Posted by Rachel on: 10.25.2007 /
This column was submitted by James Fletcher Baxter, Sgt. USMC, WW II and Korean War. Mr. Baxter will be available to respond to comments, so feel free to pose questions directly to him. We thank him for sharing his experiences and views with us.
Every September, I recall that is more than half a century (62 years) since I landed at Nagasaki with the 2nd Marine Division in the original occupation of Japan following World War II. This time every year, I have watched and listened to the light-hearted “peaceniks” and their light-headed symbolism-without-substance of ringing bells, flying pigeons, floating candles, and sonorous chanting and I recall again that “Peace is not a cause - it is an effect.”
In July, 1945, my fellow 8th RCT Marines [I was a BARman] and I returned to Saipan following the successful conclusion of the Battle of Okinawa. We were issued new equipment and replacements joined each outfit in preparation for our coming amphibious assault on the home islands of Japan.
B-29 bombing had leveled the major cities of Japan, including Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Yokosuka, and Tokyo.
We were informed we would land three Marine divisions and six Army divisions, perhaps abreast, with large reserves following us in. It was estimated that it would cost half a million casualties to subdue the Japanese homeland.
In August, the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima but the Japanese government refused to surrender. Three days later a second A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The Imperial Japanese government finally surrendered.
Following the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese admiral said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant…” Indeed, they had. Not surprisingly, the atomic bomb was produced by a free people functioning in a free environment. Not surprisingly because the creative process is a natural human choice-making process and inventiveness occurs most readily where choice-making opportunities abound. America!
Tamper with a giant, indeed! Tyrants, beware: Free men are nature’s pit bulls of Liberty! The Japanese learned the hard way what tyrants of any generation should know: Never start a war with a free people - you never know what they may invent!
As a newly assigned member of a U.S. Marine intelligence section, I had a unique opportunity to visit many major cities of Japan, including Tokyo and Hiroshima, within weeks of their destruction. For a full year I observed the beaches, weapons, and troops we would have assaulted had the A-bombs not been dropped. Yes, it would have been very destructive for all, but especially for the people of Japan.
When we landed in Japan, for what came to be the finest and most humane occupation of a defeated enemy in recorded history, it was with great appreciation, thanksgiving, and praise for the atomic bomb team, including the aircrew of the Enola Gay. A half million American homes had been spared the Gold Star flag, including, I’m sure, my own.
Whenever I hear the apologists expressing guilt and shame for A-bombing and ending the war Japan had started (they ignore the cause-effect relation between Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki), I have noted that neither the effete critics nor the puff-adder politicians are among us in the assault landing-craft or the stinking rice paddies of their suggested alternative, “conventional” warfare. Stammering reluctance is obvious and continuous, but they do love to pontificate about the Rights that others, and the Bomb, have bought and preserved for them.
The vanities of ignorance and camouflaged cowardice abound as license for the assertion of virtuous “rights” purchased by the blood of others - those others who have borne the burden and physical expense of Rights whining apologists so casually and self-righteously claim.
At best, these fakers manifest a profound and cryptic ignorance of causal relations, myopic perception, and dull I.Q. At worst, there is a word and description in The Constitution defining those who love the enemy more than they love their own countrymen and their own posterity. Every Yankee Doodle Dandy knows what that word is.
In 1945, America was the only nation in the world with the Bomb and it behaved responsibly and respectfully. It remained so until two among us betrayed it to the Kremlin. Still, this American weapon system has been the prime deterrent to earth’s latest model world- tyranny: Seventy years of Soviet collectivist definition, coercion, and domination of individual human beings.
The message is this: Trust Freedom. Remember, tyrants never learn. The restriction of Freedom is the limitation of human choice, and choice is the fulcrum-point of the creative process in human affairs. As earth’s choicemaker, it is our human identity on nature’s beautiful blue planet and the natural premise of man’s free institutions, environments, and respectful relations with one another. Made in the image of our Creator, free men choose, create, and progress - or die.
Free men should not fear the moon-god-crowd oppressor nor choose any of his ways. Recall with a confident Job and a victorious David, “Know ye not that you are in league with the stones of the field?”
Semper Fidelis
Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC
WW II and Korean War
Job 5:23 Proverbs 3:31 I Samuel 17:40
Leave a Reply
Comment by: benjamin ady
1 10/25/07 8:33 AM | Comment Link |Jim.
Thankyou for writing and engaging!
