Great point from Chuck Colson

I'm not often in total agreement with Colson, but here I think he's spot on regarding the question to be asking. There's still a debate in my mind about "just war" and especially about preeminent strikes against "bad guys", as he puts it, but all in all this is the question that we should be asking.

Whose War Is It?
That's the Wrong Question
Chuck Colson

As the press reminds us daily, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele put his size 12 foot in his mouth, calling Afghanistan a “war of Obama’s choosing” and not “something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.” This, no doubt, was news to the service members who served in Afghanistan between the fall of 2001 and January, 2009.

Steele’s “unusual interpretation” as it was called was quickly followed by an attempt to back off the limb he had climbed out on. He added that “the stakes are too high for us to accept anything but success in Afghanistan.”

Amazingly, all his fellow Republicans jumped all over him as the Democrats watched in glee. But party chairmen on both sides have done this kind of thing often over the years.

And actually, I think Steele may have done us a service by raising what is really the critical question: What is our goal in Afghanistan?

Last November, when the President was trying to decide what to do in Afghanistan, I, unlike many of my conservative friends, agreed with his deliberate approach and said so here on BreakPoint.

The reason for my commentary was that I wasn’t sure that the cost, both human and financial, of staying full scale in Afghanistan was justified by the Christian just war doctrine. And eight months later, I’m even less sure.

Despite the build-up in troops, the military news out of Afghanistan is grim. The vaunted Marjah offensive has failed to achieve its goal of stabilizing that region, which remains violent and ungovernable.

That brings me to my principal concern: “Success in Afghanistan” has become nothing less than nation-building. It’s about creating a central government in Kabul that is strong enough and competent enough to claim the allegiance of most of the country’s 28 million citizens.

But such a development would be unprecedented in Afghan history. Afghanistan has always been a loose confederation of local and tribal groups that rebelled against strong central authority.

Look, here is the debate we ought to be having: Is what we are doing in Afghanistan just? For this war to be just, under the Augustinian doctrine, our cause and intent must be just. We must wage war in proportion to the threat, and we must not target non-combatants. And we must also have a reasonable chance of success.

While pre-emptive military strikes to kill the bad guys are justifiable under the just war doctrine, the kind of nation-building we’re pursuing In Afghanistan is not. And here’s why: Sacrificing lives to give Afghanistan what it has never had and never desired—a strong central government—is the antithesis of the “reasonable chance of success” requirement of the just war theory.

So let’s stop the silly name-calling over whose war it is. Trying to score political points while people are dying and billions in taxpayer dollars are being squandered makes me wonder if we aren’t the ones in need of nation-building.

Maybe you could call my approach and “unusual interpretation” as well. But it’s rooted in fact and Christian doctrine and seeks a just use of our nation’s most precious resource: our men and women in uniform.

Curse the darkness or light the candle or both or what?

Yesterday's "Breakpoint" by Chuck Colson (copied below) challenges President Obama on his statement that "no God condones taking the life of an innocent human being" at the National Prayer Breakfast. Colson rightly argues that for the President to make such a statement and only apply it to war and not to abortion is faulty logic. Just as faulty as the Christians who apply it only to abortion and not to war.

But this post is neither about abortion or about war. It's about some of the incessant whining we hear decrying our "postmodern" world.

I will be the first to admit I live in a postmodern world. Postmodernity has affected my worldview. It's hard for it not to. I also admit I have not jumped deeply into postmodern philosophy like my friend the 7-foot ninja. I have only skimmed the surface of those writers, and probably don't have a grasp of the nuances of postmodern thought.

But here's what I know: today's Christian leaders, like Colson below, bemoan our fall into a world where there is no absolute truth recognized in societal circles. There can be "your truth" and "my truth" and they may contradict each other and that's okay.

Now, is such a philosophy correct? No, of course not. Most 5th graders can point out the illogical nature of such statements at basic levels. Both Christianity and Hinduism cannot be true in their fullest forms.

