a premature ending to some expansive thoughts...

Working as hard as a dog allows no time for writing. I decided that this morning. No sense in me keeping hope alive for further writing on pacifism Vs. aggression. I am a full-time married man, part-time house maintenance man, full-time physical therapist and part-time student.

So it ends here. My rambling writing on pacifism and aggression is over for now. No doubt I will continue to think on the matter much. For now I end off prematurely with some personal conclusions and determinations: POLITICS, MORALITY, THEOLOGY, LIFESTYLE.


POLITICS: American politics are ramping up for November presidential elections. One presidential candidate held up liberty as a virtue and peace as a plan more than any other; that was Ron Paul. Rep Paul is now out of the republican campaign and I am now unsure if any other candidate would represent my values to any great extent.

McCain has made strong overtures toward continuing American military heavy-handedness in Iraq, Korea, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and... well the list goes on. Not to mention that he took an apparently strong stand against employing "harsh" interrogation techniques with detainees only to quietly negotiate with the President a legal clause in S.3930 that says "the President has the authority for the United States to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions." So, torture is illegal, but the president has legal wiggle-room to authorize "harsh" techniques as long as they fall outside his interpretation of the definition of torture. Wow, that is tremendous; it sounds like the sort of self-justification the Soviets would have employed back in the 1980's. (Remember the Soviets, those damn enemies of freedom?) This is not to mention that McCain's bill denied habeas corpus rights to the hundreds of detainees that America is holding for not all together certain reasons. McCain is not the one America needs right now.

Barrack Obama has made speeches in the Senate expressing opposition to torture and suspending habeas corpus rights. He voted against the above bill. Disturbingly, though, Obama said that if elected in November he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government. How does that work? As a general principal is it right for one sovereign nation to attack within another sovereign nation without approval from that nation? I think not. America would not react ambivalently to Russian strikes against Chechens on American soil. Such a scenario would mean war between Russia and America. Why should we think any differently about Pakistan. Diplomacy is not an option when dealing with sovereign nations, it is a rule. With Obama's comments one thinks back to President William Clinton's decision to launch a cruise missile strike at a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum. We wonder now why Khartoum is unwilling to truly cooperate with the US with regard to Darfur. The America with which they are acquainted is a country that lacks diplomatic will power. America needs a president who will not be like a bull in the international china shop. I am concerned that Obama would be a very well meaning but disastrously spirited bull in the Southeast Asian china shop.

That leaves me with Hillary Clinton. Honestly, I have not given her policies much thought. She is hardly an international libertarian like Paul, but I do think that she may exhibit more international restraint than the other two candidates. I am just beginning to scrutinize her platform, but right now she is the front runner in my mind...however reluctant I might be to say that given America's violent international actions during her husband's White House tenure (remember Khartoum, Kosovo and Somalia?).


MORALITY: A large percentages of the American GDP is spent on keeping people alive. In fact, so much money is spent on health and life that one might be tempted to conclude that America views life as a precious gift, and disease and death as twin monsters. On the contrary, second glances at American activity reveal cavalier attitudes toward abortion and warfare. Perhaps disease and death are only monsters when they offend our highest convenience. Public laws and personal actions at times place utility way up high in the sky as the one transcendent rule of law. "What benefit will this be to us?" has become the litmus question. And without a doubt this has been the main thrust of my own thoughts on pacifism. My question has become this: "What functional outcome will benefit us best with concern to international action?" However, I make a stark departure from strict utilitarian thought by framing my functional equation within a matrix of morality. Two questions must be asked: "What is right?" and "What is most beneficial to everyone?" Unlike what the utilitarian might say, moral right is not determined by the benefits any rule or value yields to a group. Moral right is given to us by God and does not bend from age to age to meet the needs of any particular group. A group might have no other choice than to bend away from moral right to meet its needs, but this is the group bending not moral law. The moral matrix within which I place utilitarian thought is this: killing is evil. In the end a society that bends away from this moral matrix is committing evil, whether it be Germany killing Jews or America killing Bosnians or China killing Tibetans. Death is a monster and war is the result of a decision by countries to unleash a flurry of evils into the world. I am not saying that these evils are always unnecessary, sometimes they are necessary (e.g.: America entering the war against the Nazi's). However, I am saying that these evils are evil. Naming an evil as something other than an evil is a worse sin than committing that evil because it opens a fountain from which flow myriad other evils. It is a turning away from moral understanding that throws groups and nations into a spiral of wicked action. America committed evil when under Roosevelt's direction it entered into war against Germany, Italy and Japan; we should not cower away from saying this. In the end of time Roosevelt will stand trembling before the Almighty and he will answer for the Dresden fire bombings; I believe God does not play favorites with people because they used evil for a beneficial end (e.g.: ending Nazi atrocities). War is always a crime. Evil is called evil because it is repulsive to God.