I have about about 30 questions I’d love to ask you. But I guess I’ll just start with one. You mention cause effect between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima/Nagasaki. This completely makes sense to me–it seems faily clear. I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts about prior causes, as well as about our human control of cause and effect? (okay, I guess that’s two questions =)
I mean if we use a simple analogy, it makes sense to say that if I were to shoot and kill someone you loved, and then you were to shoot and kill someone I loved, we could say that the death of my loved one was the result of a cause effect relationship in which the cause was the first shooting. But doesn’t it also stand to reason that you had the opportunity to interrupt that cause/effect chain, and chose not to? And is it not arguable that it might be wise for you to have made a different choice, before, as Tevye put it, “the whole world is blind and toothless”?
And furthermore, doesn’t it make sense, before you decide to shoot back, to ask questions about *why* I shot in the first place? I mean is it possible that the Japanese also had a Pearl Harbor type event in their past, which instigated peral harbor? and if that’s true, then doesn’t that chain of violence just extend backward forever, all the way to Adam, I guess? And isn’t it about time someone decided to just interrupt it somewhere?
Am I making sense?
Comment by: Jim Baxter
2 10/25/07 9:19 AM | Comment Link |Nature’s causal chain is not neutral. The Creator has vested the creature made in His image with choice-making capabilities and opportunities. Thus, those individuals who break/ignore His Word Criteria for behavior are wise to live within His precepts and forego transgressing nature and its laws - and His Principles - and anticipate a successful visionary future in a world largely at war with Him and His.
Add: It is not accurate to use individual criteria-for-choice via governmental operations. THE LORD’S CAUSAL CHAIN BEGINS WITH THE/EACH INDIVIDUAL PERSON. Plural units thus receive their approriate direction in justice.
Collectivist ‘world’ societies are ruled otherwise; top down injustice.
vincit veritas
Comment by: Jim Baxter
3 10/25/07 11:06 PM | Comment Link |At the sub-atomic level of the physical universe quantum physics indicates a multifarious gap or division in the causal chain; particles to which position cannot be assigned at all times, systems that pass from one energy state to another without manifestation in intermediate states, entities without mass, fields whose substance is as insubstantial as “a probability.”
Only statistical conglomerates pay tribute to deterministic forces. Singularities do not and are there- fore random, unpredictable, mutant, and in this sense, uncaused. The finest contribution inanimate
reality is capable of making toward choice, without its own selective agencies, is this continuing manifestation of opportunity as the pre-condition to choice it defers
to the natural action of living forms.
Biological science affirms that each level of life, single-cell to man himself, possesses attributes of sensitivity, discrimination, and selectivity, and in the exclusive and unique nature of each diversified life form.
The survival and progression of life forms has all too often been dependent upon the ever-present undeterminative potential and appearance of one unique individual organism within the whole spectrum of a given life-form. Only the
uniquely equipped individual organism is, like The Golden Wedge of Ophir, capable of traversing the causal gap to survival and progression. Mere reproductive determinacy would have rendered life forms incapable of such potential.
Only a moving universe of opportunity plus choice enables
the present reality.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by nature and nature’s God a creature of Choice - and of
Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive
characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural foundation of his environments, institutions, and respectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the universe.
“To make any sense of the idea of morality, it must be presumed that the human being is responsible for his actions and responsibility cannot be understood apart from the presumption of freedom of choice.”
John Chamberlain
- from
“The Season of Generation- Choicemaker”
http://www.choicemaker.net/
semper fidelis
vincit veritas
Comment by: Sharon
4 10/26/07 12:38 AM | Comment Link |This may be a deviation from the post topic but this last comment is messing with my brain.
As far as I can understand it you seem to be saying that the divinely inspired causal chain begins with each individual person. Although you state that it is not accurate to use individual criteria-for-choice you go on to make a statement that collectivist type governments (communists? all socialist systems/variations?) are unjust. It seems to follow then that good governments should allow for individual choice (free will?). Correct me if I am understanding this wrong.
My question is this. If the above interpretation is correct, the end point of the arguement seems to be that there should be no imposition of rules and regulations on an individuals freedom to choose. This sounds to me like extreme anarchy- not a political position that most Christians choose to hold. At what point do you think that some degree of government level intervention in free will is right/ necessary? How do you justify that based on your belief that the individuals freedom to choose is paramount? Even the USA- arguably the world’s strongest proponent of individual freedom and choice- imposes a large degree of control over individual choice through law, taxation and so on. At some point, in every nation, a limit is set between individual freedom and societal responsibilty and I’m really interested in how this should be decided.
