Jesus and War?

[TheoloJer]

I was reading in my history book a quote from a famous biologist who said that War was the founding principle of all human life-- in which case, without war, life cannot progress.

And it had me thinking to Matthew 24, and Jesus’ signs of the times, where Jesus said in the end, there will be wars and rumors of wars because the 2nd coming.

Before I came across that biologist quote, I postulated that since the world has always started out with Wars-- Jesus proclaimed that’s how the it will all end, because there is no escape from war.

How would fellow Christians, who take a position of evolutionary biology, respond?

 

[steve53]

That is the flaw in folks like Dowd who try to meld in evolution and Christianity, as if Christianity is the natural result of evolution.

Evolution is a horrible process. Everyone gets wiped out except for the strongest few.

The Nazis loved evolution.

 

[TimothyH]

Matthew 24 is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the extermination of 1.2 million Jews, all of which took place in 70AD. The Mount Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 find’s its fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, the cessation of temple worship, the end of the Levitical Priesthood, and through these events God’s final transfer of authority from the “Chair of Moses” to the “Chair of Peter.”

The world did not “start out with wars”. Our original parents were created in a perfect state of grace, walked with God, and were “Naked and without shame” in each other’s presence. That is how the world started out. War is a consequence of man’s sin, and caused by our own sin, our “hardness of heart.” Sin is not what makes life progress. War is not what makes life progress. Sin is death. Christ is life. Christ is my life.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. (John 14:6)

If war is what makes life on our planet progress then Christ was a criminal lunatic.

-Tim-

 

[Polycarp1]

The world did not “start out with wars”. Our original parents were created in a perfect state of grace, walked with God, and were “Naked and without shame” in each other’s presence. That is how the world started out. War is a consequence of man’s sin, and caused by our own sin, our “hardness of heart.” Sin is not what makes life progress. War is not what makes life progress. Sin is death. Christ is life. Christ is my life.

Absolutely!!!

 

[JRKH]

Good answers above…But allow me to take a slightly different tack…

The quote you reference is absolutely wrong at it’s most basic element - the foundation of life - let alone human life. The foundation of all life is Love…

Why do organisms cluster together…Not for war but for love, for mutual benefit, for food, warmth protection etc. Whether one speaks of creatures as complex as mammals or as simple as single celled organisms, or the coalescing of the billions of cells in our own bodies, the reason for their clustering is the same…Love = mutual benefit, building up, reproduction, continuation, development, etc.
None of these things can have a foundational principle of war, stemming as it does from evil itself. Evil drives apart, tears down, separates, pits one against another, destroys what it cannot control and generally prevents the very spark that is Life and order.

No - the quote from the Biologist is a misguided notion that starts from a false premise of what is foundational in all things…

Peace
James

 

[Myqyl]

Matthew 24 does not imply that wars and rumors of wars are signs that the end is near. Jesus was saying that they are NOT signs the end is near. He said :

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 24 : 6[/BIBLEDRB]

“But the end is not yet”… Wars are not a sign (or cause of) end times…

Jesus was not saying that in the end there will be wars anf rumors of wars because of the second coming. He said don’t be worried when you see them happening, because they will but are NOT a sign of the second Coming

God bless

 

[Julia_Mae]

I was reading in my history book a quote from a famous biologist who said that War was the founding principle of all human life-- in which case, without war, life cannot progress.

And it had me thinking to Matthew 24, and Jesus’ signs of the times, where Jesus said in the end, there will be wars and rumors of wars because the 2nd coming.

Before I came across that biologist quote, I postulated that since the world has always started out with Wars–

But just because one guy with letters after his name said something, doesn’t make it true.

Paleoanthropology was, like most science, male-dominated for a very long time. This being the case, there were theories of the way things happened based on such premises as “nature red in tooth and claw!” For instance: stone tools were thought to have been created as weapons and then adapted to other uses.

Nope. In fact, they were first used to acquire and process food. Not only was “Man the hunter” not accurate, “men and women the scavengers” turned out to be factual. Hunting larger game than himself was a much later development.

A rather large number of cultures were not organized around war. This is, now, unfortunately more common than less. The world gets smaller and more crowded, we get longer lived, annihilating one another becomes the substitute for naturally short lifespans and the diseases we wiped out.

When we stop responding to our animal nature and allow ourselves to be dominated by spiritual knowledge and the law of God not biology, we’ll stop murdering each other.

 

[TheoloJer]

Thank you for the response everyone. Anyway, I was gonna start this on another thread on this, but realizing that the issue is relevant to the thread, I’ll keep it here…

Now that we got the Jesus and War issue out of the way-- I want to get to the initiate start of the conversation…Darwinian’s concept of how ‘War being upon itself and establishing order.’

As I thought deeply about it, I couldn’t help but think about the past wars that society and the human race has gotten itself into-- the French Revolution, Civil War of 1861-65, WWI, WW2, conquests and colonialization, etc. All of these wars have a connection of negative causes of how these wars started, but in the aftermath, these wars brought out better consequences. And according to Darwinianism, that’s how life thrives. It really troubles me because it has me thinking of how could life thrive and be strengthened through war? Have all of our causes been all for naught?

It really concerns me on a intellectual and Christian spectrum…

 

[Julia_Mae]

As I thought deeply about it, I couldn’t help but think about the past wars that society and the human race has gotten itself into-- the French Revolution, Civil War of 1861-65, WWI, WW2, conquests and colonialization, etc. All of these wars have a connection of negative causes of how these wars started, but in the aftermath, these wars brought out better consequences. And according to Darwinianism, that’s how life thrives…

Well, no, not exactly. Darwin’s model is one where species compete and those less fit get selected-out. Usually by being eaten by something else. Sometimes by disease. Darwin saw war as the way we select. But I don’t think “better consequences” follow war. For whom? The victors?

In Darwin’s day (and I have immense respect for him as a scientist) the British Empire was enormously successful. His viewpoint was that all the wars had been a good thing.

For the British. Pretty sure the people of India weren’t that delighted. Leave Darwin to what he was good at: figuring out mechanisms for the change in species over time. He was no social scientist or historian or… well… he wasn’t anything really but a self-trained naturalist and a brilliant, disciplined man.

Making war on one another is part of our basest instincts and most primitive animal nature. We can intellectualize the reasons, but in the end, it’s as far from God as we can get.

 

[steve53]

Taking it down to an individual level, I can use evolution to justify any crime against person.

I kill someone and it is justified. I am the strongest so I SHOULD kill people who dare compete with me. And take their women to insure my genes dominate the gene pool.

There are no morals or right and wrong with evolution.

It is amazing how some folks glorify it.

It is sort of like a South American soccer match.