03 February 2024
Do you understand that the only peace that matters is peace with God?
First, a little context: Covenant family should love each other without reservation. We should care about our allies, treat well those pagans who are of some use to us, and even be ready to shame our enemies by acting more forgiving then they do. But this frame of reference is for the Covenant only. We have no commission from God to put this on folks who have not entered the Covenant; they lack the power to do this. Only the Presence of the Holy Spirit can bring peace among individuals. Without Him, we should expect conflict and war.
Don't make common cause with secular/pagan peaceniks. Their ways are a direct insult to our Father. In biblical thinking, peace with God is submission to His revelation, His agenda, His Covenant. That agenda is very specific to our fallen condition. It is part of a far wider agenda of putting the carping elohim council in their place. Our fallen existence is a part of that far higher conflict. Just so, human conflict and war is a necessity in our existence.
Calling for peace without the power of the Holy Spirit is, in many ways, evil. God requires us to fight in this life, if only symbolically. We must understand where the symbolism for spiritual warfare comes from, but also understand where secular/pagan peacemaking comes from. The notion that human conflict is inherently evil is one of the greatest lies of Satan. It is rooted in the materialism of modern society. Trace the history of, not war itself, but the thinking about war. The modern peace push arose with the middle class at the end of the Middle Ages. Today the nobility are despised because they rejected middle class values. Nobility previously understood war as simply the way things were done.
It all had to do with being real men pursuing the being of manhood, not focusing on the particulars. The intrusion of the Church in trying to generate chivalry was actually a feminist influence trying to destroy manhood. There was nothing Christian about it; instead, it was quite pagan. It was built into the very Germanic culture it was trying to change. What does it say when pagan feminine self-deification found an ally in the Church?
There is only one real reason for seeking peace among pagans, hidden behind all the rhetoric and scolding: material prosperity. Granted, this is a proper concern for the feminine half of humanity, the Nest Builders. But the Bible says they were never supposed to rule.
Men properly think of warfare as a game. Losing life and limb, and property as well, is just a side-effect. All of this carping over the cost of war is a feminist preoccupation. For men when they are trying to be true to their own nature, all of those things are side issues. The real issue is men blossoming in the natural difficulties of our fallen existence.
It's not that God chose to portray Himself as male, but that something in the nature of maleness is a reflection of who He is. Granted, manhood today is partly a reflection of the Curse of the Fall. But a critical element in the Fall was Adam's failure to rise up and fight for Eve. Avoiding conflict is the quintessential nature of male failure in the Garden. The existence of conflict is built into Creation itself; it was an issue before the Fall.
The only way to have peace in our world is for sin to rise more powerfully than we can imagine. Peace is not possible without oppression. The issue is not whether we ought to have conflict, but how we conduct the business of war and why. The edict "thou shalt not kill" was not what western minds make of it. Rather, it was a command that we should not murder for the wrong reasons. That command was given in the midst of a warlike condition that followed Israel to Sinai and led them away from it to conquer Canaan Land.
Conflict is the ultimate game, and we must play by the rules God laid out. This is how we bring Him glory, by doing things His way. War is the quintessence of manhood exercised in being male. We should embrace the imagery itself as the symbol of what God intended for us within the fallen realm of existence. For all his smooth civility, Jacob wrestled with God to seal his adoption as a child of God in this world.
Still, I would assert that most wars today are stupid. We do not promote the berserker's delight in bloodshed, but the manly man's proper place for bloodshed in his consideration of reality. Shedding blood for the right reason is what the Cross is all about. But in warfare, we expect others to shed their blood, as well. It's all about the imagery and symbolism, not the facts themselves. Women who nag about their men's safety and the loss of property are the epitome of devil worship.
What lies behind war is simply the lust for adventure, of self-testing. This is quintessential manhood. It's not enough to suggest we need to restore this; it's already coming by necessity. God has commissioned the spirits He created and empowered to bring about chaos and destruction on the earth. The proper way to handle it is to squelch the feminist demands and raise the black flag. Peace among men that excludes peace with God is anathema.
Honestly, it's impossible to put this in words. It can only be demonstrated to offer the full explanation. You have to experience it to receive it.
Comments
Robust1
Believers relationship with our evil rulers, submission to our evil rulers, the use of violence in defense of self, family and neighbor, living in the world but not of the world, coming out from among them, separating from the world (system) while using the world (system)... it's all not entirely clear to me how this should look. Currently I'm winging it, keeping my head low and watching how things play out. I appreciate the Amish type communities separation from and yet interaction with the system. I envision a model of separation where there's more integration of technology without a total dependence on the system, a defense of the innocent against violence that doesn't preclude the use of violence, and that endeavors to live peaceably with the system as much as possible. Probably a pipe dream, without collapse of the current system it won't be allowed. I'm not confident we're called to watch passively, idly as family and friends are preyed upon and/or killed. Yet, enduring persecution and tribulation is something we've been told may/will come our way.
CatRez
Good job. It is not for any of us to draw hard lines for another. This is squarely in the territory of individual convictions, primarily because we are not living within physical reach of each other. We could be more unanimous if we were facing the same threats, but we are not. I agree that the Amish style of separation offers a good model. They aren't hostile but they don't assimilate. Keeping ourselves separate in one way or another is critical.
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