I asked my long time friend and former music ministry associate, Joseph Ravitts, if he would be willing to do an article for our website journal on the Christian and pacificism. He is very well equpped for this as he is currently working in Naval intelligence and has received his "dolphins" certification that qualifies him for every duty post on a submarine. He has truly put his life on the line for what he believes about pacificism. His article follows this introduction.

Joseph and I used to travel the Eastern half of The United States together ranging from Detroit to Miami singing our own songs in many different venues. We did this in a motorhome and in cars so it gave us plenty of time to discuss many important theological, ethical and spiritual matters. We didn't always agree on some finer points of doctrine but we were always friends and respectful of each other's ability to think rationally from the Scriptures. I personally gained much from these times together and enjoyed our dialogues.

One area of total agreement we had was on the need to stand firmly against the feminization of the Christian world. By this we didn't mean at all "equal pay for equal work" that the feminist movement has rightly demanded. We saw a weakening of the moral resolve to stand for what is right in the face of powerful enemies who could and would resort to violence as such foes of the gospel, and foes of even civic or temporal righteousness, have done throughout history.

We had watched the manhood of the modern western world, and especially in Christian circles, wilt before the onslaught of passivity that was being touted in the name of "world peace" and eventually "political correctness." Young men were, and are still, being taught that it is always simply wrong to physically fight for what is right. This pacifistic attitude bled over into general passivity towards the great debates of our time and has resulted in many "good men doing nothing" in the face of evil. Real masculine debate has been shriveled and is considered uncouth, or worse "unchristian," in some evangelical circles. The Apostle Paul wouldn't be welcome in many of our churches today as he would be considered "too blunt and aggressive."

Joseph has a degree in history and I have always been a "history buff" having taken courses in it throughout college. Largely because of this, and our mutual love of the Arthurian legends, we decided to put our message in a historical musical setting. We wrote "The Fable of Young Roderick" which was a ballad composed in troubadorian heroic couplet and put to a contemporary musical style resembling a rock opera. It was recorded on our "Knights of The Lord's Table" album which featured our original compositions and the musical arrangement and performances of Grammy Award winner Randy Goodrum and other top drawer/first rate musicians. This song embodies the tension that exists between those who want to be passive at all costs and the need to fight for the right.

If you would like to read the lyrics click here: The Fable of Young Roderick We may be offering this entire album on CD in the future. Meanwhile, here is Joseph's article:

DISARMING AN AGGRESSIVE PACIFIST

by Joseph R. Ravitts

When you cast cyber-bread on the web-waters, you may be surprised by what floats back to you. I frequently distribute to my e-mail correspondents articles I pick up (or sometimes write myself) on the subject of national defense. Apparently one of the recipients passed one such posting of mine to someone unknown to me who proved to be a Vietnam veteran turned absolute pacifist.

Not having been called to service in the Vietnam era, I'm reluctant to criticize anyone who was there; but it's a fact, as someone said, that Experience is the best teacher only if one is willing to learn. The mortal mind is very capable of drawing mistaken conclusions from experience as when a girl is sexually molested by one man, decides that this proves all men are rapists, and so becomes a lesbian. Her error is understandable, but it is an error all the same. Such errors also arise from the suffering of war.

This veteran, a Christian, sent me a copy of a general-distribution e-mail of his own. He gave a link to his homepage, which seemed to regard modern America as no better than Babylon (a view which I have to confess is not entirely without basis in fact). But the e-mail implied that, even if America were not like Babylon, defending her with armed force would be an unrighteous act. Here is the crucial portion of his message:

Can a born again person still fight and kill to defend the country and its interests? Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight...pick up your cross and follow me." John wrote in Revelation 5:10, "and hast made us unto our God Kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth." The answer to my questions seems pretty simple and obvious, doesn't it ?

I resisted the temptation to fling back at this brother something like the words of C.S. Lewis (who was himself a front-line combat veteran of World War One): Anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about. That would be araca, too harsh to use on a fellow believer who was trying to share his convictions. Accordingly I went into more depth with him, replying as follows in full.

Dear Jack,

Do I know you? The testimony on your site describes your dealings with a Jewish believer; are you associated with Jewish believers whom I recently contacted? In any case, I appreciate your sharing your convictions with me, but I must tell you that I have seen your line of reasoning before. I have to respect you for being a Vietnam veteran; but your having had the experience does not guarantee that you could not have drawn any mistaken conclusions from it. Here are some of the reasons why I cannot follow the pacifist line:

(1) Just to get rid of a distracter, I hope you do realize that the commandment rendered in English as "Thou shalt not kill" more properly translates as "Thou shalt not murder." There are seven verbs for "kill" in Hebrew, and the one used in the commandment is "ratsakh," which is only used for criminal murder and private blood-revenge. The very next page in Exodus prescribes capital punishment, so obviously that commandment never, not ever at any time, prohibited ALL instances of taking human life.

(2) The fact of our belonging to God's Kingdom does NOT mean that we cannot have subordinate loyalties. Does being a Christian release us from wedding vows, or from the obligation to perform honest work for an employer as long as we remain in his employ? No; and neither does it release us from the duty of being loyal to a country from which we receive the benefits of law and order --UNLESS, of course, that country is a tyranny, like Red China, in direct opposition to God. For of course we are to obey God rather than men whenever it's an either-or choice.

