Pray Without Ceasing

     I have always wondered, ever since I first heard the verse in Sunday School, what “praying without ceasing” meant (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  To make matters worse, the New International Version translates the passage to say “pray continually.”  Does this verse mean that I have to spend my entire waking life praying…uttering words of confession, praise, thanksgiving, or petition to God? Should I wear out all the knees in all my clothes kneeling in prayer? And, if it doesn’t mean this, what does it mean?                 

     One of my favorite figures in Christian history was a man by the name of Brother Lawrence.  Brother Lawrence was a 17^th century Carmelite monk who served as the cook of his monastery. Brother Lawrence is most remembered today for his closeness to God which he recorded in the spiritual classic The Practice of the Presence of God.  While he worked in the kitchen scrubbing pots and cooking over a hot stove, Brother Lawrence  developed his rule of spirituality and work: "Men invent means and methods of coming at God's love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God's presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?"

     For Brother Lawrence, "common business," no matter how mundane or routine, was the medium of God's love. The issue was not the sacredness or worldly status of the task but the motivation behind it. "Nor is it needful that we should have great things to do. . . We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God."                                       

     From Brother Lawrence we begin to learn what it means to pray without ceasing.  To pray without ceasing does not mean spending the whole day in prayer on our knees, rather it means to live every moment for God, reaching out for his love and glory in every task of our lives.   Brother Lawrence sought out the love of God in every detail of his life: "I began to live as if there were no one save God and me in the world." Together, God and Brother Lawrence cooked meals, ran errands, and scrubbed pots.  In the same way, we can do our jobs, care for and manage our homes, pay our bills, and run errands with God.  When we do this we are truly praying without ceasing, and, when we pray without ceasing we grow closer and closer to God.

Justice After War: A Just Exit Strategy

New realities dictate that war should only be deemed just if the victor is completely committed to order, stability, economic prosperity, and political peace.[1]

Recently, I wrote an essay for the Baptist Peacemaker arguing that pacifists should engage just war theorists (“Why Pacifists Should Know How to Justify War,” Baptist Peacemaker, April-June 2010).  Pacifist engagement with just war theory is not a novel idea, in fact one of the most well-known voices for Christian pacifism, the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, did so in a number of his books (including When War is Unjust: Being Honest in Just War Thinking (Wipf & Stock, 1996), The War of the Lamb (Brazos, 2009), and Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolutions (Brazos, 2009) ).  Instead, my purpose was to remind pacifists that it is important to know the grammar of just war theory.  In understanding the language, one can engage just war theorists on their own terms.

For centuries Christians have articulated two main areas of just war theory: jus ad bellum (“justice in going to war”) and jus in bello (“justice during war”).  In “Why Pacifists Should Know How to Justify War” I summarized these two areas and the criteria necessary in each to determine if a war is “just.”[2]  Recently many just war theorists have turned their attention to other areas of just war theory.  One area of contemporary just war theory that should be important to pacifists is the growing literature concerning jus post bellum or “post war justice.”  Post war justice is an additional criteria of just war theory which seeks to further buttress (and challenge) any attempt to justify war—“to give it more teeth,” as the John Howard Yoder called upon Christian just war proponents to do—by stressing that the moral responsibility for war does not come to a halt when the fighting ends.  There are many recent secular articulations of the jus post bellum criteria including writers Gary Bass, Doug McCready, Mark Evans, Lois Iasiello, and Brian Orend.  One recent Christian study of jus post bellum is Mark Allman and Tobias Winright’s After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition & Post War Justice (Orbis, 2010).

In  After the Smoke Clears  Allman and Winright, following St. Augustine  see Just War theory as rooted in Christian love. “Just war,” they argue, “is a form of love in going to the aid of an unjustly attacked innocent party; however, it is also an expression of love, or ‘kind harshness,’ for one’s enemy neighbor.  It aims at turning the enemy from their wicked ways, making amends, and helping the enemy to rejoin the community of peace and justice” (Allman and Winright, 30).  Allman and Winright see a rich history of both jus ad bellum and jus in bello discussion, yet they see a great lack of post-war consideration for “helping the enemy rejoin the community of peace and justice.”[3]  Like John Howard Yoder, Allman and Winright argue for the expansion of the  just war tradition to encompass jus post bellum.  Doing this “will close the loop” and “make for a more honest just war theory.”  In other words, just war theory cannot merely have a beginning and middle but must also have an end.  That is where the criterion of jus post bellum becomes so important. 

