I think there comes a point in the sociological evolution of a species in which they must abandon war. I have always thought this, even as a child. I abhorred war, weapons, and conflict. I wanted to be everyone’s friend. I was trusting. I was happy.
Life in the rural South isn’t kind to little boys like that, but that’s another blog post for another time.
I’ve recently been seeing that maybe that little dude with bug-eyed glasses and wild, curly hair was right. Maybe life is possible without war. I mean that in both the literal and figurative sense.
Okay, before we start warming the tar and plucking the feathers, let me say that I know full well that I would never be able to enjoy the freedoms that I have today if someone didn’t fight and die for them. I HONOR most highly the young men and women who choose to dedicate their lives to the service of their countries. My father was a soldier, his father was a soldier, I have a brother who was a soldier. I get it. I understand.
What I don’t understand is this: “What’s it all for?”
What.
Is.
It.
For?
For freedom? For power? For peace? (I’ll spare you my tirade on the irony of fighting a war for peace.)
There is only one reason to instigate a war. To dominate. Think the Crusades. These were not campaigns to spread the message of Christ. They were Crusades to DOMINATE the opposition, to crush the heathens. They failed. (Things like that often do.)
There is no good reason for war. Even defending oneself against attack is precluded by the fact that someone instigated war on you in the first place. The need, the desire to dominate is, I’m convinced, archaic, a relic of an animalistic instinct to further one’s personal ideologies (including religion), bloodline, or nationalistic endeavors. Violence is messy, hard to rationalize, and harder to recover from. It is, in my opinion, evil. The desire to hurt, the desire to injure. This is evil.
I brace myself now for the forced march down hypothetical lane: “What would you do if someone had a gun to a child’s head and the only way to protect the child was to kill them?”
That hypothetical is engineered by those who fail to realize that without violence, then there would be no gun.
Understand me now, I am no activist. I am no philosopher. I’m just a guy who’s sick to death with the violence in the world, the death, the dying. I’m sick of hearing excuses for it. I’m sick of being told I’m an idealist, that there will always be war as long as there are humans, that it’s part of human nature. SLAVERY used to be part of human nature, CANNIBALISM used to be part of human nature. Granted, those things still exist in dark, uncivilized corners of the globe, but they are (now) universally despised and rejected. I believe war has the same fate.
What saddens me is that there will be (my fellow) Christians now, those who serve the Prince of Peace, who will leave comments or challenge me based on scriptures from eschatological and prophetic writings. They’ll say war will always exist because it exists in the biblical future of the world. Well…so do chariots and archers and swords. The biblical meta-narrative is unclear on a lot of things, dear fellow believers, but let me pose this question to you:
“Does the fact that we may never see peace present a good excuse to not strive for it?”
Before you answer that question, here’s another:
“Does the fact that Jesus said ‘the poor will always be with you’ present a good excuse to not engage in charity?”
Is the fact that poverty is (allegedly) perpetual an excuse to preclude it from being evil?
The answer to both of these questions are absolutely not.
And so, I encourage, pursue the higher ground. Be a man or woman of peace. Love war as you would love poverty. Accept it as you would accept injustice. Allow it as you would allow abuse.
Dare to be a dreamer. Dream to be an idealist.
