Stephen
Terry, Director
Waging
Peace
Commentary
for the September 23, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"Yet for your sake we face death all day
long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." Psalm 44:22, NIV
When I first encountered the
Seventh-day Adventist church, I was a teenager in public high school. I had
studied lessons through the mail from the Voice of Prophecy in Los Angeles and
had come to accept the biblical truth of the Sabbath through those studies. I attended
the Adventist church in my hometown on Sinclair Inlet of the Puget Sound. But I
was never offered baptism or membership. Instead, I was offered more studies.
But being a typical teenager who is easily bored, I failed to complete the
lessons when I saw they were pretty much word for word what I had already studied
from the Voice of Prophecy. Eventually, because I was not progressing with the
lessons, they gave up on me. Nonetheless, I continued to attend every week. I
even read Uriah Smith's "Daniel and the Revelation" and did a book report on it
for my high school English class.
Because of a difficult home
life, I enlisted in the Army while still in school, with a date to show for
basic military training immediately after graduation. When the church members
found out, they presented me with a serviceman's kit from the National Service
Organization (NSO) of the denomination. It contained a small King James Bible in
a zippered case and several pamphlets from the NSO about how to deal with the challenges
of military service. One piece of advice was that since Adventists were conscientious
objectors to bearing arms to kill others they should not volunteer for military
service. That gave me pause, but since I had never formally joined the church,
I eventually reasoned that did not apply to me. But as I later discovered, the
Holy Spirit was already working changes in my heart and mind that would set me
on a collision course over the issue of non-combatancy.
When I showed up for basic
training in Texas, things seemed to go pretty much as I expected for the first
week. But at the end of the week, we were all required to attend the base chapel
for services on Sunday. The preacher was a Baptist minister with a military
commission, and he harangued us for the better part of an hour about the need
to kill all the godless communists for Christ. My blood ran cold as I realized
what I had fallen into. The next day, I approached my commanding officer about
the problem. It took about five months to sort it all out, but eventually, I
was sent to Fort Sam Houston outside San Antonio, Texas to train as a medic. I
had initially enlisted for training to be a Russian translator/interpreter but
was told I could no longer do that if I wanted exemption from carrying a
weapon. Ironically, a combat medic is assigned to combat units where understanding
and acceptance of the idea of objecting to carrying a weapon is least likely.
Despite being a conscientious objector, I served honorably for over six years.
I was only separated from service when my weaponless status was so
objectionable to others that they sought to do me harm. The Department of the
Army then intervened and assisted in separating me from service for my
protection with an honorable discharge.
Half a century later, the church
no longer counsels its young people to avoid military service. Maybe this is
because during the Vietnam era, young men were drafted into the military, but
since then there has been no active draft. No single war since then has seen as
many young Americans die in combat. Both factors may have contributed to a
growing number of Adventist youth seeing combat arms as a career opportunity. Many
churches even have regular recognition days to honor those who so serve and
have served. This is troubling to me, for I strongly believe the Christian is
called to save others for God's kingdom, not sweep them into the grave beyond
all hope of salvation. But rather than condemn those who feel differently, I understand
we all must individually give account for our choices before God. I would have
a hard time doing so, though, if I had the blood of others on my hands. I doubt
I could ever erase in this life the images of such actions from my mind.
Why am I sharing all of this? I
share it because I am intrigued that the early Christians seemed to be an
altogether different breed than we are today. Modern Christians rise up and are
offended should anyone challenge their faith in even the slightest way. But I
know of no instance of Christians behaving like this in the first century or
two after Christ. Instead, Paul the Apostle quotes from Psalm 44 in his epistle
to the Romans, chapter 8,[i]
seeing Christians as being slaughtered like defenseless sheep. Even every one
of Christ's disciples, except John, were violently slain, and reportedly John
was only spared miraculously. He was intended to be boiled in oil, but like
Daniel's three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he was unharmed when
thrown in. Exiled to the island of Patmos, he is credited with writing the book
of Revelation. Strangely, Revelation is all about bloody vengeance taken
against those who reject God, but it paints a completely different picture of
the character of God than what is found in John's three epistles. This may be
why Martin Luther did not originally wish to include Revelation in his German
translation of the Bible, but he later relented and included it.
Despite all of this, many are
drawn to the militaristic language of Ephesians, chapter 6. We don't find
similar language in the New Testament outside the Pauline epistles, with the
exception already mentioned of Revelation. But even in Revelation, it is not the
saints who do battle. It is the army of heaven. This seems consistent with
Jesus' turn-the-other-cheek theology. It is not our place to requite evil in
kind. God has reserved that for himself. Strangely, Paul seems to recognize
that in his epistle to the Romans, he quotes from Deuteronomy, writing that God
claims the right of vengeance and it is his work to repay evil, not ours.[ii] It
seems an unusual work then to couch his message to the Ephesians in military
terms. He tells the Romans we are defenseless sheep, but he tells the Ephesians
we are to wear spiritual armor and gird ourselves for war.
Scholars tend to date the
Epistle to the Ephesians as being written during Paul's first imprisonment in Rome.
The Epistle to the Romans, on the other hand, was likely written from Corinth
prior to that imprisonment. Perhaps that imprisonment wrought in him a more
militant faith where the lines of conflict are painted in stark relief.
Doubtless he must have seen much in Rome that directly opposed the principles
he was sharing with the world. However, if he succumbed to the temptation to
directly confront Rome with the new religion he was promoting, it worked about
as well for him as it did for John the Baptist to confront Herod.
There is much that is evil in
the political arena. Like John, we can lose sight of our purpose when we choose
to do battle there. Over my lifetime, I have played many different games and
one common lesson they all teach is that if we lose sight of the objective and
allow other issues to distract us, the game is often lost not because the game defeated
us, but because we defeated ourselves. We are in danger of exactly that problem
when we engage in combat on God's behalf. We no longer love our enemies as Christ
taught, and we no longer leave the problem of evil to God to deal with as
Christ taught us we should do.[iii]
The work of the evil one is to fill the harvest with as much opposition as he
can. We may be strongly tempted to root out that opposition, stabbing it to
death with the proof-texting sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. But
in doing so, we allow our focus to dwell on the evil one and his works instead
of the works of God. Our hearts harden as we battle instead of softening with
empathy and compassion toward the lost that Jesus came to save, just as he came
to save us.
We can choose to be like John
the Baptist, waging war against evil, even though he was called to be a herald
for the Messiah, and our calling may be cut short because of going astray of
our mission. But we can instead choose to be like the Apostle John who had the
clearest vision of the character of God and the love that emanated from that
character. As we look at the strange visions that John recorded in Revelation,
it is worthwhile to remember that while the book does indeed contain scenes of
bloody vengeance and retribution, none of that is perpetrated by the saints. It
is all God's work. It is not ours. Christ called us to something different, and
we are privileged to participate accordingly.