With the forever war in the Middle East, have you wondered why war is necessary?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #212 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Recently, the Israeli government surgically bombed the nuclear bomb preparation facilities of Iran. Israel argues it is fighting an existential fight, even as many in the international community criticize or condemn Israel as the wrongdoer, initiator, or perpetrator of war.
Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman famously said, “War is hell.” He knew whereof he spoke. He’d seen thousands wounded, mangled, and killed.
War involves death and destruction, the subjugation perhaps annihilation of the enemy, if not for your own forces, and sadly, the inevitable death of civilians. It’s not pretty, nor is it preferrable, except for demented souls, and therein lies the problem. Demented souls exist because evil or sin exists.
We know this because God told us in Genesis 1-3 about the Creation of humanity in God’s image, followed by what’s called the Fall from grace after Satan, masquerading as a Serpent in the Garden of Eden, tempts Eve then Adam into sin. Only one generation later, one chapter in Genesis, brother Cain rises up and kills his brother Abel.
War exists because evil exists. People act against others out of greed, lust, envy, desire for power, hate, so they go to war. Think Hitler, the personification of a warmonger in the past century. But wait, didn’t others rise up against Hitler and the Axis powers? Yes, they did.
The Allies mounted a concerted and remarkable effort involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors, eventually landing on the beaches of Normandy, D-Day, June 6, 1944, and pushed all the way to Berlin. Meanwhile, other Allied forces in 1942 began island-hopping, pushing back the Empire of Japan in the Pacific.
Why did the Allies fight? Did they want their young people to die in battle? Of course not. They fought because the evil that was presented to them would not stop and could not be stopped in any other way. Today, we thank God, and we thank both those who served and those who gave the last full measure of devotion for our freedom.
Back to the question: why is war sometimes necessary? Because evil exists.
God used war and warfare in the Old Testament to hold evil civilizations accountable, and he even used it to discipline his own children the Israelites.
In the New Testament, God said, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:1-5).
While God clearly states that murder is a sin, nowhere in Scripture does God forbid self-defense or use of weapons or even warfare. War is never labeled immoral or ungodly. While Jesus taught love for enemies (Matt. 5:44), turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and peacemaking (Matt. 5:9), and the Apostle Paul emphasized living at peace with everyone, as far as it depends on us (Rom. 12:18), Scripture does not forbid all war.
Diplomacy is a noble art. Wouldn’t we rather engage in strategic arms limitation talks with Russia than shoot at one another? But diplomacy works only when the sides are either exhausted by war or truly desire peaceful coexistence.
Arguments for ceasefires may be useful diplomacy and are not ipso facto naïve or wrong, but ceasefires agreements with governments and militaries driven by ideologies like Nazism and Hitler’s megalomania, or present-day Islamic jihadism, will not likely be fruitful.
This is one of the challenges in Western capitals. Western secular leaders do not now seem to comprehend the level of ideological religious extremism that hates, that celebrates not only the death of the enemy but welcomes their own death in the service of their fanaticism.
Extremist Islam is a culture of death. ISIS, al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Houthis, and the Taliban are examples of groups associated with Islamic extremism and terrorism. These radicals are not interested in finding consensus, breaking bread and living happily ever after. They do not want peace; they want the annihilation of Israel. The Hamas charter says as much. Their drive is to exterminate Jews or the Great Satan America that they consider the dark oppressors of the world.
So, by noting the dark side of the jihadist extremists am I advocating war? No. But I recognize that in this fallen world, war is unavoidable, inevitable, and at times necessary to protect and preserve the lives, freedom, property, and well-being of innocent citizens. If you do not believe this, take some time to read world history.
In the late 1970s-early 1980s, during my days in graduate school studying political science our concern was what was then called “thermo-nuclear war.”
The primary foreign policy America pursued in this nuclear context is still called MAD, “Mutually Assured Destruction.” The assumption is if we build our devastative military power to a point, we can destroy the enemy and they’ve built theirs to a similar level, any use of nukes by them will result in use of nukes by us, or vice versa. Boom. Everyone is destroyed.
Mutually Assured Destruction assumes no one wants to commit suicide and no one will blink.
But MAD also assumes rational actors, meaning an enemy that thinks logically, wants to live, and cares about its future. Will MAD work when the enemy are fanatic ideologues, death cultists, people who religiously believe that their path to glory goes through bombings, attacks on civilians, assassinations, elimination of Jews, and destruction of America? Talks, treaties, timeouts clearly don’t work. So, we’re left with the prospects of eventually going to war to preserve peace and a future for our children.
This is what Israel, and the United States, face with the jihadist government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Iran has waged war on Israel and the West for over 45 years. As it repeatedly broadcasts its calls for “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” it has been pursuing the development of nuclear weapons and stockpiling missiles to use against Israel (and potentially the U.S. homeland). It has hidden behind its terror proxies Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to attack both military sites and civilians. And egregiously, it fully supported Hamas’s detestable actions against civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, on October 7, 2023, and refused to call on them to release their hostages. And last year, on two occasions, it directly launched missiles into Israel.” It’s doing so now.
While no one wants endless war, not going to war can be more irresponsible and result in greater death than going to war. Sometimes we must fight because we aspire to higher purposes.
As John Stuart Mill observed long ago, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. . . .A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
People advocating ceasefires under any condition and no war at any cost seem to have forgotten this.
Wars will only end when someday the “Prince of Peace” returns. “He shall judge between the nations and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Is. 2:4).
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
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