Why I'm Wearing a Poppy Today

It is the crazy time of term: marking to do and I'm away at ETS/AAR next week. So blogging has been slow. But I wanted to get this up for Remembrance Day.
__________

For years I was conflicted about Remembrance Day and found it difficult, especially as a pastor. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with the issue of war and whether Christians should participate in it. For about 15 years, from the start of my doctoral work until about 5 years ago, I embraced pacifism, to which I had always been vaguely inclined. But after I completed 12 hectic years of academic administration in 2004 and had a chance to read, reflect and pray systematically about the theological implications of the pacifist position, I gradually changed my thinking.

Theologically, I have always been conservative, Reformed and Evangelical. On moral issues like sexuality, marriage, the family, abortion and euthanasia I have always held firmly to the traditional, biblical positions. But for a period of my life I departed from the conservative consensus on two points: war and economics. Over the past few years, having had time to reflect on these issues more thoroughly, I have come to reject liberal pacifism and socialism as incompatible with a biblical worldview. I have been deeply influenced by my reading of Augustine over the past few years, whose thought on matters relating to Christianity and culture I now regard as the most profound in the history of the Church.

I admire the Amish and their separatist way of life, just as I admire the venerable tradition of monasticism, even if neither pacifism or celibacy is my personal calling. Like celibacy in the monastic tradition, socialism can be a positive thing if it is voluntary and limited to a specific community like the Amish or the monastic orders. But to impose either socialism or pacifism on the modern nation state, which means imposing it in unregenerate people, is folly and the theology that teaches we ought to try is, in the end, heretical.

The reason for my change of mind is not practical but theological. I have no problem seeing that a moral position may be true and right even if highly impractical and hard. But it was when I began to think through the theological implications of the position that the Church should be calling the nation to adopt a pacifist stance that I lost my pacifist faith.

First, there is the Pelagian optimism about human nature that one must have if one seriously believes that a nation can become pacifist without causing a disaster. One must take seriously all that old social gospel rhetoric about abolishing war, disarmament and so on. Is human society susceptible to being reformed to that extent in this age? To the extent that war becomes a thing of the past? No it is not, I now believe, without a tyrannical, absolutely totalitarian, total world government - in which case the cure is much worse than the disease.

Second, the tendency toward pacifism involves an over-realized eschatology in which the kingdom of God becomes a human project achievable by human effort here and now. Since there is no evidence to suggest that this is an actual possibility, the determination to achieve it hovers precariously between triumphalism and nihilism. The anti-war stance can become a nihilistic, fatalistic, stubborn call to abandon the defenses of civilization, let the wave of evil roll over the culture, and give up the ambiguous work of fighting against barbarianism with all its shades of grey in favor of morally clear but grim determination to die heroically.

Third, where my pacifist faith really went off the rails was when I realized that the very nature and character of God is at stake. Non-violence becomes an absolute higher than good and evil themselves; in fact, for the liberal pacifist God is non-violence. All judgment must be then considered unworthy of him. God does not fight against or punish evil; he simply absorbs them until they stop. Why they should ever stop is never explained; it is just assumed. But in any case, God does not judge sin or conquer it except by suffering from its effects.

I came to realize that non-violence, while certainly a very important good, has been turned into an idol. In fact, it has become God. The old God of wrath who acted in history to reveal his wrath against sin and his mercy for sinners has been turned into an abstract principle of non-violence. Pacifism is the appropriate way to worship the God who is non-violence. There is no grace in such a God because there is no holiness. There is no love, because there is mere passivity. The passive tolerance of modern liberalism finds its ultimate sanction in the God who passively suffers but never acts to conquer.

To embrace liberal pacifism, that is, to advocate pacifism for Christians and non-Christians alike and for the nation state in this age is to embrace liberal Protestantism and its deformed, modern doctrine of God. To advocate liberal pacifism for the state is to become liberal. It is to have a Pelagian doctrine of human nature, an over-realized eschatology, a passive, suffering God who is no longer the righteous judge of all the earth and a view of salvation as essentially a human, social accomplishment.

I noted in my book, Rethinking Christ and Culture, that General Dwight D. Eisenhower entitled his memoirs of his experience of World War II as supreme allied commander, Crusade in Europe. I criticized World War II as a crusade on the grounds that it bore a resemblance to the Medieval crusades to liberate the holy land from Muslim invaders. If the Medieval crusades were wrong, so must the modern one be wrong. But it was my assumption about pacifism that was wrong: both the Medieval and so, logically, the modern crusades were justifiable, though tragic, wars. To fight against the neo-pagan death cult called Nazism and save civilization from its nihilism and terror was the right thing to do. Of course it involved great evils, but once Hitler started invading one country after another great evils were set in motion and would have continued regardless of how the West responded.

