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Pacifism is an ideology that opposes war and violence of all kinds in all cases. Longing for universal peace, some pacifists may die for their dream but they refuse to kill for it.
The problem is that humans have always had a terribly hard time getting along. Someone somewhere is always fighting, for good or ill. Dreams of peace have never changed this tragic fact.
I was once a pacifist. While many 17-year-olds today seem to be quite focused on fun, at 17, I agonized over the ethical dilemma presented by the prospect of being drafted and ordered to kill another person. The Vietnam War raged as I approached age 18. Could I actually kill a human being? I fled to the Bible.
My initial answer was, no. Jesus called for turning the cheek. And how could I obey Jesus’ command to love my enemies (Mathew 5:44) while killing them? The Apostle Paul added, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21). The sixth commandment said, “You shall not kill.” (Exodus 20:13). All that was enough for me.
The Vietnam War ended just before I came of age and I never had to sustain an order to kill. Yet, I emerged from my struggle as a serious young man, no less capable of having fun but finally capable of serious contemplation. My ethical struggle helped make me into a serious Christian with a faith no longer on loan from my parents.
It was my serious side that eventually deconstructed my pacifism. A biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenged my pacifism. Bonhoeffer was a pacifist in his youth but the problem of Adolf Hitler helped to change his mind. That oversimplifies the story but his problem with pacifism was that it is itself oversimplified. It feels great in theory but in real life, it leaves the innocent too vulnerable and the guilty too powerful.
Back to the Bible. Not only does the Old Testament (OT) overwhelmingly endorse the death penalty, it also presents God Himself as a warrior. Many wars in the OT are merely described in historical terms. Yet, many also rise out of the stated will of God, who calls men into and out of war. Still, the idea and reality of peace (shalom) is central to the God of the OT. When violence and war are needless or in excess, God was not pleased. David could not build God’s house due to the blood on his hands (1 Chronicles 28:3). The beautiful Abigail also showed her intelligence by guiding David away from the “staggering burden of needless bloodshed” (1 Samuel 25:3 & 31).
In the OT, there are ethical and purposeful guidelines, but war is not ruled out. Among the purposes for violence are protection, provision and punishment. And, the sixth commandment is translated poorly in the King James Version. It specifically prohibits “murder” (a legal term), and not various other forms of killing.
In the New Testament (NT), we see Jesus Himself use violence and wield a weapon (John 2:15) in the very temple of God for the sake of God’s honor and justice. Jesus did not tolerate the use of the temple as a den of thieves or a marketplace where prayer was besides the point (Mark 11:17).
After Paul told his readers to overcome evil with good, he spoke of God’s institution of governing authorities to “bear the sword” for the purpose of just punishment. In fact, the one in authority is called “God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” (Romans 13:4).
God does not call His church to violent missions of mercy or justice, but he has not left the innocent vulnerable and unprotected. He recognized the need for the forces of evil to face stiff resistance and He gave that role to governing authorities. This does not mean that all authorities will do right. It merely affirms why their office was given to them by God. And when authority is abused, God can and often does take that office away.
The NT does not call soldiers out of their service to the state. John the Baptist had serious moral advice for soldiers (“Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely--be content with your wages," Luke 3:14), but his advice did not include breaking their commitments as soldiers. Jesus commended a centurion (commander) for his use of authority and his great faith (Matthew 8:5-13). He healed the centurion’s servant and never challenged his service in the Roman military. Later, a devout centurion named Cornelius was praised in Acts 10 for his character; generosity and regular prayer life.” God accepted his virtues as a memorial offering. Once baptized, we read of no departure from his army command. Paul later called Epaphroditus a “fellow-soldier.” (Philippians 2:25). He also compared Christian servants to soldiers favorably (1 Timothy 2:3-4).
Leaving pacifism need not make one a warmonger. It only means that you recognize that some wars, like it or not, can be justified and that we can honor the peacemaking service of a devout policeman, soldier or governing authority. I happily serve under an elder who is also a policeman.
Like sincere pacifists, I cringe painfully over the casualties of war. Recently, a pacifist friend shared his outrage with me over the fate of innocents killed by bombs made in the USA. He decried the tragic fate of babies being killed in the name of war.
I agreed that it was terribly tragic. But I added that in some cases, if peace-loving people do nothing and evil people are not stopped, even more babies may die. I realize that such fates are not easy to decipher before the fact, but cases are common in which it is possible that appeasement or inaction can result in higher casualties. I suggested that in the case of legitimate defense, the blame for the baby-killing goes to the perpetrators posing the evil threat in the first place.
I was flabbergasted by his response. As a pacifist, he could not conceive of good people doing violence for any reason. So he replied, “Then let the bad guys do the killing.”
He seemed less concerned with people dying than over the idea of good people being responsible for people dying. With emphasis on the word “bad” in his reply, he clearly sought no culpability for the casualties of war. His reply sounds more ominous with the accent on the word “let.”
Pacifism often calls for too much confidence in the goodness of men. To their credit, Christian pacifists do seem to place a lot of confidence in the intervention of God, sooner or later. There is merit to their position, but only to a point. And that point is the point. Peace-making calls for the application of every feasible option before resorting to war. There is a point, however, wherein peacemaking is counter-productive, or even useful to evil-doers. We humans have always had a way of imposing real threats and dangers beyond all points of negotiation, appeasement, strategy or sanction. At that point of last resort, it becomes unethical, in my view, to “let the bad guys do the killing.”
The Bible speaks of a God who approves the use of the sword by those in authority (Romans 13). God ordains this to protect the innocent. The weakness of the pacifist position was illustrated on United flight 93 on September 11, 2001. In that case, the last resort turned out to be too late for the innocents on board. Yet it was not too late to stop the evildoers from doing more evil. The plane had been hijacked. The pilots and stewardesses were butchered. Passengers learned on their cell phones that other planes had already hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. They knew their plane had been turned back toward Washington DC. The time for pacifism had passed. In the face of such evil, you fight! With slaughtered stewardesses at your feet, you storm the gates of hell! To let the bad guys do the killing is not an ethical option. Universal acclaim goes to those heroes who stormed the terrorists, violently. It was too late to save their own lives, but not the lives of others.
All violence is not evil. Sometimes (and it is not always easy to know when), the refusal to resort to violence is wrong. The love of peace is a virtue, but pretending that peace is an easy virtue is dead wrong. At least not in this present world. Shalom!
For a related article in this issue, see "Just War Theory: A Summary"
Joel Mark Solliday , B.A., M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Brooklyn Center Church of Christ in Minnesota. A Pepperdine graduate, he later worked in their Campus Life Office and at ACU as a Missionary in Residence. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary.
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