The Rev. William P. Mahedy was a Catholic chaplain in Vietnam for a decade. In his book Out of the Night: The Spiritual Journey of Vietnam Vets, Reverend Madedy told of a soldier, a former altar boy, who asked him: "Hey, Chaplain, "how come it's a sin to hop into bed with a mama-san but it's okay to blow away gooks out in the bush?"
Mahedy wrote, "Consider the question that he and I were forced to confront on that day in a jungle clearing. How is it that a Christian can, with a clear conscience, spend a year in a war zone killing people and yet place his soul in jeopardy by spending a few minutes with a prostitute? If the New Testament prohibitions of sexual misconduct are to be stringently interpreted, why, then, are Jesus' injunctions against violence not binding in the same way? In other words, what does the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' really mean?"
"In theological terms, war is sin," wrote Mahedy. "This has nothing to do with whether a particular war is justified or whether isolated incidents in a soldier's war were right or wrong. The point is that war as a human enterprise is a matter of sin. It is a form of hatred for one's fellow human beings. It produces alienation from others and nihilism, and it ultimately represents a turning away from God." ["nihilism" here means, simply, the rejection of all moral principles — CAulds]
The wars that the US is involved in (soon to be twenty years in Afghanistan, having accomplished ... well ... nothing) has exposed the truth about America's Christian fundamentalists ("christianists", not Christians), the hollowness of their morality, the hypocrisy of their religiosity. On the subject of war, one that is without doubt a question of morality, America's leading religious leaders and institutions have been silent, not willing or brave enough to take a moral leadership position. And now it is best they remain so, as they have nothing to say to us now.
Shockingly a few have even tried to defend the indefensible. To defend sin. To affirm that evil committed in the name of good is not evil (a violation of one of the very most basic tenets of Christianity). And the gap between the values that evangelicals claim, and the reality of their actions in the past 20 years, is an ugly open oozing wound.
I say, once again, principles that can be easily changed and manipulated by others, for whatever purpose, good or evil, aren't true principles at all.
"In theological terms, war is sin," wrote Mahedy. "This has nothing to do with whether a particular war is justified or whether isolated incidents in a soldier's war were right or wrong. The point is that war as a human enterprise is a matter of sin. It is a form of hatred for one's fellow human beings. It produces alienation from others and nihilism, and it ultimately represents a turning away from God." ["nihilism" here means, simply, the rejection of all moral principles — CAulds]
The wars that the US is involved in (soon to be twenty years in Afghanistan, having accomplished ... well ... nothing) has exposed the truth about America's Christian fundamentalists ("christianists", not Christians), the hollowness of their morality, the hypocrisy of their religiosity. On the subject of war, one that is without doubt a question of morality, America's leading religious leaders and institutions have been silent, not willing or brave enough to take a moral leadership position. And now it is best they remain so, as they have nothing to say to us now.
Shockingly a few have even tried to defend the indefensible. To defend sin. To affirm that evil committed in the name of good is not evil (a violation of one of the very most basic tenets of Christianity). And the gap between the values that evangelicals claim, and the reality of their actions in the past 20 years, is an ugly open oozing wound.
I say, once again, principles that can be easily changed and manipulated by others, for whatever purpose, good or evil, aren't true principles at all.
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