Stopping ISIS
Pastor Rick Warren’s tweet echoes a sentiment that I’ve been hearing a lot lately around evangelical Christianity: that ISIS is an evil that must be stopped. Unsaid but clearly implied is that the USA should be stopping ISIS by “wielding the sword” - in other words, send in the military.
On one hand, I’m sympathetic. I’m a red-blooded male who gets motivated by the idea of going and fighting evil, and who today appears more evil than ISIS? I’m horrified (as nearly everyone is) by the videos of beheadings, and my heart is wrenched when I hear the accounts of children being kidnapped from families.
And yet… I get a little uneasy at the rhetoric I see going around, and believe that Christians should rethink that rhetoric, for at least a couple of reasons.
First, there’s a legitimate case to be made for Christian pacifism. I’m not sure at the moment quite where I fall along the just war - pacifism spectrum, but I respect those who believe that when Jesus said “love your enemies and do good to them that hate you”, it has a practical implication that means you won’t call for your enemies to be killed.
Yeah, the pacifism argument doesn’t work for me.
“And yet…” I hear some say, “…Paul says that the government has the responsibility to wield the sword, to reward those who do good and punish those who do evil”. True enough. But, even if you subscribe to that, I’ve got some more thoughts.
Second, I have serious reservations about whether or not sending the US military back in large numbers into the middle east to fight ISIS is a solution that will actually improve things. Unless you’ve been under a rock since 1990, you’re most likely aware that the US has had troops on the ground in the Middle East for the past 25 years, and that they don’t seem to have greatly stabilized the situation. It also looks a lot like ISIS is intentionally spoiling for a fight. How many more decades do we need to continue with this strategy before we start considering other approaches?
Third, while “you don’t negotiate with evil, good people stop evil” is great rhetoric and makes a punchy 140-character tweet, it doesn’t hold up as a consistent axiom even in a very brief reading of 20th century history. Sure, we went in to stop Hitler, and most would agree it was the right thing to do. But Stalin and those that followed him in Soviet Russia were at least as broadly evil as Hitler’s Germany, and what did the USA do? Well, we fought in a handful of proxy wars that were pretty much all disasters. And then finally Reagan negotiated and outmaneuvered them until their economic system imploded.
Would Rick Warren like to argue that Ronald Reagan was wrong in that course of action, and that he (or Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, or Truman before him) should’ve just nuked Moscow because they were EVIL? I’m guessing not.
Finally, I’m concerned when I hear appeals urging Christians to write our congressmen and demand action against ISIS because it comes with the strong implication that our leaders either (a) don’t understand that ISIS is bad; (b) don’t care enough to want to do anything about it; (c) are secretly radical Islamist sympathizers who hate America; or (d) All of the Above.
And maybe I’m just not cynical enough, but I think it’s quite likely that our President and congress DO understand that ISIS is bad, that they DO want to do something about it, that they’re NOT secretly radical Islamists, but that they’re people a lot like me who are trying to make very difficult decisions while getting counsel from the foremost experts in these areas that the country (and probably the world) has to offer.
So what SHOULD we do?
First and foremost, we can pray. Pray that the innocent would be protected. That Christians would be strong in their faith, even to the point of death.
Then pray for ISIS. Pray that they would be challenged by the faith of the Christians whom they are persecuting. Pray for their repentance and that they would come to know Jesus.
I love what Matt Chandler said back in a sermon in August:
I have been reading over and over the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9). Murdering Christians. Well known terrorist among evangelical followers of Christ in the first century. Brutal. Powerfully converted and becomes one of the greatest missionaries of the Christian faith. I feel powerless about what’s happening in Iraq, but I’m also praying that God would raise up a Paul out of the leadership of the ISIS. Why not? God is God. He’s done it before. Why wouldn’t he do it today? Lets ask.
Now that’s something worth asking for.