MEMORIAL DAY – WAR IN THE BIBLE

A Marine Corps honor guard carries the casket of Marine Sgt. David Russell Christoff, of Springfield, Ohio, during funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.. Wednesday, May 31, 2006. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

On Friday, April 9, 2004, the Florida Times-Union ran on its front page an arresting photograph of ten U.S. Marines praying while standing and kneeling around a fallen comrade in Fallujah, Iraq. On Sunday, April 11, the newspaper ran Tony Perry’s commentary on the incident.

The wounded Marine lay on the olive-drab stretcher placed gently in the dirt and rocks beneath a freeway overpass. There had been other casualties, and the dirt was littered with discarded surgical gloves and tourniquets. The Marine had been wounded in the head in the final minutes of the battle for a Fallujah mosque. His head was swathed in bandages but the blood seeped through from the wound in his left temple, a blossoming crimson stain in the white fabric.

Kneeling over his stretched-out body, Navy doctors and medical corpsmen, backed by the Marine guards to protect them from hostile fire, worked feverishly on the Marine. Orders were barked out. Clamps, gauze, intravenous solutions, everything in a fully stocked medical supply truck was being used.

A sergeant sternly demanded that reporters move back. The work continued, more clamps, more this, more that. More barked orders. Light was failing and night arriving. For 40 minutes, work on the wounded Marine continued. Then it stopped. Tubes and clamps were removed. An anguished call went out for a chaplain, but the chaplain was miles away.

Still kneeling, the doctors, corpsmen and Marines draped their arms over their buddies’ shoulders and leaned forward over the Marines’ body, in a kind of huddle. Marines who had watched atop their vehicles nearby became quiet. Some had tears in their eyes.

Navy Lt. Cormac O’Connor, a boyish-looking doctor from Indiana, pronounced the Marine dead and led a prayer asking God to help his family through the grief that would soon descend on them. After the hushed prayer was said, and the Marines and sailors had separated, nothing more was said for several moments.

Then came a voice, maybe a corpsman’s, maybe a Marine’s, saying: ‘OK, let’s get this area cleaned up. We have work to do.’

The body was put in a large rubber bag and taken away.

On Memorial Day we remember those who have died in battle. We cannot turn on the news, or read the newspaper without being confronted with the reality of war. We cannot go to the movies without encountering violence in one form or another. How does our faith help us to deal with war?

If you read the Bible you will find that it too, deals with wars. Recently a member of the congregation mentioned to me how troubled she was about all the wars in the Old Testament. How do you make sense of them? Can you?

A seminary classmate of mine wrote a book on this subject: The Problem of War in the Old Testament. Peter Craigie had served in the RAF, but was discharged because of color-blindness. He became a specialist in Middle Eastern languages, and began teaching, and writing, on the Old Testament Let me summarize what he wrote.

First, appreciate that God reveals himself to us as a Warrior.

“Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, The Lord, mighty in Battle.” (Psalm 24:8) “The LORD is a warrior, the LORD is his name.” (Exodus 15:3)

Modern generals and others engaged in battle pray to God as a warrior capable of affecting the outcome. Field Marshal Montgomery closed a message to his troops before D-Day with these words: “Let us pray that the Lord Mighty in Battle will go forth with our armies, and that his special providence will aid in the struggle.”

General George S. Patton, on January 1, 1944 wrote his famous “Soldier’s Prayer”: “God of our fathers, who by land and sea has ever led us to victory, please continue your inspiring guidance in this the greatest of our conflicts… Grant us the victory, Lord.”

The theme of God the Warrior is an important one in the Old Testament. It is not peripheral to the main subject matter. God is regularly referred to as the “Lord of Hosts” (literally Armies). The title is used more than 200 times in the OT, and associates God with the armies of Israel. The Ark of the Covenant symbolized God’s presence on the battlefield. The people of Israel were commanded to kill their enemies by the law of God. How do we deal with this conception?

Some people view the Hebrews as a primitive people who simply did what their neighboring nations did who had a coarse and low view of God, but that this was outgrown in the New Testament. They see the conception of God as Warrior as simply a human interpretation of God, and so it can be dispensed with and replaced with a loftier, less primitive conception of God as Love.

This confuses a view of progressive revelation, in which God gradually reveals more of himself and his purposes over time without contradicting or canceling out the earlier revelation; with a developmental or evolutionary theory of religion in which the Old Testament is not seen as revelation by God but is rather humanity’s primitive attempts to interpret human events as demonstrating the activity of God. From this point of view, the Hebrews thought God was a Warrior, but now that humanity has come of age, this primitive notion can be rejected. This reflects the arrogance of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the matter of war, mankind has not clearly progressed, and may have regressed from the standards of the Biblical period.

The victory of God over Egypt (Exodus 14,15) illustrates God’s self-revelation through human history. God is said to have participated directly in that event and he revealed his presence and power to his people. To call God a Warrior is to use anthropomorphic language, which is limited but points to a truth about God, a theological insight. God as Warrior fought through the fighting of his people. History moves and develops within the providence of God. Even the term ‘salvation’ has the primary sense of victory, or deliverance, as in war. War is a human activity, a sinful human activity. To describe God as a warrior is to say that God participates in human history through sinful human beings. He is employing for his purpose sinful persons. God acts to bring man salvation, and participates in all aspects of human existence to do so.

