Thoughts on War

For my history class, I've been forced to read a book on the Vietnam War, a book of which I have just passed the halfway point. As our country is currently engaging in war, and the country is caught up with protests and protests of protests and whatnot, I feel like I should sit and reflect a little bit about this ever-important subject.

War is a necessary product of our sinful nature. It is a tragedy that some men feel it appropriate to kill other men for their own gain, and inevitable that those other men feel the need to defend themselves militarily. War is a sad fact, but a true one.

In the recent political conflict over whether or not President Bush's action was justified (I happen to believe it was, but that is beside the point), I have heard the feuding factions called "pro-war" and "anti-war". As a member of the former party, I must argue that both labels are misnomers. I am not pro-war by any means, and I loathe the fact that it is necessary for America to send troops to Iraq to take the lives of others. But it has become necessary, so we have done it.

War necessarily involves the taking of human life. In war, the lives of men created in the image of God are snuffed out. Whether through a 10mm bullet going through your chest and creating a nine-inch radius exit wound or a disease that slowly eats away at the heart and brain until the body can no longer function, lives are snuffed out in wars--lives attached to spouses, families, jobs, and potential.

I hope I am never conscripted. I am not unwilling to serve my country if asked, but I pray that I am not asked. I simply do not think I could bear the sight of so many dead. It is said that war hardens a man--I have been hardened enough through other troubles in my past; I pray that I am not hardened further.

War is a necessity, but it is evil. Sometimes I wonder if our pride in our country's superpower status is misplaced. Is it really a good thing that we have the capability to kill more people than anyone else? On the one hand, it is (because the reason you build the biggest bomb is in the hopes that you never have to use it), but on the other hand: such pride simply magnifies for all to see the evil of the world we live in.

How amazing it will be to live in a world without sin among those Christ has redeemed. I think only then will we understand just how sinful we are now and from what pit we have truly been saved.

Luke