But is a cultural belief of "no absolute truth" a bad thing for the kingdom of heaven? I say no.

We have moved away from a society that took certain pieces of Christianity (yes, only "certain" pieces, not the whole gospel) and favored a public, outward form of Christian religion as "the truth." The church typically enjoyed this public religion, because it made church attendance at times a given in our society. That's what good Americans did.

But I maintain that the real gospel--life lived in the kingdom of heaven under the effectual reign of God--is better served and promoted by postmodern thought than by the times of watered-down-Christianity-as-public-religion.

Much like the first two centuries after Jesus' life, in many circles the gospel now stands on equal footing (or yes, even looked down upon footing--oh the horror!) with other religious or irreligious beliefs. And like Colson below, we complain about what is, instead of using what is--tailoring our message and more importanly our lifestyle as followers of Jesus--using what is to move the gospel forward in our world.

Are there those who use postmodernity to say that God/religion is dead? Of course there are. Are there those who use postmodernity to say that morality has no place in our world? Yes. But instead of complaining about postmodernity's unabsolute influence on the world, let's start living lives and speaking words that reflect that "effectual reign of God" and embrace postmodernity as what is. The Spirit will help us make disciples that understand truth is not relative. But we have an opportunity for the kingdom of God to spread that we did not have in a "christian" America.

NO GOD CONDONES WHAT?The President and the Innocent Chuck Colson At the national prayer breakfast last week, President Obama seemed to signal that he has seen the light and is abandoning his radically pro-abortion agenda. At least, that's the only reasonable conclusion one could make after hearing the President, who says he's a Christian, also say: "There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know." So I could only surmise that the President now concludes that "no God" would condone the 1.6 million abortions performed each year in America: 1.6 million innocent lives destroyed. But I've checked the White House website, and it's very clear that God's disapproval hasn't changed the administration's agenda one bit. Here's what the White House website says: "President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Administration." Well, in one way I'm glad I wasn't at the breakfast this year - I was speaking instead at Moody - because I'm not sure I would have been able to stay in my seat. How can a president of the United States say that "there is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being," when he himself favors a woman's right to have an abortion under virtually every circumstance? How can he say that when, as an Illinois state senator, he voted against the Illinois Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected the lives of babies who survived late-term abortions? When he even had the audacity to describe the act as "One more burden on a woman . . . I can't support." President Obama is a highly intelligent man with a huge job on his hands. I know what the White House is like, and I pray for him fervently every day. But how does such an intelligent man make a statement like this without understanding its implications for his own pro-abortion policies? The only way to explain it is to understand the intellectual environment, called postmodernism, in which President Obama and his peers have been raised. Generations of Americans have now been taught that truth is subjective. You have your truth, I have mine. And, even worse, I can't "inflict" my version of truth on you. The law of non-contradiction has been suspended. So politicians can tell us over and over that they can't allow their personal faith to affect their views on public policy. Or they can take two completely opposing positions at the same time: like believing that no God condones the taking of innocent life and at the same time, condoning-even promoting-the taking of an innocent life. The problem isn't simply President Obama and his views on life; the problem is a postmodern culture which believes that truth is merely a matter of opinion, and that therefore the sanctity of innocent human life is simply an expression of one viewpoint among many. I have argued for the last 20 years that postmodernism would lead to the unraveling or our society. The fact that so few noticed the contradiction in what the President said and the policies he pursues tells me that we're far along in the unraveling process.

Thanks.

I am not a military man.

My dad served in the Army. He is one of the most patriotic men I know, even though we don't always agree on politics.

I believe in peace and want to pursue it with all my heart. Jesus called us to be peacemakers in the world.

