What if Jesus really meant it when He said "Love your enemies"? You may call it simplistic, but Jesus did not say to come to Him as a theologian, but as a child.
By Jonathan on Military ethics on 4/8/12
It’s striking how selective people are when prooftexting pacifism. Loving our enemies is not our only social obligation. The Bible presents a number of different social obligations. For instance:
10 Do not forsake your friend and your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away (Prov 27:10).
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 5:44).
4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die’ (Mt 15:4)
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22:37-40).
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph 5:25).
8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim 5:8).
Which brings us to the next point: where does your duty lie in case of conflicting duties?
If a man pulls a knife on your wife, and you have a gun pointed at his head, should you shoot him, or should you let him slit her throat? How are you loving your wife if you let him murder her when you were in a position to save her?
It’s not as if the pacifist is more faithful to Scripture than a Christian soldier or policeman. The pacifist can only be pacifistic by disobeying a number of other Scriptural duties.
The solution to the dilemma is to distinguish between higher and lower obligations. Not all obligations are equally obligatory. Some duties are greater than others. Some duties take precedence over others. In case of conflict, a higher obligation temporarily supersedes a lower obligation.
All things being equal, we should love our enemies–but all things considered, there are situations in which we can’t simultaneously love our neighbors and our enemies. Something has to give. Some duties are prima facie duties rather than actual duties.
If, for instance, we have to harm the assailant to protect the innocent from harm, then our first duty is to the welfare of the innocent, not the assailant. It would be unjust to treat both parties equally.
Finally, pacifists talk carelessly about loving your enemy. Suppose a bank robber takes hostages. He shoots one hostage to show the police that he’s serious. Suppose the police sharpshooter has a clear shot and takes the shot. He kills the bank robber before the robber murders any more hostages.
The robber wasn’t the policeman’s enemy. He wasn’t a threat to the policeman. The policeman wasn’t avenging the robber.
Whenever I encounter pacifists (and my area of the world is rife with Mennonites, so it's fairly common), I find this question makes their words stop:
ReplyDeleteIf you had to smash a man's skull to stop him from continuing to rape your 10 year old daughter, would you?
If the answer is anything except, "Yes. Absolutely. Give me a brick," then I find the person no less a monster than the rapist.
For me one of the best debunker bomb scriptures in all the Bible is this one:
ReplyDeletePsa 46:9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.
Tell me, then, how does one break the bow and shatter the spear and burn the chariots with fire to cause wars to cease to the end of the earth?
It's the sinfulness of this fallen world that creates such conflicting obligations. Many who despise God point to the apparently irreconcilable conflicts brought on by sin as proof that God is not all He's cracked up to be, when the sin is our fault. In cases like these, I think you have a good principle here. When faced with conflicting obligations, we can't judge all obligations to be equal. Even when the conflict is between two very difficult obligations, the principle is whether our ultimate desire is to serve God faithfully while grieving that we cannot fulfill both.
ReplyDeleteThe story is told of two soldiers in WWII, one American and one German, who met each other on a remote corner of the battlefield. In Western culture, it is a little-discussed quasi-tradition that allows enemy combatants to enjoy a temporary cease-fire under certain circumstances and these two took advantage of that tradition for a moment. As they sat down together to rest, they talked and discovered that they were both Christians. Submissive to their governing authorities in the service of their country and bound not to murder according to the commandment, they shared the tension between those obligations. One of them, the American, had the clear advantage as they got up to part ways. Grieving as he did so, the American promptly killed the German who would have followed orders, reported troop movement information, and facilitated in killing Americans. Knowing that his enemy here was a brother in Christ, the American had at least the consolation of knowing that the One to whom he dispatched his brother would welcome him into eternal life.