22 Dec
2009

Posted in: Featured Highlights, Nonviolence
By Eddie    2 Comments

Ben Witherington on the War President’s Peace Prize

I have resisted writing anything extensive about US President Obama’s acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize. And, after this article by Ben Witherington III, I do not believe I need to. In “The War President’s Peace Prize—The Influence of the Niebuhr’s,” Dr. Witherington took a look at the speech and assessed the content, “the substance of the speech itself.”

Feel free to read through the article. I was firmly gripped by these words toward the end (which are the reason I don’t have to concern myself with writing a post on this topic myself):

But I must confess to being doubtful even when we talk about a justifiable struggle that it ever becomes a just war. For what the President has admitted in this speech is that war is not merely hell, it is one of the ultimate expressions of human sin on earth, one of the greatest expressions of a violation of love of neighbor and even love of enemy imaginable.

Even if a convincing case could be made for a war of necessity, say WWII, it still involved so much killing of non-combatants, so much taking of innocent life, that as a Christian I have to insist that the most appropriate and necessary response to the conclusion of a war is not a victory parade, but a service of repentance for sin on a grand and grotesque scale. The sacrifices of the soldiers should be recognized, their safe return should be prayed for and thanked God for, but not without recognizing that we have asked them to go and do something that inevitably involves commiting sin on a grand scale! And such actions do indeed require repentance.

There are no clear cut winners in a war—its just that some lose less than others, some lose less permanently than others. As one of my favorite poets once said “any man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of mankind. Therefore do not seek to know for whom the bell, the death knell tolls—it tolls for thee.”

Please take some time to read Dr. Witherington’s post. It may look long at first, but that’s only because he included the entire transcript of Pres. Obama’s speech. And please swing back over here and leave a comment. I would love to get your take on both Obama’s speech and Witherington’s response.

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