Comment by: Jim Baxter
5 10/26/07 9:12 PM | Comment Link |Social Freedom requires a People who choose to live by self-imposed Transcendent Criteria for virtue, ethics, and morality. Those who reject such, are obliged to be ruled by civil law - minimal restrictions on behavior. All elective offices are chosen by the People who in turn agree to submit to their degree of authority. Such a government is reasonably based on the superior defintive in human nature: earth’s Choicemaker, via the People’s elective process. Psalm 25:12 kjv
Comment by: David H
6 10/27/07 12:37 AM | Comment Link |Dear Mr. Baxter,
Perhaps the better part of valor is not to respond. However, as I have learned through great difficulty in my life and as I have told others, allowing assertions with which I disagree to pass unanswered is the same as accepting them. The message to you, were I to leave this un-remarked, would be that I either approve of your message or I am afraid.
My parents raised me to accept the authority of my elders. You are not only older than I, you have done things that probably required great bravery. I would guess you are a respectable person. However, my path toward becoming a peacenik began with the realization that my elders could not always be trusted and their word was not always true.
My father was a pastor, a teacher, a somewhat honored civic figure. He was also a dictator who did not allow anyone within his own home to question his will or ways. He was a child beater who used the threat of torture to force compliance. Lastly, he was a sexual predator who used the trust of his positions as church leader, educator and father to find children he could safely abuse. In all likelihood you consider me damaged goods because of my wrong-thinking stance against war. You likely need no further proof of that presumption.
But it wasn’t just my father who taught me that someone shouldn’t be trusted just because others call them elder or a leader. Born in 1960, I came of age during the Vietnam war. I signed up for the draft and also became a student of the American part of that conflict. Likewise, since I became a journalist, I was very aware of Watergate and the megalomania that reached the highest levels of our government.
As a child I dreamed of becoming a soldier. Many relatives have been in the armed services, including my younger brother who participated in the Panama invasion and was recalled to active duty for Desert Storm. However, as a student of history and war, I understood that one of the defining attributes of a soldier is that they must often follow orders without question or even thought. Long before I became a pacifist I determined I couldn’t join the armed forces because I wouldn’t accept orders from those I did not trust.
Eventually I married a Vietnamese woman and even had the opportunity to visit Vietnam. What I saw there nearly broke my heart. There were many who had been children during that war and were now begging on street corners or working at menial tasks. They had been maimed by weapons or deformed from the variety of chemicals with which our government blanketed the countryside. Perhaps their fathers deserved whatever fate befell them because they had chosen the wrong side in that struggle. But their children were condemned by poverty and geography.
More devastating to me were the lists of dead. The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC is heart-rending. So much lost potential rendered so starkly. Just names on a black wall. It seems to take forever to walk through it and who could remember all of the nearly 60,000 imprints? There is no wall in Vietnam. The names are too numerous for such a thing. The government in Hanoi says 13 million died. Surely an inflated number. The generally accepted figure is 4 million, just in Vietnam. Another 2 million people probably died in Laos and Cambodia.
I don’t have to agree with the politics or the causes of those nations to weep for the lives — the untold potential — lost.
As a young journalist I watched on TV as a compound in Waco, TX burned. David Koresh, I was told, had fortified himself there with many mindless followers. They had stockpiled weapons and ammo. He had sexually abused some of his own children. He wasn’t a good man.
Federal authorities had attempted to arrest him and his people resisted. Trying to drive them from their compound they fired tear gas bombs that accidentally set the place ablaze. In the end, 79 bodies were pulled from the site. Twenty-one were children.
Perhaps this was justice for David Koresh and his adult followers. They were delivered straight from fire on earth to its eternal form. But even if that were true, does that preclude my sympathy for the children who did not choose their place of birth, their parents, their circumstances. Born at the wrong place and wrong time, they died terribly.
All of this is to say that much of my sadness for those who died from the A-bombing of Japan is completely separate from my feelings about the cause their country espoused. Likewise, my feeling that nuclear weapons are terrible and should never be used does not directly correlate to a sense that you or other soldiers should have had to risk their lives invading mainland Japan. I have seen the pictures. I have read the accounts of survivors. That informs my view the bombs were terrible and should never be used again. Hopefully annual reminders of them will preclude their use in the future. Tolling bells or fluttering doves seems a small price to pay for vigilance against a conflagration that could consume all the children.
