No more war, but what have we gained?

It’s not a question I would have thought much about 25 years ago.  That was the era after Vietnam, when flags were not welcome in the chancel, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” had lost its place at the top of hymn lists, and one began to think twice about singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  A socio-ecclesial shift was taking place to reframe the Christian narrative and message without reference to warfare. 

There were several reasons for this, I think. One was an effort to redirect a society back to a peacetime stability.  The Cold War didn’t demand passionate combat imagery.  Peace, unity, and tolerance were the threads from which the social tapestry was being woven. The Church was succumbing to the therapeutic way of thinking that eschewed notions of divine wrath or retribution and recast the message in terms other than sin and grace: glory, new creation, baptism as (solely) new birth, for example.  Gone was any real concept of sin as something to resist, fight, yes – even engage in warfare against – on a daily basis. Christ fought it all and there is nothing left for us to do.

Now, if the question is about salvation, then of course, Christ did go to war against the forces of sin, death, and the devil and won the victory for us.  But if the question is daily discipleship, don’t we have to grapple with the reality that sin still clings to us and the cosmos? Isn’t there still warfare to be engaged in on this side of the eschaton?  I believe there is.

But fundamentally, we have excised all military language from our modern faith speech, and so we are limited in our capacity to talk about spiritual warfare and limited in our capacity to plumb the depths of the biblical narrative of salvation itself.

We use the biblical language for our Lord Jesus: Redeemer, Deliverer, Savior, all of which are military in origin. Judges 6-7 describes the Deliverer as one who engages in battle with the people against their enemies. We’re talking real warfare, with weapons and bloodshed, death and mayhem.  The same is true in Exodus when the LORD is active redeeming his people:

Say therefore to the people of Israel, 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. (Ex. 6:6)  What other nation on earth is like thy people Israel, whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name, and doing for them great and terrible things, by driving out before his people a nation and its gods? (2 Sam. 7:23)

Now these great and terrible things include the warfare at the Red Sea, the plagues, and the battle at Jericho. The fulfillment of God’s covenant to Abraham and Moses was not a smooth transition, but a hostile takeover of land and resources that was accomplished through Israel’s warfare with the nations. Conversely, God’s judgment upon Israel for their sin was political exile in oppression by their enemies. 

The apostolic church understood the mission to involve warfare, too, though of a more political rather than militant nature.  If not to press the cause of Christ against a hostile culture, how do we understand Paul’s repeated imprisonments for publicly preaching Christ and his self-defense before the Council, the Governor, the King, and the Emperor?  How do we understand the references to the enemies of faith as wolves that must be resisted if not in terms of pastoral warfare? (Acts 20:28-30; 1 Peter 5:8-9; John 10:11) How do we interpret “wage the good warfare” or “fight the good fight” (1 Tim. 6:12; 8:16) if we do not permit any notion of violence into our understanding of daily discipleship and faith, whether by way of offense or defense?

The erosion of our self-understanding as a people who are warred against by inimical forces and who resist them, firm in faith is compounded by ongoing shifts in the language of prayer and hymnody.  In Evangelical Lutheran Worship, we no longer sing “Led on their way by this triumphant sign [the cross] the hosts of God in conquering ranks combine” (cf. LBW 377 and ELW 660). “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” is not included at all and “Mine eyes have seen the glory” has been moved from being an expression of Christian Hope (LBW 332) to the hymnal section of National Songs (ELW 890).

Thankfully, we still have “Sing my tongue the glorious battle” “The Strife is “O’er, the battle won” and “For all the Saints” that retain the biblical narrative of faith and struggle both on Christ’s part and on ours.  For the sake of our children, whose television and video game diet is primarily the warfare of good and evil, let us reclaim the Bible’s language of deliverance, redemption, and military victory as descriptive of God’s ongoing activity in the lives of believers and the life and salvation of the world.