THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT AND THE CURRENT WAR

by Reverend Paul T. Stallsworth

 North Carolina Christian Advocate, May 6, 2003

 

A version of the following sermon, entitled “The Sixth Commandment and the Current War,” was preached at Broad Creek and St. Peter’s United Methodist churches on the Third Sunday of Lent (March 23rd).

 

     This week the United States led a coalition of nations into a war against the government of Iraq.  The coalition governments did not require the permission of the Church to enter this war.  After all, it is not the Church’s responsibility to put its stamp of approval (or disapproval) on every war fought by the nations of this world.

     Instead, with regard to international politics, the Church’s regular responsibility is to help nations, their citizens and their leaders, to reason morally about war and peace.  It is the Church’s duty to assist Christians and all people of good will in reckoning whether entering a particular war is moral or immoral, and in reckoning whether war-fighting in a particular way is moral or immoral.  In other words, the Church helps Christians and others in fulfilling their vocations in the political and military and citizenship arenas.  So the Church’s teaching should assist government officials and citizens to think more clearly and more deeply about the morality of war and peace. 

     In the last several months, the Church seems to have been more interested in standing against the coalition’s war in Iraq than in assisting citizens and political leaders to reason about this war.  For weeks now, the Church has spoken against this war.  Representatives of the Church -- including United Methodist bishops, United Methodist agency executives, National Council of Churches spokesmen, World Council of Churches leaders, and John Paul II -- have taken strong stands against this war.  For example, Rev. Bob Edgar, a United Methodist pastor who heads the National Council of Churches, recently stated: “As a people of faith, we are one in our concern about the rush to war.  We are one in our opposition to thinking war is an option.”

     In American democracy, Christian leaders have the freedom to take such stands on matters related to American foreign and military policies.  Our nation would never deny Church leaders, or anyone else, that freedom.  Indeed, we Christians encourage our church leaders to speak, and to speak boldly, in the public arena about moral principles related to war and peace.  At the same time, we Christians recognize that church leaders do not have special, revealed wisdom from God on what the coalition governments should be doing politically and militarily about Iraq.  Though some Church leaders act and speak as if they have a revealed word from God against this war against the Iraqi government, they in fact do not.  Therefore, entering the public square to address war-and-peace issues, church leaders should be more humble about particular policies.  Drawing from the riches of the Christian tradition, they are charged to reason theologically and morally and persuasively to assist leaders and citizens.

 

WHAT WE RESIST, WHAT WE DO

     At her best, the Church resists two forms of political activity that are tempting to some.

     First, the Church stands against hate propaganda.  In recent demonstrations against American entry into war, signs that read “Bush=Hitler” and “No War for Oil” have appeared.  So-called peace demonstrators have defecated on the streets of San Francisco.  This is an adolescent, if not infantile, form of politics.  It is beneath serious citizenship.  It is beneath serious politics.  Hate propaganda does nothing to advance or deepen political-moral reasoning about war and peace.  It does nothing but poison the politics of a nation.  Therefore, the Church should never engage in this kind of political activity, nor should the Church approve or support this kind of political activity. 

     And second, the Church stands against holy war or jihad.  That is, the Church stands against a blood-lusting, crusading mentality that would encourage one nation to obliterate an enemy nation, to blow an enemy nation to smithereens.  The indiscriminate killing of noncombatant men, women, and children does not bother holy warriors.  For holy warriors seek only total victory, no matter what the costs.  Holy war is war without the rule of law, war without justice, war without conscience.  The Church opposes this generalized killing of innocent human life.  Always and everywhere, the Church stands against holy war.

     That leaves the Church with two general alternatives to advance in its principled deliberations about war and peace: pacifism and just-war theory.

     First, the Church can and should encourage pacifism.  Pacifism involves the refusal to use armed force.  This form of Christian witness is becoming very popular in the churches today.  These days Professor Stanley Hauerwas, of Duke Divinity School, is a leading voice of Christian pacifism.

     And second, the Church can and should encourage just-war thinking.  Just-war thought is a way of reasoning to discern which wars are just, and how just wars should be fought most justly.  Just-war theory employs various criteria to consider and evaluate war efforts.  Just-war theory attempts to keep military efforts under a rule of moral law and to guard a just war from transforming into holy war.

     Both of these options -- pacifism and just-war thought -- are historic, moral traditions in the Church.  Both pacifism and just-war theory are available, moral options to Christian leaders, soldiers, and citizens, and to others.  Neither of these responses to matters related to war and peace can be considered “more Christian” than the other.  The Church lives with this unresolved tension.  

