Thoughts on war, part 2

It is Tuesday, the fourth day of the US/Israel and Iran war. (I don’t know if that is it’s official name, but it seems accurate to me.) Today, on some political program, there was a discussion in which the commentators were struggling with the justifications for the initials strikes on Iran: Are the strikes wrong if they killed an evil man? Shouldn’t we rejoice that a bad leader is dead? This is the Machiavellian argument that “the ends justify the means.”

Our biblical texts address this idea - that, as long as there is a good outcome, the methods and actions used to achieve the good outcome are okay. In Proverbs 20:17, the author advises:

“Food gained by fraud tastes sweet, but one ends up with a mouth full of gravel.”

Even though the results may seem “sweet” as the proverb says, our actions matter. How we act, what we say and do, demonstrates our faith and thus cannot be ignored.

As the Social Principles of the UMC state:

“We reject the use of war as an instrument of foreign policy and insist that every peaceful and diplomatic means of resolution be exhausted before the start of armed conflicts. Similarly, we oppose the increasing reliance on preemptive strikes unless they can be clearly demonstrated to be proportionate in response, delimited in human casualties, and undertaken in response to clear and immediate threats to human lives.”

~ Social Principles of the UMC: The Political Community