Rector’s Reflections
Wednesday 16th October 2024
Christians and the Ethics of War
In yesterday’s reflections, I shared some reflections on how Christians have often felt a call to be peacemakers, especially in their families and their communities. I will not say every Christian everywhere seeks to be a peacemaker. This is clearly not the case. But I would say that a predisposition towards peace making is a characteristic Christian value.
However, Christians have been well aware of the difficulties faced by those who wish to make and keep peace. Some of these difficulties result from certain aspects of human nature. One of the strengths of the Christian ethical tradition is that it often looks long and hard at the roots of human behaviour. It is prepared to ask the question: why do we do what we do? Christian ethics tends to focus on addressing the root causes of our behaviour. It also looks at ways in which we can change our behaviour for the better.
In terms of the ethics of war, Christians have often been prepared to ask some pretty tough questions. To start with, wars sometimes begin because we feel that we need to take revenge for some hurt or outrage. We might dress this up in terms of asserting or recovering our “rights”, but often it’s simply a matter of getting our own back. It is a natural human feeling: we have been hurt, so that we want to hurt back. But is this “tit for tat” approach always the best response? An act of retaliation can easily escalate a conflict beyond anything either party had intended or desired, and once a conflict has been escalated, it can be very hard indeed to bring it back under control. Deciding not to respond to a deliberately provocative action can be the best policy, for purely pragmatic reasons.
It can also be an example of the Christian virtue of forgiveness. In the Lord’s Prayer, Christians pray to God: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Note the word “as”: we ask God to forgive, as we forgive others. If we are not prepared to forgive others, how can be expect God to forgive us? I should add that forgiving our enemies is perfectly compatible with asking our enemies to provide appropriate compensation for the damage they have caused. Forgiveness does not rule out the need for reparation.
So the Christian tradition is prepared to challenge the gut instinct which leads us to want to fight back. I accept that in some situations, a “tit for tat” approach might have its benefits. But let us pause before we assume that it always the best policy. Sometimes there is more power in a willingness to forgive than in any act of physical violence. And it is typically also a much cheaper option, at least from a financial point of view.
So Christians are prepared to promote the value of forgiveness. They are also prepared to champion the value of humility. I think there would be far fewer wars if nations and their leaders were prepared to embrace a spirit of humility, and were more willing to compromise and co-operate with one another. I also think that the preparation for war and the conduct of war are so often entangled with issues of pride. “Look at our armed forces and our weapons! Aren’t they magnificent! Isn’t our military campaign going well! What, bring it to an end? Surely not. It hasn’t achieved what we wanted, and we simply couldn’t live with the loss of face. Far better to go on killing other people that to allow ourselves to suffer the humiliation of defeat!”
There is a third value which Christians can bring to the table: the value of trust in God. The desire for revenge, together with human pride, undoubtedly play their role in causing and prolonging human conflict. But the greatest cause of war is probably fear. We might be fearful of the future for many different reasons. We might be fearful of what our enemy might do. We are fearful of what might happen if we don’t take military action, either in resent moment or at some time in the future. For what ever reason, we are frightened, and our fear can soon lead us to armed conflict.
How can we face our fears? How can we overcome our fears? We might be tempted to place our hope in having more weapons than our enemies, or a more righteous cause. But Christians would say that ultimately we can only overcome our fears by putting our trust in God and in His loving purposes. God is a God of love and of justice, and so we need not be slaves to fear.
We shall look in more detail at the question of justice in tomorrow’s reflections.