I wear a poppy today in honor of the brave men who gave their lives for freedom, civilization and peace in that war. War is always horrifying and always involves sin and evil. It is never a matter of absolute good and evil; both sides are made up of sinful people. But nevertheless, as Augustine recognized long ago, there is a need for good people to do their duty even when duty is compromising, morally ambiguous and tragic. And it always is and always will be until that great day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory to end all opposition to his rule and bring peace once and for all.

The West Must Not Incentivize Violence by Accepting False Guilt

Jenny McCartney, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, has a good blog post entitled: "Omar bin Laden has two messages: one for the West, and one for the Islamist world" in which she discusses the rather ambiguous messages coming from one of bin Laden's sons regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden.

She notes that Omar bin Laden tries to turn the West's commitment to the rule of law against it by trying to make Westerners feel guilty for retaliating against bin Laden in the same way bin Laden attacked the US. He asserts that he condemns his father's violence, although we have no way to judge the sincerity of his assertion, and this gives him an opening for criticizing the West.

I think McCartney has him all figured out:

Omar bin Laden publicly opposed his father’s ideas when Osama was alive: he still does, but has now taken up the metaphorical sword of familial defence. Yet whatever complicated psychological position Omar now finds himself in, it is clear that the US’s killing of his father was not at all arbitrary, in the sense of capricious or uncontrolled. The US is a nation that, unlike Britain, supports and regularly enacts the death penalty. Osama bin Laden, in 2004 and again in 2006, admitted directing the activities of the 9/11 bombers. If Osama’s execution was justified as an act of US self-defence – as President Obama argues – it was also broadly in keeping with that nation’s code of retributive justice.

It is a tactic familiar to terrorism, from the Provisional IRA in its heyday onwards, that it reserves for itself the right to wage a brutal and summary “war” against its opponents, but to be treated by them in return with all the complicated legal privileges of a liberal democracy. The US has declined, in the case of Osama bin Laden, to buy into that particular bargain, although President Obama has done well thereafter not to pander to the more ghoulish impulses of elements in the US population by touting death photographs as a trophy. Omar bin Laden can perhaps draw consolation from the fact that, unlike him, his father – who regarded the murder of thousands of blameless US citizens as a triumph – strongly approved of the principle of sudden death.

The US declined to resort to international law procedures in the case of bin Laden. It just killed him. But it was bin Laden who did it first. It was bin Laden who ignored the "rules of international law" by flying airplanes into skyscrapers and the US would not have done what it did if bin Laden had not done what he did first. So it is bin Laden who deserves the criticism and the US was perfectly justified in responding in kind.

This is something a lot of people either don't understand or are being willfully obtuse about. War is always a failure of diplomacy and a breakdown of the rule of law. War is about restoring the rule of law, but whoever attacks first has stepped outside the law and chosen to resort to force.

The next time the Arabs attack Israel, they need to understand that they are abandoning diplomacy, international law and all pretext of seeking justice. They are resorting to brute force. And when they did that in 1967 Israel seized the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza. It is ridiculous for the Arabs then to cry foul and demand the land back. It was they who chose to live by the sword, just as bin Laden did, and those who live by the sword die by the sword.

If the world community rewards the Islamists for using violence to get what they can and they demanding that their victims be punished for winning the battle, then the world community should expect that there will be a never-ending resorting to violence over and over again. If there is no fear that will face retribution and possibly lose land, they have every incentive to attack and no reason to hold back.

So, does the world want peace or war? Which is it? If you support the apologists for bin Laden in condemning the US for fighting back in self-defense, then you are supporting violence and make further war and terrorism more likely. If you support forcing Israel to give up defensible borders and the land they won in a defensive war to the aggressors, then you incentivize aggression and war.

It is rank hypocrisy to appeal to "peace" and "international law" in order to make war, terrorism and violence profitable. And it is not "Christian" or "moral" to do so either. It is folly.

Pacifist Priests and Levites and Militarist Good Smaritans

Liberal pacifists and isolationists can be insufferably smug. In fact, they can remind one of the priest and the levite in Jesus' famous story.

John McCain and Joe Lieberman have issued a joint call for the US to step up to the plate and protect civilians in Libya from unnecessary violence and bloodshed. Why should you care? No reason - other than concern for one's neighbor.

Daniel Halper in The Weekly Standard writes:

Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have just issued a joint statement on Libya. "We strongly support President Obama's declaration yesterday that Colonel Qaddafi must go," the senators say. "The President is correct that Qaddafi and those loyal to him – unleashing horrific violence against the Libyan people – have lost the legitimacy to remain in power, and we agree that the United States must consider the full range of options to stop the bloodshed taking place in Libya now."

