Should it come to war any time soon between the United States and Iran, the history books about that confrontation will include at least a chapter on the role of some Christian Zionists in urging this conflict on, and in giving it religious and ideological cover. Or the historians may say that some well-meaning Christians were used and manipulated by the same public and political figures they thought they were encouraging to start war between America and Iran. Some of the blame will rightfully go to the mullahs and the president of Iran for all they did to inflame warlike sentiments. But some of it will also go to some high profile American Christian televangelists and political activists who genuinely seem to think that by encouraging a pre-emptive military strike against Iran, they are blessing Abraham and his descendants and doing God’s will.

And should the unthinkable happen, and an un-winnable war with Iran be launched, unleashing an avalanche of devastating complications and consequences for generations to come, some of them easily foreseeable, future American generations will likely look upon the church and their Christian parents and ancestors and ask, as they have in Germany and Austria after the Second World War, “What did you do to prevent the war or stop it?” And if enough of us must remain silent or give excuses, or (God forbid) confess that we poured gasoline on the fire with apocalyptic glee, then the church will garner the same indifference or contempt that it does in much of postwar secular Europe today.

If that should be the case, then I, for one, want to go on permanent record as saying that I oppose any efforts to wage war with Iran, and even to threaten or encourage it. And I am not alone. The Sojourners Community of Washington, D.C., has issued its call for restraint on both sides in a statement, “Words Not War,” that can be found at  http://www.sojourners.com/index.cfm?action=action.wnw&item=wnw_main. There you will also find the story of Christian leaders, representative of not a few denominations, including the Mennonites, who have met more than once with President Ahmedinajad of Iran for some respectful dialog and some very pointed and honest challenges to his inflammatory and irresponsible statements about Jews, Israel and the United States. But they earned the right to be heard precisely because they were willing to listen, and to acknowledge the rights of Muslims and Arabs (few Iranians are Arabs, by the way) to exist in Palestine and the Middle East, as well as the Jews.

By “Christian Zionists” I mean fellow Christians, but those who justify and support the most hard line Israeli political positions and military actions against Arabs and Palestinians, even though many, if not most, Israelis might not go so far. They are absolutely right when they say that Christians in the past have too often engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms and inquisitions, that we slept-walked through atrocities such as the Holocaust, and that its time to reverse our complacency about, and our collusion with, anti-semitism. But I disagree with their implicit call to choose between loving Israelis or Arabs (many of whom are Christians) and to identify the most warlike and oppressive Israeli policies with the will of God.

Watching or hearing the sermons of the most militant Christian Zionists, like the Rev. John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, I am transported back to the 1970′s, when I was a new believer and my country was as fearful of the Communists as we are of terrorists and jihadis today. Then, as now, it was not uncommon for some televangelists, pastors and revivalists to whip up sentiment and support by whipping up our fear of enemies, who would take over our country and kill us Christians, we were told, if any softies among us would let them. Since the Vietnam War was still underway, it was allegedly God’s will that we kill the Commies since they so desperately and unanimously wanted to kill us. This call to war was all the more powerful and gripping when fed into calculations of apocalyptic scenarios from various combinations of Biblical prophecies to show why the imminent and inevitable fiery showdown with godless Bolshevism or Maoism would soon usher in the return of Christ. Hagee’s teachings and videos are full of similar charts and speculations about how war with Iran is necessary for the Second Coming of Christ.

I still believe in the real and visible coming of Christ. My reading of history and of Bible prophecy doesn’t give me much reason to believe that we humans will suddenly and smoothly evolve or progress our way out of inequality, injustice and violence any time soon. I am much more hopeful about our long-term, eternal prospects. And my faith and my Lord give me resources and encouragement to keep working toward that end in the short term. Yet should the Lord’s return be soon, and should it occur in the course of a cataclysmic debacle, I would much rather be found, in that final inspection, on the side of those who were showing love to Israelis and Palestinians equally than on the side of those who were stoking the fires of war. I would much rather be found on the side of those who were helping feed the poor and the hungry, of those who were reaching out to self-described enemies, and of those who were restraining their appetites for energy and comfort, than be found on the side of those who were pushing the pedal to the metal on the road to Armageddon.

Nor do I intend to fall again for the error of confusing fear, loathing and the “stern, impassioned stress” of war fever with a spiritual experience, as I did back when some revivalists almost had me convinced to stockpile ammunition because the Communists were coming any day now, and therefore Christ was, too. But I’m experiencing “deja vu all over again” in the messages of those Christian Zionists who are whipping up the case for war with Iran. Think of what that will do to the Iranian church, which is growing, even as the mullahs deny its existence or hunt it down.

