SA Ep82 - Special Edition The Christian Conscience in the Time of War

SA Ep82 - Special Edition The Christian Conscience in the Time of War

In this special edition of Seeking Approval, we step away from the Articles of Faith to inquire what the Word of God says about how a Christian should view political conflict that leads to war. With so much being said by popular, so-called Christian voices demanding that we need to stand against war, what should a real Christian think? Which side should we fall on this chasm created, being "for" or "against" war? We will discuss this from a biblical point of view. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelser from Iliad Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. I want to take a little detour with you today. I know we've been discussing the articles of faith, and I'm looking forward to getting right back into those. But this has just been on my mind for the last few weeks, and um I've heard many people um discussing it, uh wondering how they should feel about it. And now with uh many popular voices out there uh making claims one way or another, I wanted you to kind of maybe have a trusted source if you are uh maybe in confusion of how you should feel about it. And what I want to discuss is the Christian conscious during the times of war. I'm not talking about our personal battles that we're going through. I'm talking about the tangible physical war, like the one our country is involved in currently, or has been involved in in the last few weeks and will continue, uh, it seems almost inevitable that it's going to continue. In Romans 12, 18, it says, if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. And a lot of people will claim that verse that we should live peaceably with all men, but don't forget that little two-letter word at the very beginning. If it be possible, as much as lie within you, live peaceably with all men. You see, with the emergence of conflict, such as the one that's going on in Iran right now, it it brings to life, it awakens not only this political discussion that people are having, and I'm not going to deal in politics. I have no business dealing in geopolitics because I don't know enough about it. The things I know about, uh I know little about, the things I don't know about, obviously I have no clue about. Um, and I would, you know, we would all have opinions on some of those things, but we shouldn't have an opinion when it comes to our Christian morals and values because they should be set by the word of God, and it is truth. And if we're going to say that the word of God is truth, then we need to be able to find truth about the these times in the Word of God. And this in the past few weeks, there's been some very Christian uh I guess faces, people who claim to be Christian. There we go. They carry the title, uh, such as uh Marjorie Taylor Green, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens. I don't know that Megan Kelly, you know, too often claims to be a Christian, but I it's kind of the mainstream thing for people to say, and now they're using uh the uh morals of a Christian to speak against the war. And they have begun to voice very strong opposition to the war, and now it's creating this chasm of you've got to be on one side or the other with this thing. And it can be very appealing to Christians to oppose war because of, you know, the it it's uh a foundation and our foundation on our our position that we should not uh kill or or steal or anything else. And while this may sound sincere in what they're saying and other people are saying, and I'm not listening to everything they're saying and uh wouldn't even claim to do so, I don't have time to do that. Matter of fact, um but it does present an opportunity for us as a as a church to step back for a minute and as Christians to step back and and and uh and examine the issue that's going on and not hear it from other people, but actually look through the lens of Scripture and only Scripture to see what is what's going on and how we should feel about it. Not how it's forcefully said or how loud it's said. But as the Bible says, what saith the word of God concerning war, peace, believers' responsibility in this very fallen world that we're living in? So the biblical witness to this is uh there's a there's a tension that must be carefully walked in in this. On one hand, the Bible consistently elevates peace as a virtue that's uh reflective in our character as peacemakers of Christ Himself. He said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. In Romans 12, 18, Paul urges the believers to pursue peace to the fullest extent possible, indicating that peace is not merely a passive state, but that it's something that we should desire, we should work towards. And that we do that by humility, by restraint, and for the desire of reconciliation. And that the spirit of Christ, furthermore, is one of meekness, long suffering, reminding us that we need to have those things. And then, right after that verse in Romans 12, 19, Paul writes that vengeance is mine. This is what God's saying, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. So we have this on the one side. And if that's all we read, then we would say, well, wait a minute, then all war is bad, then we should never go to war. We should we should try to talk it out and present the word of God to them. Well, we know we don't live in a perfect world, we live in a very fallen world. And alongside of this live peaceably, there's an equally clear biblical stance or acknowledgement that there must be civil authority, and it's God ordained, it's a God-ordained function that restrains evil. So you go the next chapter, Romans 13, teaches that governing authorities