5 Years of War - Part 2

As promised, here are my favorite quotes from Stanley Hauerwas' book The Peaceable Kingdom. On this, the fifth anniversary of my country's unprovoked invasion of another country, I pray for God's forgiveness. May He have mercy on those who suffer as a result of our own arrogance and may He also have mercy on my own land for the selective listening that took place in the run up to this war, the greed that has infused our every move since it has begun, and the violence in which we are willing to participate in the name of preserving "the American way of life."

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“The truth that moves the sun and the stars is that which is so sure in its power that it refuses to compel compliance or agreement by force. Rather it relies on the slow, hard, and seemingly unrewarding work of witness, a witness which it trusts to prevail even in a fragmented and violent world.”

“Christian ethics is not first of all an ethics of principles, laws, or values, but an ethic that demands we attend to the life of a particular individual – Jesus of Nazareth. It is only from him that we can learn perfection – which is at the very least nothing less than forgiving our enemies.”

“Christians cannot seek justice from the barrel of a gun; and we must be suspicious of that justice that relies on manipulation of our less than worthy motives, for God does not rule creation through coercion, but through a cross. As Christians, therefore, we seek not so much to be effective as to be faithful – we, thus, cannot do that which promises ‘results’ when the means are unjust.”

“I was also slowly coming to see that there was nothing very passive about Jesus’ form of nonviolence, rather his discipleship not only allowed but required the Christian to be actively engaged in the creation of conditions for justice and peace.”