Is it possible my wish that an atom bomb had never been used does not necessarily denigrate WWII veterans or wish them death? Is it wrong to feel guilt, shame and revulsion at all of the engines of destruction to which humans have turned their hands, their minds and, yes, sometimes their hearts in the multi-millennia of our history? Would it be better to revel in the destruction because of all the pain it saved me? Perhaps those are questions that can only be answered by better people than myself.
However, just to be clear, I am aware of causal relations. My Uncle Frank walked the Bataan Death March. He came back from years of starvation, disease and torture — I am told — a different man than when he departed. He never spoke of his experience. It may have been too awful, he may have simply felt those uninitiated had no perspective from which to understand. Maybe he just wanted to forget. There can be no denying the horrid things the Japanese did to allied soldiers and civilians. In “The Rape of Nanking,” the author estimates that Japanese troops manually executed 30,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians in a single day. Many were decapitated by sword strokes in brutal competitions between officers trying to best each other’s body counts. The Japanese ignored civilized conventions, they violated the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners, and set a modern standard for poor treatment of conquered peoples. They do seem to have brought on themselves much of the destruction that befell them.
Yet the question that comes to my mind is whether the four years between Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki are an adequate span to provide necessary perspective? Even if we stretch back five or 10 more years to the beginnings of Japanese aggression in China and Korea can we be sure that is adequate? Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. In 1937 Japan invaded China (leading to the Rape of Nanking). For decades prior, the Japanese colonial occupiers of Korea had conscripted males for slave labor and females for prostitutes. During all of that time the world governments remained largely silent. US oil refineries continued to supply Japan during this entire time and other US manufacturers provided that country with much of the parts and equipment needed to keep its armies going. It wasn’t until early 1941 — nearly 6 months after Japan invaded French Indochina — that the United States embargoed all trade with the Empire of Japan. I can’t help but wonder what the tyrants of Japan and Germany might have learned had this country and its leaders not put economic interests ahead of human concerns in the years leading up to the World War II.
As a related aside, since we are discussing causality, can you tell me, Mr. Baxter, why the US didn’t declare war on Germany until after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941? American intelligence operatives knew, by that time, Germany was conducting mass killings of Jews (more than a million were believed killed in 1941). Likewise, those agents had informed our government that Hitler was building camps to house slave laborers throughout the conquered lands. They had information on plans for a Final Solution developed by the Germans between July and October of 1941 that would allow the Germans to “clear the table of Jews.” In fact, in May 1939 the US government knew Jews were being oppressed and killed in Europe when it refused to allow the luxury liner St. Louis to disembark its nearly 900 Jewish passengers. The ship was forced to return to Europe where most of those people were eventually killed. But the United States didn’t declare war on Germany until Dec. 11, 1941 and then, according to Pres. Roosevelt, because that nation was allied with the Japanese.
But let’s go even further back in the causal line.
I became interested in Japanese social mores because two of my wife’s sisters married Japanese men. The one sister had terrible issues because her husband frequently went to Japanese girlie bars with his boss and other associates from the business. She felt as if he was being unfaithful, he apparently couldn’t understand why she was upset about these women whom he would never allow into their home. It was disturbing and I wanted to understand why such things could be in a civilized country. It seems the old ways are dying hard in Japan.
In Japanese society loyalty and honor have long been considered the two most important character traits. One of the ways that works out is that if you boss goes out to a girlie bar, then you must go with him or you are a disloyal member of the staff. Disloyal staffers don’t get promoted. They aren’t even likely to keep their jobs.
In the centuries prior to WWII, these traits were enshrined by Japanese society. Blind loyalty became expected of people, not the least because the emperor became known as more than just the royal leader of his country. The term for the emperor is Tenno, it literally means “Heavenly Sovereign.” A religious cult even developed around the emperor and they insisted he was descended from the gods.
Oddly, though, this demi-god was in practicality more of a liaison than a divine ruler. Throughout Japanese history there have always been powerful political and civic leaders running Japanese society but using His Imperial Majesty as the foundation for their power and, sometimes, the moral imperative behind the actions they ordered. One such person was General Hideki Tojo, who held various high posts in Japanese government before and during the war. He helped to rally support for the war and by many accounts undermined efforts that might have prevented the conflict.