The only experiences I recognize as spiritual anymore are those that have to do with trust, pardon, peace, mercy, reconciliation and costly, cruciform love, even for enemies who are determined to stay enemies. In the history books to come, if the Lord should tarry, I hope that Christian peacemakers—friends of Israelis and Arabs, Jews and Muslims–get more space than just a few footnotes. Better yet, may those histories never need to be written.

I don’t know what to say that can add to the following statement issued by some members and leaders of the Amish community in Nickel Mines, PA., on the recent first anniversary of the deaths by shooting of five young schoolgirls and the wounding of others:

“Forgiveness is a journey….you need help from your community of faith and from God, and sometimes even from counselors, to make and hold on to a decision to not become a hostage to hostility. Hostility destroys community.”

The decision of the Amish community members to forgive has not been met with universal approval. What right have the living and the unharmed to forgive an assault against others who died or were wounded? some have asked. But it was an assault against the entire community, when you factor in the familial, neighborly, and religious connections among all the Amish of the region, even of the country. This act of corporate forgiveness is an important reminder of our connectedness and a necessary challenge to a stubbornly individualistic culture.

But the approach that the Amish take, not to allow themselves to “become a hostage to hostility,” turns that question on its head. The value of forgiveness is not only in what it does for the assailant (or in this case, his surviving family, who have received much support from the Amish) but in what it does for those who have been injured, even indirectly. While we might be able to make a legal or philosophical case for the “right” to hold a grudge or to avenge an insult or an assault, it is a right no better than one’s “right,” so-called, to hit oneself with a hammer or to drink poison. In fact, withholding forgiveness has been likened by sages to “drinking poison and hoping that someone else will die.”

Of equally stunning insight is the admission with which this statement begins, that “forgiveness is a journey,” and that “you need help.” This is a transparent and disarming admission of the fact that forgiveness has been no more automatic or easy for the Amish than it is for the rest of us. If ever we have determined to forgive someone, only to find our anger rising again and again, we are not alone. But we often differ with the Amish in this: don’t we often think of forgiveness as a destination we arrive at after the pain of the injury subsides with time and insight? The Amish, by contrast, seem to see the decision to forgive as the beginning of the journey, not its end.

And could it be that forgiveness does not always preclude anger? Rather, in forgiveness we work to transfer our grief, anger and outrage from the assailant to the assault, from the enemy to the enmity between us. Some actions are indeed worthy of great outrage and grief, some for the long periods of time that it would take to work toward resolution and healing. God forbid that we would come to any cheap and easy peace with such atrocities as what happened at Nickel Mines, or Columbine High School or Dachau. But part of that resolution and healing involves coming to see the enemy and assailant as someone in just as much need of healing and grace as ourselves, and finally even, to dare to pray and labor for his or her healing, as well as for our own. In this dark and difficult mystery we enter the very heart of God and the meaning of the cross. As Jacob said to his brother Esau, after years of bitter estrangement and separation between them, “Seeing your face is like seeing the face of God (Genesis 33: 10).”

Yesterday’s New York Times (October 7, 2007) carried an article about churches sponsoring Halo video game events as a way of bringing youths—especially young men—into church. The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/us/07halo.html?em&ex=1191988800&en=4db9da4caaef0870&ei=5087%0A.

I have not played Halo. I’m so far behind on the digital revolution that I’ve only recently given up looking for the “Any” key. I wouldn’t even know how to install and play Halo. Not that I wouldn’t want to, I’m afraid. From my brief experience of having Chessmaster on my computer, I quickly recognized the addictive power of video games (for me, at least) and took it off, as a matter of self-defense. That I know how to do. And I didn’t need any more humiliation, even at the Easy level. I confess, as a human being of the same substance as everyone else, to the appeal of exercising power by blowing things—and people—away. Digitally, of course. All my Christian life I have been struggling to trust and cultivate another type of power than the destructive, fear-based one that the world recognizes and even worships: the power of life, love, light, the power of nurturing and embracing, even the power of simply letting things and people live, be and grow.

I have been told that Halo has relatively less graphic violence and more noble, even spiritual, elements than other shoot-em-up video games. That doesn’t say lot. Something tells me I’d better not spend time checking it out to see if that is true or not. I have people and places to nurture and only so much time to do it.

But another question comes to mind: What’s so great about getting people into a church building? Especially if all they’re doing is what they’d already do at home? If we’re sitting around blowing things and people away, even if they’re just digital things and people, how does that make it “church?” To me, its just as important to get church out to people as it is to get people into church. Christianity is at least as much about what we do in our homes, at work and in the world, as it is about the few hours a week that we spend inside a consecrated space, important as those hours are. There we gather, in part, to scatter, renewed and empowered for love.

