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Berserk
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B-man,
My political views on Iraq are inappropriate for this section of the site, but I'd be glad to discuss them with you in a private message. What I intend to do here is address the religious problem of war from a perspective that might shed light on the difficulty of gaining a consensus through astral exploration.
Until around 200 AD, the church's official position on war was anti-militaristic. The church prohibited Christians from serving in the Roman army. For the details of when and why this changed, see Jean-Michel Hornus, "It is not Lawful for Me to Fight." This pacifism was based on Jesus' teaching:
e.g. "But if you are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for the happiness of those who curse you (Luke 6:27-28)."
Jesus was not a complete pacifist. He encouraged His disciples to carry swords for personal protection (Luke 22:36-38). But He prohibited aggressive use of violence. Consider His reaction to Peter's swordplay in Gethsemane:
"`Put away your sword,' Jesus told Peter. `Those who use the sword will be killed by the sword (Matthew 26:52).'"
Most Christians don't confront the question of how Jesus' attitude squares with the God of the Old Testament who often sanctions war. But after some progressive revelation, God's ultimate position on war is expressed by this vision or goal that He repeats through two prophets to ensure that Israel gets His point:
"The Lord will settle international disputes. All nations will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. All war will stop and military training will come to an end. Come, people of Israel, let us walk in the light of the Lord (Isaiah 2:4-5 = Micah 4:3)."
Remember, the future is not fixed for a prophet. Jesus' teaching on non-violence is merely intended to help implement God's program of ultimate harmony. So in an ironic sense B-man's sarcastic question about why God needs soldiers and their weapons is quite to the point. When it is not a case of self-defense, Jesus advocates the substitution of supernatural warfare employing weapons like patience, love, and prayer. It is up to us to establish the right policies to bring Gpd's goal to fruition.
But, you say, what about all those divinely sanctioned battles in the Old Testament? This is a good question. It requires us to squarely face the meaning of progressive revelation.
It must be recognized that most of ancient Israel's battles were struggles for survival. Yet at times, Israel seems eager to claim a divine mandate to justify her bellicose ways. To put this in perspective, it is helpful to grasp how Jesus and the prophets view God's Mosaic revelation.
The Law of Moses allows a man to dirorce his wife for any "indecency" (Deuteronomy 24:1) and later rabbis deemed this to include burning dinner or having the gall to develop wrinkles with age.
But Jesus contradicts this by teaching that God wants couples to marry with the assumption that this means a lifelong commitment. When asked to explain how He can contradict Moses like this, Jesus in effect replies that in Moses' day Israel was too culturally close-minded to hear what God really wanted to say (see Mark 10:4-5)! Jesus would no doubt explain Israel's spiritual rationalization of excessive violence in a similar way.
Any reader of the Pentateuch will have the impression that all the ritual laws concerning sacrifices derive directly from God. The Jerusalem Temple, of course, becomes the center of the cult of sacrifice. So it is most shocking to hear the prophet Jeremiah contradict this assumption:
"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: Away with your burnt offerings and sacrifices! Eat them yourselves! WHEN I LED YOUR ANCESTORS OUT OF EGYPT, I DID NOT SPEAK TO THEM OR COMMAND THEM CONCERNING BURNT OFFERINGS AND SACRIFICES. This is what I told them: `Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people (Jeremiah 7:21-23)."
The implication here is stunning. God never established Israel's sacrifice system, but once it evolved, God chose to work with it as a structural tool to achieve His top priority: to motivate people to love God with all their heart and mind and to love their neighbor as themselves: "On these two commandments hangs all the law (Matthew 22:40)."
I do accept the Bible as God's Word, but in a different sense than Christian Fundamentalists. The Old Testament must be viewed through the lens of progressive revelation. On the issue of militarism, God's Word is initially silenced or distorted by the prevailing cultural attitudes and belief systems. God must wait for the right time to penetrate this close-mindedness and get through what He always wanted to communicate.
In my view, this has profound implications for the seeming impossibility of gaining a widespread consensus for astral exploration. God so respects our free will that He allows our preconceptions and wishful thinking to distort our overview. But then when we finally do acquire this consensus, our new knowledge will be all the more precious because it will be won with minimal divine interference.
Don
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