are ordained by God, and that the magistrate, they they they beareth not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. This this doesn't now all of a sudden make uh aggression and and violence and and uh um I guess it doesn't glorify those things. But it does recognize that it it's it it has to happen from time to time. And the use of force may at times serve as a just and necessary purpose to uh accomplish um safety, security, to r to rid evil. Uh the sword in the context of what he's saying is is not just an instrument of personal aggression, but it's uh public justice. So when he's talking about the sword, it's it's not just protecting your home, but it's it's these ones who are given authority, these ones who are sitting in in power places like the White House. So a categorical rejection of war as inherently unchristian fails to account the full testimony of all the scripture. I mean, if someone is to break into my house, should I jump out of bed and grab my Bible and say, hey, let's let's pray together. Let's try to work this out. I don't think that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna grab whatever instrument of protection I've got, and we've got many of them around, and I'm gonna use that instrument of protection to do just that. I'm gonna protect, I'm gonna protect the girls that are in my house. The stuff I don't much care about. We can replace stuff, but it's hard to replace people. And just in a bigger context, if someone is is threatening our country, what do we do? Do we do we try to just let's open the Bible and let's pray about it. Now, I I will grant you this. If if uh I heard uh you know that my neighbor was going to break into my house, I wouldn't just wait. I would try to go to him and talk to him, like, hey, what are you doing? What are you thinking about? I mean, let's let's talk about this. Why in the world would you do that? And this is what happened, I believe, in in the the current war. The the with all the nuclear uh discussions and all those things, we are we're at allies with Israel, and you've got a a group of very um radical um thinking people that they don't they don't think and reason like normal people do. They're they have one mission and one goal, and that is to bring Armageddon, to bring destruction. And they they chanted ever that the last Friday of Ramadan, they they chanted every year Death to Israel, death to America. And so we we heard that we we knew they were trying to do this. They found out about these nuclear weapons, they were bragging about it. I mean, it's like your neighbor bragging, I'm gonna break into your house, I'm gonna break into your house. Well, let me talk about this first. I don't just go shoot them, let me go talk, let's talk about this. Why would you do that? So there's good reason for what's going on, but historically, tension like this has been addressed through what's often called a just war. Okay, we've tried to discuss this, we've tried to do it a diplomatic way, and and one side or the other is obstinate and won't talk, won't reason, and and we know that's the case when you're dealing with if you want a good research, and I'm I'm I'm working on this, I'm gonna do a series on this uh about some of these uh things that we hear, but we don't know about it. But go and look up the Shia Muslim. S-H-I-A Shia Muslims, or the or the Twelvers. That's exactly what it sounds, the number 12 and an Ur Twelvers. It's very interesting. And it's a it's a mindset that you and I do not understand. These people are not looking for peace, they're not looking for bargaining, they have no use for it. So there comes a time where there's a just war. And this is not a departure from uh biblical truth, but it's it's an attempt to bring peace or to bring or to to thwart evil. So s even though we don't have a like a formal like philosophical framework for what a just war is, it does tell us the principles that will help guide us in the moral discernment if if war is needed, and if it's needed to be entered into lightly. It's never to be motivated by pride or conquest or vengeance, it's never to uh disregard the sanctity of human life. We're not just killing people to be killing people. That's what was going on there. They were just they were killing people who were trying to to uh uh protest uh a government that was uh harsh to their people. I mean, it's it's a again, it's a mindset we don't understand that the people there mean nothing. The people mean nothing to them. They are it is the same mindset as many years ago in antiquity that we don't understand, where women and children were were not really considered people, they were just commodities. And that's what human life is there. It's a disregard for the sanctity of human life. And uh so we can't just go into it with pride, we can't go into it just wanting to kill people. It's there there's a gotta be a more moral reason for that. I think that's there. That's where some people probably will divide or will depart from this and say, well, I don't think we had a reason to go to war over there. I don't know. Again, your neighbor is talking about I mean, your neighbor's in the yard chanting, hey, I'm gonna death to the Smelzer House, death to the Smith, death to the Johnsons, and then you find out that they've got the guns to do it. I think that's a pretty good reason. I mean, I think that's a good reason for me to, hey, let's let's talk about this, and then if not, then okay, we're gonna have to handle this this different way. This is what it's doing. Now, they're not our neighbors, but they've got people all over the place. So the distinction that we must make and we must maintain is between personal ethics and public responsibility. Personal ethics