 Allman and Winright list four categories for determining if a war is just post bellum: just cause, reconciliation, punishment, and restoration.  The goal of these four categories is to establish social, political, and economic conditions that are substantially more stable, more just, and less prone to chaos than what existed prior to the fighting ; to go beyond merely re-establsihing the status quo and to create an environment where people could pursue lives of meaning and flourishing.  In this way, just war theory addresses the problems that led to war in the first place.  The first category, just cause, demands that the purposes and goals which ostensibly justified going to war are carried out and completed in the aftermath of the fighting.  If, for example, the vindication of rights of a people group is the goal of the conflict, the party fighting the just war bears the responsibility to assist in the realistic establishment of those rights.  The second category, reconciliation, seeks restorative justice in the aftermath of war.  Instead of merely retributive and punitive justice (both of which are indeed a part of jus post bellum according to Allman and Winwright), restorative justice is forward looking and aims at reconstruction.  The third category, punishment, aims at justice, accountability, and restoration.  As basically a sub-category of reconciliation, the punishment phase of post war justice requires that “truth telling,” “apology,” and “reparation” be made on behalf of the unjust party to the group wronged.  These actions are designed for some form of restoration of the unjust group and the group wronged even if complete restoration is unattainable.  Finally, the fourth category, restoration, demands that a just war end with “the creation of conditions that permit citizens to pursue a life that is meaningful and dignified” (Allman and Winright, 143).  This responsibility falls to the victor for practical and moral reasons.  Practically because they are in a position to provide necessary security and policing (typically the most pressing post war concerns).  Morally because a just cause for going to war carries with it the obligation to reconstruct. 

While pacifists may not necessarily agree with the reasons for going to war, it is seemingly more difficult to disagree with the need for post war justice.  The four criteria of jus post bellum articulated by Allman and Winright (just cause, reconciliation, punishment, and restoration) are helpful ways of thinking about responsibilities of a war making nation[4] after the fighting stops.  To understand the importance of these issues perhaps a brief application of Allman and Winright’s four categories to the current situation in Iraq is helpful.  In a word, these categories should help determine if the employed exit strategy by the United States is just or unjust.  Is the United States attempting to meet the reasons for going to war in the first place?  Is the United States seeking restorative justice in Iraq which aims at reconciliation?  Is the United States punishing wrong doers in a manner which forces “truth-telling?”  Is the United States creating the necessary conditions through security and policing which create conditions conducive to human flourishing?  Answering these questions in print would require much more than a brief essay, yet asking them helps us understand how to think through what justice after war might look like.  In the end, perhaps most importantly for Baptist peacemakers, post war justice challenges many pacifists’ cries to “get out,” for a hasty exit which fails to meet jus post bellum criteria will ultimately determine any war to be unjust.   One might object due to the financial cost and human resources necessary to employ these measures.  Allman and Winright do not disagree with these facts but conclude, “the costs incurred are the penance for having committed the sin of war…perhaps [a consideration of post-war responsibilities] might quell the often feverish rush to war [since] war is and ought to be expensive.”

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[1]George A. Lopez, “Just? Unjust?” Sojourners 33, no. 5 (May 2004): 24.

[2] It is important to note that while there are those who see some wars as “good,” most just war theorists prefer the term “just” because they realize that all wars are inherently evil.  To just war theorists’ some wars are simply necessary to avoid a greater degree of evil.

[3] According to just war theorist Michael Walzer, jus post bellum is “the least developed part of just war theory” (Walzer, Arguing About Just War (Yale, 2004), 161).

[4] According to the principle of “right authority” in the jus ad bellum area of just war theory, only nations can make war.

“The Fighting Golden 65th”

“The Fighting Golden 65^th”

In his essay “Draft the Boys at Sixty-Five” Clarence Jordan, the founder of the controversial Koinonia Community out of which Habitat for Humanity would later be formed and author of the once popular Cottonpatch Gospels, advances the notion that the military draft is aimed at the wrong age group. In this provocative, tongue-in-cheek piece Jordan concludes that men sixty-five years and older rather than “young boys age eighteen to twenty-six” are the best candidates for the draft.  Although Jordan’s essay, written during the Vietnam conflict, is almost fifty-old (it is reprinted in Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings (Orbis, 2003) ), many of the arguments he makes shed light on contemporary perspectives on the military and war making.

