Why I’m Not a Pacifist
Comments (5) Published July 24th, 2006 under GeneralThe sermon at church yesterday explored questions such as “Why does God allow war?” It got me thinking on my stand on war and peace issues. Generally speaking, I subscribe to the Just War theory that was first developed by Augustine, and has since gone through several revisions. And although Just War prescribes a set of rules or criteria before engaging in war, thereby reserving war as a last ditch option, it does not (as many critics of the theory claim) advocate pacifism.
In contrast, pacifism opposes all kinds of violence and opposes war as a solution to conflict. Although I grew up in a brutal war zone, have seen first hand the horrors of war, and tend to want to exhaust caution and rationale before engaging in military action, I am not a pacifist.
- 1. Pacifism (maybe not in theory, but definately in action) seems to deny the existence of evil. Evil exists in our world. And though the evil that exists may exit in context and is not pure evil, it is still evil. And there come points, where one cannot bargain and work out diplomacy with it. For example, in 1939, Neville Chamberlain, Great Britain’s Prime Minister, ended a meeting with Hitler when he boldly declared, “We have achieved peace in our time.” Within months, Great Britain was at war with Germany. Hitler was bent on dominating the world for evil purposes, and the only way to stop him was to engage him in war.
- 2. Christian pacifists tend to defend their stance through scripture by quoting Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount when he says, “Turn the other cheek”, Moses’s law when it says, “Do not murder” and Paul in Romans who declares, “Overcome evil with good.” What is significant about Jesus is that he was not bent on creating a new political system. His revolution was that of hearts and minds and not of people in an earthly kingdom. His disciples would have liked that, but Jesus’s concern was for our hearts and minds. And Paul would have walked in that same tradition. While Jesus wants to have an impact on the political landscape, his teaching to turn the other cheek is primarily meant to be about personal relationships within a community.
Some scholars suggest that the commission to the Apostles in Matthew 28 where they are to go and proclaim the kingdom to the ends of the earth is an echo of the commission to the Israelites and Joshua in Joshua 1, where they are supposed to claim the holy land. The difference is that in Joshua, they would conquer the land for the Kingdom of God, and in Matthew, they would conquer hearts.
- 3. Loving and turning the other cheek is a powerful, radical response to evil, but when you are responsible for a state engaged in conflict with people of a different worldview, it doesn’t work quite the same way. Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. did bring a revolution through peaceful means, but they were operating within government systems that could be transformed through these means.
What does this all mean? Personally, I was against and continue to remain against the American war in Iraq. It was a war sold on dishonest evidence (remember Weapons of Mass Destruction?) and with an agenda of democracy and fighting terrorism that was flawed from the beginning. However, I thought the US needed to respond to the 9/11 attacks by fighting in Afghanistan.
And with the recent Lebanon/Israel conflict, though I’m Lebanese, Israel does have a right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s actions. However, Israel needs to learn how to win the peace not just the war. Israel’s current strategy offers short-term solutions. By destroying Lebanon, they have effectively created space for more anti-Israel militia groups to develop.
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