Slowly, and only by the grace of God, are my soul and body getting rewired to experience the rush and thrill of peace and compassion that people experienced around Jesus. It amounts to swimming against the cultural current. And don’t forget, such video games were first pioneered by the Defense Department, in order to “program” soldiers to overcome their natural reluctance to shoot to kill. Now tell me that such games don’t do anything to us, other than release some pent-up aggression. Why spend any more time “hard-wiring” ourselves for destruction, vengeance and fear, when they seem to come so easily anyway? Are there not other ways to know and feel that we are truly alive, I ask, as I admire the bright yellow maple tree in my backyard, glowing in the mellow sunlight of an autumn afternoon?

Rather than telling anyone, though, not to play Halo, I will simply ask: Are there not better ways to spend the short time we have here before eternity, where we’ll see in full what we became, and live with the results forever? Look around yourself to see the answers in living faces. And are there not better things to be making of ourselves? Until the answer to both questions is No, the gatherings of Emmanuel Mennonite Church will remain Halo-free zones. Especially since we rent our space and want to stay on good terms with our gracious landlord (Luther Seminary). Now you know at least one time and place where you can come to get away from all the murder and mayhem, the shooting and the explosions.

Mathew Swora, pastor

Thoughts on “The War:”

Last night I caught a segment of the new PBS series, “The War,” by Ken Burns, in particular, the segment entitled, “The Ghost Front,” about the winter of 1944-45. Or at least I listened to much of it while I was in the kitchen turning an excess of tomatoes into gazpacho for later use. Much of this story I knew already, as my family members include refugees from that war. I asked a neighbor friend, who served in an armored reconnaissance and intelligence outfit on the European theater, what he thought about the documentary series. He was particularly fascinated and enlightened by the home front aspects of the story, having not been home during the war. As for the combat part, he felt it was pretty accurate.

As fascinating and as well-done as this series is, I find it hard to watch much more than I have, for the sheer, overwhelming, sadness of it all. Perhaps I inherited and carry around the mix of fascination, fear and grief that my forbears brought out of that searing experience. That war and its effects are part of the reason why I felt that I needed to be part of an historic peace church (see “A Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective,” (http://www.mennolink.org/doc/cof/), because the trauma of war carries through the generations, as is so well portrayed in Elie Wiesel’s novel, The Fifth Son.

Though the Mennonite Church is a peace church, and has pioneered the field of alternative service during war, that does not disqualify veterans from membership or discipleship, and I pastor them as gladly as I do others. In fact, I tell them that I admire their courage, discipline and devotion, and I hope I would emulate those traits if ever I am placed in a situation that requires them. Indeed, from all the veterans I have met, I sense that they, having put their lives on the line for a cause they deemed greater than their own survival, have things to teach us. During last night’s episode, I remembered reading in A Time for Trumpets (Charles MacDonald, Harper-Collins, 1985), an account of the Battle of the Bulge, about three U.S. Army engineers who, when the German counter-offensive began, set up an ambush with an anti-tank gun that they knew was an inadequate to the heavy armor of German Tiger Tanks approaching them. But it was all they had. And it was all they needed to blow off the track of the lead tank, thereby buying precious time for their retreating comrades, and denying the road to the advancing Germans. They also knew, however, that they would be unable to escape before the disabled tank fired upon them. The frozen bodies those three U.S. Army engineers were buried in Belgium soon after the battle. How can I not admire such courage?

I simply ask all who read this column, Can we not show such courage, discipline and devotion for the Kingdom of God, in the cause of gospel peace, with the means of peace? Especially now, when any conflict can quickly go nuclear and betray any moral rationale it might claim? For we who are in Christ are citizens of a heavenly kingdom, and are soldiers in the service of the Prince of Peace, armed with weapons in keeping with Christ’s loving, self-sacrificial cause.

I also know peacemakers who are giving and sharing and working just as diligently and sacrificially as do soldiers in uniform, for the cause of the gospel and human well-being. Watch this website for future stories about the Twin Cities’ Mennonite Central Committee Relief Sale, Ten Thousand Villages, and our partnerships with churches and aid agencies around the world. There are other ways of fighting evil than with a gun, without adding to the evil we seek to overcome. I see it done with prayer, with needle and thread, a spatula, woodworking tools, food, friendship and service, so that people aren’t left to feel like a warlord such as Hitler is their only hope for dignity and security.