Tag: War

Now that attention has turned from Miley to the civil war in Syria, people everywhere are wondering: Should America intervene? The cause for intervention, of course, stems from August 21, when Syrian President al-Assad allegedly used chemical weapons against rebel forces, leading to the death of over 1,400 people including...

Last year I posted a series of blogs titled “Christians and Violence” that gained a lot of attention. Much has happened since those posts, including a book on violence that I wrote with the help of my good friend and former student, Andrew Rillera. The book is titled Fight:...

In this sixth and final post on Joshua’s conquest, we will wrestle with God’s command to kill women and children in the conquest (Deut 20:16-18; cf. Josh 6:21; 8:25). It’s one thing to kill soldiers in combat, but to kill non-combatants is morally questionable to say the least. How...

In the last post, I started a series on the ethical dilemmas surrounding Joshua’s conquest. In this post, I’d like to set some groundwork by looking at two important facets: the people and the land, or the Canaanites and Canaan. The Canaanites. Many critics such as Richard Dawkins will describe...

The Old Testament is filled with various ethical dilemmas, but perhaps the most complex one is Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. God’s command to kill all the Canaanites—men, women, and children—has led Richard Dawkins, an atheistic philosopher, to state The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character...

This is the 7th (actually, the 8th) post on Christians and violence, and for better or worse, it’ll be the last. We’ve covered lots of different sub topics within the issue, including what Jesus and Paul say about violence (blog 2), how the Old Testament’s view on violence fits...

We’ve been considering the relationship between Christians and violence, and in this post, I’m going to do what many people never think of doing. I’m going to list what I think are the best arguments against my position, because the best way to understand and defend your own view...

Okay ya’ll, this is the post many of you who have been following the discussion have been waiting for. In the previous 4 posts, I’ve argued that a form of pacifism known as “non-resistance,” which says that Christians should not kill people, but they can join the military as...

In this post, we’ll dig into the issue that’s been lingering in the back of many of your minds, I’m sure, and one which has come up here and there in the comments thus far: What about the Old Testament? Surely the Old Testament’s clear allowance, and in many...

In the previous post, I declared myself to be a pacifist. In this post, I’m going to show why the Bible endorses pacifism. Again, I’m arguing for the so-called “non-resistance” version of Pacifism, which states that the church/Christian should not participate in War as a combatant and that violence—along...