Once people saw war as simply a fact of life, like hurricanes and earthquakes. They feared it and prayed to be delivered from it, but did not stop to think whether it was right and wrong. It was as natural for human beings to go to war as it was for lions to kill deer that crossed their path.
But war is not a force of nature. Wars are human events, people decide to make war and plan to kill other human beings. In modern wars those killed and maimed include a high proportion of women and children. So we should not simply accept war as a regrettable and inevitable event.
In this Explorations we shall look at what war does to human beings. We shall also ask whether war is a right and decent way of resolving conflicts between peoples, and explore the way in which the Gospels reflect on war and the resolution of conflict.
What war does to human beings
Wars always involve killing and dying. Many of those killed and wounded are civilians. They lose their lives, lose arms, legs and eyes to land mines, their houses and their public buildings. Children suffer from trauma whose effects last throughout their lives. Many have no work to go to and lose their livelihood. They go hungry, become destitute and depressed. When towns are captured young men are often executed. Women are raped and humiliated.
In nations that are not invaded or bombed, people are often fed lies about what is happening in the war and are persecuted if they criticise it. They hear enemy soldiers described as inhuman monsters and their own soldiers as unfailingly kind. They are schooled to hate and to be prejudiced against the enemy. As the death toll mounts, so does the sadness. Parents lose sons, wives lose husbands, children lose fathers, young women lose lovers with whom they hoped to have children.
The horrors of war outlive it. Many soldiers are so affected by what they have experienced that they cannot show love to their families. They may develop addictions and pass their unhappiness on to their children.
Public life is also coarsened and impoverished by war. People whose only skill is with guns can find no place in a peaceful society. The national heroes are people who make war and the wisdom of peacemaking is lost.
The fascination with war
People who come close to war know its terrible sadness. So why are people so fascinated by it? Part of the interest lies in its horror. We wonder secretly how we could cope if we had to survive in a town that was being bombed, whether we would overcome our fears and fight bravely if we were caught in fierce fighting or if we would run away. We wonder if we would be true to ourselves when we faced death or lose our spirit.
We can also be inspired by the heroism of ordinary people who fought for their country, by the generosity of soldiers who forgave the enemies who tried to kill them, and of women who forgave the men who abused them. We may admire the bravery of soldiers who sacrificed their lives to protect their companions, or be awed by the moral courage of conscientious objectors who were ostracised by their friends and jailed for their stand. We may admire the wisdom of officers who refused to put civilians at risk even when this meant disobeying their orders.
It is right to honour people who died in war and the goodness of people who acted decently under terrible pressure. But we should also recognise the terrible human costs of war both to soldiers and to civilians. These costs are always paid by the victims of wars we wage on others as well as by victims in the wars that others wage on us. And they continue to be paid long after the war is ended.
Why do people make war?
If the costs are so terrible, why do people go to war? St Augustine said that rulers make war in order to make peace. They want to shape a world in which they and their people are secure and prosperous. That is true even of aggressive and cruel people who want to extend their empires and rule brutally. They go to war because other groups threaten the peace and power they already enjoy, or because they stand in the way of the kind of peace that they want. War is always a step to a political settlement that creates a peace satisfactory to those who wage war. But of course the peace won can be empty. An ancient Roman writer said, ‘They turn the land into a desert and call it peace’.
If war destroys so many human lives and leads only to another war soon afterwards, it may seem a very ineffective way of bringing about peace. Are there better ways of living? The Scriptures wrestle with this kind of question. The writers generally accept that wars are a fact of life, lament the death and destruction they bring, and focus on the right way for people to live. They do not ask whether it is right to go to war, but tease out the connections between the ways in which people live together as persons, and the relations between nations. Like rulers, individuals often use violence as a way of making a peace satisfactory to them. They also divide their world into friends and enemies, so that their relationships are always likely to end in violent words or actions.
A better way than violence
In the Gospels, Jesus has much to say about our way of relating to our enemies and so of dealing with conflict. He assumes we shall have enemies: people we cannot get on with, people who wrong us, or people whose interests conflict with our own, people against whom we are prejudiced because of our experience or our differences. The question is not about how we avoid having enemies but about how we relate to them.
