by Jennifer W.

Created on: June 18, 2007

War has never been a "romantic" idea to me. I have never been flippant about any type of military action. This is because I have grown up around military men and women. If all the military people in my church were called to active service and shipped over seas, we would be left with mostly women and children and a couple of college age girls. I have watched the recent war movies: Saving Private Ryan, A Few Good Men, and a couple others, and I have cried as I watched the wives and children say goodbye to their husbands and fathers, knowing that the tears shed in the movie are a reality today, even in my own church.

I hate war. I hate what it does to our nation, and to other nations. The bloodshed is horrendous and I mourn over the children who are left fatherless and without hope of much of a future. Yet I grow increasingly angry and frustrated at the countless people who have looked me in the eye and told me that no Christian should ever serve in the military, and that those who do are simply misled and not under the guidance and will of God. I see this position as cowardly and hypocritical.

My own father went to the Navel Academy and served for many years afterward in the military. My father is also an elder in my church and is the leader of a Christian boys group that goes camping every month through the winter months. He leads a men's Bible study, and he teaches College Sunday school. I have to say that I know more godly men, completely sold out to Jesus, devoting their entire life to serving God, and serve in the military, than I have met in college and beyond. Listening to people expound on their soap boxes about how godly they are for not serving in the military, and then going home and listening to men who are presently serving in the military talk about reaching out to their fellow man and how God is humbling them in their daily walk, makes me sad. How can men who are supposedly so misled, be so much more humble than those who have supposedly figured God out?

Jesus preaches about peace in the New Testament. We are supposed to love each other and be at peace with each other. We are also told to respect the institution of government and note it does not say that we are to agree with everything the government says and does. If the case is simply Jesus' teachings on peace, then why, when the military was a very present reality in Biblical times as well as today, did Jesus not say, "be peaceful with other nations as well, and by the way, those who follow me, do not serve in the Military, that is a good example of not being at peace". Instead Jesus gives example after example of interpersonal conflicts and reiterates that we should solve our differences with one another.

If the "moral" and "religious" reason for the pacifism is regarding the wrongness of war, then decide for yourselves and do not condemn your fellow brothers and sisters as they serve God. God calls us to be at peace so why, while striving to obey Jesus' teachings, do so many people cut down and trample over those who are also trying to obey Jesus' teachings and have simply come up with a different view on one issue? Can we not put down our differences and get along peacefully as brothers and sisters? The attitudes I have run across seem a little hypocritical to me you preach peace, will you practice it small scale as well as large scale?

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