With this final judgment in mind I say with a trembling heart that violence is sometimes necessary to protect the weak and oppressed. Even so, a country fighting on behalf of the weak must keep in mind that in the end we are all oppressors and ruthless killers (to some degree) who plead at the mercy seat for grace and transformation. I would go so far to say of myself that even I (a supposed pacifist) am a killer.


THEOLOGY: God created out of his limitless inspiration and God will justly destroy any critter that maligns his good creation. God exists in perfect righteousness. Right action continually emanates from His holy character. Evil cannot begin to get near to God without being justly destroyed. Paradoxically, though, God is not absent from this thoroughly evil world. Understanding this paradox from a reformed line of thought has been my passion for three or four years now. Mentally enter the old Greek pagan shrines, Jewish temple courts, ancient family lives, Roman legal systems and markets and you have in mind the images Saint Paul conjured up when reckoning with the reality of a holy God acting in love to an evil world. God lovingly incarnated into the world and bore the penalty of evil to reconcile the world to Himself. In so doing God did not condone wickedness but rather objectively dealt with it and demonstrated holy wrath against such wickedness through the death of Christ on the Cross. A world which had stolen from God's good creation beginning in the Garden of Eden had been ransomed by Christ. The debt of death owed by humanity to God was paid by God. Christ willingly bore humanities wickedness and received the full measure of God's wrath in our place. Conversely, the moral righteousness of God was placed on those obedient to God by Christ. God's long divorced family was reconciled through the Good Friday work of Christ.

And yet evil remained evil. Righteousness remained righteousness. In other words, when living became right for humans, killing did not become right. The moral law remained unchanged. Please toss aside any idea of a morally superior nation justly waging war against a morally inferior nation. Christ went to the cross because of all-pervasive wickedness; there was no such thing as a righteous remnant. This is not to say that God does not execute righteous judgement through one nation directed at another nation. However, one look at ancient Hebrew national history reveals that YHWH would at times direct His wrath through the Hebrews against pagan nations and at other times through a pagan nation against the Hebrews. At times the Hebrews were used to execute YHWH's judgment on another nation when it was the Hebrews themselves were deserving of the judgment they were dishing out. God was just in so acting, the Hebrew nation was not. All nations are wicked and consequently unjustified in any war.


LIFESTYLE: How should I live then? I have not ever physically killed any person. As a child I did used to torture my brothers. From time to time I did kill various animals ranging from ants to toads to crabs. That is the closest I have come to actual, personal violence and killing.

So what do my thoughts on pacifism mean for me, then. First of all I need to recognize that if ever I am in a situation where I am physically malnourished, physically unsafe and emotionally anguished I will be severely tempted to use violence. A disciplined reliance on the spiritual sustenance of Christ would be an anchor for me in such a crisis. Regimined time with the Lamb of God would remind me how to chose to live as He chose to live...a man for others.

Secondly, I need to practice habits of verbal conflict resolution. The alternative to the sword is the tongue. All too often the words I do not use are words of honesty which, when conveyed lovingly across time, speak to my personal disaffections toward people. Only after speaking specifically to a rupture in a relationship can reconciliation occur. For me, this requires honesty about my feelings and particular concerns about the history within that relationship. It also requires a good deal of active listening when emotions run high. Walking away in anger is the fighters response. Day in and day out I find myself repressing my true thoughts and feelings. Just yesterday I walked away from a nurse who I felt was disrespectful to me. I then proceeded to talk about her to all my co-workers; that was the wicked fighter in me, not the peace maker. Verbal conflict resolution means engaging in conflict verbally. God, help me here.

Thirdly, I need to specifically recognize my own moral corruption. There can be no healthier practice for this Christian than to invite the Spirit to search my insides for wickedness. The temptation arises in a conflict to search my "adversary's" character for easy-to-find flaws. What I need is to see my short comings, my wickedness, my guilt before the Almighty and my "adversary." Self-searching creates a genuine humility which is the breading ground for peace making. After internal and external confession of transgression against my adversary I can confidently speak my complaint without internally being a self-righteous, arrogant man.

Fourthly, as a citizen of Heaven I am an ambassador for Christ. This citizenship trumps my American citizenship. When enemies strike America my regular discipline needs to be that I revisit Good Friday. St. Paul said it well, "While we were still enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." God's Son died for God's enemies. This is a powerfully provocative picture for the Christian residing in a country at war. My personal conviction is that my role as Christ's ambassador is not to die for my country or my family but rather to live for them. If I must die, my dying should be a dying for my enemy. This is real love: to die for an enemy while engaging him in the ministry of reconciliation. Reciprocal altruism be damned. The most pressing question now is do I really mean that? Time tells all.


Now that I put all those thoughts out there I can end my writing on the topic (for now, anyway). I will not stop writing, though. My next project is to get a graduate degree in physical therapy. This will involve lots of writing and eventually publishing research. If I have any readers remaining I would direct them to my new blog: http://themboneshurt.blogspot.com/