I live in a place where peace has been bought and paid for. A friend recently put a quote on his Facebook page that waging war to make peace is like having sex to save virginity. And while it's a pithy quote, I can't totally buy into it the way he apparently does. As I've written about before, I don't think that peacemaker necessarily means pacifist. Too often some fall into the trip of doing nothing to stop evil. While Jesus may not have made war, he definitely did not do nothing.

I struggle with war and violence and their outbreaks in our fallen world. I like living in a free country. But I don't want to fall into the opposite trap either, the trap that places God in a patriotic box and believes that war is justifiable to protect that which is a luxury. No, freedom is not a luxury, it is a privilege. But let's be honest, lots of wars have been fought over, well, stuff.

But in the midst of my own nonunderstanding of where Jesus wants me to be, I love and respect those who have sacrificed for the sake of freedom. They were and are a great generation. And today I watched this video and cried in gratitude.

So, thanks.

Feel the pain...

Now this sounds like a good idea.

Or not.

Bishop N. T. Wright and the goal of Jesus

Here's a great article N.T. Wright wrote posted on the God's Politics blog. It's a part of a series on the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, but I really don't think it's about the war, per se. What is today's response by Jesus-followers to the empires of the world?

Monday, March 24, 2008
Easter's Challenge to Empire (by N.T. Wright)

Jesus came with a job to do, to complete the work to which Israel was called. This work, from the call of Abraham onwards, was to put the human race to rights, and so to put the whole creation to rights. As the gospel writers tell the story, this task was to be accomplished by Jesus bringing about the sovereign healing rule of the creator God. Jesus was addressing the question, "What might it look like if God was running this show?" And answering, "This is what it looks like: just watch." And then, "just listen." In what he did, and in the stories he told, Jesus was announcing and inaugurating what he referred to as "the kingdom of God," the long-awaited hope that the creator God would run the whole show, on earth as in heaven.

But the problem was, and is, that other people are still running the show. Other kingdoms, other power structures, have usurped the rule of the world's wise creator, and the forces of evil are exceedingly powerful and destructive. Jesus' task of inaugurating God's kingdom therefore necessarily led him to meet those forces in direct combat, to draw upon himself their full, dark fury so as to exhaust their power and make a way through to launch the creator's project of new creation despite them. That is one clue at least to the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion, though that event, planting the sign of God's kingdom in the middle of space, time, and matter, remains inexhaustible. But let's be clear. As the gospels tell the story, Jesus' death was the culmination of several different strands: a political process, a religious clash, a spiritual war, all rushing together into one terrible day, one terrible death. And in the light of that, according to Jesus himself and his first followers, everything in the world looks different, is different, must be approached differently. With Jesus' death, the power structures of the world were called to account; with his resurrection, a new life, a new power, was unleashed upon the world. And the question is: How ought this to work out? What should we be doing as a result?

If we are to think Christianly, then we must think according to the pattern of Jesus Christ. And that means that the first place we should look for God in the "War on Terror" would be in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers, and then in the ruins of Baghdad and Basra, the shattered homes and lives of the tens of thousands who have through no fault of their own been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the angry superpower, like a rogue elephant teased by a little dog, has gone on the rampage stamping on everything that moves in the hope of killing the dog by killing everything within reach. The presence of God within the world at a time of war must be calibrated according to what Paul says in Romans 8, that the Spirit groans within God's people as they groan with the pain of the world. The cross of Jesus Christ is the sign and the assurance that the God who made the world still loves the world and, in that love, groans and grieves.
But God wants his rebel world to be ordered, to be under authorities and governments, because otherwise the bullies and the arrogant will always prey on the weak and the helpless; but all authorities and governments face the temptation to become bullies and arrogant themselves. The New Testament writers, like other Jews at the time, saw this writ large in the Roman empire of their day. Those with eyes to see can see it in other subsequent empires, right down to our own day.

