It's the War Stupid

PREACHING TO THE CHOIR
-because sometimes they are too busy to actually read the book.

There was once a common soldier in Italy at a time when Italian city states were warring against each other for turf and trade against the back-drop of the Crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries who had an epiphany. War isn't holy. So he dismounted his horse in prayer and eventually penned the most famous peace prayer outside the Sermon on the Mount:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Saint Francis, from a town called Assisi, made it his mission to cast off all human self-centeredness and self-seeking that inspired war. He de-vanitied himself and divested himself of the pride of life and the things that would tempt him to believe it was more blessed to keep than to give-going so far as to return his fine clothing to his father to wear the famous brown burlap like sack of a cassock tied with simple rope.
He studied Jesus Christ whom he believed actually spoke to him-and he understood him better than most people pretend to now or then.
Condolessa Rice, whose father was a Presbyterian Minister and George Bush can no doubt tell you by heart the story of how Jesus turned five barley loaves and five fishes into enough food to feed five thousand people sitting on a mountainside in Galilee waiting to hear Jesus, the Jewish itinerant preacher lecture the outdoor classroom. They may even think Halliburton's agenda in Iraq is metaphorically analogous. But can they tell you the ending of the chapter?
Jesus, the carpenter, son of Joseph from Nazareth, arrived on the human scene during a time of gruesome bloody brutal Roman oppression. Romans, before the Christian era were a thousand times more brutal and oppressive a dictatorship regime under Ceasar Augustus and all the Ceasars than Stalin, Saddam, Papa Doc Duvalier, Pinochet, or almost the Pharoahs. Rome's form of capital punishment was crucifixion- or hanging, not with a quick jolt to the neck but by a longer lingering impaling of hands and feet to cross poles, which took hours if not days, while Romans broke the legs by clubbing them, and watched crows peck out the eyes of the crucified as they dangled in sweltering heat. If you were lucky enough to be a Roman citizen (like Saint Paul), you could not be crucified, and were instead beheaded. This was the kinder gentler Roman way to kill an undesirable. It was more common in Roman times than in Iraq today. Later, after they built the Colliseum, criminals and gladiators dueled to the death, and people were thrown in with mauling lions just for the sport of it. "Brutal" is an understatement. Romans invented terror.
The mere rumor of Jesus' birth so threatened King Herod's power, the Roman ruler of the province of Judea, that he ordered the slaughtering of all Jewish infants under the age of two around the time Jesus was born. He killed his own people-or those over whom he was charged to rule- and lots of them in murderous rampages. That is why Jesus' family, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt for a time when he was a small child. That ranks the Romans in the genocidal category of most brutal civilizations western history has chronicled including those in Kosovo, Darfur and Rwanda.
Why do I mention how brutal the Romans were? Think of how much the Jews wanted to rid themselves of the yoke of this oppressive, unjust, brutal empire whose foot was planted on their necks and to whom they had to pay taxes while being abused so unjustly and brutally. The prophesies of the coming Messiah or King of the Jews would surely deliver them from this madness and be the one who would overthrow the Roman rule off Judea.
Then Jesus enters the scene. He was not credited as being a Messiah largely because he did not come bearing arms and a call to over throw the Romans. He came with a different message about freedom- an internal freedom from sin through love and faith to hope. He took up no arms. He did not commission anyone to take up any arms on his behalf or in his name or for its sake. He taught love to everyone in a way that is rarely understood even by people who preach it. He taught this love to a Roman centurion, a half-breed Sammaritan and anyone who had faith to hear it.
Back to the account of the loaves and fishes. Jesus was a miracle-maker. He transcended and was not bound by physical laws. He raised the dead, he healed the blind, he fed five thousand people with five barley loaves and five fish. He surely could have overthrown the Roman rule in a day.
The end of the chapter on the loaves and fishes reports that the people were so impressed with him (and their full bellies) that they wanted to make him King. They wanted in essence to force him to become king through a coup d'etat of some kind. Implicitly, they wanted to take up arms for him to overthrow the existing Roman structure, and make him King. But Jesus would have none of it. It is reported instead that he withdrew to pray so as to not provoke violence. Jesus loved everyone, even the Romans, and desired that they all understand his message of transcendent love and faith, redemption and forgiveness. He forgave the Romans as his last breath even as they strung him up and nailed him to the cross. It is easy to read in scripture that he hated violence. They still wanted to make him King and hailed him as such as he rode in on a lowly donkey into Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday.
If Condolessa Rice and George Bush actually grasped the real character of Jesus, the way that Saint Francis of Assisi did, they would understand how completely un-Christian it is to start a war to impose a democratic ruler or force regime change--much less by hyped connivance of a demonized threat. If Jesus did not allow it to make himself ruler over the brutal Romans, its hard to see how he approves of lying a nation under false threats to their personal security to motivate them to take up arms to overthrow someone else's oppressor. There simply is no scriptural justification for it whatsoever. There are enough demons in the world without creating more.
When Jesus himself was finally being captured by the Romans, he witnessed his disciple Peter slice off the ear of an approaching sword yielding Roman guard. Jesus chastised Peter, told him to knock it off and reached over and re-attached the severed ear of the Roman soldier.
Jesus loves everyone. Everyone. Jew and Gentile. Shiite and Sunni, Athiest, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and every living human, all of whom have uniquely coded DNA made in the image of God. It is rather difficult to win someone's "hearts and minds" over for Love if you kill them first. Jesus never risked any collateral damage of innocent casualties, because he never condoned, sanctioned, instructed, approved or applauded war or violence in any form.
As a tool of trade, or a vehicle to profit, war is just obscene and pure evil.
Saint Francis visited Egypt and the holy land, he met with the Sultan of Turkey and the King of Babylonia at the time. He is said to have won over to peace and love both and the Crusades soon ended. That is why you see today all over the holy land that holy Christian sites are tended to by the brown frocked Franciscan order of monks.
It is time for the choir to stop singing and start listening to the words. Jesus is still talking but few are listening.
The US Army has no place now in Iraq. They are intrinsically unqualified to win the hearts and minds of anyone in that context. The bully bravado blunder that sent them there in the first place was far worse than "strategic error." It was and continues to be sadly deeply un-Christian. A disciple of Christ cannot hide under His mantle to justify acts that are abhorrent to Him. To do so strips one of any true qualification of being His disciple.
The people in America who are calling to bring the Troops Home Now are not just supreme Patriots, they are in many cases just good disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.