and public responsibility, they're two different things. Now they they affect one another, but they're they're separate things. We are personally called to love our enemies, Matthew 5.44. Don't return likeness with lightning. I mean, we're called to love our enemies. To do good then that to spitefully use you. We're called to forgive freely, to walk in grace. But that personal ethic does not nullify the role of public safety that a government must maintain. We can't allow a free-for-all to where everybody is afraid to walk out of their house. That's what they have in other countries, where people are afraid to walk out of their house. There for a while. I don't know if it's still true or not, but we had a missionaries in South Africa. He said it was it was the worst thing. You you didn't want to stop at a red light. If you could run a red light, run it, because there was a good possibility. If you're stopped at a red light, the the the marauders there were would come and and uh break your window out, drag you out of the car, take your car. I mean, it didn't matter. Nobody was going to stop them anyway. He said, You didn't want to go out of the house. You didn't want to leave your family alone. I mean, who would want to live like that? And if we don't, if we don't maintain public safety, we don't have the life that we know now. And there are countries, many, many countries on the world, where they don't have the freedom and the safety that you and I have. And we're talking about a country that hung an 18-year-old, I mean, just barely I mean, starting his life all because he spoke against his government. And so they had a public hanging. So we can enter into war for public safety and never abandon our personal conviction. I don't hate these people. I mean, if I if I'm in the war, I don't hate these people. I don't want to see death come upon them. And if they came and and and and apologized and said this is not I mean, we're we're we're sorry for that, and then I I would forgive them and let's move on because I don't want to be involved in this either. But during this time, it calls us as Christians who are now being put on the spot to choose one side or the other, either for it or against it, and there's no middle ground. I don't I don't I don't believe that. So we must we must guard ourselves in this in this line of of thinking that we have to. You have to be against this as a Christian because it's everything about it is wrong. But that's not the case. I don't like war. I don't think we need to be in war just to be involved in it. But when it comes to protecting the sanctity of life in our uh government in our area, if the w if war is the only way necessary to end that threat, then I have to trust the people who are making decisions in which we put in office. The Bible talks about those who are raised up and put down, that they've got the authority. We've got to trust what they are doing. There has been discussions and and intelligence information that we don't understand, so I've got to trust that. The Bible talks about that. So our hope is not found in the absence of war, nor is it found in the policies of nations or in backroom government deals. But our hope is found in a sovereign God who rules and governs over the affairs of men. And Scripture tells us that that even in times of conflict, it says the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men. That was during a time of war in Daniel. Wars may come, kingdoms may contend back and forth, nations tremble, people are are uh displaced, yet none of those things unfold outside of the the providential hand of God. And and that should allow us to have some comfort in knowing that if everything in our government has done, has been done to try to stop this before it started, then we have to trust that our government has made the right decision, and that is not going against our Christian morals and belief. Now, if we come up ten years later and we find out that none of this was true, because you don't, I mean, nobody's gonna know right now, people are gonna be throwing baloney against the wall to see what sticks, and they're gonna try everything. If you if you love the decision, they're gonna name every reason why it's good. If you hate the decision, they're gonna throw everything out there just to see, to try to find something. But one day the truth will come out about everything. And when it does, then we'll know. Then we can look back and say, see, it was a just thing to do. We needed to do this. They were within weeks of having, you know, certain uh apparatuses of death. Or it may come out and say, they weren't close at all. Well, something went horribly wrong then. But I was not wrong in agreeing with the people who have been put into position to make these decisions at that time. So I hope, I hope that this maybe helps find a place for you to fall as a Christian. And that we can be uh not riding the fence in the middle, but we can stand in the middle of this and say, look, we have to have personal convictions according to scripture, but we also need personal security. We need public security, public safety. And sometimes the only way that is accomplished is through war. I hope that you find this helpful today. And let me just say, all of this, not all of it, much of this is in my humble opinion. But the part that's from Scripture, that's from God. Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval. You know our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places. I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day. And join me, Dr. Chris Smelser, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together. Until then, grace and peace to you from Seeking Approval at Gilead Baptist Church.