It has been said that we live in one of the most violent ages of human history. Is this so? Is it instead that voilence extends from localized brutality and warfare and enters global consciousness. What makes now any more violent thousands of years before the birth of Christ when God had to wipe clean of human existence the face of this earth? When the Roman empire's people lusted for blood so much that games were made of human being ripped upen and made into human torches was this mortal coil any less sullied? This world has always been filled with filth, violence and hate. It is now merely being played out on a different stage. Are Christians called to stand in the wings and watch or to become principle players for light in the sordid drama taking place?
Where is the balance between righteous anger and murderous rage? Where do godly people draw the line between martyrdom and cowardice? Are we truly called to stand by and watch this world tear itself to pieces? I claim no expertice in philosophy or theology or even Scripture. But this is what I do know.
Christians are called to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek. We are called to love and not to hate; this is indeed one of the founding principles of our faith. These seem to me matters of relationship. If someone attacks a Christian for being a Christian he will not grab an Uzi to go off and hunt him down. But are we called not to defend ourselves? Scripture says that if a woman does not cry out when she is raped it is upon her own head. All throughout the Bible the Warrior God sends His people to destory wickedness in His name. Many say that is Old Testament. Is God not the same yesterday, today and forever? That savage and just side of God is still a part of His character post Cross.
Was Bonhoeffer wrong to attempt to assassinate Hitler? We are told to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but this was no civil controversy. The man was systematically wiping out entire people groups. His evil was founded in hatred. Would guilty blood truly been on his hands had he succeeded, or would he have been rewarded for, in righteous anger (not personal hatred) taking up a sword against evil? Hitler's evil would have died with him.
Should then Christian begin bombing abortion clinics? No. Do I believe them carefully sterilized slaughterhouses? Of course. But murdering abortion doctors will not cease the evil of abortion. The evil will not die with the deaths of those men and women.
So what do we do? Strife in the Middle East will never cease until this world ends. Does this mean we should accept defeat as a foregone conclusion and hoe-hum our way through our comfortable, relatively safe from invasion lives? That sounds to me like hyper-Calvinism, those Christians who do not bother to share their faith with others, who even perhaps do not care how their lives appear to others because what will be will be. They completely ignore the command of Jesus to go share with all nations and to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction. I as a Calvanist know that God's will is sovereign, and indeed what will be will be, but there is room for free will and obedience within the sovereign will of God. I cannot claim to understand how it works, but I have a life to act out on this Earth. I have a responsibility to live each day well and with the reminder that I have a blood debt owed to God.
Which best serves Him? To stand in the wings watching the attrocities of this world? To pray and lift nary a finger? Or take take action agains the sea of troubles this world writhes in?
