We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Lion, the Witch and the War
sandy Poore via Compfight
Red Letter Christians featured some of Greg’s thoughts in their recent article entitled The Lion, the Witch and the War. The author of the article talks about the C.S. Lewis story and the subtle ways that it reflects his bias and has encouraged Christians to embrace a wrong-headed view of war. Really excellent.
From the article:
One of the biggest stumbling blocks in following the teachings of Jesus is our tendency to do whatever we want, and to then convince ourselves that Jesus supports our agenda. This is especially true when it comes to His peace teachings. I’ve talked to church leaders who really want to speak the truth about peace but are afraid of repercussions from people in their congregations who are either in the military or related to someone in the military. There are a couple of things I’ve learned from thinking through this issue. The first is that we can love and respect people without agreeing with all of the choices they make. Many Christians do join the military, or support going to war, but I believe that there are much more Jesus-focused paths that we can take. The second is that none of us is perfect at following Jesus but we do need to be honest with ourselves about what He taught. He is the Prince of Peace and His teachings on this topic are incredibly clear, so if for some reason we don’t want to follow Him in all situations, let’s just admit that and not pretend that He didn’t actually say what He said.
Category: General
Tags: C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Peace, Peacemaking, Red Letter Christians, War
Related Reading
Podcast: Is There a Moral Difference Between Killing and Murder?
Greg argues against C.S. Lewis’ claim that not all killing is murder. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0223.mp3
A Distinctly Christian Take on the Israel-Palestine Conflict
David Masters via Compfight Here is a great essay, written by a young kingdom revolutionary I’m just getting to know, Jonathan Martin. Jonathan addresses the hot topic of the Israel-Palestine conflict with biblical insight, theological depth, and a heart that reflects a knowledge and love for the people he’s talking about. My favorite quote: “The…
Does the Bible teach total non-violence?
I wouldn’t say the whole Bible teaches non-violence, for you find Yahweh engaging in quite a bit of violence in the Old Testament. But I would say that the whole Bible clearly presents non-violence as God’s dream for humanity, and I would most certainly say this dream is realized in Jesus Christ and the Kingdom…
True Serenity
Andrew Sullivan pointed readers today to this meditation on two sources of spiritual serenity. Rather than relying on the absence of conflict or our own privilege, the writer asks us to go deeper to the source of all real peace. From the article: Such reliance knows God to be a rock that enables us to…
How to Produce the Fruit of the Spirit
When the New Testament tells us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, kind and so on, it is not giving us a new set of behaviors that we are to strive to accomplish. Striving to attain them means nothing if they are sought as ethical ideals or to meet a set of religious rules. They have…
Memorial Day
For Memorial Day, we thought we would repost Greg’s thoughts from 2007. In this post, Greg expresses his conflicted feelings over this holiday and gives a brief defense of Christian pacifism. *** Hope you all had a happy Memorial Day. (Isn’t that something of a misnomer — a happy time remembering people killed in war?) Memorial Day…