When War Harms Christians

Christianity Today has a short Q&A with Frank Wolf, who recently helped to form the House of Representatives’ Caucus on Religious Minorities in the Middle East.  Christianity is a minority in the Middle East, but that does not mean it is not well represented in the region, especially in major areas of conflict like Iraq and Lebanon.

As Christians, we need to be first concerned about our kingdom, the children of God who form the nation without borders: the kingdom of God.  When people like Wolf voice that there are "currently an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria
and another 600,000 in Jordan, a significant number of whom are
Christians—and these figures are probably growing," it makes me wonder why so many Christians don’t put the survival of the kingdom first.  As Wolf elaborates, "these refugees don’t
have food, housing, or health care. They can’t work or get an education
for their children," which means that the minority of a foothold the kingdom had in the Middle East has been ripped apart socially, educationally, religiously, and demographically by the war in Iraq.  And what’s more, this does not include the devastation caused to the Marionite Christian population of Lebanon that is around 30% of the Lebanese citizenry.

Many Christian proponents for the wars in Iraq and Lebanon have been adamant that freedom and democracy are better for the church than persecution.  A case needs to be made that war is far worse for the communities of the Kingdom than persecution is.  One of the oldest sources of edification in the Church is the martyr’s tale.  The Church grows by the blood of the martyrs.  When we are persecuted in the darkest of times the kingdom of God shines brighter.  War, on the other hand, is an arbiter of misplacement, pain, and fear.  It is far scarier than persecution, which is specifically directed at a religion, but instead is a persecution of our very humanity itself.  It is a consuming fire that destroys not just culture but the very ground beneath our feet.

We cannot continue to see how the kingdom of God is effected by the atrocities of war and continue to accept it as a trade-off for freedom and democracy.  Freedom only comes from God, and he has seen fit that in the last days freedom be not by democracy but by a King reigning over his kingdom.

May it be so.

For additional reading please see my post on Novena in Time of War .