 

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

     “You shall not kill.” (Exodus 20:13, RSV)  This is the Sixth Commandment of the Ten Commandments.  This is God’s commandment to the Church.  The Sixth Commandment assumes that God is the Creator of the world, the Father of all humanity.  Because God is the Father of each and every human being, Christians regularly refrain from killing other human beings.

     According to the Church’s traditional understanding of the Sixth Commandment (e.g., “The Larger Catechism” from the Reformed tradition), Christians have a duty to protect other human beings, especially the weakest among us.  That is, because of the Sixth Commandment, Christians have a responsibility, a duty, to defend the innocent.  That means that in the Sixth Commandment God commands his people to protect innocent people from an aggressive intruder: so killing a murderous aggressor, as a last resort, is sadly approved for the sake of defending innocent people.  This can apply to a Christian husband protecting his wife from a vicious intruder intending to murder.  It can also apply to Christian soldiers assisting in protecting people from a dangerous, ruthless, aggressive dictator and his regime.

     Again, the Sixth Commandment strictly forbids mindless, reckless, vicious killing.  But for the sake of protecting innocent people, the Sixth Commandment allows, even demands, killing ruthless aggressors.  That is, for Christians, human life can be taken if and only if the taking of those lives protects the lives of others who are weak and innocent.

 

THE PURPOSE OF POLITICS

     The ultimate goal of domestic politics is protecting innocent human beings.

     Likewise, in the politics among nations, the ultimate political goal is protecting innocent human beings.  Internationally, this goal is achieved through the establishment of tranquillitas ordinis (the tranquility of order), as St. Augustine put it in The City of God.  This imperfect peace, which falls far short of the peace of God’s Kingdom, comes from a political order that maintains a semblance of justice.  To repeat: in international life, peaceful, just order serves the ultimate goal of protecting innocent human beings.  Make no mistake, a peaceful, just order -- the order of peace -- is broken by an aggressor nation, by a nation that ruthlessly kills its own citizens.

     With the Sixth Commandment in mind, Christians of the just-war persuasion -- be they citizens or political-military leaders -- should reason about when justice

s entry into a war, and about how such a war should be most justly fought.  If war is to be entered and fought, it is entered and fought for one ultimate reason only: to protect and defend innocent human beings.  That is the only Christianly justifiable reason why the allies opposed, fought, and defeated Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in World War II.

     This we Christians know: the first goal of national and international politics is the protection of the innocent.

     This we Christians should reason about together: when a war will or will not advance the protection of the innocent.  On pacifism and just-war theory, on political policies and military strategies, we Christians can and will disagree.  But the goal remains the same for all Christians: defending the innocent.

THIS WAR

     Now consider the coalition’s war against the Iraqi government.  What follows is this pastor’s opinion.  This is not a word from God.  It is a word from George Weigel, a Roman Catholic moral theologian, who writes: “International terrorism of the sort we have seen since the late 1960s, and of which we had a direct national experience on September 11, 2001, is a deliberate assault, through the murder of innocents, on the very possibility of order in world affairs.  That is why the terror networks must be dismantled or destroyed.  The peace of order is also under grave threat when vicious, aggressive regimes acquire weapons of mass destruction -- weapons that we must assume, on the basis of their treatment of their own citizens, these regimes will not hesitate to use against others.  That is why there is a moral obligation to ensure that this lethal combination of irrational and aggressive regimes, weapons of mass destruction, and credible delivery systems does not go unchallenged.  That is why there is a moral obligation to rid the world of this threat to the peace and security of all.  Peace, rightly understood, demands it.” (“Moral Clarity in a Time of War,” First Things, January 2003)  Furthermore, protection of the innocent demands it.  For Christians, the Sixth Commandment demands it.

     If the coalition’s war against Iraq keeps protection of the innocent as its goal and guide, this pastor will back the effort.

     If the coalition’s war against Iraq turns into an unjust war, a holy war, against Iraq, this pastor will oppose the effort.

BEING CHRISTIAN CITIZENS

     What about you?  What do you think about these matters?  How are you, as Christians, going to fulfill your citizenship responsibilities?  Such responsibilities are a significant part of our obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over this world.

     However we respond to this matter at hand, Jesus Christ remains and will remain the Lord of all, the Lord of history.  And at the end of history, at the consummation of this world, this same Jesus Christ will be the Judge of all.  He will judge each of us.  An essential part of our judgment will be whether we have assisted in protecting the innocent.

     May God have mercy on this world, on Iraq, on the nations of the coalition, on the Church, and on us.

 

Rev. Stallsworth is the pastor of Broad Creek United Methodist Church in Newport and St. Peter’s United Methodist Church in Morehead City.

 

To respond to this article and continue the dialogue, please send your article to: St. Peter’s United Methodist Church/111 Hodges Street/ Morehead City, NC 28557.