I suppose the idolationist Left (which never criticized Soviet or Chinese meddling around the world) will cry "Imperialist" and Obama is too sensitive to bear such criticism. But listen to the final paragraph of the McCain-Lieberman statement:

“The United States must not be passive at this critical moment in history. From Bosnia to Rwanda, we know that the international community has in the past been too slow to react to situations like the one unfolding in Libya – with awful and unspeakable costs in human life. For both moral and strategic reasons, we must not repeat this mistake.”

Not repeating the mistakes of Bosnia and Rwanda should be a major component of the decision-making process here. Augustine would consider the use of force to be wrong insofar as it merely asserts one's own interests, but regretfully necessary in the protection of the weaker neighbor. The problem with liberal pacifism is that it places self-interest above neighbor love and thus becomes moralistic, self-righteous and selfish.

James Lewis at American Thinker asks why Europeans feel so free to condemn the US for trying to act justly in the world while Europe sits on its hands and lets the US do all the work.

Europe is the world's hostile-dependent Welfare Queen, and it is high time for the United States to stop indulging Europe's childish irresponsibility. The Euromedia are constantly telling us they have the answer to the world's problems, and just to prove it, they never actually do anything but criticize Uncle Sam. They call our indulgence of their hostile dependent rage "American Imperialism." The average lefthead in Europe is convinced that all the world's troubles can be blamed on us, and that Progress and International Love and Peace are bound to come... whenever. Meantime they celebrate their own morally superiority and never do anything responsible.

When George W. Bush intervened in Iraq, Europe's ruling elite carried on a sustained campaign of personal hatred and rage against Bush for eight years, knowing full well that without American intervention in the Gulf their economies would be starved for lack of fuel.

They have been playing that hostile-dependent game for sixty years and America has indulged them like an overprotective mom. For them America it's not Uncle Sam but Uncle Stupid.

Now that the civilized world claims to be horrified by a grotesque and ranting Col. Khadafi bombing his own people in Libya, Europe is waiting for the United States to put our military lives at risk to protect their southern flank. But Tripoli is only 200 miles from Malta (a member of the EU), Italy is 350 miles, France, Greece and Spain are less than 1,000 miles. That's New York City to Chicago. Sending a dozen jet planes to buzz Col. Khadafi is well within the military capabilities of 300 million prosperous people in Europe. But nobody is talking about it.

Turkey is the biggest military power on the southern NATO flank and desperately wants to be a member of the EU. Let the EU put together a small expeditionary force, control the air by flying their idle military jets over Libya, save the rebellion and starve Khadafi out of power. The United States is expected to do it, while at the same time keeping the peace in the Persian Gulf and Korea.

The Europeans have knowingly eaten their seed grain. They have cannibalized their militaries to run a corrupt and anti-democratic European Union, leaving the primitive duty of self-defense to the United States, a country they feel morally obliged to abuse and trash in public at every possible opportunity.

Europe is morally decadent and in demographic, economic and political decline. But they are world champions at moralistic, self-righteousness. Too bad they couldn't care less about their weaker neighbors. If the Europeans are the priests in the story and the American Left plays the role of the Levite, it falls to the poor, old, beleaguered, American military to play the role of the Good Samaritan. No, the Good Samaritan doesn't have a very good reputation. And no, he does not get much good press. All he does is the right thing.

Liberal Pacifism is Not Christian Pacifism

From Christian Week comes this story about pacifists who insist that the Canadian government become pacifist. Immediately. This is called having a "peace witness."

WINNIPEG, MB—Christians who want less bang from their tax bucks are protesting Canada's military spending by withholding a portion of their taxes this year.

Peaceloving taxpayers can include a special form when they file their taxes. The form offers two options: taxpayers can sign a declaration of conscience, yet still pay all their taxes, or they can divert 9.2 per cent (the amount allocated to Canada's military spending) to the Peace Tax Trust Fund of Conscience Canada.

Conscience Canada, a Toronto-based organization, set up the fund and produces the forms. Canada Revenue Agency doesn't endorse the Conscience Canada tax form or the trust fund, so withholding taxes adds up to a form of civil disobedience.

"We believe this is a witness we as a historic peace church can make," says Janet Plenert of Mennonite Church Canada. The denomination is the only one Plenert knows of in Canada to promote the tax form on its website. Anyone who downloads and submits the form should let her know, says Plenert, who's trying to track how many people participate. Last year about 100 Mennonites reported filing the form, but Plenert suspects there are many more.

She doesn't know of anyone who has suffered any penalties for withholding tax money, but some "repeat offenders" have received letters and phonecalls from the Canada Revenue Agency.

Canadians like to joke about having a puny military, but Canada is actually the world's 13th biggest military spender. In 2008, Canada spent more than $19 billion on national defense, compared to just over $1 billion allocated to the department of the environment and about $5 billion on international aid.

MP Bill Siksay has introduced a private member's bill to Parliament that, if passed, would let conscientious Canadians divert their tax money toward peaceful efforts."

I have a few problems with this approach.