Jesus’ way is to go behind the enemy uniform we dress people in and to reach the human reality underneath. In the Gospel stories we often meet people who were hated as enemies or mocked as inferior. In Jesus’ world, for example, Roman soldiers were seen as the brutal enforcers of a foreign, Godless occupation. But in the Gospel they are given a human face. Jesus praises the faith of a Roman officer who asks him to cure his servant. The officer stationed to prevent anyone from rescuing Jesus from the cross recognised him as the Son of God. Jesus also saw the humanity of tax collectors who were seen as Mafioso extortioners, and he cheerfully ate with them.
The Good Samaritan
Samaritans, too, were regarded as contemptible heretics. But Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan when he wanted to describe a faithful person. He consistently urged his followers to set aside the prejudice that easily leads to violence, and to look into the faces of the people against whom they are prejudiced.
Jesus was at his most challenging when he showed how we should respond to violence. He invited his followers to love their enemies, to give their shirt to someone who was robbing them of their coat, to walk a mile with someone who forced them to walk a few yards, to bless people who cursed them, and to welcome persecution. He also set out ways of settling disputes within the community, involving conversation with space for review.
His own example discouraged violence. When Peter cut off the ear of an official who was trying to arrest Jesus, Jesus told him to put away his sword and cured the man’s ear. The Gospels, too, stress how he went freely to his death because this was where his devotion to God’s will was leading him.
Reconciliation and forgiveness
For Jesus the key to dealing with hostility was forgiveness. He was over the top in insisting on it – we should forgive someone who wrongs us repeatedly five hundred times rather than once or twice. Letting go of the injury was the core to responding to violence or hostility. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus says of those who put him on the cross, ‘Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.’
The heart of the Gospels lies in Jesus’ insistence that God is forgiving and compassionate. God joins us in Jesus and stays with us despite all the hostility and violence that we might direct against him. God’s business is reconciliation, enabling people to be reconciled with God, and reconciling people with one another. Our relationships with one another should reflect God’s relationship to us.
Thinking about war
The Scriptures do not tell rulers whether it will be right for them go to war or not, but they do help us think about war. First, they tell us that when we think of war, we need to think of what it means for human beings. We must be realistic about the suffering, death, loss and devastation of spirit left behind by war. If war is ever justified, it is not because it is good, but only because it is the last and second worst way of avoiding even greater human destruction and loss. Almost any other form of negotiating peace will be much better than going to war. We are often told to go to war to prevent the brutal killing of people in another nation. They tell us that we should not just sit there, but do something. But normally, sitting there and thinking will ultimately save far more lives than just lashing out violently and unthinkingly.
From the beginning many Christians have taken seriously Jesus’ instruction to turn the other cheek and not to act violently. They have refused to fight in wars and have accepted the often harsh consequences for not doing so. This is a heroic course of action. Others have asked whether the wars in which their nations are involved are justifiable.
Our normal assumption must be that war is wrong. It can be right to go to war only if a number of conditions are met. We must ask first, is the cause we fight for right? We may fight only to defend ourselves, not for gain.
Second, we must ask, is the war ordered by legitimate authority? It would be wrong for private groups to make war.
Third, we must ask, is the peace sought by going to war achievable? It would be wrong to inflict such punishment on people if we knew we could not find the peace we seek.
Fourth, we must ask, does the damage to human lives caused by the war outweigh the good? To secure peace by wiping out the population of the nation we go to war against would be wrong.
For war to be justifiable, we need to satisfy all these conditions. In modern war with its destructive power this can rarely be done. Other forms of negotiation will almost always be a better way.
Conclusion
When we are confronted by our enemies, the insult, the killer email, the sullen silence, the quick punch, the devastating retaliation, the dropping of bombs, and the demonising of opponents will always seem attractive options. But they always cause damage to human lives and relationships. The way of peace and nonviolence proposed by Jesus seems a weaker option. But it can turn a desert into a garden. Violence and war turn gardens into deserts.
QUESTIONS
1. Why are people so fascinated by war?
2. What are the main effects of war on people?
3. Should we celebrate the anniversaries of wars? What is it right to celebrate?
4. What are good and bad ways of dealing with conflict?
5. Is Jesus’ teaching on violence realistic?
6. Can any modern war be just? What reasons do you give for your answer?
View more reflection questions and activities for 'What is war good for?' here
MORE REFLECTION QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
All Saints, All Souls and Catholic remembrance – questions and activities
Catholic remembrance is about gratitude, learning and connecting with those who are already in God’s presence. The antithesis of this is glorifying war. As Catholics remember, we consider the preciousness of each human and how God loves us all.