Christianity and War

[real tree]

I agree with this, however, in this particular circumstance it was not our freedoms that were attacked...so the question is then, do we fight another's battles or stay out of it?

I would say the war on terrorism plays a major role on our freedom as well as our safety.

 

[Bible2+]

real tree said in post #19:

To say that only non believers should only have to fight and die sounds a little self righteous to me.

Note that nonbelievers don't have to fight anyone. For example, Gandhi was a pacifist even though he wasn't a Christian.

 

[real tree]

Note that nonbelievers don't have to fight anyone. For example, Gandhi was a pacifist even though he wasn't a Christian.

Gandhi huh
If you are going to try to convince me that the victims of holocaust would of been better off if all were pacifists your wasting your time. If you you are trying to convince me that groups such as ISIS will just behave them self if all embrace pacifism you are wasting your time.

 

[FireDragon76]

I don't think Anabaptist style pacifism is the answer, since it usually involves social disengagement and a lack of realism. I'm a bit more Augustinian in my anthropology- escaping sin doesn't make one guiltless, necessarily.

 

[Bible2+]

real tree said in post #23:

If you are going to try to convince me that the victims of holocaust would of been better off if all were pacifists your wasting your time.

Note that if all were pacifists, there would have been no Holocaust.

Also, note that World War II wasn't actually fought over the Holocaust, but over the political control of countries. Also, even if it had been fought over the Holocaust, should over forty million people be killed in a war to save six million alive? Instead, what could have saved them alive would have been an American offer to receive as immigrants all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people whom Hitler thought were weakening Germany. Hitler could have agreed to let them all go, for he would have seen it as a way for them to (in his mind) weaken his ultimate rival America instead.

Also, who supports the idea of a shooting war to stop the current Holocaust of millions of aborted babies who are being brutally murdered around the world each year? Who are more innocent than these little ones? And yet where are the war-makers put who try to defend these innocents by killing anyone who would harm them? They are put in prison, as murderers; or they are put in insane asylums, as crazy people.

real tree said in post #23:

If you you are trying to convince me that groups such as ISIS will just behave them self if all embrace pacifism you are wasting your time.

Note that if ISIS embraced pacifism, it would behave itself.

Also, ISIS is not behaving itself no matter how much warfare is directed against it. It is just metastasizing and spreading across the globe.

So military action is not a permanent solution, but is even making things worse.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on physical weapons to fight ISIS, the world should be spending all that money on ideological warfare against ISIS, defeating its ideology in the minds of its leaders and recruits.

And the Mother of all Ideological Bombs against ISIS would be an all-out, worldwide promotion of Islamic Pacifism.

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Also, note that during the Middle Ages, the Islamic Caliphate allowed Christians and Jews to keep their religion, so long as they simply submitted politically, and paid a tax. The Jews even thrived in Islamic countries during the Middle Ages. It was not until a church that believed in violence reconquered Spain, for example, that the Jews there began to be slaughtered in the name of religion (that is, under the Spanish Inquisition perpetrated by Christians). Similarly, the ISIS-type Muslims of today believe that it is okay to murder people who do not convert to their religion. And the Crusades were no different than this type of Islamic "jihad" (that is, a so-called "holy war"), which mistakenly thinks that it is okay to wage physical war in order to defend or expand one's religion, or to "take back" lands which were once under the political control of one's religion. As if that is what religion is supposed to be about (cf. James 1:27).

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Also, note that, before it came into power politically, Christianity survived its terrible persecution by the Roman Empire, not by fighting back physically, but by continuing to pray, and preach, and peacefully convert the Roman Empire.

Similarly, Christianity is surviving, and is even growing today, in atheistic China, precisely because the Christians there do not employ violence. If they did take up arms, the Communist state would only use that as an excuse to attempt to crush Christianity out of existence in China altogether.