“What’s the right thing to do?” This question should come up a lot for us. It’s important that we pay attention to it. It’s easy to avoid pausing to reflect and ask about the right thing to do; it is easiest to just do what we feel like in the moment or go along with what everyone else is doing. But, especially as followers of Jesus and people of faith, we are called to be accountable to a different way of life than what is always the easiest, relying on the Grace of God. We need to be asking ourselves questions of right and wrong. We need to be talking about them together and helping each other explore the wisdom of our tradition. We need to be praying and asking God for guidance about what to do and how to be, catch ourselves when we’ve strayed off course and let grace nudge us back in the right direction.

It is important we are equipped to reflect ethically and theologically about the issues that impact our lives and our world.

So, let me take this opportunity to share with you an overview of Christian approaches to the ethical problems of war and peace. This could be a month’s long course. It probably should be – let me know if you want that. For now, let me just lay out the range of approaches.

I’ll just say from the start: none of this is easy. The problem of war and violence is a problem, and it is right to be agonized about it. I pray that you all know God’s Grace through this, and the peace of Christ guarding your hearts.

There have been a range of Christian responses to the problems of war and peace. We can see it as a spectrum:

 On one side of the spectrum is Christian pacifism: A total renunciation of violence.

On the other side of the spectrum is what we can call Crusader Christianity: An enthusiasm for war when waged by Christians against non-Christians or on behalf of “Christian civilization.”

In the middle are Christian Just War teachings. These place rigorous ethical limitations around when and how Christians can engage in warfare. Also in the middle there are Christian views that accept that war and violence are sometimes necessary evils, and should have strong ethical limitations, but in this view war is not something we can ever call just or good.

First, Christian pacifism.

This is the view that Christians should do our utmost to conform ourselves to the model of Jesus’ teachings about violence, which the Apostle Paul echoes in his letters, and we find echoed in the teachings of the earliest pastors and bishops of the church.

“You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you do not violently resist evil;” “do not repay evil for evil;” “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek;” “love your neighbor; love your enemy;” “pray for those who persecute you;” “put away your sword for those who live by the sword die by the sword;” “blessed are the peacemakers;” “to the best of your ability live at peace with everyone;” “if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him water;” “don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good;” “you have heard it said, ‘do not kill,’ but I say to you, ‘do not even feel angry;’” but if you are angry, “be angry, yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” and so on.

There have been very earnestly faithful followers of Jesus who have sought to truly live like this and believed it means they should renounce violence. There are those who held to this even to the point of not defending themselves and dying for it. In early Christianity many of the heroes and saints they celebrated were martyrs, who did not fight back when they were attacked for their witness to the life changing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and surrendered to execution.

In ancient times, and to this day, there were and are Christians who translate this personal pacifism into opposition to war. To pick one of many examples, a 3rd Century Bishop from Carthage named Cyprian argued against Christians participating in war, saying “murder, which in the case of an individual is admitted to be a crime, is called a virtue when it is committed wholesale. Impunity is claimed for the wicked deeds, not on the plea that they are guiltless, but because the cruelty is perpetrated on a grand scale.” (Cyprian, Letter 1.6)

In the first few centuries of the early church, there were Christians who refused conscription into the Roman army, some clearly because of opposition to violence, others because they refused to worship Caesar as the “son of god” which was often required in the Roman army. These days there are Christians who plead conscientious objection to military service, or will take only non-combat roles in the military. Quakers are known for this; as are Mennonites and other anabaptists; there’s a history of pacifism among Seventh Day Adventists; among some Catholic groups, some Eastern Orthodox folks, some Protestants.

While Christian Pacifists have a history of shying away from conflict altogether, many have been instrumental in developing nonviolent means of resisting evil and injustice.

That’s Christian Pacifism, one end of the spectrum.

On the other end is Crusader Christianity. This crops up often when Christianity is the official religion of a state or empire, or very closely aligned with nationalism or other kinds of tribalism. Crusader Christianity is enthusiastic about war when waged by Christians against non-Christians, or the “right” type of Christian against the “wrong” type, or on behalf of “Christian civilization.”

Crusaders celebrate the parts of the Bible where YHWH appears as a war god to destroy the enemies of God’s chosen people. Crusaders have to ignore the teachings of Jesus and the prophets, or they are cynical or hypocritical about it. Or what they do is say that Jesus’ teachings about peace are so impossible to live by in the real world, so alien to human nature, it’s ridiculous to even try. The point is just to show how wretchedly sinful we all are, impossibly far away from the sinless ideal of Jesus, so we are driven to accept the salvation we find through Christ. Once we are saved, our prime directive is to advance the faith, at all costs, bringing as many other people as possible into the fold by any means necessary, including fighting against the “enemies of the faith.” Washed by the blood of Christ, we are “justified” as “righteous” in whatever we do to execute God’s will to bring the world to submission. Popes during the Crusades even told their holy warriors that their violent acts serve as “penance for all sin.”

