The Cross is Not a Universal Symbol of Sacrifice
By Austin
Yesterday the Supreme Court came down on a decision in Salazar v. Bruono that the WWI memorial in the Mojave desert featuring a cross may be able to remain as it was, because the symbol of the cross does not violate the separation of church and state, and does not discriminate against other faiths (viz., Judaism). The “Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs” (Anthony Kennedy), but rather “evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies would be compounded if the fallen are forgotten (Samuel Alito).”
Justice John Paul Stevens retorted, “the cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice…It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith.”
In this exchange it is Stevens who is right. Too often people talk about the death of soldiers as the “ultimate sacrifice,” and the use of the cross in this imagery is blatant. 
But the death of a soldier attempting to kill another human being in the service of the selfish goals of his country has nothing to do with Jesus’ sacrifice.
Let’s rehearse what this sacrifice was: it was of a man who had the opportunity to lead a violent rebellion against a foreigner oppressor, and who instead submitted himself to their twisted justice, and was murdered as an example to anyone else who crossed that authority. In this sacrifice he unmasked this authority for what it truly was (read John’s trial and crucifixion scene and you’ll get the picture), showed the pattern of all Christian discipleship, and set us free from our destructive lives.
Opposed to this you have the death of soldiers in combat. While I would never want to dishonor men and women who have died in battle, their death has nothing to do with Jesus.’ The personally die for a variety of reasons, sometimes really noble ones (like the story of Sgt Rafael Peralta who smothered an enemy grenade to save his comrades), and you can definately call this a sacrifice.
But not an ultimate one. Most of the time this is a sacrifice to the self-interest of a nation or party or race. Whatever way you slice it, Jesus’ sacrifice is truly universal, and a sacrifice specifically for the enemy.
For the cross to become the symbol of a death that is almost the complete opposite from Jesus’ is blasphemy. It’s too bad that once more America confuses the gods it serves.
American Freedom vs. Real Freedom: A Declaration of Dependence
By Austin
I was perusing the comments over at Christianity Today in response to the decision about the national day of prayer (that I wrote about here - see more from Kathy Kattenburg here). There was some lament in there, along with some atheist who must be trolling the comments and being obnoxious. Some of the responses by Christians were:
“what a sad day for America. They are surely taking away all our freedoms. The leadership in this country makes me sick.” (Marrie Rowe)
“Wow such a sad day in America. The atheist have their right to believe or not to believe as we have our right to believe in God or not, it is our freedom OF religion… The Constitution is slowly being re-written and some people do not even realize it. People need to wake up. We need God BACK in America today. We as christians need to PRAY for our nation.” (Cindy Peplaw)
These are pretty standard responses from Evangelicals. Cindy is certainly right that we need to pray for our nation (see Jeremiah 29), but what many of my fellow Evangelicals get wrong is the nature of freedom in the U.S.
Evangelicals in the U.S. have a real thing for religious freedom. If I criticize it too much they would say to me, ‘image if you lived in a country where you weren’t free to worship! It would be awful!’ And of course there’s some truth to that (although they often forget that the most vibrant places for the church are often in the most oppressive – and there is a good theological reason for that). But there is a bigger truth often missed – that in America, our founding document called “The Constitution” gives absolutely no guarantee of freedom.
Do we think that Paul wasn’t serious when he says ”you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness…” (Rom 6.16)? When Christians posit the antithesis between “sin” and “Christ” they seem to completely forget the fact that America rests on the “sin” side of the ledger, because there is only one thing on the “Christ” side of the ledger - Jesus himself! That’s another way to say “Jesus is Lord.”
Another way to put this is the way John Howard Yoder does. He says:
One of the major efforts of spiritual gear-shifting involved in thinking Christianly is that of getting over this revolutionary idea of freedom, as meaning being left alone to do as one wants, ‘free’ of any outside influence or controls. The freedom of the Christian is not freedom from as much as freedom to: what matters is not fromwhat we are freed, but for what.
For the Bible is more realistic than the revolutionaries of 1776 or 1789; it tells us that we have a choice, not between freedom and unfreedom, but between two kinds of slavery…God gives us the freedom to choose whom we will serve. (The Christian’s Declaration of Indepedence)
And this should properly be called a declaration of dependence.
A Victory for Christians – No more Day of Prayer
By Austin
Kathy Kattenburg over at the Moderate Voice points to a story NPR did about a U.S. District court ruling that makes it unconstitutional for the President to proclaim a national day of prayer (a practice that stared in 1952).
Why do I say this is a victory? Because for too long, American Christians have blurred the distinction between worship of God in church and worship of nation at sporting events, national holidays, and schools.
But this blurring is wrong. Christianity has always defined itself against such provincial bonds because it proclaims the life, death, and resurrection is for all peoples, and that the church is universal. I have more in common with my Chinese, Iranian, or Cuban bothers and sisters in Christ than I do with my American neighbors who do not confess Jesus as Lord.