First, it is to act in disobedience to Scripture. Paul already dealt with some proto-pacifists in Romans 13 and we are, therefore, fortunate to have explicit guidance on the point of whether Christians are to pay taxes to the government or not.

Verse 6 says that we pay our taxes as Christians not because we agree with everything the government does (in which case most people would not pay taxes most of the time) but rather because we recognize the powers that be as performing a legitimate function of punishing evil and maintaining order. To the extent that governments provides these minimal functions they are doing what God has ordained that it do and to think that we could get to a point in a fallen world where such coercive authority is unnecessary is to deny the doctrine of original sin.

Second, the call to a pacifist lifestyle is a legitimate vocation for some Christians, who are called to renounce involvement in politics and worldly endeavors and live lives of peaceful prayer. I think of the Amish and Mennonites as Protestant monastics and think they do well when they follow their calling.

However, to expect a secular, non-Christian society to embrace pacifism without embracing Christ first is to drift into liberal pacifism. Liberal pacifism is an outgrowth of liberal Protestantism and it is a Pelagian and utopian system of thought in which the eschaton is immanentized. It expects non-Christians to live the Christian life, which is impossible. It is heresy.

Third, Mennonites who pursue this form of what they call the "peace witness" are failing to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ front and center in their public witness and replacing it with anther gospel, just as Liberal Protestants replace the Biblical Gospel of sin and salvation with the Social Gospel of socialism. To do this is to fail to make it clear that one's pacifism is Christocentric and thus to become worldly and compromised. If the salt loses its savor it is good for nothing but to be thrown out.

If you are called to a separated life of prayer and peace, that is a worthy and noble calling. If you are called to a life of political involvement and social action that is also a noble and worthy calling. To mix the two indiscriminately, however, is unwise, imprudent and ineffective.

Can This Be For Real?

The National Post is reporting today that a group of professors at the University of Regina is trying to take scholarships away from children of soldiers who have died in Afghanistan as their way of being anti-war. Seriously. It must be a hoax. Can there really be people with academic qualifications who are so obtuse?

Anyway, here is the story under the headline "Professors Slam Scholarships for Children of Dead Soldiers."

"A group of professors at the University of Regina is protesting a scholarship program for the dependents of dead soldiers, arguing it promotes militarism.

"We think this program is a glorification of Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan," said Jeffrey Webber, one of 16 professors who drafted an open letter to university president Vianne Timmons.

The program, called Project Hero, provides financial aid for children of Canadian Forces personnel who have lost their lives while serving in an active mission. Individual universities establish the terms and conditions for the scholarship including value, duration and application process.

The open letter, endorsed by Mr. Webber and his colleagues, asked for three things: the immediate withdrawal from "Project Hero," public pressure on government to provide funding for universal access to post-secondary education and a public forum on the war in Afghanistan and Canadian imperialism to be held before the end of semester exams.

Barb Pollock, a spokeswoman for the University of Regina, defended Project Hero.

"The decision was made by the executive of the university," she said. "Other universities whom we respect are involved in it and we thought it was a good thing to do."

She did not expect the reaction from the group of protesting professors.

"We have diverse opinions on moves the university makes all the time and the decision has been made at this point.... That's where it's at." But she said university will "not have a debate" on the issue and has made its decision to go through with the program.

The professors' objections begin, but don't end, with the name of the program.

"Project Hero" has dangerous cultural underpinnings, implying that Canada's military activity in Afghanistan is heroic, said Mr. Webber.

"We disagree with that. We think it's a military occupation of a sovereign country," he said. "It's not the position of the university administration to take a position in favour of this war."

"We think it's aligning a public university -- without any consultation with its students or staff, or the broader community -- with support for this war."

Read the rest here.

For once words fail me. If that is what it means to be a pacifist, color me a militarist. And put James down as a militarist too:

"True religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
(James 1:27)

The Headline Alone is Enough to Make Liberals' Heads Explode!

From today's Daily Telegraph: "Barack Obama defends war as he receives Nobel Peace Prize"

The story includes such gems as:

"Mr Obama, who was greeted at the Oslo City Hall by a fanfare of trumpets, was acutely aware that many Americans view his acceptance of the award, for which he was nominated just two weeks into his presidency, with amusement and even derision.

A CNN poll found that just 19 per cent of Americans believed he deserved the prize and 43 per cent thought he was unlikely ever to deserve it."

He did clarify one thing, however:

"Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms."

Good to know - a lot of people were wondering if he was sure about that.

"Mr Obama's remarks were only occasionally punctuated by applause, such as when he stressed that the US "must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war" and renewed his promise to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba. . . There was silence as he alluded to the blanket anti-war sentiments and anti-Americanism of many in Europe."

Fascinating that he would mention European Anti-Americanism; clearly, he has been reading polls and he obviously said that for the audience back home, not the one in the hall.