"But it is not conceivable that any improvement of responses could ever trun them into acts of insight or even remotely tend to do so. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and the truth known." The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism (C.S. Lewis)
One of the things that I love about college life, are those opportunities you get to just talk philosophy and religion with other classmates. Obviously as a Christian and an aspiring missionary, I see each opportunity as a change to share my faith. But it's also an opportunity to do another important task... clearing up misconceptions about Christianity.
Anyways, God has put a great guy in my lab for the last several years. Although he probably doesn't like me giving him this label, he's in my mind the ideal "educated post-modern" college student. Even though he's an engineer, he's well versed in philosophy and he's taken a lot of time to think about what he believes. He is by no doubt smarter than me and so my "big brother" method shoveling loads of ideas force doesn't work ... most of the time : ) But seriously, he is a deep thinker and I really enjoy talking with him, even though almost everything that he believes is opposite of what I believe.
Today we talked about war. His position was ... if Christianity (or any other ideology) gives any credibility to the idea of a "justified" war, than it should be fought against. I did my bit, asking questions about his presupposition of why we are "supposed" to do anything when everything is in the end "relative". But I also tried to spent some time actually answering his questions about a Christian (my Christian) perspective on war. I noticed today that this kind of discussion is a really critical ministry for us as Christians because for the most part, those who are not of the faith (and sometimes even thoses who are! ) are not familiar with the basic Christian stances on different important issue. Even though you might not be sharing the gospel directly, clearing up misunderstanding is a huge task that needs to be accomplished before the any type of initial evangelism begins.
So, I've actually been think about the war issue for a while and here are my thoughts. I believe that Christianity teaches peace and non-violence on the individual level. We are not to murder (physical, mentally or emotionally). I believe that there is forgiveness when someone is killed in self-defense or by accident but it is never the "right" thing to do. I believe that the government has the special power given to it by God, to bring justice to it's land and to discipline (in some cases use force against) those who do evil. Christians are to submit to this authority unless, the action of the authorities go against a greater command (there are a heirarchy of moral laws). I believe that war (using force), in a theoretical sense can be justified when it is purely in self-defense, but in reality, I believer that there will never be such a thing as a war that is purely executed in self-defense (there are always other motivations). So I do not believe that war can actually be justified. There is more to say about this issue but I'm not trying to be exhaustive. Those are the bare conclusions I've come to.
In response to a comment from my friend SN: I don't think that saying that the natural instinct of "self-preservation" lays enough grounds for a "common moral law" to not kill, that should be followed by everybody. Self-preservation, can go both ways, offering only an incomplete explanation (justification) for either killing or not killing. Natural instinct from a naturalist point of view (if I understand naturalism correctly), is nothing more than emotions-feelings induced by somekind of natural process (possible a chemical reaction) that has no normative power (can't be used as a standard for implementing an absolute truth).
Ok, there are some thoughts from todays cafeteria talk. Looking forward to some more deep talks, praying that our time will one day bear fruit and that our conversations wouldn't have been a meaningless exercise our mouths.
