Monday, February 23, 2009
Just War
Just War is very hard to define. There are sooooo many questions that have to be answered before you can decide whether war is necessary, and most of them cannot be answered concretely but change with every situation and every perspective. I thought Daniel Bell has lined up how we should approach just war in the simplest way possible. He challenges every aspect of just war and it's validity in the world and comes to the conclusion that we need to take up the challenges and be just people before we can consider making choices about just war. I totally agree with this statement. I think that you need to be just in order to choose when just war is necessary. Bell talks about how we can't consider ourselves to be the true authority on these kind of situations and that God is the only one who can decide the fate of man. This is pretty intense and I think it's also the thing that people have the most trouble believing in. This kind of happens in Isaiah, when the Assyrians attacked Judah and the Jews ended up ditching thier faith in God and allying with the Babylonians, which just led to bigger problems in the future. Just war is really the decision that we make when we have to take authority over God, which seems crazy, but must be necessary in some situations. I believe that maybe we shouldn't always believe God will magically make everything right, but that he has left us the tools to approach war and other violent situations in the most God-like way possible.
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Your blog is true! I believe also that God has left us the tools to handle violence but our way of handling the violence determines if it is just or not. I think that is the major thing that societies struggle with! Also giving up hope when things dont happen when we want them to! Thinking that trusting in the Lord and being just is not enough therefore taking matters into our own hands!
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with you both that God gives us the tools to handle war and conflict, I wouldn't go as far to say that we should take authority over God. Maybe I just didn't like the wording that you used, because I do agree with you. I don't think that we can ever take authority over God, because we have no way of knowing what his long-term plan is... But if we believe that God knows our actions before we take them, then we should also believe that he will use us for his purposes. And by trying to be as "God-like" as we can (I assume you mean Christ-like), we will hopefully act justly.
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