I wish I could call myself a pacifist but I can't. If someone did harm to someone I care about...well...my approach to retribution in that case would not at all be peaceful.

Anyway, I'm not at all arguing that pacifism is the way we should address all conflicts. I'm too much of a realist to think we could solve all conflicts this way. My real point is that to call yourself a Christian and actually be one...you have to be a pacifist. This is just one of the reasons I don't call myself a Christian. I do not fit that standard. All of the real Christians I know are pacifists. I am highly respectful of that and their ability to live that way and I do think the world is a better place due to their presence in it. A true force of good in a world that desperately needs it.

So why do you need to be a pacifist to be a Christian? It is simple really and it is at the core of what Jesus taught...it is the Christian theory of retribution. You are to love your enemies, turn the other cheek, and let God decide if there shall be any punishment for the "evil doers" or wrong doers of this life.

Not at all an easy thing to do but Christian doctrine and Jesus calls for you to offer forgiveness and mercy to your enemies. If you seek to punish them for what they did to you (or your country) you are then committing an act of vengeance...a big no no in the eyes of the Christian God and against what Jesus said.

This presents a rather interesting conundrum for a lot of folks who wish to claim to be Christians because to comply with what Jesus and the Christian God wants of you (and Jesus laid that out)...well you have to be a real rebel. You would in no way be a conformist to the rules and laws of the state because you would be living your life based on a higher law.

In other words you would not participate in our legal system because you would believe that God, not a judge, jury, and lawyers, would have the authority to pass judgement and hand out a punishment for a crime. In fact any man punishing another man is wrong because punishment is an act of vengeance and therefore not at all the Christian thing to do. You must forgive. You must have mercy.

To be a Christian you would not participate in an abortion.

To be a Christian you would never suport the death penalty...huge no no to do that...it is the ultimate act of vengeance.

To be a Christian you would support no war of man...Jesus says so.

I don't know a lot of things but I do know no Christian would sue another person, kill another person, or encourage the killing of another person...not now...not ever.

This is not an easy way to live and so over the course of time mankind has thoughtfully searched for loopholes in these most important rules laid down by Jesus himself. Can you imagine if all of the people in the world that call themselves Christians actually lived like Christians what a better place the world would be? Just the amount of misery and strife that would be lifted based on those people alone living according to the word of Jesus. Hitler was a Christian, he said so, what if he had truly taken the words of Jesus to heart? Imagine that! It would have made a huge difference in the world we live in now.

The thing is though Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, governments...well...they like to expand their influence and they don't want to be seen as evil, so they have had this thing where they, over the centuries, have always looked to broker a deal with the religious types. Hence the invention of the "Just War" theory. That sexy idea that...well...you see if we kill all these people it's only because it will lead to some greater good...so in that case war really is a good thing.

So happily we all went, murdering, slaughtering, killing, torturing, raping, carpet bombing over the millennia on our way to a greater good...and with the ok of some church bureaucrats...which of course makes it all ok in the eyes of God...right?

Wrong.  

And has all this war and slaughter led to some greater good?

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

What has it led to? Well, it's led us to becoming even better at war and slaughter and an overall feeling that the whole planet is going right down the shitter...which in the eyes of some Christians is just peachy because it means the End of Days is coming and we are gonna have the biggest greatest bloodbath ever! Christ himself will preside over it and all evil bastards will pay...of course that means just about everybody so all those that make it through will have beachfront property, their choice of yacht, and the most amazing petting zoo mankind has ever seen.

It's also led the religion of Christianity into some pretty heavy duty muck and mire. All this brokering deals to help the Kings, Emperors, and Presidents of the past expand their empires, get richer, and in turn promote the religion of choice (in this case Christianity) and fill the churches ivory coffers as well...has left us today with a bunch of people who claim to be Christians but really have little to do with the teachings of Christ but instead operate as a tool of whoever the political ruling class is. A strong arm if you will.

Church bureaucrats sold Christianity and their flock to the highest bidder basically. So often, in fact, that most so called Christians can't even tell the difference anymore between what is a political tenet and what is a teaching of Jesus. Jesus, and therefore God the Father, never meant for the two things to become so intertwined.

So that's what I'm talking about, Pat. Not that I think pacifism is a solution to all our problems.

In an enlightened society there would always be a pacifist solution to our conflicts. The problem is we don't have a fully enlightened society. Christians can't even agree on Christianity and in the process throw the teachings of Christ out the window. It profits their life in the corporeal world to do this but in the teachings of Christ they are oh so very wrong.

Let's take the words of a man that at the End of Days may be getting a piece of that beachfront property, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. On the folks who committed crimes and atrocities in South Africa Tutu was for granting them amnesty. He asked that they come forward and confess what they had done and he asked surviving victims of these acts to forgive them. In fact Tutu asked that those accused of these acts not be forced to "run the gauntlet of the normal judicial process" and even that no punishment should be imposed on those found guilty of these acts. He even titled his book on the whole deal "No Future Without Forgiveness."

Someone like Ann Coulter would call Tutu an idiot and likely hope he got run over by a Greyhound bus...she's not real bright. A lot of folks would agree with her and say Tutu was insane...as human beings we are filled with a horrible thirst for revenge and bloodlust.

So where is Tutu coming from? He's living by the teachings of Jesus...I'm afraid that many people find them useless now...even folks that call themselves Christians.

Here's a confession for you, I read some of the accounts of when these people came forward and confessed, not to God, not to a courtroom, but to surviving victims of the atrocities they committed in South Africa. That's right face to face. They looked into the eyes of people who had survived what they had done and confessed to them and the victims forgave them. The guilty and the victims held each other and wept. I wept just reading it...uncontrollably. I wept because I did not know if I could have done that...I wept because the rage I felt not even having been one of the victims may have caused me to kill one of the guilty with my bare hands if I had to confront them. I wept because I wondered what kind of human being that made me. I wept because the sheer impact and power of that level of forgiveness seems so often a million miles beyond our reach. And these times there are so many people who just want to keep pushing it further away. 

Try to tell me there is no power to that level of forgiveness and I'll tell you, you are one of the greatest liars I have ever met.

I am not a pacifist, I am not a Christian. I know it's hard to be either one. It is funny though to hear someone who claims to be a Christian and should follow the teachings of one of the greatest pacifists of all time tell me "pacifism does not work" which is the equivalent of saying "Jesus was wrong."

Desmond Tutu did not think Jesus was wrong and I know for a fact when those people gathered together and forgiveness was offered to the guilty the people there were forever changed.

I guess the thing is Pat, there is a lot of mean spirited bullshit that takes place these days. Ann Coulter is a perfect example of that and sometimes I think what gets to people is not so much what you are saying but that you claim to be a Christian and yet you seem to want to participate in this mean-spiritedness...which is absolutely not Christian.

I don't know...I've rambled now for probably far too long...