Christian War Fever

[MacFall]

Yes, one of my best friends is a Marine. Another is in the Navy and two are joining the Army this summer.

 

[Wirraway]

Yes, one of my best friends is a Marine. Another is in the Navy and two are joining the Army this summer.

do you get the impression that they're bloodthirsty? or tools? or just not good Christians?

 

[MacFall]

Bloodthirsty, no. But I never said that was true of individual soldiers (although I have known a few...)

Tools... well, unless they mean not to follow every order they are given, then what else? Hell, the Marine I mentioned even said so, which was a shock to me at the time as I was a pro-war conservative back then. If you don't have the ability to judge an action and act according to your own judgment, then you are the tool of the one directing your action, like it or not. Of course mutiny is always an option, but how often does that actually happen?

Good Christians? Well, nobody is a "good Christian". I don't think that God rates sin on a scale of more and less sinful, and everyone has sinned. However, I do see within the faith a strong tendency toward the idolatry of statism, and it frustrates me to see my friends participating in that. As I've said before, I don't judge them for what they choose to do, but I will judge the choice itself, and the philosophy behind it.

 

[Wirraway]

did your dad serve? any member of your family? are you embarrassed of that?

 

[MacFall]

A few of my grandparents' generations and earlier did. And no, I'm not embarrassed. Those who chose to serve the government did so because they believed things that I believed myself until only a few years ago. Those before them were drafted, and I could no more be embarrassed by them than by others who pay their taxes because they'll go to jail if they don't.

 

[Wirraway]

A few of my grandparents' generations and earlier did. And no, I'm not embarrassed. Those who chose to serve the government did so because they believed things that I believed myself until only a few years ago. Those before them were drafted, and I could no more be embarrassed by them than by others who pay their taxes because they'll go to jail if they don't.

you should consider that there are many men and women on this forum who served in the armed forces, or might still be serving, and some of us have relatives who aren't here because of their service, and most of us hold a very different point of view than yours. for a lot of us, "love of country" is not the kind of cartoon cliche you seem to think it is.

you should also have a long talk with your friends when they come home. they'll be different than when you last saw them.

 

[MacFall]

Well that's the thing. I don't believe in any such a thing as "country". I believe in people; individual people. The thing that disgusts me the most about the military philosophy is its collectivism: It's all "us" versus "them". If an American citizen dies because of a Muslim terrorist it's a cassus belli - but if an Iraqi child dies from an American bomb it's "collateral damage". It's no difference to me whether people are collectivists in the name of nations or in the name of economic classes or religions or races. It's logically fallacious and morally evil to judge people in groups, and groups determined by which gang of tax-feeders that claims power of them are only the most commonly reckoned group, but nearly always the only means by which governments distinguish between "good" and "bad" killing. Never mind that if the same government kills one of it's own citizens, it's just fine.

But I see absolutely no difference between my neighbor and the average person in China, Mexico, Iraq, Iran, or Israel other than proximity to me. Yet people who serve the state will often believe that everyone who is in a different country are "bad" just because "our" government says they are.

And the problem is that even if you aren't one of the people in the last paragraph, once you start taking orders from someone who believes in collectivism, you are a collectivist until you say "no". And that will probably land you in jail, or even dead. So don't put yourself in that position.

When my friends come home, I suspect they'll be like all the other ex-military people I know: either fanatical defenders of their previous employer, or burnt-out and sick to death of anything related to the government (you might be surprised at how many people who influenced me into the position I now take were in the military). I suppose there are exceptions who fall in between, but I've never met one personally.

 

[Wirraway]

...
When my friends come home, I suspect they'll be like all the other ex-military people I know: either fanatical defenders of their previous employer, or burnt-out and sick to death of anything related to the government (you might be surprised at how many people who influenced me into the position I now take were in the military). I suppose there are exceptions who fall in between, but I've never met one personally.

interesting.

childish and naive, but interesting.

 

[MacFall]

So... how exactly can one's objective, personal experience be "childish and naive"? Also, it's interesting how you ignored the majority of my post and limited what response you gave to name-calling, instead of actually addressing the arguments I presented.

 

[Wirraway]

you don't have any objective, personal experience. you're too childish and naive.

 

[Wirraway]

I actually meant to say that you're a naive child.

 

[Wirraway]

no, I think that's childishly naive.

 

[MacFall]

So, you're just going to call me names like a playground bully now? Fine, I thought it was funny in second grade too. Funny in a sad way.

 

[green wolverine]

I think a lot of the problem with Christians being in favor of war is that we have no real way of knowing what the truth is on any given subject. Unless we're intimately involved, we have to rely on what the news media tells us, and they're controlled to a greater or lesser degree by the White House--even fair and balanced Fox News.

Most of us also can't fathom that the government would ever provacateur an event to achieve an ulterior motive such as was proposed to JFK in Operation Northwoods:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

If you haven't read this document, I urge you to do so. The government isn't above doing whatever it takes to fool American citizens into falling for a lie to further their objectives.

 

[MacFall]

Although, is there anyone left in America who doesn't know that the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag operation? I mean, the NSA basically admitted it. But if the Great and Benevolent Uncle Sam would lie about that, why not other things?

I remember after the US failed to find WMDs in Iraq, I kept saying that they'd turn up in Syria or something. But I never really believed that. I just didn't want to admit to myself that "my" government was just as bad as all the other ones.

