I am a Mennonite youth pastor in … Ohio, and I recently picked up 'A Generous Orthodoxy' at a YS convention. I'm now about 2/3 of the way through it and have over and over thought how great it would be to pick your brain about some things...
In any case, I really appreciated your comments about the Bible as narrative. As a pacifist, to understand the Bible as narrative is nearly essential--in my experience, just saying that Jesus said so sometimes isn't enough for some...my question for you really pertains to young people. I joined the Mennonite church while in college in NW Ohio, and after watching the Gulf War on television as a high school sophomore, something about that whole thing didn't sit right with me. My thought has always been 'someone at some point has to take the high road so to speak.' However, I didn't have the language or environment at the time to question the prevelant view of 'let's reduce Iraq to a steaming pile of rubble.' I will say though that experince of seeing the tradegy of war and the innocent 'casualities' helped shape my view on the subject, and I want to be able to articulate where I am now to the young people in our youth group.
Do you think that one needs an experience like mine (or close to it) to really understand the apparent hypocrisy of armed conflict? I can talk about Christo-centric theolgy ( in HS language) or Jesus as God's word on the matter, but is the experince a necessary part of the journey to what I (and many other Mennonites) believe is one of the things closest to God's heart--not the fact that God is against war, but is against human suffering.
In my heart of hearts, I cannot understand how one can follow Christ and look at his life as a model for us, and be pro-armed conflict...but that's another subject altogether...
Any light you could shed or thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
I was brought up in a family that had a diversity of opinions on pacifism and just war theory. One of my uncles was a conscientious objector in WW II, while other relatives served in the military as combatants. I sensed that the combatants respected my noncombatant uncle – sensing perhaps that he was witnessing to a “higher road,” as you said. I hope that voices like yours will be heard … and that you’ll be given wisdom from God on how to be a voice for peace in a way that is winsome and inspiring. We need more of those voices! Even among people who believe in just war theory, we need people who take seriously the limits that theory requires.