Religion & Politics: In Your Facebook

This post doesn't specifically get into Facebook per se but it does speak about the nature of conflict. Since I work in a high school, I can say with absolute certainty that social media either magnifies the good or bad in people.  

The 30 Years War was largely fought on German soil and reduced the country to desolation as hordes of mercenaries, left unpaid by their masters, lived off the land. Rapine, pillage and famine stalked the countryside as armies marched about, plundering towns, villages and farms as they went. 

‘We live like animals, eating bark and grass,’ says a pitiful entry in a family Bible from a Swabian village. ‘No one could have imagined that anything like this would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God...’ Wenceslas Hollar recorded devastation in the war zone in engravings of the 1630s and starvation reached such a point in the Rhineland that there were cases of cannibalism. The horror became a way of life and when the war finally ended, the mercenaries and their womenfolk complained that their livelihood was gone. 

The war or series of connected wars began in 1618, when the Austrian Habsburgs tried to impose Roman Catholicism on their Protestant subjects in Bohemia. It pitted Protestant against Catholic, the Holy Roman Empire against France, the German princes and princelings against the emperor and each other, and France against the Habsburgs of Spain. The Swedes, the Danes, the Poles, the Russians, the Dutch and the Swiss were all dragged in or dived in. Commercial interests and rivalries played a part, as did religion and power politics. - See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/treaty-westphalia#sthash.thBNvM9E.dpuf

He who lives by the sword, will die by it. Jesus

Thursday night was our monthly Beer Theology meeting where we quaff craft beer at Columbia Kettleworks and discuss a theological topic. At the end of the official topic of the night about the Incarnation of Jesus, the leader of our group, brought up the recent spate of Islamic terror in Western Europe and California. It sparked a somewhat contentious conversation with every possible viewpoint from arming oneself against assailants (one guy had a gun with him) to pacifism being represented passionately. I am a middle of the roader. I choose to not owe a firearm yet do not disparage those who do. I believe both postures of packing heat and pacifism can be justified biblically and it is a personal choice.  

First, a couple of premises. To not acknowledge that this recent Islamic violence is rooted in a literal reading of the Koran is dishonest. Flat-out. This does not imply that 99.9% of the world's Muslims agree with such violence. However, Islam was spread by the sword, whereas a Christianity--until Constantine--was not militaristic. Its growth was not the result of violence. Those are historical truths. Post-Constantinian Christianity however is checkered with massive blood being spilled between warring factions of Christendom, and towards groups not within Christendom.  Therefore, a second premise should be a recognition that Christianity has been used to justify very nefarious and evil actions. 

The Old Testament/God orders or at least sanctions genocide and slaughter, both societal and against individuals. Because I am not a pacifist, this doesn't cause me theological schizophrenia when trying to square the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is clear to me that violence can be moral YET I also recognize that such an understanding is fraught with much danger. I suppose that right can have might but might does not make right. The school yard bully punching the little kids all the way up to Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, feel justified in annihilating others as an act of morality.  

In Luke 19 an onward, Jesus tells parables pointing to what is going to happen to those  who oppose Him and prophesies about the coming destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 where God uses the Romans to punish apostate Judaism.  He weeps over the coming destruction but he is clear about why it is going to happen. The Bible is replete of examples where God uses human agents to punish sin with horrifying consequences. There are also instances where God does it all on His own.  Sometimes God even seems to take joy in  doing so, other times it is clear that He takes no joy in the death of the wicked.  And Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. Try to figure all of this out. Lots of luck. 

We are to be quite circumspect in our use of violence and only use it as a last resort when all other efforts at peace-making have failed--and it should be utilized to quell a greater evil. When employed, it should be with determination and dedication, yet with tears in our eyes.