It is the task of the followers of Jesus to remind those called to authority that the God who made the world intends to put the world to rights at last, and to call those authorities to acts of justice and mercy which will anticipate, in the present time, the future, coming, final victory of God over all evil, all violence, all arrogant abuse of power. And where the world's rulers genuinely strive for that end, the Christian church declares as the ancient Jews did with the pagan king Cyrus, that God's Spirit is at work—whether the authorities know it or not.

Insofar as the last five years have constituted a wake-up call to sleepy western Christians to think urgently about issues of global justice and governance, we can see God, I believe, in that new stirring, warning us that we have a task and that we haven't been doing it too well. In particular, we must face the deeply ambiguous question of the present power and position of America. I am not anti-American when I criticise some policies of some American leaders, any more than I am anti-British when I criticise some of the policies of my own elected leaders. To suggest otherwise is simply a cheap way of avoiding the real questions. The creator God allows societies to rise and fall, empires to grow and wane. And though things are massively more complicated than this, we could see in the rise of America as the current sole superpower some great possibilities for bringing justice and mercy, genuine freedom and prosperity, to the whole world. Empires always carry that possibility. But empires also face the temptation to use their power for their own prestige and wealth. The challenge now is to provide a critique of American empire without implying that the world should collapse into anarchy, and a fresh sense of direction for that empire without colluding with massive abuses of power.

Where then is God in the war on terror? Grieving and groaning within the pain and horror of his battered but still beautiful world. Stirring in the hearts of human beings the desire for a more credible structure of global justice and mercy. Burning into the imagination of human beings a hope that peace and reconciliation might eventually win out over suspicion and hatred, that the world may be put to rights and that we may anticipate that in the present time. The Christian gospel, revealing the mysterious God we discover in Jesus and the Spirit, offers a framework for discerning where God is at work in the midst of the dangers and opportunities that confront us. All of us in our different callings are summoned to this task; some of you, perhaps, to make it your life's work. Jesus is Lord. The Spirit is powerful. God is doing a new thing. Let's get out there and join in.

Dr. N.T. Wright is a New Testament theologian and the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He is the author of many books, including Surprised by Hope, and Evil and the Justice of God. This post is adapted from his lecture "Where is God in ‘The War on Terror?'" and is used with permission by the author.

Should Christians write futuristic novels about killing people in future religious wars?

What would you do if suddenly your car didn’t run, all power to your home was gone, your house furnace and central air conditioning were disabled, your refrigerator and freezer became warm storage cabinets for rapidly decaying food, and your employer was permanently out of business?

How would you survive? Where would you go to escape the harsh realities of the climate where you live?

And suppose that on top of this calamity there came a horde of marauders riding swift horses into your city to murder, rape, burn, and pillage? Police, firefighters, and National Guardsmen would be powerless to put up much resistance since they couldn’t operate vehicles or equipment to get to the site of the conflagration.

Do you own a gun? Could you bring yourself to fend off your formerly friendly neighbor who is now murderously intent upon taking your last food reserves to keep his family from starving? And how many bullets would it take to repel thousands of heavily armed invaders, all intent upon killing you for your beliefs and stealing your family and property?

In this fanciful but not far-fetched page-turner, xxx xxxx portrays a world where the ultimate weapon of mass destruction has instantly propelled the United States hundreds of years backward and turned society into a vicious, dog-eat-dog, stone-age madhouse of chaos. This weapon is out there, in the hands of insane men and it could happen!

I found this interesting. I met the author of this book last week, and he asked me to peruse his website. He seems like a good writer, but when I read the paragraph above that begins "do you own a gun..." I couldn't help but wonder if the paragraph was hype or if we were really supposed to contemplate shooting our neighbor to keep him from stealing our food or storing up ammo to kill "thousands of heavily armed invaders"?!? Reminds me of the "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper sticker you can by at www.landoverbaptist.org...

Great article from Brian McLaren...

One of my favorite writers, Brian McLaren, had this post recently on the God's Politics blog. Where do we as followers of Jesus need to stand on the line of balance between self-protection and love for enemy?