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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: When did World War II become a just war?
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
You two, Beeswax Altar & Martin, if you want to get personal - take it to hell.
Doublethink
Purgatory Host
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Ma'am.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
You're a good man Martin. I love you. Really I do.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Beeswax Alter, that is TOTALLY ... disarming of you. Blessed are the peacemakers indeed. That is me defeated. I'm afraid you've made a friend of me. You have done EXACTLY what Brian McLaren teaches and I utterly endorse and ... failed to do with you.
And you are of course totally WRONG. I am NOT a good man. And although I AM a raving compulsive self-righteous egotist (sick with self loathing - God is fair), it doesn't mean I'm wrong.
That an ambulatory receptacle of mental, experiential, emotional excrement (a walking shit bag) can't be the utterly undeserving and UNWANTING (it was SO much easier when I was a hawk) recipient of the uncompromising grace of God in Christ's stark example of utterly repudiating violence as a response to the abuse of power. As a starting point.
So what do we do now ? It's your move Sir. Friend.
And deano's. I'll have to apologise to him on the hell thread devoted to him.
Sigh.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
Don't bother. Just give soldiers their faith back please.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
deano, soldiers have to step in because Christianity fails. It fails them by not showing them personally that there is another, better, yet MORE noble way.
I have had the honour of knowing five soldiers well, some too well, four I would count as close, personal, long term friends. Very close. Some too close. And yes I a have been security cleared. I have known many others and without exception have the highest regard for them.
Including the two who make the historians fools and/or liars.
They all did well what Christianity could not. Would not.
The enemy is tamed Christianity, not soldiers.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Martin it seems to me that on the one hand you are defining "Christian" in anabaptist, "professing" terms (individual commitment, pacifism, not part of any earthly kingdom, etc.) and on the other hand defining "Christian" in "confessing" terms (a "Christian nation") when you say that "Christians" are responsible for all wars since Constantine.
You want Christians to behave within worldly kingdoms as though these were the Kingdom of God.
I think Jesus was a vehicle for the Kingdom of God in a unique way. I'm not saying we shouldn't try and follow his example, but if we just try and copy/paste it without thought onto geopolitical kingdoms we are likely to end up in millenialism/dominionism, which frankly I find just as scary as the dispensationalism you say you have abandoned.
As an aside, here in France I have never heard more serious, responsible, ethical, agonising and Christianly-informed debate about war than in the nation's top officer training academy.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
Martin,
Accepting for now the premise that when we as individuals or groups are attacked, the truly Christian response is to turn the other cheek, what about the case when third parties are attacked ?
Waiving one's own right to self-defence is one thing. Failure to act in defence of someone else is another.
In imagining what Jesus would do, turning His face away doesn't seem right. But neither does picking up a sword.
But when you've looked for a third way and not found one, those seem to be the bottom-line choices.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Hi Eutychus, Russ.
Christianity subverted the Roman empire too effectively and became the Roman empire. East and West. So the empire won. We must shake the empire's dust from our feet. Untame ourselves and get back to subverting it. The fact that decent, civilized men agonize over Devil's alternatives is overwhelmingly sublimely humanly beautiful. Tempting or what. We stood at the top of the temple and accepted a long time ago.
Jesus gave us only ONE example of how to avoid that. Sacrifice. Without coercion - and NO clearing the temple twice, is NO comparison - without violence. That means getting between the violent and the oppressed, absorbing, shaming violence. That means - literally - laying our lives down.
That's as Christians, followers of Christ, AS Christ, FIRST.
If we're soldiers, police of the empire FIRST then it's more complicated, it's compromised. We're living by the sword.
And NO that is NOT forbidden. It's MORE complex, MORE real, MORE nuanced, MORE up to us to work it out, to TRULY agonize over.
At this moment, Christians are significant by their invisibility in Northern Ireland, in Syria. As they were concerning Libya, Iraq, Rwanda, Bosnia ALL conflicts that our civilized leaders have wrung their hands over. So good men of the empire have to kill and be killed.
