| In whom do we trust?  BY PETER L. DEGROOTE In reacting to terrorism, our national priorities have become obvious. Our military expenses, manufactures and sales exceed those of Europe and several other nations combined. Our investment in the development and production of military technology has no equal. Our military power is spread worldwide in support of economic and political purposes having little to do with military defense. In consequence, when threatened, or even thwarted, we are inclined to turn to our military power as the first means of response. Questions need asking: Do we really feel secure knowing that we are citizens of the greatest military power on earth? Is there justice in forcing a global economic system on people who neither benefit from nor want it? Have we redefined democracy so that a market economy has taken the place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? To what are we being faithful? In what are we putting our trust? The similarity between how others see us and how people saw Rome in Jesus day is growing. The peace of Rome was a brutal system of military, economic and political domination that assured the Romans control of world affairs and the flow of goods and services necessary for Roman prosperity. As those goals often seem to be ours, we, like Rome, are also becoming the targets of dislike and hatred. Some of that hatred is from envy and evil, but some of it arises from the frustration of the political and economic domination that appears necessary to maintain the global economy. The lessons from the story of Jesus temptation are relevant. After the intense spiritual experience of his baptism, Jesus retreated to the wilderness where his trust in God was challenged by the offer of military, political, economic and, necessary for the day, religious power. He rejected them all. In that story, Jesus followers were recalling the kind of community he had gathered and the way he taught them to treat others. Those memories, along with the understanding that they were to be peacemakers, were foundations for the early Christian rejection of military service. Later, when the Church accepted the inevitability of war, the principle of defensive war in response to attack or immediate threat (and always proportional to the threat) became the tradition. In an imperfect world, a military seems necessary. However, the recently announced policy of preemptive military strikes exceeds necessity. Further, we need to ask if it contradicts Jesus teachings and runs counter to 2,000 years of Christian tradition. If the times call for aggressive military action, they also call for us to ask what we mean by In God we trust. Can a nation that boasts of its military superiority and announces a policy of unilateral and preemptive military intervention to assure its continued superiority over others properly say that it trusts in God? The third commandment prohibits the wrongful use of the name of God. Are we rightfully using Gods name? During the Cold War, we allied with others and proclaimed peace was only possible through the spread of democracy and the rule of law. Affirming that no nation should attack another without direct provocation, we agreed that the United Nations has the power to authorize intervention where peace and stability are threatened. Some argue that the United Nations is too weak to enforce international law, but we are as much to blame for that condition as others. Now that we are an unchallenged military power, do we decide to do whatever we choose? What have democracy and the rule of law come to mean to us? The Rev. Peter L. DeGroote is pastor of Back River UMC in Essex. | 
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