Holidays like the “National Day of Prayer,” while often initiated in good faith, actually participate in national “liturgies” of unity. And these liturgies have a specific function that Christians are often confused about. I’ve heard Christians say that national day of prayer should help us get back to the faith of the founding fathers (read Drew’s discussion of such “faith” here), but the real function of these liturgies is to develop a primary loyalty to one’s nation, rather than a loyalty to Jesus. It does not rule out loyalty to Jesus (obviously that’s a part of this holiday), but it promotes a particular vision of what that loyalty means - the hope is that by getting the country “back onto God’s path” the country itself will prosper and flourish.
But the main guarantee of loyalty to Jesus is not success. In fact, the one guarantee is that if you follows the way of the cross, you will suffer (consider: Acts 5.40-42; Acts 9.15-16; Rom 8.16-18). The attitude of early Christians we see in the New Testament, and texts form figures like Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch, is that they expected and welcomed suffering. They almost universally did not expect prosperity – which is one of the reasons Romans found them so strange (their view was that Christians were atheists, anti-family, and immoral). Roman civic religion, as Augustine noted in the City of God, promised prosperity to the nation. But Christians knew, said Augustine, that the real “patria” (fatherland) is not the nation, but Jesus.
So this is indeed a real victory for Christians. The more our faith is publically distanced from the nation, the freer we are to be who we are. If we truly confess Jesus as Lord, we will always remember what the Epistle to Diognetus says about Christians:
They live in their own countries, but only as nonresidents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign.
Just War and Our Wars, Part III: Authority
Continuing this series on Just War and Iraq and Afghanistan, we come to the third criteria. This states that those engaged in the war must be a legitimate authority – not a group of bandits, not a private vendetta, but a legitimate government.
This criteria is strange, and a bit difficult to apply. Obviously the U.S. is a legitimate government, since it has a constitution, a rule via representative democracy, etc. A majority of the population gave authority to George Bush at the start, and while perhaps the polls were ambiguous about full “support”, that really matters little. Bush had the authority handed to him by the people’s representatives in congress, and he went with it.
But is this really legitimate? According to Just War theory, yes. No matter what international law says (as many in fact thought the wars “illegal”), Just War does not really account very well for competing authorities. When is an authority legitimate? When are “bandits” more than bandits but legitimate movements, such as the contras supported by the U.S. in Nicaragua, or by Iran in Lebanon?
Whatever the complications, though, it’s clear that both Iraq and Afghanistan fit this second criteria. Some may not have liked how it went down, whether there were “lies” or not, still, from a Just War perspective, there is no problem.
Just Wars and Our Wars: Part II, Intention
By Austin
Yesterday I began this series of reflections by laying out the ways Christians talk about war. Today I want to look at the first criteria for the most common position, just war: the intention must be good.
This criteria of intention basically means that if you fight, it must be a) defensive; b) not for mere selfish gain or hatred; and c) have peace as the long range goal.
I should mention at this point that it’s almost impossible to think about this criteria in terms of the so-called “war on Terror.” What is the war on terror? As Bush said in his Sept 20th 2001 speech, this is different from every other war. Indeed. The enemy is not a state, and it’s motives are not fully clear (it’s targets aren’t either – their targerts are Muslims, not Americans). Is this really a war? In terms of Just War theory or international law, it is not. Typically a war is between state actors, or at least actors with some legitimate authority. Terrorists are not state actors, and the closest comparison (even according to Bush in this very speech) is the Mafia.
So I will limit my questions to Afghanistan and Iraq since they are clearly “wars” (even though even they were not ”declared”). So how does that fit in with the three criteria above?
First, Bush basically said in that Sept 20th speech that self-defense included offensives against states that did not actually attack us: “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded as a hostile regime.” This really streches the notion of self-defense, and a Just War perspective, almost to the breaking point. This would basically be saying that ‘any friend of my enemy is an enemy in the full sense – I am justified in harming them just as serverly.’ But self-defense is by definition very limited. It is protective, not proactive. If Bush actually went through with this logic, he would have attacked numerous countries, which obviously he didn’t.
This is not to say some Just War thinkers might not agree. Perhaps self-defense should be extended that far in today’s world. I think the self-defense notion must be more robust, and because Bush did not follow through on his logic it appears it was merely rhetoric – not really a good indicator that even he took the self-defense argument too seriously.
What was not ambiguous was Iraq. This was not even close to being a self-defense war, even if they had WMD. They didn’t harbor terrorists, even if there was evidence they talked to them. Instead, Iraq was justified under the third criteria – making the world “safe.” Bush reasoned that democracy is safer than dictatorships, and ultimately, this would lead to a safer world. This does show that the ultimate intention is in line with criteria (c), even if not with criteria (a).
Finally, what about the second? This is pretty hard to guage, and except for crazies like John Hagee, no one would say they would fight out of hatred. If we were giving the U.S. the benefit of the doubt, we would say that we did not attack either for selfish reason (although plenty would debate Iraq – especially over the issue of oil). In general, our government justified the wars in terms of the peace and security, not full on self-interest.
In sum: neither Iraq nor Afghanistan (but more so the latter) fit the bill fully for this first criteria. They come close in some ways, more so Afghanistan. Tomorrow we’ll look at the second criteria – just authority.
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