| War is failure when peace is the goal War is a failure of peacemaking, a digression from Gods peace, said the Rev. Luis Leon, according to the Washington Post, when he spoke on Sunday, March 23, at St. Johns Episcopal Church, located just across Lafayette Square from the White House. Our Christian duty cannot be fulfilled with a military victory. It was a tense, troubling Sunday as Americans learned of the first U.S. casualties in our military invasion of Iraq. Church sanctuaries and altar rails reportedly drew crowds of solemn worshippers, once again seeking emotional and spiritual comfort and gbwc_superuserance in a time of national distress. It is difficult not knowing right from wrong or being able to divine the certain consequences of action and inaction. God forbid that one apocalyptic day, we might be forced to admit that we shouldve, wouldve, or couldve prevented some act of destruction or our very demise. Nevertheless, we lean upon our Christian faith for solace and for answers, not just the Old Testament Scriptures that some use to rationalize a just or holy war against an evil empire. We seek the blessed assurance that Jesus offers in the New Testament, where good overcomes evil and even death. But do we seek to follow Jesus principles of peaceful forbearance, principles that define our Christian duty and offer us true victory? Clearly, this war is a result of failed diplomacy, although many Americans would pin that failure on the United Nations because it could not reach global consensus in our favor. We state several purposes for our military invasion: to end Saddam Husseins brutal, arrogant reign over an oppressed Iraqi people; and to find and destroy his disavowed nuclear and biochemical weapons of mass destruction. We want to get him before he can get us. Despite our governments insistence, some of us still question these motives and find them unsubstantiated and unjustifiable for war. When does a threat become imminent? However, opinion polls and media interviews indicate that most Americans upwards of 70 percent support our military goals and efforts, many of them with outspoken, patriotic conviction. Some reluctantly admit their uncertain concurrence, while others are merely reluctant to denounce the war for fear of reprisalsor of simply being wrong. We do see the multitudes of anti-war protesters in cities around the world, bearing placards, shouting slogans, being arrested, and voicing their ardent convictions as well. Yet, they receive fringe attention in the media, reducing their clamor to a virtual whisper. Rarely, it seems, have so many meant so little in the forum of public opinion. Of course, everything changes when threats and rumors of war become realized. We are compelled to join ranks and support our troops and our national leaders, to appear united and boldly confident in our convictions and expectations of success. Many say they are opposed to war but acknowledge that this war is a necessary exception. We become prayerfully focused on success and on survival for us and for our troops. And those of us with a proper amount of humility hope that we are doing the right thing, or if it is the wrong thing, that God may forgive us and have mercy on us. As Bishop Felton Edwin May wrote in his letter to United Methodist churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, We stand in need of Gods steadfast grace and the peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding. Indeed, we must remember that which we would rather forget: that war is sinful and ultimately a failure of our will and wisdom when our goal is peace. If we submit to its course, no matter how compelling and defensible our reasons, we turn away from the new commandment and the new covenant given to us by Jesus Christ. Moreover, the outcomes of war especially long-term are no more certain than those of peaceful restraint. Thus, we may well have accepted failure when our goal is success, embraced an evil course in our quest for good, and invited imminent, unseen dangers while trying to ensure our survival. I pray I am wrong. Only time will tell, and for better or for worse, one thing is certain: time is in Gods hands. | 
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