orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (05/07/85)
> > I DO want peace. Desperately. Because if war came either I would have > to fight or I wouldn't. In one case, I would be placing my life at the > disposal of the war. In the other, I would be ashamed that I wasn't. But > I could not be ashamed to fight for the rights of people to live without > a machine gun at their necks. I could be ashamed for allowing it to happen. > And many could die in that shame. > -- > from Mole End Mark Terribile So in order to "give people the right to live without a machine gun at their necks" you are willing to put a machine gun at people's necks? Isn't this a contradiction? Worse yet, you are willing to put the possible destruction of the whole human race at stake? Why? What will it gain? Is it not possible there is a better way? During Christ's time there was an oppressive Empire which permitted slavery and practiced brutal violence on many of its subjects. (Christ himself included) Did Christ take up a sword against this violence? Show me where in the Bible he did so. Or did he try to change the world by showing an example of Peace and nonviolence, of love for one's enemies? Was it not the latter? Many early Christians refused to serve in the Roman army as a matter of principle. Yet that does not mean they just "gave up" and accepted oppression. The question is which is the better way to reduce violence? Foment more counterviolence? Or pursue another way of resisting oppression without increasing the cycle of violence? After the abolition of slavery in our own country we know that Blacks were segregated and oppressed by racist laws. Which was the better way to change those laws? For Blacks to rise in a bloody revolt? Or the way they achieved their recent great gains in Civil Rights: by following Martin Luther King's method of nonviolent resistance? King's nonviolent resistance *worked*. And it freed more people with far less violence than any armed revolt would ever have done. Is there not a lesson to be learned here? tim sevener whuxl!orb "Blessed are the Peacemakers"