They may want to read the Old Testament - sadly today,
too many people think the OT is obsolete just becuz we're in a new
covenant of grace. But war is of God (He formed His own armies and He's Lord of Armies (Hosts) - and God doesn't change.
But NOWHERE did Jesus/God condemn any just wars - He also didn't promote them either.
If war had been overturned, He would have told us that. And just war is DEFENSE of self/country. Protection is not evil. I don't see how Christians are to be the ONLY ones who don't use protection or defense while everyone else may. ???
The only reason Jesus didn't retaliate when He was being arrested is that it was His very mission to come in humility and die for our sins. His mission is NOT our same mission.
Well, you can't exactly turn the other cheek while trying to shoot your enemy. I mean, you can, but it'd be difficult to aim. Now, Christ is our example: Jesus said take your cross and follow me.
23 Then He said to
them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. 25 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? 26 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His
own glory, and
in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.
(Luke 9)
The idea isn't some liberal peacenik garbage about nonviolent protest, it's about personal morality that supersedes political rule of law and war - it's how you treat people, it's what you do with your enemies and how you look at them (they are evil? or are they simply lost, themselves?). It's not a euphemism for "Try not to be mean to people, and like, take up the cross of having to vote for a politician who will wage war against them."
You said:
I don't see how Christians are to be the ONLY ones who don't use protection or defense while everyone else may. ???
I have no problem with protection or defense on an individual level - you protect your loved ones with a gun and that's fine if the situation calls for it. Jesus didn't say "Whoever loses the life of all the people he cares about as a consequence of his inaction is worthy of me", now, did He? It's a different matter to wage war against a political adversary, in some impersonal and completely intellectual capacity. Besides, aren't we to somehow be different from everyone else...? I thought we trusted in God, not our own abilities.
Also, there is no "new covenant". I think that was a bit of a rhetorical device used to elucidate what Christ was dying for - "You take A to mean B, so we'll call A a new thing to get your attention away from the false B and directed at the correct object". Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, etc... were all saved by the same faith we have, only they didn't know the specifics of that faith as we do now. They trusted in God to provide salvation; we trust in God because He has provided salvation. The Old Testament is hardly irrelevant or obsolete, but it takes some wisdom to understand.
Whenever these issues become politicized, they get distorted by the eisogesis inherent in the polemic of today's political process.
BTW: I don't particularly care for Rob Bell, either. He's basically as postmodern as you can get, and almost everything I've read from him sounds like a postmodern philosopher trying to couch his ideas in theological-sounding words.
