So I asked, later in the debate, so how do we “love our neighbor” in this context? The reply was that Jesus was talking about “personal matters”. At that point, I realized I was dealing with a philosophical separation that, for me , does not exist. I cannot separate “perosonal” and “social”. Nations cannot , and yet they claim they have to. It is all a part of the history long subscribing to the grand myth: that violence returned for violence solves problems. They say that these “Christian ideals” don’t work.

None of the Bush supporters I’ve talked to who approve of all this are willing to answer the question of whether it would be permissable or right for any of the things going on in Iraq to happen on American soil. Can we go in and bomb American sites where people also make their residence or go about their everyday activities? I am met with no response to this in every case. The long and short of it is, is that American Christians are perfcectly willing to “sacrafice” OTHER people who are are NOT us, NOTour family, not OUR neighborhoods, for the “Cause of the greater good”. The Golden Rule is out the door. We do not apply this entirely simple question:

Would we have a foreign power, which has a legitimate security concern, to pursue this with ANY means that includes wiping out 2 to 3 times as many innocents as the original offense? Taking the revenge question out of the picture, even: Can we say that THOSE ENDS (rooting out and punishing the perpetrators and their supporters) justify THIS MEANS? I would venture to say that the American People would not allow this to happen on American soil to American families and American Children. Our failure to apply the golden rule here and find solutions without such levels of “collateral damage” is an affront to the Jesus way. It is failure to live as Christians. When we say that Jesus would have “no opinion” on this because he didn’t adress war, we’re basically throwing our brains out the door. I cannot see Jesus saying “That’s up the leaders whom God has appointed”. Jesus would NOT be taking the 5th. If there were, in Jesus’ day, weapons of war with such widespread, massive capability, Jesus would have been talkijng about it. I’m not so sure he didn’t address war. I am not a beliver in the idea that the Bible we have is entirely what God wanted handed down to us. Christianity was declared a religion of the Roman Empire. This was prior to the canonization of our present Bible collection. Would disapproval of “scared State methodologies” such as war be allowed to be distributed under a Christian message? If God allows suffering, and war, then God certainly allows things such as written texts to be “censored” (notwithstanding all these “god allows” and “Problem of Pain” questions about what we mean when we say “God allows it”)