(3) Loving all people does NOT mean that we can have no individual priorities in allegiance. Does loving all people mean that you feed your own children one day in the year, and the other 364 days you completely forget your own children and go around feeding other people's children selected totally at random? Special love for your own country does not necessarily mean wishing ill to others; but unless overruled by God's will in an individual case, e.g. becoming a missionary overseas, it is at least something of a moral duty.

(4) Since James 1 assures us that God does not lure people into doing evil, we must conclude that the God-ordained functions of law enforcement and national defense referred to in Romans 13 are NOT inherently wrong. If they were inherently wrong, God would be cruelly entrapping men into evil when He appointed them to carry on these functions. (By the way, Romans 13 contains its own answer to Hitler types who misuse it to trick Christians into aiding an evil regime: verse 3 says that rulers are to punish evil, not good--so if a ruler punishes good and rewards evil, he has forfeited his Biblical basis for authority.)

(5) When Jesus talked of turning cheeks, He talked of each of us turning HIS OWN cheek. Jesus did not say that if a hooligan hits my wife in the face, I should grab my wife's head, turn HER cheek toward the hooligan and say, "Here, hit her again." There are times when passive neutrality is NOT an option, because there are times (plenty of them, too) when passive neutrality is really not neutrality at all--instead, it is POSITIVELY HELPING THE WRONG SIDE. The prisoners in Hitler's death camps were NOT rescued by witness teams handing out gospel tracts; they were rescued by soldiers.

(6) Being a patriot need not blind one to the faults of one's own country --in fact, it may put you in a special position to do something about those faults, even without resorting to violent rebellion. In August of 1991, when the Communists in Moscow tried one more time to suppress all dissent by armed force, a crucial turning point came: Russian troops refused to fire on their protesting fellow Russians. If these men of conscience had not been IN the army, they would not have been in a position to receive such an order and then refuse it; it would have been only heartless thugs who were wearing uniforms and carrying guns, and those thugs would have killed the pro-democracy protesters (the same way China's uniformed thugs DID kill the protesters at Tienanmen Square).

Now, I am very well aware of the Babylonian phenomena so horribly active in America today; but those phenomena (abortion, homosexuality, witchcraft, etc.) are alien to what God originally provided us in the founding of the United States. The true founding principles of America are not only not hostile to God's Kingdom, they actually favor the spread of the gospel of Christ when genuinely practiced. I fight against "Babylon" wherever God gives me opportunities; but America and Babylon are not identical and interchangeable. If they were, you would not see so much of Christendom's mission force being supplied by Americans. And our country would not have survived TO send out missionaries if some men had not taken up arms and fought. For every one time that God spares His children from having to fight (as when Jehoshaphat sent his musicians onto the field), there have always been ten or twenty times when God has NOT given His children a free pass, but has required them to take up arms and engage in literal physical combat.

Certainly, many Christians are called to be absolute pacifists as individuals; but the whole body is not an eye or an ear. The body also comes with knuckles and teeth. I have seen too much Godly fruit borne in the lives of war veterans who were NOT ashamed of having fought, to let anyone tell me that all of them were always wrong to have fought. If any brother is genuinely called by God to total pacifism, I will not think him a coward or traitor; but let him in turn not call me a deserter from God's Kingdom just because I try to protect my country from enemies who would attack it without provocation if they dared. It so happens that one of the clearest, most unambiguous cases of divine leading I ever experienced was the one that led me to serve in the U.S. Navy as an attack-submarine crewman, in fact a weapons technician. Let all members of the body serve as God calls them.

Yours in Christ,

Joseph Ravitts

One Scripture passage which I did not mention in this rebuttal but which Kevin will remember from our own long-ago discussions of the pacifism issues the 29th chapter of Job, which describes the virtuous conduct Job routinely practiced before his affliction. Part of this virtuous conduct consisted in physically fighting against evildoers in order to rescue their intended victims. When victims are in the very process of being robbed, murdered, etc., our smiling and telling them "Go in peace, be warmed and filled" is not going to cut it; and unconditionally loving the oppressor while allowing him to get away with his crimes--is never going to bring the oppressor to repentance and salvation (see Isaiah 26:10).

This answer to pacifism obviously required more verbiage than the simplistic statement it answered had required. It is an easy cop-out to say that complex argument "only proves one's case to be inferior to beautiful simplicity;" it is not simplicity for its own sake we should desire, but accuracy and truthfulness. As this ethical issue needed to be looked at in some depth, so may the gospel itself. Sure, the central facts of the gospel can be stated in a fairly short and plain form; but many people will never get within hailing distance of those central facts unless we (or some other instrument of the Holy Spirit) will help them hack through the surrounding jungle of modern thought. Peter's admonition for us to be ready to give a defense of our faith never said that we could always get by with just two sentences full of one-syllable words.

Of course there often are moral complications we must consider before we go in with guns blazing; pacifists themselves will remind us of this when they're in their mode of calling patriots too simplistic (their alternative to calling patriotism a complication and selling pacifism as profound simplicity). But after all the false alarms and bogus causes are culled away, there still is such a thing as justified warfighting. And with the way Red China is behaving this year, we'd better not forget it.

Mount Carmel Outreach

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