david@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood) (10/22/84)
The most urgent political and religious issue of our time is the relentless militarization of our world, with the utter neglect of the human welfare of poor nations, which will very probably conclude by our overwhelming self-destruction in a Third World War, if we do not turn around very soon. I am reminded that John Paul II has said very recently that the poor nations of the Third World would sit in judgment like Christ. Whether or not this was intended to be prophetic, those who would survive would surely condemn our unjust and militant civilization as accursed. For if we have gained the world, and lost our very souls, then how are we well off? And if we have more than enough, but turn away from our brothers in need, how is the love of God in us? Then it is we who are in desperate need; it is we who should be appealing to the poor nations to forgive us, that we may help them and help ourselves before it is too late. Nearly two thousand years ago, the fate of the Earth became involved with the startling appearance in history of Christ, and as if the Name of the Lord were like lightning in the racial consciousness, the generations of mankind have resounded "Christ has come". And it is his Spirit which is eternally resurrected among those who are so called, for "blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord." It is Christ who promises to save mankind from self- destruction, who confounds the political and religious authorities, and declares that the eternal blessing of life depends on our charitable love for one another, even for our enemies. And even his enemy became his apostle to the entire world, who gave up his life for the gospel of reconciliation through Christ, who urged that without this charitable love, then great eloquence, knowledge, or sacrifice, even great faith, without love, amounts to nothing. I suppose that not many would understand this law of love as natural law, that is, a natural, moral law of our universe. But I can imagine that among the stars of heaven there are many worlds, like Christmas ornaments of a celestial tree of life; but somewhere too there are stillborn worlds, once beautiful and full of life, then suddenly enveloped by a shroud of death, worlds without charity where the race of mankind was soon cut off. There arrogance combined with technology, and arrived quite naturally at the final uncharitable conclusion. And if it were not for the grace of God, we also might have no hope. In the first three centuries of our era, almost all Christians refused military roles as a matter of conscience. But in the fourth century, the imperial state which crucified Christ was born again, as the Holy Roman Empire, it is said, when the emporer Constantine the Great had a vision of a cross, flaming above the setting sun on the western horizon. Only God knows how many innocent, like Christ, have been slain on that cross of his conversion, when the good news of God's love became a perverse apology for the justice of warfare. In our time, in the name of pseudo-Christian ideologies, the military-economic superpowers of our world, like the ancient imperial state, profit upon the misery and starvation of the poor, while wasting and poisoning our only planet, and engaging in profitable, mercenary warfare throughout the world. And they would indefinitely secure this incredible peace with probable horror, with threats of horrifying retaliation against hundreds of millions of human beings who have no real political power or military ambition. The Emporer Constantine might just as well have forseen the cross of a thermonuclear abomination arising on the distant horizon of the West. The apostle Paul warns us that there are false apostles, even as "Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light." Even now they say that we, like the companions of Daniel in Babylon, are immediately faced with fiery destruction, if we do not bow down to the ninety-foot, billion- dollar idols, the so-called "Peacekeepers" of our age. And it is more than fitting that the so-called "superpowers" secure their "peace" on Earth by appealing to what they call "a necessary evil", an ultimate angel of death whose ungodly light would destroy the Earth. Is this the good news of the Kingdom of God? Where does it say that the superpowers are to lord it over the Earth, and that God so loved the world, that whoever believes in the Bomb shall not perish but shall have eternal life? We are faced with our uncharitable conclusion: We do not secure peace by charity and justice; rather, we secure greed and injustice by rationalization and threats of violence. As the prophet Isaiah has said, we have in fact made a pact with death. The apostle Paul said that in Christ, all have died, and that he no longer did live for himself, but Christ did live in him. But if we, who are said to be called by His Name, have betrayed Christ, then how shall we live? For if the Spirit of Christ does not live, then neither shall we live, for His is the way of life. This then is our dilemma: There is no question of the final deliverance of mankind by the eternal life of Christ; for that is the promise for which he gave his life. But what will his sacrifice mean to us? Is the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of Man to prefigure the final holocaust of mankind? On the last day, in that instant of the flash of the Bomb, what would be the last seven words of mankind? Who then will accuse Christ in order to justify himself? No, on that day, although we may then die, perhaps we shall see the One we have pierced, and at last we shall all be changed. I remember that Jesus told his disciples at the Supper, "When I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee." And among the myriad of stars, I imagine there are many wonderful worlds like our own Earth, along the way by the Sea of Galilee, where Christ has come. But on which of these worlds does mankind enjoy the eternal blessing of life? Surely there where love has triumphed over death, where God's love for us, in Christ, has become the love of life, in all. "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him." Our Father, Lead us from temptation and deliver us from evil... David Harwood