The conception of God as warrior does not legitimize warfare, nor does it mean that a noble end has somehow justified war as a means to that end. Theoretically, it may be said that God, the giver of all life, has the absolute and only authority to withdraw life, or to command war in which it will be withdrawn. God’s withdrawing the lives of the Egyptian army in the sea is no more problematic than his withdrawing the life of the aged Moses. He exercises the right to withdraw lives which he gave in the first place.

Second, accept that war may be a vehicle of God’s judgment.

War is always evil, sometimes the lesser of two evils, but still evil, even when its intention is good, e.g. to prevent genocide, or to restore freedom and justice. The judgment of God is the other side of the coin which is the mercy of God. On some occasions the reasons for God’s exercise of judgment in war may be made evident (e.g. the punishment of evil men and nations by Israel, or the punishment of Israel by foreign nations), but they may remain as much a mystery as the initial mystery of God’s creation and gift of life.

If God is the ultimate sovereign of human history, it is to be expected that he will stand in some kind of relationship to war. He participates actively for the purposes of judgment and redemption. This conception provides hope for mankind, for even in sinful human behavior we may seek for God and find him.

War is a practical necessity for survival as a nation-state. Most nations had to undertake war if they were to come into existence and survive, and equally inevitably, they had to inflict hardship and death upon others, just as they accepted them for themselves. The United States came about through the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War of Independence, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. The existence and survival of nations in the ancient world was dependent to a very large extent on military might. As a nation state in the real world of that time, Israel could not exist without war. Any nation is established and maintained solely through violence; violence has many manifestations, of which war is only one, but war is perhaps the most significant manifestation of violence with respect to the continuing existence of a state. Once a nation has been established, it must have the right to self-defense in order to survive.

The wars of Israel were justified because they enabled Israel to fulfill the divine promise of the gift of a land, but also because they executed the divine judgment on the inhabitants of the land, who are said to have been sinful beyond redemption. God is presented as employing the political unavoidable wars of the Hebrew conquest as a means of divine judgment on evil nations, just as later he was to employ the victorious warfare of foreign nations in the execution of his judgment upon his own chosen people.

“The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them.” (Deuteronomy 28:25)

Following the death of King Solomon, ancient Israel divided into two states, Israel lying to the north, and Judah to the south. The Assyrians defeated Israel in 722/1 BC. Judah was defeated by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Jerusalem’s walls were leveled and much of the city was destroyed by fire. The sons of the king, and most leaders, were executed, and the rest were deported into exile. It was a total defeat, and a reversal of their own conquest. Now the Israelites were judged because of their evil deeds. God was no respecter of persons. Just as the judgment of God was affirmed in the Hebrew invasion of Palestine: God was judging the evil of the Canaanites; the judgment of God was also affirmed in the defeat of Judah and the fall of Jerusalem: God was judging the evil of his own people.

Third, realize that war reveals the sinful reality of human nature.

War is a large-scale manifestation of the sinful nature of humanity. There is violence inherent in sinful man, and human sin will be reflected in human nation-states. The Old Testament provides a realistic view of warfare, with all its ruthlessness and killing. If we read the ruthless laws of war in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 20) and express pious shock, we are deceiving ourselves. War is a manifestation of violence to achieve a purpose. We should not need the Old Testament to tell us of its nature and horror, but it is in our nature to prefer ignorance in certain matters. Our novelists, historians, and film-makers often glorify war; they lack the honesty of some Old Testament writers. The Old Testament war literature is characterized by realism. It does not draw a false and romantic picture of the reality of the human situation, and consequently it forces us to face up to the reality of our own world, which we often don’t want to do, and would rather avoid. We cannot assume a morally superior attitude to history, or to the rest of the world, when we are engaged in war.

Wars in ancient Israel were a harsh reality. What is to be learned from them? They serve as a massive and solemn warning. If war is to be waged at all, it must be done thoroughly. There are no half-measures in war; it is not a game to be played casually. The war narratives of the Old Testament are a safer guide to the reality of war than various formulations of the ‘Just War’ theory. If war is to be contemplated it is wise to think realistically of its horror and implications, and in this the Old Testament gives some guide.

Fourth, admit the need for a new kind of Conqueror.

The kingdom of Israel was a failure, but the failure demonstrated that redemption was not to be found in the human institution of the state (contrary to some contemporary political philosophies or religions). It prepared the way for the kingdom of God as inaugurated in the person and teaching of Jesus. God entered directly into human history through the Messiah who established his kingdom through the receipt of violence. God the Warrior became the Crucified God, the one who receives in himself the full force of human violence. The suffering and death of Jesus on the Cross is also an act of conquest: it is the conquest of evil, the defeat of principalities and powers. His strength lies not in the exercise of violence, but in the humble act of submission to violence.

The prophets anticipated the end of the state of Judah. Jeremiah saw that there had to be a new covenant of the heart. Zechariah looked forward to a new kind of King, whose coming would be marked by humility and whose message would be of peace. Defeat in war ended the old covenant and demonstrated the failure of all men, and the true need of man. All of us need a work of God within us, to make us citizens of a new kingdom. We need the work of the Spirit of God to change our hearts, to give us the power to love our neighbors as ourselves.

On the day of Pentecost, the Jerusalem mob, after being condemned by Peter for putting Jesus to death by nailing him to the cross, was cut to the heart by his message. They asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.” With many other words he warned them, and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” (Acts 2:37-41) The message of the Gospel is still the same: Jesus is our only hope.