Tuesday, November 18, 2025
I read this morning’s newspaper accounts of a terrorist raid on a government school in Northwest Nigeria in which 25 schoolgirls were kidnapped and some of the police officers and school officials who tried to protect them were killed. Just last week we commemorated Veterans Day. Calling to mind those who bravely fought in years past to defeat malicious attacks, defend the innocent, and preserve life and freedom.
Yes, we know that not every war ever fought was wholly noble. Yes, we know that not every war was launched only after all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted. Still, there are attacks that have no justification whatsoever.
Pacifists within the Christian tradition argue that the Christian commitment to nonviolence must be absolute, following the example of Jesus and his inauguration of a peaceable kingdom in which no sword ought to be drawn. I’ve listened closely to the arguments for pacificism since my undergraduate days as a philosophy major at Wheaton College, so a lifetime now of reflection. I’ve listened carefully to the most well-known and influential spokesperson for this view, Stanley Hauerwas, for whom I have great respect. Recently—well, in the last decade I think—I heard him say during a question-and-answer segment on a podcast or a YouTube video that his view meant that there will be tragedies and innocent lives lost. I had wondered for decades, in relation to his work, if this wasn’t just the point on which the debate hinges. Or, maybe I should say this is a very telling point. For if we are to love our neighbors, doesn’t this mean that we are to protect them from evil, especially evil that desires to kill? It seems to me that we are to protect the innocent. It seems to me that many heroes of war have done just that.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the pull of the pacifist arguments. I do. It’s hard to reconcile the taking of any human life with the Christian faith. Bearing witness to Christ through non-violence—that is, to the One who himself was non-violent—seems to be coherent, but only, I think if we fail to take in our duty to the innocent. So, I give thanks for those who have protected the innocent, even as I lament the evil of wars—indeed, the wickedness of the human heart--and the failures of diplomacy.