Jesus and War

I grew up as a kid during the Second World War.  My enemies were clear—and so were my heroes.  The Marines who attacked the beaches, the soldiers who slogged through North Africa and Europe, the sailors who got them there and protected them on the way, and the fly boys who filled my skies with the roaring sound of magic.  The movies told me about what they had to go through, but it also showed the enemy, vile people who sneaked and tortured and killed innocents. 

I was proud of our men who fought so valiantly.  That was in the forties.

Then there was a war in the fifties, and another one overlapping from the sixties, and also a few skirmishes here and there.  And now there is one more war.  And not just a skirmish!  My attitude towards war has changed since those forties, but I am still proud of the men and women who are willing to put themselves on the line for the values they believe in.

But there is another value that I believe in very strongly, the value of love as taught us by Jesus.  He has talked to us of forgiveness and compassion and service to others.  He has told us that we are all brothers and sisters because we all have the same Father.  He has taught us that the greatest command was to love God with every part of our being and to love our neighbor as an intimate part of our love of God.  He has identified himself with the hungry and the stranger and the prisoner.

And he has told us to love our enemies.  I wonder, when a soldier has an enemy lined up in the sights of his rifle, does he say, “I love you,” before or after he pulls the trigger?

I take Jesus seriously.  He’s not just an hour-a-week buddy, He is, or at least should be, my whole life.  I picture him as a young kid growing up and a teen-ager who wasn’t sure why his parents had not arranged a marriage for him and a young man who grew into maturity that included an intense knowledge of his God and love of that God that led Him to call Him ‘Abba’.  I think about Him the day He was down at the Jordan and had a religious experience that blew Him away and gave a whole new direction to his life.  I wonder about Him starting to preach the Kingdom and muse about Him when that first person came to Him and asked for a cure: “You are so wise and so filled with the Spirit, surely, Teacher, you should be able to help me with my bad back so that I can work again and take care of my family.”

I respect and love the man Jesus and I listen to what He tells me.  And He tells me to love my enemy.

I heard those words back in the forties but they didn’t mean anything to me, and in the fifties but they didn’t disturb me.  Then I heard them again during those years overlapping from the sixties—and I was clearly disturbed.  And now I hear them again and react to them very strongly.  Jesus asks us to love our enemy.  How can we endorse  war when Jesus asks us to love our enemy?