Christians are invisible in the empire generally. In its buying, selling, its bread and circuses. In its consumption - with all the overtones of tuberculosis, cancer - to sustain itself.
And yeah I've been at the sharp end and will be again and will always call the cops although that's always too late. And until they come I will have to partially ineffectually interpose in the violence and get caught in the crossfire, distract violence from the weak to myself. There is no other way.
And yeah, if a guy pulls a knife, I will pick up a chair. Two weeks ago a volunteer, a five foot nothing young woman handed me a wrench that she'd just taken off a very close friend who has served six years for murder. Awesome.
This is what Jesus wants and does.
From, by, in US, individuals on up ... down in to the empire.
Caesar is NOT lord.
[ 08. December 2012, 10:20: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
If we're soldiers, police of the empire FIRST then it's more complicated, it's compromised. We're living by the sword.
You've done it again: you're mixing up how to run kingdoms with the Kingdom.
I don't think a nation state, which is "of this world", can be fully pacifist.
Even if we admit Jesus as a proponent of non-violence, he is advocating that for the Kingdom, not any earthly kingdom.
We may agree with Jesus that the nations and kingdoms are all a drop in a bucket, will be blown away like chaff, and so on, but the fact is that for now, we collectively are still stuck in nation states.
We can implement non-violence on an individual level (as you relate) and on an organisational level (like MLK), but if you want to opt out of the nation state altogether I think you are heading for your Essene holy huddle. We are called to be in but not of; doing so will sometimes require us to choose the lesser of two evils.
The way those choices play out is down to individual conscience which I personally see as one of the great triumphs of grace. We are allowed to differ!
(I'm reminded of the Christian couple I knew who, many years ago, were both at a Greenham Common demo - he as a copper and she as a protestor).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
No I haven't.
He is advocating for ALL. Now. Just as then.
As long as we capitulate to the empire, the reich, the beast there is no Kingdom come.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I think you're missing the "not yet" bit.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I reject it. I put no limit on the Kingdom NOW, for ALL of us, NOW. I have no idea what a government is. Something, a myth, a fantasy to hide behind. An excuse.
And by the way Eutychus, ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
I reject it. I put no limit on the Kingdom NOW, for ALL of us, NOW.
Well I do, and that limit is our fallen nature, which doesn't evaporate on conversion and won't go away altogether until all things are made new. (Which presumably has a lot to do with why there will always be wars and rumours of wars until the end). We underestimate our own fallen nature at our peril and especially so when we try and occupy the moral high ground.
Oh and I'll see your and raise you a ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
posted by Euty:
quote:
I don't think a nation state, which is "of this world", can be fully pacifist.
Article 9 comes pretty close. At one stage Ireland came very close to a similar arrangement to article 9 in light of the horrors of the Easter Rising and the ensuing civil war, but instead went for a type of fudged neutrality.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Japan seems to be entitled to self-defence under the provisions of that article. I think Martin would enjoin them, christianly speaking, to martyrdom in preference to self-defence.
(Here's another one to mess with your minds: French army chaplains now carry sidearms, for self-defence, when deployed with patrols in Afghanistan on the basis that failure to do so puts the whole patrol at greater risk).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
I reject it. I put no limit on the Kingdom NOW, for ALL of us, NOW. I have no idea what a government is. Something, a myth, a fantasy to hide behind. An excuse.
We need you and others who have remained unjaded and torn by what we see in the world. Those whom Viktor Frankl observed while in a Holocaust death camp neither gave up hope nor identified with the aggressor, but continued to help others. I think Frankl thought that perhaps less than 5% of the people showed this. Just a few. We need this group to grow. Much larger. We cannot accept that the polarities of the world are true. We already have learned that death and life are the same thing. We must also learn that about the kingdoms of god and of the world. (And no he says considering the usual objections to such visions, it is not about creating heaven on earth, it is about being fully human on earth.)
