Christ-ianity

When does a belief system become unhooked from the thought of the person it was originally based upon? That was the question I had as I listened to the spring convocation address a week or so ago.  The speaker used the occasion to argue for just war theory - suggesting that only college freshmen should be excused from the naiveté of non violence.  The rest of us who might have such leanings are just dumb.  We're dumb because we don't know how the world works.  After all, evil is real - Nazis were real.  Isn't it interesting that it's always Nazis - its always Hitler.  What about the German Christians who allowed, dare I say supported, Hitler's rise to power?  I'm sure Romans 13 was invoked to legitimize the establishment of the Third Reich.  Is it possible that the very arguments used to support a "just war" against the Nazis provided the justification for the Nazi party?  Just a thought...

Funny thing about war... it seems like those who actually have to fight in them don't like them very much.  My grandpa would never talk about WWII - until he inexplicably started talking into the tape recorder.  Four to five tapes later what I remember most were the tears in his eyes as he talked about coming onto the beaches of Normandy after the D-Day invasion.  And when he said the only people who like to play dress up and march in the memorial day parades were the pencil pushers... the ones who didn't actually have to kill anyone.  My father says the same thing.  The big difference between my grandpa and my dad is that my dad won't talk about Vietnam.  He told me where to put the tape recorder in no uncertain terms.


Yet there we were - the faculty of a Christian college being lectured on the merits of just war.  Very little mention of the teachings of Jesus.  No discussion of whether the teachings of Jesus are normative for the Christian community.  It seems we've done Jesus a great service - we've taken his teachings into the 21st century.  We've used him to justify military retribution in the name of liberal democracy and freedom.  Divine justification for weaponized drones and military occupation.  When does a belief system detach itself from its teacher?  When we begin thinking we know better...