Okay, that’s enough about Crusader Christianity for today. I hope you can tell I don’t advocate for this.

Beside Christian Pacifism on the one hand and Crusader Christianity on the other, there are Christian Just War teachings. These place ethical limitations around when and how Christians can engage in warfare or not. Besides what’s known as Just War theory or doctrine, there are also Christian views that accept that war and violence are sometimes necessary evils, but not something we can ever call just or good. This is not pacifism, but like Just War doctrine has rigorous ethical guidelines around war.

The thing to keep front and center with most Christian Just War teachings at their best is that they in fact share most of the values of Christian Pacifism. We have to take Jesus’ teachings about peace and violence very seriously as getting at fundamental truths about God and humanity and goodness and sin. All human life has inherent worth and dignity. So, there is a terrible rupture with what is sacred when one person kills another. But we have to be real that we live in a tragically fallen world. Because of human sin, we can be put in terrible situations where we may have to be willing to take life, to prevent something even more evil from happening. As a society, we should be prepared for this, and under the right conditions it can be okay for sincere Christians to have roles in the military or police forces. But we are always accountable to God above any human authority.  

Christian Just War puts ethical conditions around when to engage in war and how to engage in war. Usually the conditions people talk about are: War must have a just cause, and just intention – like self-defense, but not territorial expansion or economic gain. All other means for addressing the issue must be exhausted in good faith; war must be a last resort, reluctantly taken. War must be openly declared by a legitimate authority. It must have a serious prospect of success. You can’t be guilty of causing the conflict in the first place.

The outbreak of war does not mean that anything goes. The methods must not produce evils or disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The lives of noncombatants and civilians must be respected; prisoners of war must be respected; no torture, no genocide. After hostilities end, there must be repair of the damage done.  

If any of these conditions are not met, the war is not justified.

So, this is not easy. And as we know, reality can be messy, especially when it comes to war and threat of war, and the primal feelings that get unleashed in war. As we also know, these criteria for Just War can be tricky to get clear about. Clever people can argue about it in ways to get to the conclusion they want, not in good faith.

In any conflict, both sides claim they are justified. In any conflict, both lands are pierced by the cries of grief at the funerals of the fallen soldiers and slain civilians. What counts as a “just cause” and “just intention” for the horrors of war is something we’ve been wrestling with and arguing about as a society for many decades.  As we should.

These criteria are very important to name and to wrestle with.

Now, in this Just War area between Christian Pacifism and Crusader Christianity, I’ve found there is a range of attitudes. Some Christians who hold to Just War theory can look at a conflict and determine that, yes, this is a just war, and then throw themselves in with a righteous enthusiasm that’s more on the crusader side of things. Other Christians though still hold onto the fundamental insight of Christian Pacifism, and will say, okay this is a terrible situation, and we have to fight, but it is an evil. At the end of the day, we must grieve, and repent and return to God and throw ourselves on God’s grace – receive God’s forgiveness and pray that the Spirit of Christ can guard against the contagion of sin that violence does so often set in motion. War, even if it is justified, always comes at a grave moral cost. Yet our faith is that God’s Grace wins in the end.

I’m reminded of a line from David Mitchell’s book “The Cloud Atlas.” There’s a character named Zachry, who is a sensitive soul. There came a time when someone attacked Zachry with murderous violence, and Zachry managed to fight him off but in doing so killed his attacker. Zachry was deeply grieved by this. “I knowed I’d be payin’ for it by’n’by,” he said, “but … in our busted world the right thing ain’t always possible.” (p. 561)

in our busted world the right thing ain’t always possible.

So, as ever, we must rely on God’s Grace; we must sincerely seek God’s wisdom. And we must give thanks for the gift of Jesus who offers us that grace and that wisdom and that reassurance that however it is in our busted world, God loves us as we are, forgives us, and helps us to try to do better.

As people of faith seeking to follow the way of Jesus – above all else – our duty is, as best we can, to keep faith in God, who is the God of all humanity; to pray for peace; to work for peace; to grieve the tragedy of the lives lost in war; and to be as we can healers of the wounds of war on body, mind, soul, and society.     

Thanks be to God.

You can read more about Just War theory in the Catholic Church and European ethical philosophy here, here and here. You can read more about the range of Eastern Orthodox approaches here, here, and here.  You can read more about Christian Pacifism here, here, and here. I’m not going to pretend to be neutral about Crusader Christianity, which is aggressively dangerous and contrary to the Way of Jesus – you can find a succinct yet informative criticism by a Reformed Protestant pastor here.

Image: Guernica by Pablo Picasso, wikimedia commons