The Morality of War

Newsletter article for November 2002

© 2002 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

With the past year’s military action in Afghanistan, and the talk lately of a potential war in Iraq (again) I believe that it is good to take a look at the Bible’s views on war and military action. This is not necessarily an easy task. The Bible is somewhat ambivalent about war, in much the same way that it is ambivalent about such things as divorce and slavery. The Holy Scriptures clearly frown on both divorce and slavery, but they also accept them and deal with them as an ongoing reality because people are sinful. The same is true with war, except for the fact that unlike divorce and slavery, God actually told His people to go to war on occasion, although with some very strict and oftentimes bizarre rules of engagement.

Because of this ambivalence about war you can sometimes find both “hawks” and “doves” quoting the scriptures to support their position, which just confuses the issue. However, there is one passage that I find most illuminating to help understand this issue. You may find it in Joshua 5:13-6:7. There are few books of the Bible which contain more battles than Joshua, and here in the account of the fall of Jericho you will not find a more bizarre battle tactic, but God does most of the actual killing (which is proper).

In this passage Joshua is preparing for battle when he meets a man with a drawn sword who claims to be the “Commander of the army of the Lord,” From what follows this is apparently God Himself in human form. Joshua asks the man if he is “for us or for our enemies” and He replies “neither.” Now I find this rather puzzling and somewhat strange. The “Commander of the army of the Lord” proceeds to give instructions to Joshua for how the Israelites will go and attack Jericho in a siege which must result in the death of all the people of Jericho except for the former prostitute Rahab and her family (because she protected the Israelite spies when they were in the city.) Since God clearly wants Israel to destroy Jericho you might expect that he would be for Israel and against Jericho, but He instead says that He is for “neither.”

How can God not be against the people that he is going to kill in just a few days? We can find the answer in Scripture. Romans 3:23 says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are all sinners in God’s eyes. There is no one who is better than anyone else because we are all sinners. No one is saved because they are more worthy than anyone else, because no one is worthy of salvation. However we also read in Acts 10:34-35 that “God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” In the book of Joshua God did not favor Israel because they were better than the Canaanites, instead God had promised the land to Abraham’s descendants because God had chosen Abraham as the ancestor of the Messiah (Christ) who would come to save all sinners from their sin. The Israelites were far from perfect. Many times they showed themselves to be no better than the Canaanite people they were fighting, but God was able to lead Israel to repentance, while the Canaanite people stubbornly rejected God’s calls to repentance. That is why God gave Israel the Canaanite land and destroyed the former inhabitants.

So what does all this mean for today? There are some very profound lessons here which are ignored at our peril. All war happens as a result of sin. God doesn’t want nations (or others) to go to war for the sake of conquest or cruelty. But since God has sanctioned war in Biblical times we see that there are occasions when even the Christian may get involved in war.

Romans 13 says that God gives the authorities “the sword” to enforce laws and keep the peace. From this we can say that war may be waged in defense against an unprovoked attack, and also for the sake of upholding justice and peace. This is shown most recently in the fight against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network in Afghanistan. They made an unprovoked attack on our nation, and we fought back to discourage terrorism and to bring peace to the world. In the process we (hopefully) laid the groundwork for a more stable, peaceful government in Afghanistan. The fight against Germany and Japan in World War II was also a just war which brought justice and punishment to those nations which sought to expand their empire by force.

Let us therefore first of all pray for peace, that there may be no need for our countrymen to fight and die in a war. Next let us citizens hold our nationally elected representatives accountable and only pursue war for the sake of justice and peace. Finally let us take advantage of the peace that is here and spread the message of the Gospel both in our country and in others so that more people may come to believe in Jesus and be saved. If we do this then God will certainly continue to bless our nation and give us the peace which we treasure so much.

Selected to Escape Tribulation

Newsletter Article for November 1996

© 1996 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

As we approach the end of the Church Year the themes of the Sunday Morning Bible readings begin to focus on the end times, death, judgment, and heaven. This reminds me of a piece of junk mail I received while I was on vicarage. Through a window in the front of the envelope, printed in red, were the words “Escape Tribulation,” and beneath that was printed on the envelope (also in red) “Notification of Selection.” Well, I’m not the sort of person who gets a kick out of tribulation, and I did feel a little honored to be selected to escape it, so I opened the letter.

You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the letter was only an offer to subscribe to a magazine. The enclosed letter described the content of the magazine. Apparently the magazine attempts to take Biblical prophesies and apply them directly to present history. This is like taking an oversized square peg and trying to force it through an undersized round hole—even if you get it through you lose something valuable in the process.

This publication seems to claim to be a Christian publication. And they claim that their conclusions are based solely on the Bible, but something doesn’t ring true. Their attempt to make Biblical prophesies correlate to our present history only takes away from the true object of the Biblical prophesies, which is Jesus Christ. Also from the tone of the letter it seems that the underlying message of this magazine is to encourage fear and anxiety over current events. They want us to believe that we are headed toward destruction or tribulation. This is also anti-Christian because it denies that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)

I don’t know what sort of a gospel they are preaching, but from their advertisement, it seems to be a “different gospel” than the one preached in the Bible. This “different gospel” is really no gospel at all (See Galatians 1:6-10). The Bible was written to show us that Jesus is our savior from sin, so that we know what God has done to save us. The Bible gives us hope and confidence in our salvation, it doesn’t lead us to fear and despair.

I have seen these sort of ideas before. I was working as a pizza delivery man back when the Persian Gulf War was going on. On the evening when the bombers began bombing Baghdad one of my co-workers got very excited, like this was the end of the world. He was particularly worried and remained glued to a radio, listening for news. He was pretty much useless for the job at hand, partly because he was enlisted in the reserves, and partly because he thought this was the end. I must admit that I benefited from this because I took nearly all the deliveries that night and made a ton of money. (I honestly tried to reassure my friend that this wasn’t the end of the world, but he didn’t want to listen to me.)

My friend had been told that because ancient Babylon is located in what is now Iraq that they would destroy Israel and the world would shortly come to an end. Of course, nothing like that happened. We defeated Iraq in such a lopsided victory, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Biblical times. To me the defeat of Iraq is closer to a metaphor for Christ’s victory over sin and evil, than any sign that evil is somehow going to be victorious.

The moral of this story is that there are still people who will pervert God’s word to try and make it say what they want it to say, and not what God intends. God doesn’t want us to be fearful about what the future holds, because the future is in His hands. If God wanted to make us fearful He would not have given us the Holy Scriptures, He would not have told us that He loves us, and He would not have sent Jesus to save us. It is the task of every Christian to keep the Second Commandment and uphold the truth of God’s word, and his name. The best way for us to do that is to study the Bible regularly so that we know what the truth is, and we won’t fall for lies.

No one knows when Jesus will return, and when it happens it will be “like the lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other” (Luke 17:24), and it will happen “in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Corinthians 15:52) Jesus made it a point not to tell us when, so that we will always be prepared. I don’t know what my friends were so worried about. When Jesus really returns we won’t mistake it for anything else, or he will wake us up with trumpets. In the meantime, there is work to be done. We should tell everyone about what Jesus has done for us so that when He returns His coming will be a joyful event for them, just as it is for us who believe, and not a fearful event.