6 Reasons to Say No to War

War destabilizes and creates hatred. One need only imagine the resentment that might begin to grow if an enemy stifled your country’s growth, assassinated your leaders, and killed your neighbors. It is not hard to understand why these methods might have difficulty creating lasting peace.

War creates reliance on military industries. There is a perverse profit motive behind billionaires who get richer when we go to war.

War involves killing civilians. You may believe Khameini deserved his fate. Did his daughter, son, and 14-month-old granddaughter, killed when his house was bombed? What about the 100+ schoolgirls whose school happened to be near a military base – killed with taxpayer dollars? We must not allow ourselves to be desensitized to the killing of children. It is literally a war crime.

War always carries an opportunity cost. War is always chosen instead of service to and enacted love for our neighbors around the world. (Reminder: “neighbor” is not code for “people from my country”). This is best voiced by Dwight Eisenhower in his famous line:

“Every gun that is made,
every warship launched,
every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.”

War centers unChristian attitudes. It breeds nationalism, xenophobia, fear, self-righteousness, dehumanization, and desensitization to the suffering of the poor.

Jesus is opposed to war. War is not how you love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). It is not how you bless those who persecute you (Romans 12:14). It is not how you live peaceably with all (Romans 12:18). It is not how you choose to forgo vengeance (Romans 12:19). It is not how you overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). War is not how you regard others as better than yourself and consider their interests above your own (Philippians 2:3-4). War is not the way God reconciles: God reconciles “by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). War is not how God disarms rulers and authorities; that is the cross (Colossians 2:15). Jesus’ followers “do not wage war according to human standards, for the weapons of our warfare are not human weapons” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4).

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6 reasons, not 7. Not perfection, but its inversion. The guise of honor in the form of deceitful power. The number of the all-consuming beast.

The 6th commandment reads, “You shall not murder.”

The featured image for this post comes from Shane Claiborne’s Facebook page; image link here.