If Jesus, God Incarnate, is not the ultimate norm for moral conduct for a Christian, who or what is? All Christian just warists, regardless of their status or standing in the Church or in the world, believe and proclaim that it is Jesus, who is with them, who tells them individually that it is okay to pull the trigger that discharges the bullet that rips off some other human being’s head. For all Christian just warists, it is Jesus who ultimately says to the Christian, albeit through the ministry of a just warist institutional Church, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow his brains out.” Who else but Jesus would a Christian ultimately consult to discern if he or she could destroy a beloved son or daughter of the Father of all?
Jesus of the Gospels could never be reasonably or sanely interpreted as saying to a disciple, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow his brains out!” So, from whence do Christian leaders and Christians get the idea that Jesus approves of “Blowing some one’s brains out?”
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It is one thing to have a mere limited human being, who is a Pope, Bishop or Priest, virtually standing beside or inside a disciple of Christ on the battlefield, or with a Christian in the cockpit of a fighter plane, telling him or her, “Fire! Destroy the enemy.” It is quite another to have Jesus, the Messiah of God and the “Word of God made flesh” standing or sitting beside or inside a Christian, telling him or her, “Fire! Kill them!” The former has been happening all day every day across the world for 1700 years. The latter has never happened in the history of the world.
If the risen Jesus Christ would never stand next to a soldier or fighter pilot and say to him or her, “Go ahead! Fire. Kill the enemy,” then just warists Popes, Bishops, Priests, Ministers, Pastors, etc. are not teaching Jesus’ disciples what He explicitly commissioned them to teach, namely, “to obey all that I have commanded you,” and are not obeying it themselves (Mt 28:19). When Church authorities explicitly or implicitly lead the disciples of Jesus into thinking Jesus would say to them, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow the enemies’ brains out,” they are propagating disinformation, they are desecrating their ministry within the ministry of the Church and they are defrauding the Baptized in an eternally grave matter directly related to Redemption and to Salvation through the love, communication, means and merits of Jesus Christ.
Just war theory is and always has been and always will be a phony piece of Christian morality. It owes nothing to anything Jesus ever said or did or taught, or ever would say, do or teach. If you hear someone inside of you or outside of you, inside the Church or outside the Church say, “Go ahead! Fire! Kill the enemy,” be certain, it is not Jesus, God Incarnate, speaking to you. The proper and only Christian response to such a temptation is the one Jesus gave to Peter the first Pope, when Peter became an agent to try to entice Jesus not to follow God’s will: “Get behind me, Satan.”
Realizing from their histories over the last millennium and a half that the institutional Churches don’t give a hoot about the stark and unfathomably consequential problem of their bracketing-out or squelching segments of the Way of Eternal Life as proclaimed by the One “who has the words of Eternal Life” (Jn 6:68), it can only be asked what in hell do the leaders of the Churches think they are spiritually doing when they do this? Do they think they are saving souls by brainwashing Christians to believe that Jesus would say to them, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow his head off?”
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There have been hundreds of just war theories in the Churches over the centuries and thousands outside the Churches. Precisely, which just-war theory is the one that is a valid Eternal Salvation substitute for Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as taught and modeled by Him in the Gospel? If a Christian does not want to trust in Jesus and His presentation of God’s will in the Gospels, and to struggle to love as the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels loves, then adhering to some piece of philosophical speculation is no substitute.
If philosophical speculation by sinful human beings could have conquered evil and death, and eternally incorporated human beings into the mystery of God who is love, there would be no need for Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, the Messiah and Savior. However, standing before the perennial and universal terrors into which human beings are thrown at birth, mere human speculation by men and women collapses into puddles of hopelessness and tears. Philosophy does not save. Where Christlike love seems to fail, philosophy is not a replacement.
The immortal soul of a fellow Christian and his or her eternal destiny are not realities that Church leaders or fellow Christians have a license to toy with. With Christian just war theories, the institutional Churches have gone far beyond human absurdity to possibly being purveyors of unending tragedy and the creators of a well of eternal tears.
Beware: Corruptio optimi pessima.
