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| The combined military spending of the world's nations is staggering--and immoral. |
"The regenerated do not go to war, or engage in strife. They are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they know no war. Since we are conformed to the image of Christ, how then can we kill our enemies with the sword? Spears and swords made of iron we leave to those, alas, who consider human blood and swine’s blood as having well nigh equal value."
- sixteenth-century reformer Menno Simons
According to The Visual Capitalist, combined spending worldwide for military purposes reached $2.7 trillion in 2024. The U.S., with less than 5% of the world’s population, increased its spending by 5.7% last year, to a staggering total of $997 billion. Much of that spending is money borrowed from future generations.
By comparison, China, with a population of over four times our own, spent $314 billion, and Russia $149 billion.
While estimates vary, the cost of eradicating world hunger, homelessness and preventable deaths from lack of medical care would be far less than we are currently spending on ever more deadly means of destruction. We can only dream of what such investments could do to help bring about world peace and stability.
I find it disheartening that even some of my Christian-minded friends support acts of massive destruction and human butchery by nations they favor, seeing it as a kind of necessary evil committed by a more innocent party. Thus "lesser evil-ism” becomes a justification for actions that are morally unjustifiable no matter who engages in them or for whatever reason, just as we would no longer defend torture, cannibalism, or slavery.
Yet we continue to see desirable ends as justifying whatever regrettable means necessary to achieve them. Maiming and murdering men, women and even innocent children, along with destroying their homes and means of livelihood are seen as forms of “self defense” or as necessary for eliminating an evil enemy. Citizens on both sides firmly believe their cause is just, and that whatever barbaric acts they engage in are therefore justifiable, right and divinely approved.
But if the vision and teaching of Jesus and the prophets were to be taken seriously, we would urge every nation in the world to beat their military swords into plowshares, and to study war no more. If humanity is to survive we must all stop rationalizing irrational and genocidal behavior.
Unsurprisingly, no application of so called "just war" principles has ever been known to actually prevent a war. Not a single one. Not ever . And when it comes to "war crimes," it's high time that we rule out war itself as the most heinous crime imaginable.
Jesus consistently taught and demonstrated what it means to defeat evil by doing good rather than inflicting harm. When his disciples asked him to call down fire from heaven to destroy their Samaritan enemies, Jesus rebuked them in no uncertain terms. And when one of them drew his sword in Jesus's defense his response was swift and clear: “Put your sword away. Those who wield the sword will perish by it.”
Even if we set religious and moral reasons aside, a total rejection of war as evil is not some utopian fantasy, but absolutely necessary for human survival.
2024/https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2023/03/will-more-war-help-bring-about-more.html
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Thank you for writing this, Harvey.
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