Please comment on war. Probably we all hate war and no one hates it more than those who must fight in it, but what must we do when invaded by a Hitler or when Japan bombs a Pearl Harbor?
Dear Reuel,
The battle over whether war is ever just or right has raged in the Christian Church for hundreds of years. War is always interpreted in terms of the world view of the nation affected. Yes, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and our own survival forced us to take up arms to defend ourselves. We know now, however, from data that was released later, that six months before Pearl Harbor, Churchill and Roosevelt cut off Japan’s oil lifeline so they responded out of their need to survive. Hitler was himself the product of the humiliating and ill-advised treaty of Versailles, which kept the German people in poverty long after World War I, which in turn was exacerbated by a world wide depression. That does not excuse Hitler’s behavior, but it does help us to understand it. War is an instrument of foreign policy and in my opinion it always represents a failure on the part of a government, which believes it has no other option.
Were the two Iraq wars justified? How about Korea? Vietnam? Afghanistan? Grenada? We could debate them all. The driving desire in every human life is to survive. When survival is threatened, war is inevitable. In a world in which seven nations are known nuclear powers and one nation is probably a secret nuclear power, the price that war brings may prove to be too destructive to measure. I think we Christians must be peace makers, but I doubt if we have the power to prevent war!
~John Shelby Spong
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