Our response to war, an atrocity impossible to understand, is the subject of Chapter 5 of No Small Snakes. (Finally something good after trudging through the first chapters.)
Gordon Dalby writes, “Clearly, something more evil must underlie war.” Duh.
Remember all those wars in the Old Testament? How do we reconcile that with the love of Jesus? Dalby explains that “the God of Israel tells His people to distrust military power—not because it’s intrinsically evil, but precisely because it keeps them from recognizing and trusting in His power instead. War is idolatry, insofar as it leads people to look for saving power in their weaponry instead of in God.”
Are Americans looking for safety through military might?
Dalby also states: The people of Israel did not recognize Jesus, not because they had wrongly expected the Messiah to be a warrior king, but because they did not recognize the war He had come to win.
Aha, the earth as a battlefield.
“This is not, as Wiesel warned, to embellish guns and bombs with a ‘spiritual dimension,’ but rather to engage an entirely new dimension of war itself, in which guns and bombs are subject to God’s purposes, if not irrelevant.
The question is not: Shall I spend my energies working for disarmament or praying, promoting peace candidates or fasting, reading the editorial page or the Bible? (Or going off to war.) The question is: How can I be so wholly submitted to God that I can both hear and respond when He calls me to any of these?
Effective peacemakers in the world must first and foremost be warriors in the kingdom of God. War ceases – not when vanquished surrenders to victor—but rather when all of us surrender to Jesus.
Peace is defined not by the absence of conflict but by the presence of God.”
Dalby, I think you’ve got something here.
You will succeed, not by military might or by your own strength, but by my spirit. Zech 4:6
Taken from Gordon Dalby in No Small Snakes
2 replies on “The World as a Battlefield”
Amazing post. Any possibility of posting this on Facebook directly?
I love to glean insights from authors, be it small or large, or even if if I disagree with much of their writing. No one has the complete answers, but it’s like a huge puzzle which none of us will ever understand. We can only piece together our little part, and learn to follow His leading.
Dalby clearly hit the nail on the head here.