I was pondering war and Jesus tonight. I asked myself if Jesus would support the war in Iraq or any war for that matter. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Love your enemies definitely doesn’t sound like his hat in the ring. Blessed are the peacemakers, do to others as you would have them do to you…here’s a good one:
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Add in his love for the downtrodden and disdain for his local bureaucracy and it seems like Jesus would most definitely be against war.
How can we marry this image of God with the one we get in the old testament? A God who seemingly supported war and violence against his enemies and those of his people.
So we are left with a good question:
Does God changes his mind?
It’s not unprecedented, but it makes it hard to believe in an infallible God.
Let’s take a look at our current war for a second without getting too political. Simplifying it, republicans support the war (or at least did initially) and democrats don’t (or didn’t). Now, I won’t say ALL Christians are republicans but that is the traditional party affiliation (for some good and bad reasons), so I understand why Christians politically supported the war because they were supporting the consensus of one our their social groups, but what if they really thought about it…
I don’t think we can be social or religious Jesus followers but not political ones. Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength…he pretty much covered everything.
What do you guys think?