, and permits, even commands, violence (the use of force) to protect people and restrain evil. The question of which command is applicable in any certain situation, is where issues and disagreements arise.

I ended the previous blog with this statement: “There were times when God commanded the ancient Israelites to war against their neighbors and oppressors. Is there such a thing as a just war today? If so, under what circumstances, and how would such a war be carried out?”

This is the question I will try to briefly address. Given that peace is our prime directive, are there times when war is a valid exception to the rule? Is there such a thing as a “just war?”

For the first 300 years of Christianity, the answer was almost always, “No.” Christians were a despised or even illegal minority, and they suffered persecution and death without fighting back. Even when soldiers converted to the faith, they would lay down their arms and refuse to kill other human beings, under penalty of their own death.

One example of this was the martyrdom suffered by over 6,000 soldiers of Rome’s Theban Legion, who in 286 A.D. were slaughtered by other Roman legionaries after they refused to obey the emperor’s command to hunt out and kill other Christians. Other examples abound of Christians who accepted martyrdom without violent resistance, considering their deaths to be patterned after Christ’s own submissive death.

It was after Christianity became legal – and even mandated – that Christians considered war as appropriate and in some cases, necessary. Very soon, the rightness of war was debated. One very influential writer on the subject was Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) who wrote:

“The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like; and it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authorities, good men undertake wars, when they find themselves in such a position as regards the conduct of human affairs, that right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act, in this way.” Reply to Faustus the Manichaean XXII. 74. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, p. 301.

Even after the Church accepted the idea of just wars, certain Christian sects continued to hold and practice pacifist doctrines. These have included the Cathars, Lollards, Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Moravians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists. (See the moving story of Desmond Doss, a Medal of Honor recipient, Adventist, and conscientious objector who served as a medic in World War II, in the movie, Hacksaw Ridge.)

When I think of situations when the use of force, even lethal force, might be appropriate, I think of three levels: personal, societal, and international.

First, as individuals we may need to use force to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and those who are in our care and need our protection. If someone is on a murderous rampage (such as the recent killer in Lewiston, Maine), and attacks us or those we must protect, we are not only allowed to stop the attack, we are righteous in doing so. Where we draw the line is at self- defense; we may not invade other people’s homes and harm them to steal their stuff. We may not torture the wrong-doer or act as vigilantes, roaming the streets looking for law-breakers to punish. We may not kill someone over a perceived insult or minor wrong; this is where “turning the other cheek” comes into play (Matthew 5:39).

The second level is societal. God raises up governments and charges them with subduing evildoers from harming their subjects/citizens. Romans 13:4 says, “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he [the ruler] does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” The police are necessary for a peaceful and ordered society. Where laws are not enforced, the result is rampant crime and societal chaos. It would be nice if police could be like the old British Bobbies, patrolling without sidearms, but those days are past. Nowadays, police have SWAT units to fight criminals with military weapons and tactics. And what happens when police officers themselves step over the line and commit crimes? Then they too should suffer “God’s wrath” under the ruler’s authority.

The third level is international. In a way, it is an extension of personal and societal justifications for violence. It, too, is used to protect those who are, or are about to be, under attack. When one country attacks another, it gathers forces and launches them against the other country. The attacked country responds, and the result is war. Here, one country acts in self defense, and its government uses the sword to restrain the evil being directed at its citizenry. Thus the similarity to the other levels.

Because of the devastating nature of war, countries have entered into treaties to limit aspects of war to protect civilians and regulate the treatment of combatants and Prisoners of War (POW’s). Examples of this are the Geneva Conventions, the Geneva Protocols, and the Hague Conventions. Certain chemical and biological weapons were banned, while the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons addressed such things as landmines, booby traps, and incendiary devices. the intent of the 1980 accord was to limit post-conflict casualties, especially among civilians.

Politicians are not the only ones to consider the question of just wars. Theologians in the Church have also addressed the issue, and have come to the following conclusions on when warfare can be considered “just.”

The first category is about just reasons to go to war (called by theologians, jus ad bellum):

1. Just cause – innocent life must be at stake
2. Proportionate cause – the good accomplished by the war must outweigh the evil done by it.
   
3. Employed only by a competent authority (Government)
   
4. The right intention (to save lives more than to kill enemies)
5. Probability of success to avoid needless deaths (Luke 14:31 –  “Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?”)
   
6. Last resort (All attempts at peaceful resolutions have failed.)
   

Once a country is engaged in war, it must conduct hostilities in certain ways to remain just. Theologians call this, Jus in bello:

1. Distinction – between combatants and civilians. You fight against enemy combatants, not civilians, surrendering enemies, POW’s, or neutrals.
   
2. Proportionality – minimize collateral damage of civilian life and property.
   
3. Military necessity – no violence that does not directly help defeat the enemy.
4. Humane treatment of prisoners of war – medical treatment, food and water. No torture allowed.
   
5. No malum in se, that is, do no acts that are evil in themselves, such as rape and  torture.

Finally, people have recently added a third area of just war: Jus post bellum. This concerns justice after a war, including peace treaties, reconstruction, environmental remediation, war crimes trials, and war reparations. Those are important issues, but are beyond the scope of this blog.

Ultimately, the purpose of a just war is to end violence and bring reconciliation, for we are fighting our brothers and sisters, those who, like us, are made in God’s image. The goal is not to destroy our enemy, but to stop their evil actions. In this way, former enemies may become friends and allies (such as Britain, Germany, and Japan). This desire for renewed fellowship is an important Christian distinction to conflict. Paul tells us in Galatians 6:1, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”  And Jesus told us that we are to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us (Luke 6:28). This doesn’t mean we stand by and allow us or others to be killed, but it gives us the right motives and limits our actions to what is needed and no more.

I hope and pray that neither you nor I face situations where our desire to avoid violence is tested. If so, may God protect and guide our actions!

May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you, that Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Romans 12:16; Romans 15:5; Matthew 5:38-48.

P.S. Stay tuned for Part 3, coming soon!