Many in the Imperial Military staff, including Admiral Yamamoto, the man credited with the “sleeping giant” quote, were completely opposed to war with the United States. He is also quoted as saying: “Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.”
Despite being so vocally opposed to the war he was almost cashiered, Yamamoto prepared the Pearl Harbor plan and became his country’s most proficient military leader during the conflict. Once the Emperor called for war Yamamoto believed there was no choice for him but to fight.
Here is another quote from Yamamoto: “To die for Emperor and Nation is the highest hope of a military man. After a brave hard fight the blossoms are scattered on the fighting field. But if a person wants to take a life instead, still the fighting man will go to eternity for Emperor and country. One man’s life or death is a matter of no importance. All that matters is the Empire. As Confucius said, “They may crush cinnabar, yet they do not take away its color; one may burn a fragrant herb, yet it will not destroy the scent.” They may destroy my body, yet they will not take away my will.”
Some might consider his words honorable today were we only to remove Emperor and Empire from them.
Yamamoto was not alone in his conviction that it was his religious duty to fight and die for the empire. Japanese children were reared on the code of Bushido and taken to the Yasukuni Shrine where, they were told, their souls would be gathered if they died in battle for the Emperor. The code of Bushido gave Japanese men an ideal for service. It is summed up by Ronin Oishi Kuranosuke, who centuries before the war, said:
“Some people live all their lives without knowing which path is right. They’re buffeted by this wind or that and never really know where they’re going. That’s largely the fate of the commoners–those who have no choice over their destiny. For those of us born as samurai, life is something else. We know the path of duty and we follow it without question.”
To shirk from military service was considered disloyal, cowardly, a betrayal of personal and national honor. To even question the dictates of ones leaders would likely lead to a loss of social status or such a loss of face that suicide would be the only course to escape the stigma.
In short, the Japanese institutionalized unquestioning loyalty and merged gods with country. Men like Tojo exploited that to drag the nation into a war that at least some of its citizens opposed and its best military leaders felt was not winnable. Why does this sound so saddly familiar.
By 1945 most knew the war was lost. Always short of natural resources, Japan was cut off from the places it had taken to gain access to oil and rubber and iron. Bombing raids had destroyed much of the mainland’s industrial capacity. The once-vaunted Japanese navy was crippled by lack of spare parts and fuel; it’s air force practically non-existent. Fire-bombings of major cities were taking a terrible toll on Japanese citizens and the war industry. One raid on Tokyo killed an estimated 80,000-100,000 people — mostly civilians. The architect of these raid, General Curtis LeMay has publicly stated he advised the US high command that the bombing campaign alone would have eventually brought about Japan’s surrender.
By June of 1945 the Japanese military and government were convinced they would lose the war but were unwilling to accept an unconditional surrender. Factions fought over how to bring about the end with the best circumstances for Japan.
On Aug. 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The Japanese government gathered two days later to discuss how to deal with the changed situation. On Aug. 9 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. The Japanese government and high command met again and had come to the conclusion the war was lost and must be ended immediately. A split remained over whether some terms could be negotiated. Before the meeting concluded word came of the second Atomic bomb blast.
Historians still debate whether the same affect could have been gained by an offshore detonation of the second bomb as simply a demonstration that the US was capable of dropping more such bombs. However, the great awakening brought about by those two blinding lights changed Japanese society in many ways. The Japanese constitution was modified to prohibit an army. Recently riots broke out over plans to send a Japanese contingent to Iraq. Attempts to reconstitute a Japanese army, 60 years after the end of the war, have been met by popular resistance in Japan. The Japanese learned first hand that war is hell and are now largely unwilling to wage it on other nations.
In the end, we may have taught the Japanese a valuable lesson. But what did the US learn?
Today we still kill innocents in other countries. We spy on our own people. We arrest those who have committed no crime, sometimes simply because of how they look or the sound of their names. We imprison suspected terrorists without trial or recourse to counsel in violation of the US Constitution (an opinion held by the Supreme Court). Some of those jailed have been American citizens and more than one has been taken to a foreign country where they have been held secretly and questioned under duress. A few have emerged from such imprisonments to tell of the mistakes that led to their arrest. They have also told of torture and other inhumane treatment to which they were subjected in violation of national and international laws. Soldiers captured in Iraq and Afghanistan have also had their Geneva rights abrogated by US troops under orders from the top people in our defense department.
All this is to say we are now doing all the things for which we vilified the Germans and Japanese during World War II.