 

[Brother_Mark]

War is a necessity for a nation that prizes Bible Doctrine, Christ and freedom ( Exodus 21:12; 15) and when a nation must got to war to destroy evil (Romans 3:10-18). The Christian is called to kill the enemy in combat; any Christian who is called to military service should understand that in combat, the enemy must be destroyed. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest stated many times:

war means fightin' and fightin' means killin'
​

I've heard many liberal sermons from many liberal pastors and have always cringed in my seat; they attach a political sentiment to their chosen bible text to portray war as "evil" or "wrong" even in rightous circumstances. I disagree with Charles Spurgeon:

Better far for us to have famine than war. From all civil war and all the desperate wickedness which it involves, good Lord deliver us; and if thou smitest us as thou hast done, it is better to fall into the hand of God than into the hand of man ("Christian Sympathy," November 9, 1862, Metropolitan Tabernacle).

​

History has shown that those nations who reject doctrine, reject freedom and the necessity to prepare for war eventually fall neither into their hands of their countrymen nor the Father, but into the bloody hands of madmen intent on the total erradication of Christendom.


Let us pray (Phillipian 4:6-7) for our leaders, our military and that casualties are minimal if war does come.


In Christ,
Brother David

 

[MacFall]

There is a difference between people defending themselves against aggression, and people killing because they are ordered to do so by politicians. A BIG difference. Furthermore, when a state in waging war commits the very atrocities it claims to be trying to prevent (the death of civilians, the abridgment of liberty, the casting aside of the rule of law, the suspension of rights and codes of justice), then those who participate in it are parties to mass crime. There is a just way for a people to be defended, and the state fails every time. Although most of the time, the state does not even try to be just.

 

[BernieEOD]

These excerpts from Spurgeon's sermons on "Christian War Fever" were compiled by Laurence M. Vance for his series of essays entitled Christianity and War. I think they are a healthy antidote to the national-collectivist bloodthirst that seems to infect the American church these days.

I'd link to the original article but I guess I need 23 more posts before I can do that.




[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The thing that most disturbs me is how quick Christians are to buy the ideas of statism when it comes to war. As soon as the state - by far the institution which most closely approximates the Devil in ideology and operation - declares that those who live under the hand of a rival state are evil, Christians believe the story and cheer on their deaths.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Worse, Christians tend to judge people of other nations not based upon their individual persons, but rather by which gang of thugs taxes and regulates them. This, of course, is what most people in the world do - but shouldn't a Christian follow Christ's words rather than the reasoning of the world that leads them to these collectivist ideas?[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Defense of a person is one thing. But war as it exists today is always and everywhere the program of one gigantic, socialized military-industrial complex either fighting another such organization, or stomping all over the lives and property of smaller nations.[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]I would encourage Christians to abandon their War Fever and with it cease their support of the state and its works. The only business a Christian has at the altar of the state is in tearing it down, and the worst a Christian can do is to aid the state in the spilling of more blood upon it.
[/FONT][/left]

In spite of my 26 years of military service, I never had war fever. I have seen my job as doing my duty under Romans 13. When 9-11 hit, my job was to patrol our harbors against those who might blow up our ships and facilities and to disarm any bombs they might succeed in planting. When Iraq started up, I abandoned my quest to seek a 3rd reprieve from mandatory retirement and submitted my papers because I believed my job was to repel invaders, not to be one.

 

[BernieEOD]

War is a necessity for a nation that prizes Bible Doctrine, Christ and freedom ( Exodus 21:12; 15) and when a nation must got to war to destroy evil (Romans 3:10-18). The Christian is called to kill the enemy in combat; any Christian who is called to military service should understand that in combat, the enemy must be destroyed. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest stated many times:

war means fightin' and fightin' means killin'
​

I've heard many liberal sermons from many liberal pastors and have always cringed in my seat; they attach a political sentiment to their chosen bible text to portray war as "evil" or "wrong" even in rightous circumstances. I disagree with Charles Spurgeon:

Better far for us to have famine than war. From all civil war and all the desperate wickedness which it involves, good Lord deliver us; and if thou smitest us as thou hast done, it is better to fall into the hand of God than into the hand of man ("Christian Sympathy," November 9, 1862, Metropolitan Tabernacle).

​

History has shown that those nations who reject doctrine, reject freedom and the necessity to prepare for war eventually fall neither into their hands of their countrymen nor the Father, but into the bloody hands of madmen intent on the total erradication of Christendom.


Let us pray (Phillipian 4:6-7) for our leaders, our military and that casualties are minimal if war does come.


In Christ,
Brother David

Exodus 21:12; 15 We are not Isreal! There is no gospel of bombs & bullets! Any Church blessing our current policies is a fake church.


As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
11there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."[a]
13"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."[b]
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."[c]
14"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."[d]
15"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16ruin and misery mark their ways,
17and the way of peace they do not know."[e]
18"There is no fear of God before their eyes."[f]
What does that have to do with invading other nations?

 

[BernieEOD]

Yes, all of Jesus' followers were sinners. Jesus didn't kick any of them out of the club.

Really? Are you actually saying that?

You mean you don't follow orders? Are you not expected to do so without question? Is not disobedience of an executive order a federal crime?

I do.



What does that mean? Everybody who does anything at all does it for a reason.

No, I suspect they believe they are fighting for freedom and justice and other such concepts. How that can be done with an organization controlled by politicians, I have yet to hear.

Does the Christian soldier offer the same choice to those on whom they drop bombs and level rifles when ordered to do so?

I don't judge people for their choices, but I do judge the choices. And to me, the choice to surrender one's individual will and follow the orders of government bureaucrats is without exception a bad one. All the worse when they are ordering people to kill.

Only 1/3 of the military consist of actual "Trigger pullers" 2/3 of all servicemen are non combatant workers, not fighters.
The Navy and Air Force are considered "Non combatant service forces" You don;t even touch a weapon in these services unless you are one the few elite units who are tasked with doing so. The assumption that all in the military are blood thirst killers is false. One whose only military experience consiists of swabbing decks, polishing brass, washilng planes hardly fits your accusation.