Thinking Christianly About War

There continues to be concern about the administration's political will and acumen with respect to the Afghan War. Much of the rhetoric seems to presuppose that the question of handling the war is simply one of pragmatism. Some on the left object to our making war in Afghanistan simply because they believe we ought to devote our resources to domestic projects.  Others on the right criticize the president because they believe the administration is not prosecuting the war with sufficient seriousness to protect essential American geopolitical interests.  But whenever good and patriotic American Christians reflexively embrace pragmatism as our moral framework for thinking about war, we forget the moral compass entrusted to us by virtue of our baptism and run the risk of steering our nation into shoal waters. 

Image via Wikipedia

A case in point is conservative columnist Peggy Noonan's ruminations last fall about our prosecution of the Afghan war.  I especially appreciate her reminder of how Lincoln dealt with his generals in comparison to what appeared to be confusion on the part of the Administration as it considered our next steps as the nation responsible for that war. My concern is that Noonan, a self-described Irish Catholic, seems to accept uncritically the premise that war is often necessary; therefore, she frames the debate in terms of a popular but flawed "just war" doctrine that reduces the decision to make war to a checklist that inevitably results in sanctifying whatever seems practical to the nation-state.  However, the ethical question for Christians is not, as Noonan suggests that Obama believes, whether or not this war or any war is necessary. For Christians, the ethical question begins and ends with our working out what it means to receive the grace of Christ as command in our lives. And that begins by taking the Ten Commandments much more seriously.

The president, as almost all have noted—and for once, almost all are correct—has not distinguished himself in this matter. Afghanistan is a necessary war or not, we'll see. 

via online.wsj.com

As Christians enter the Lenten season, our liturgy will tend to emphasize grace in the form of divine command, such as we receive in the Ten Commandments. With our catechumens, we recently reflected on the implications for Christians of the second table of commandments, beginning with the most simple of all, the one that is often translated "Thou shalt not murder." We often forget that the point of that commandment is not really the negative one of proscribing the killing of others as much as it is to issue an invitation into a joyful and peaceable life with God in which killing can never be seen as 'necessary.' 

As William Cavanaugh notes, the key to understanding the fifth commandment is not the verb but the pronoun implied: "You shall not kill." The commandment reminds us that death belongs to God alone. Moreover, the context and historic reception of the commandments reminds us that we are to receive the fact that we are not to kill as a great blessing made possible by God's decision to be with us in spite of our tragic estrangement from God and each other. In other words, we are to received the command "You shall not kill" as a means of grace that we are to share with the world so that all the nations are brought into the blessings that God intends for all creation. This is the eschatological hope and reality declared by Isaiah:

In days to come the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3 Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 

(Isaiah 2:2-4 NRSV)

As Christians, our refusal to kill grows out of our conviction that Christ has conquered death on the Cross and that God has in the Incarnation already ushered in the time in which the lamb lies down with the lion, a time that is both here and not yet here. It is this faith, this refusal to believe that taking human life is ever necessary, that gave moral courage to the martyrs of early Christianity. Their deaths were their witness to their faith that the politics of domination in which the world subsists has been and must be replaced by the politics of Jesus, a politics that turns the world upside down through its embrace of Christ's gift of peace.

So the question that Peggy Noonan presupposes, and the question raised by our President in his allusion to just war doctrine in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, ought to be problematic for Christians. The question before us as we contemplate the Afghan War or any war is not "is this war necessary?" And it really is not a question of choosing between two hells as Noonan suggests, though I think Noonan helpfully illuminates the chaos that may ensue if we were simply to abandon Afghanistan now that we have grown weary of our war there. We are responsible and accountable for what happens next. 

The moral issues at stake here are not illuminated sufficiently for Christians simply by asking if a war is necessary.  It is a good question, yet insufficient.  Rather the question we Christians must prayerfully consider is, "Now that we are engaged in war-making and have taken by virtue of our position of power as a nation-state responsibility for the consequences of our actions, what ought we do now so that our actions embody the grace of God that it is our vocation to embody? What ought we do now so that our actions point all the nations to the reality, envisioned in Isaiah and revealed in the gospel accounts, that the kingdom of God has drawn near?" 

It is much easier to justify our violence ourselves by claiming it is the only practical course, or by persisting in the fiction that God has appointed us or requires us to make war in order to make sure Evil in the world is ultimately conquered.  Yet, our faith demands much more; it demands that we ask how our actions are consistent with the story of the kingdom of God revealed in Christ that it is our duty to tell.  Only when we ask this of ourselves and of God do we have any hope of recognizing the faithful course.