You say trust freedom, but what do you call those who question, those who defer from blind service to this country, those who exercise their right to speak and peaceably petition the government for a redress of grievances? Ignorant. Cowards. Effete. Ungrateful. Vain. Dull. Traitors. I call such words the tools of tyrants. The Constitution calls for citizens to question. This nation was formed as an escape from blind obedience. Yet for all of my life those who ask why, those who say: NO have been bullied. I can’t count the number of times I have heard: If you don’t like it here, go live in the USSR.
Yet all of these things I might accept if simply couched as nationalistic fervor. Who am I, after all, to question the purposes of this nation if a majority conclude that we should harm others to further our own purposes. It has been this way since civilization began and the US has proved no exception. However, what I can’t accept is when these concepts are tied to God and, more so, his son Jesus.
Perhaps it is not your intention to make such linkage. However, the current government of this country does so on a regular basis. I must reject connections between God and country and war secondly because history shows us where this leads, but first because it is a violation of my faith in a power greater than this nation and its temporal leaders. These are the principals that I accepted when I took on the yoke of Christ: To love God above all things and to love my neighbor as myself. To do good to those who harm me. To love my enemies. To sacrifice anything, even my own life (if I have the strength and courage) in the service of the Kingdom of God, rather than some petty nation. To live, as best I can, with my eyes on heaven but my feet and hands and heart and mind on earth.
I have no faith in the things that humans can invent. The potentiality of humanity is amazing, but every blazing light of insight seems to also carry a bomb blast of destruction. Every gain is balanced with tragic loss. And nearly every person nurses the seeds of an oppressor within.
Denigrate me if you must. Dismiss me if you will. Given the tone of your column, I have sincere doubts that you will hear what I have to say. But I will not be silent.
I will not argue the means to peace. I do not see through God’s eyes or know his thoughts. The grand purposes and end of history are beyond me. What I am charged to do is BE peace in the world. That does not require fancy words, arguments of philosophy, a chess-like divining of move and counter move. What it asks is that I do no harm, even if harm is done to me. And that I speak against any effort to do harm to others.
A woman from my church recently returned from Columbia where she spent time with a Christian Peacemaker team. Most of their job was to simply stay in the homes of people. While they were there, those people were safe. Government assassins, rebel militias and drug gangs left these people alone out of concern for what would occur should they go in and harm a foreigner. Perhaps it is not the same as assaulting a beach or charging a bunker. But it is a small way to pass on and, hopefully, preserve rights and freedoms for others.
Jesus said: “Blessed are the Peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God.”
Comment by: Jim Baxter
7 10/27/07 8:30 AM | Comment Link |You are correct to choose not be a cause of transgression. Your message is reasonably accurate over the historical period delineated, however, I reject any conclusion or act that will encourage any abuser to proceed with his view of cannibalism on human beings.
Each person has continuous life-long choice-making opportunities to resist any and all dangers to posterity. As bad as it is, war is not the worst crime against humanity. Those varieties of ‘peace’ are not valid peace.
Confidence in man is not worthy. His man-made ‘criteria’ for choice is hobbled in an ego-centric carnal selfhood and rises no higher than his belly-button. Even his selective reading of GOD-made transcendent criteria, Scripture, is to be questioned, regardless of station, age, or office.
Inevitably, his ‘center’ needs be relocated to the actual center of all things; the Lord JESUS. He must be born-again of the Spirit.
We are now living in the early Last Days. All the signs of end times are being fulfilled daily. JESUS, The Lion of Judah, is coming soon.
“Wars and rumors of wars” will continue until then. We are obliged to resist evil as we are led of His Spirit.
Too many peace-efforts mislead others down the wrong paths of personal abdication to destruction. There is only One who came as the Lamb of God. One is enough. He served in that role for less than 24 hours - and the results will last for eternity. When He comes again “we shall all be changed …for we shall see Him as He is, The Lion of Judah …and He shall rule with a rod of iron for a thousand years…in Jerusalem.”
Thus, will His Eternity begin…
Psalm 25:12 kjv
Comment by: Elaine
8 10/27/07 9:15 AM | Comment Link |Well said David. Thank you.
Jim, thank you for sharing your perspective. My father, who served in WWII, and I frequently debated the peace movement. Born in 1948, I am on the leading edge of baby boomers and have grown up with one war or another as part of my life.