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
posted by Euty:
quote:
I don't think a nation state, which is "of this world", can be fully pacifist.
Article 9 comes pretty close. At one stage Ireland came very close to a similar arrangement to article 9 in light of the horrors of the Easter Rising and the ensuing civil war, but instead went for a type of fudged neutrality.
Japan maintains a defense force and hosts a large detachment of the US Pacific Command.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
We already have learned that death and life are the same thing.
They are? ![[Confused]](confused.gif) quote:
We must also learn that about the kingdoms of god and of the world.
What, that they are the same thing? quote:
it is not about creating heaven on earth, it is about being fully human on earth.
I think that embracing our humanity means a) coming to terms with our individual and collective fallenness b) allowing for the fact that being endowed with their own consciences, other humans may legitimately attempt to follow Jesus in the light of a) by means other than those we see as right for us.
There's plenty to be recommended in non-violence and pacifist thinking, but it's a poor show if its proponents fail to have any respect for Christians who have chosen other approaches.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
We already have learned that death and life are the same thing.
They are?
States of being in the outer sense, we're doing that 'one' thing in Christ.
quote:
We must also learn that about the kingdoms of god and of the world.What, that they are the same thing? quote:
it is not about creating heaven on earth, it is about being fully human on earth.
I think that embracing our humanity means a) coming to terms with our individual and collective fallenness b) allowing for the fact that being endowed with their own consciences, other humans may legitimately attempt to follow Jesus in the light of a) by means other than those we see as right for us.
There's plenty to be recommended in non-violence and pacifist thinking, but it's a poor show if its proponents fail to have any respect for Christians who have chosen other approaches.
It's not about respect. It's realizing that people are in different places along the path, and in the sense of their understandings, 'young' such that some outer things matter a little too much. In my view, we're now verging on discussion of conversionism, where some people hold that if you are Christian you're more or less arrived and done: converted. Whereas I think that everyone is being converted to the person they need to be are should be and are wanted to be step by step, progressively and will be until their dying breath.
No, you cannot follow Jesus legitimately into a war, nor into anything like it, though you can follow Jesus even if you're in a war.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
No, you cannot follow Jesus legitimately into a war, nor into anything like it, though you can follow Jesus even if you're in a war.
Just found this.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Awesome.
Just watched episode four of Band of Brothers which covers the Anglo-US failure to relieve Arnhem. I get choked up ALL the time watching it. Again. I've read everything. Played the game. I was at Stoke Rochford last New Year's where Market Garden was planned.
I can hardly breathe I love those men so.
no prophet, I am the worst of men. Afflicted for my sins. I have been the most vociferous armchair warrior here bar none. Earlier this year I bought EVERYTHING Ambrose wrote. One of my favourite, all time films is Zulu. Utterly useless heroism all round.
God has a funny sense of humour.
All of that is redeemed. All that our heroes - DON'T get me going on the Guards at Dunkirk! - did and do is redeemed.
It's about time we - Christians - sacrificed that they don't have to.
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Love wins
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Just watched episode four of Band of Brothers which covers the Anglo-US failure to relieve Arnhem.
The second attempt was successful. This was the Canadian 1st army, including the 5th Cdn armoured division. I know this because my father-in-law was there, both in 1944 and returned in 1994 and 2004. I have a shell casing, about 5" across we inherited after my inlaws both died, given to them in 1994 when they visited a family he'd met in Dec 1944 and they'd revisited. It's been worked a bit but still very recognizable as a casing, and was used as a vase for flowers. Makes me rather emotional thinking of it all.
I'm not so fond of American productions re WW2 as they are not necessarily historical and they don't mention the allies much. Most people don't know that the Canadians had the 3rd largest navy in WW2 and achieved more of their objectives at D-Day than UK and USA. Juno Beach.
[ 10. December 2012, 02:10: Message edited by: no prophet ]
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