According to Will Durant, the author of the award winning series, “The Story of Civilization,” there have been only 29 years in recorded history when war was not being waged somewhere on earth. Most likely there were wars during those 29 years. We just don’t have the records.
No wonder Jesus said, “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” Matthew 24:6-7
Wars are more common to mankind than a cold. Sometimes when our health is good and our resistance high we can go more than a year without a cold.
Psychologists tell us men love war because it gives us a sense of belonging to a noble cause. The enemy is always evil and so we fight for justice and freedom. If these are the needs of mankind and they do seem to be so, then we have failed to truly present Christianity for what it is. There can be no more noble and righteous cause than for us to battle the evil within and with the aid of the Holy Spirit emerge victoriously becoming more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. Everything we need for the satisfaction of the soul is within. We don’t need to kill our neighbors. As the cartoon character Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on October 1, 2002
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