History shows that wars are only short term solutions. My Christian beliefs call me to a different way.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
9 10/27/07 2:11 PM | Comment Link |David
thankyou! I’m glad that you’re a journalist, and a writer, for you write my aspirations better than I can.
Comment by: Rachel
10 10/27/07 3:51 PM | Comment Link |And isn’t stopping that chain of violence exactly what Jesus was asking us to do when he told us to love our enemies and to turn the other cheek? Jesus warned us that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”
Comment by: David H
11 10/27/07 4:31 PM | Comment Link |War should be the last resort for resolving dispute between people and nations. Yet it is almost never so. Other options are often ignored or forestalled for expediency, fear, greed. Then when the conflict comes, those ordering the armies claim its inevitability.
Those men are seldom in the front lines, but frequently speak loudest regarding the importance now of keeping an eye on posterity.
What thing in the history of humanity has been more destructive than war? How many wars, even when given the widest possible latitude, fit the criteria of just? Would it take more than one hand to count them?
How can we speak of protecting the future with war when each destructive act lays the foundation for the one that follows? The logic of that would dictate that the best war would leave no one alive to fight.
When I try to think such big thoughts, when I try to determine divine will and then act accordingly I soon end up substituting my own mind for God’s, replacing his holy desires with my own egocentric wants.
I am a lesser man. Fortunately, God does not demand that I know him fully or act as his right hand. He sent his son to to live as the least of all men and provide a model for other people on how to act in the world.
In the end, there will always be many willing to pull a trigger for grand causes or mean ones. There will be far fewer willing to step between the target and the gun without a weapon in their own hands. Yet that is the model Jesus gave to the world.
In Christ there is only personal abdication and if that leads to bodily destruction then what comes after is glory. To live otherwise is to live without love. Jesus said: “Perfect loves casts out fear.”
I am not perfect. I still am overwhelmed by fear. But that does not mean my self-protective impulses, my anger towards others, my desires for vengeance (holy or otherwise) are blessed. One day, I pray to be perfected, then those things will be gone. Until then I must struggle against the soul eater that makes war seem a valid response to wrongs done me or mine.
Until we are changed then rumors and rumors of war will abound. That is a sad statement of fact, not a call to arms. The sons of God have no choice in this until Jesus does return. Then if he tells me to take up a gun and shoot the man before me, I will know it is the will of God and not just the word of the latest human pretender.
Comment by: Rachel
12 10/27/07 6:11 PM | Comment Link |David, I love the way Shane Claiborne puts it: “The central message of the cross is that there is something worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.”
Comment by: Justice and Compassion
13 10/29/07 3:47 AM | Comment Link |[...] was moved by many of the things which David wrote in his lengthy response to Jim Baxter’s recent article. I wanted to repost some excerpts at the top of a [...]
Comment by: Benjamin
14 10/29/07 6:38 AM | Comment Link |I have reposted excerpts from David’s response (comment #6 above) as a new post
Comment by: joe
15 10/29/07 6:48 AM | Comment Link |Who are you to tell me what is freedom? Who is the USA to dictate to others what is right and wrong? The US is not immune to evil, nor to toppling democratically elected governments by ‘free’ people.
Oh yes, silly me. The problem is obviously the Muslims.
Or maybe recall the commands of Jesus - which insist that we should not judge someone by the colour of his skin, the way he combs his hair or his shoe size.
This is not only nonsense, this is offensive, unchristian and uncharitable nonsense.
Comment by: Jim Baxter
16 10/29/07 6:03 PM | Comment Link |JESUS said, “I am not come to bring peace but a sword.”
Unlike man, GOD does not lie, or play extensive verbiage games of self-justification for free-riders to enjoy their gifted Freedom.
The peace alternative initiative in this world will not work to preserve life, posterity, - or virtue. Faith requires courage of conviction - not any variety of gutless wordy retreat.
You are a patty-cake group of losers. You will have some compelling experiences yet in your future. Governments don’t have “a cheek to turn” - only individuals. So be it. Psalm 25:12 kjv
Comment by: David H
17 10/29/07 8:47 PM | Comment Link |Jesus may have come to bring a sword. But who speaks for him today in determining who is the righteous wielder of the sword and who the just recipient? Who is the true voice of God in the world today. Not the government of this country. If God doesn’t lie then he certainly couldn’t work with the people we have in charge here now.