In his essay Jordan argues two interrelated points.  The first argument is foundational—we should have a draft.  According to him, a draft is necessary for two reasons.  First, Jordan argues that it is America’s responsibility to police the world for peace, and, second, a draft is the only way to make sure that the “necessary war-making” happens.  In Jordan’s words, “Without the draft, there’d be just entirely too much talk about peace and too little real fighting for peace.”  The second argument in Jordan’s essay defends his view that drafting seniors is the best way to ensure that the “necessary fighting” be financially, practically, and efficiently successful.  It is in this second argument that the relevancy of Jordan’s article for today is particularly manifest. 

Jordan begins the second piece of his argument eliminating the young and middle aged as appropriate draftees.  Both of these age groups are “simply unsuitable for combat.”  According to Jordan, America’s youth are simply “too young…too flighty…too sexy..too immature.”  “Besides,” Jordan continues, “those kids need to stay home and get married and get into their vocation and start raising a family and all those kinds of things.  Middle aged folks should also be excluded from service because “they’re too productive.” The middle aged need to be kept in the country because “we got to have them to make the bombs and the planes and the napalm, without which there can be no peace.  We need them to run our big banks and our big corporations, to keep the economy booming.” 

On the other hand, Jordan posits, seniors provide the best candidates for the draft and, correspondingly, for military service.  First, seniors are the best candidates for the military financially: “ [Seniors] are getting ready to retire and they could go at their own expense due to nice pensions and social security…We don’t even have to pay ‘em.”  In fact drafting seniors would decrease the costly load of recruitment and training soldiers for, “When a man’s that old he just about as trained as he’s gonna get”—we would not have a band of immature amateurs “but an army of decrepit professionals.”  Second, seniors are the best candidates for the military due to their strong yearning to fight: “I’ve learned that the older one gets the more belligerent they get. There isn’t anybody who’s more anxious to give the Communitsts hell than a man who’s too old to deliver it…If  given the opportunity they’d just volunteer in droves” for “who would want to just fade away in boredom at a retirement center, when he can go down in a burst of glory for his superlative ideals on a foreign shuffleboard court.”  Third, drafting candidates would relieve some of the social stresses war puts on American families for seniors “usually wouldn’t leave a sweetheart or somebody like that at home weeping for him…[also,] it would cut down on the war baby boom as there would be no rush for couples to become pregnant prior to service.”  On this point Jordan argues that elderly men should not be the only ones drafted, but the women should get drafted too .  This way an elderly wife could help her husband be a “ good soldier” and “not turn foreign cities into brothels.”  Fourth, drafting seniors could relieve the financial burden of making war.  Seniors love to travel, Jordan observes, citing “the numerous campers on Interstate 75 headed to Florida.”  Drafting seniors “merely gives them the opportunity to travel abroad.”  In fact, Jordan quips, seniors could even use their own camper trailers for military conquest rather than “expensive helicopters.”  Fifth, seniors are simply more frightening to our foreign combatant than any other age group: “[Seniors’] knobby knees and varicose veins would cause a psychological effect on that country that they would capitulate immediately.”  Along with this visual image their “incessant talk” about grand children and aches and pains would “produce a stampede to the conference table” that “no tonnage of bombs” could ever hope to produce.  Sixth, drafting seniors would “support the future of America” for “when you kill a young man,” Jordan argues, “you don’t know but maybe you’re killing a future Einstein or Lincoln or Washington or some other genius. But when you kill off a guy sixty-five years old, you know what you’re killing.”  Finally, Jordan argues that a military staffed by senior citizens would be able to optimize post-war reconstruction far better than any other age group due to their seasoned professional skills.  These skills in law making, education, and economic stimulus would lead most country’s to actually desire American invasion.

Needless to say, Clarence Jordan’s affinity for wit and sarcasm are on deep display in this delightfully humorous, status-quo questioning essay.  Jordan’s trenchant rhetoric is intended to challenge the moral sensibilities and entrenched dogma behind American military policy.  Through his unique perspective he tries to alert us to the very nature of war.  Jordan forces us to reflect upon the pragmatic downfalls, some might even use the term “evils,” of war: loss of life, financial stress, social corrosion, and misguided patriotism.  He confronts politicians, policy-makers, and news pundits who cry out for war on the basis of “self-defense” or “peace through democracy” or “protection of the American way of life” with the inherent hypocrisy of their actions and statements.  Because of this “Draft the Boys at Sixty-Five,” written almost five decades ago, is actually quite timely.  It is this long dead Baptist preacher’s voice who stands prophetically against young Americans being sent to war for, while we no longer have a draft, it is nonetheless still the young who more often than not bear the weight of making war.