Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
This week, the US Ambassador to Israel declared our support for Israel to conquer large parts of the Middle East and within days, a joint attack with the United States was launched on Iran’s 90 million people. There are many different ways to discuss the geopolitics and the overwhelming unpopularity of these moves both in the United States and throughout the world. But for us, we must begin here: war is not good. It is not an expression of God’s love.
We can nibble at the borders of church history, theology, and ethics. Massive intellects have composed conditions and philosophies to express some strained justifications for war as just. Few are terribly convincing in the end and none apply in these conditions in the slightest.
This alone causes us great pains to understand the role of individuals who participate. And there are few satisfying responses to this, too. We are perhaps best left with one’s conscience and recognize those who are willing to make personal sacrifices for the health, wholeness, justice, peace (Shalom) of others.
The challenge remains for us, however, regardless of our participation or our politics: war itself is evil. Our place is to wage reconciliation by praying and working for peace. Not just for the cessation of conflict, but for the building of unity, the healing of people’s bodies and relationships, the economic security that protects the vibrant living of the population, the tearing down of the systems which oppress the population and creating new systems which make equity, not just possible, but the norm. This is our work as people of faith, as followers of Jesus, inheritors of this tradition of peace whose God is love itself. It is fair to assume that none of the dead feel loved by us.
With love,
Drew+