Also, I agree that governments don’t have a cheek to turn. But Jesus did make it pretty clear that those who claim to follow him should answer violence with non-violence. So, there is the division. Christ says to his followers: Do good to those who hurt you. A government says to its people: Kill those who might harm our interests.
The question that must be answered is: Who do I serve? Jesus also said a man can’t serve two masters. The answer to the essential question lies in who each person considers their master. To contend both is a pretense at best. One will either do a disservice to one or both.
I would also argue that while a radical peace initiative may not preserve life or posterity, it may — in this world — be the only way to preserve virtue. Is it virtuous to kill an innocent? In war can one ever be certain that no innocents are killed? And what of the person who pulls the trigger, what do they lose in that simple act?
As I said previously, perhaps governments can no more follow the commands of peace than they can turn the other cheek. Perhaps governments can’t be Godly. But that would seem to be a rather strong argument against thoughtlessly doing what they tell me.
I have to admit, Mr. Baxter, that reading your column made me just as angry as it made Joe. I resisted responding to it in that tone because I hoped to in some way persuade you to something other than the rather harsh attitude and opinion you expressed. Perhaps that hope was pointless.
However, I have been called worse than a patty-cake loser and expect I will be again. I hope for compelling experiences in my future — isn’t that what life is all about. If nothing else, I hope such things will continue to help clarify for me who it is I serve.
Comment by: Benjamin
18 10/29/07 10:52 PM | Comment Link |Jim,
I’m really curious about your understanding of how to reconcile Jesus’ clear commands to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and bless those who curse us with your interpretation above of the passage you quote from matthew 10 about not peace but a sword.
Is a christian to put himself in a position where he or she must choose to kill his enemy? What if that enemy is a child? Even the military recognizes the growing problem of u.s. military personnel facing child soldiers
How is a christian to operate in a military which must consider questions about the killing of child soldiers, a very real concern which students at our own military academies are researching, in order to deal with the mental health effects of such encounters. Here’s a great paper by Judith Hughes, LtCol, United States Air Force, published last year. (warning, the content might be a little intense, especially if you have PTSD or are easily frightened or disturbed)
Following are a couple quotes from the paper.
How is a christian to legitimately operate within an environment which has to question and comment within these parameters? I would argue that it is impossible.
Jim,
I would love to hear your reaction/response to this
Comment by: joe
19 10/30/07 3:49 AM | Comment Link |I’ve often wondered what Jesus meant by that, Jim. I am not convinced that he meant we should be justified to kill and destroy anyone we see as an enemy. If he did, then that does not seem to match up with his life of sacrifice or his gentle words of peace.
I suspect you and I are very similar, Jim. We are both passionate and we both shoot from the hip.
For that reason, and for respect for my Grandfather - who like you was involved in heavy fighting as a career soldier during the Second World War - I will not take offense at your words. But I am not a free-rider and nor do I enjoy gifted freedom. And nor do you, as it happens. Our freedom and our standard of living is built on the back of millions who live in poverty. And as Amos says, we should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.
Possibly not Jim, but the war alternative hasn’t either has it? As our world usually works on the ‘might is right’ principle and we’re part of the strong community, we naturally enjoy life, prosperity and (arguably) virtue. Most do not.
I agree.
Thanks. I am very proud to be considered amoungst the losers such as Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the other countless people who refused to be kow-towed by the men of violence.
So ethics do not apply to governments? And thanks for the reminder that my responsibilities are primarily to God and only secondarily to the nation in which I live.
Comment by: April Terry
20 10/31/07 2:36 PM | Comment Link |I have always thought that Jesus meant that he brought the sword of truth to the world–Not a literal sword. Jesus spoke in parables, symbolically, and yes, sometimes literally, too, but more often in spiritual terms.
His words were a sword that would pierce the world with the truth. His words were a sword that would challenge the church leaders. His words were a sword that would battle the forces of evil and win.
Keeping in mind as well that it was a common idea among the Jews that the messiah would deliver them and put them in their rightful place as leaders of the world. They thought this meant literally, but it was a spiritual rightness that God was talking about. Duh. No one got it then, and they are still not getting it.
He follows up that verse with a verse that says he will pit father against son and mother against daughter. Does that sound like a call to war? It sounds like a call to truth and a call not to blindly follow anyone, not even your family.
Finally, I would like to say that Matt. 26:52 also says, “for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
Comment by: Rachel
21 11/1/07 7:49 AM | Comment Link |I think that your interpretation of the passage is right on, April. Well said!