On Our Side

I greet with suspicion any claim that “God is on our side,” even when it comes from one of the writers of the Bible such as the composer of Psalm 124. When I hear such a claim, I always think of a line from songwriter Terry Scott Taylor: “Everyone seems to think you’re on their side, / but I don’t think you’re that small.” God, the Holy, the Sacred, the Mystery at the center of reality, the Ground of All Being cannot be circumscribed by any of the petty differences we cook up to fight about. Even the ones we consider serious enough to go to war and kill over must seem paltry and inconsequential in the light of Eternity.

At the same time, however, we have the evidence of God’s intimate connection to each of us to consider. God is as close to us as our own skin; every breath we take is a gift from and a portion of God’s Spirit; God has numbered every hair on our heads. Shouldn’t that mean, then, that God must choose sides in our disputes? In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln pointed out that “both [sides in the Civil War] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other.” He concludes from this, “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His [sic] own purposes.”

Doesn’t this suggest that God does indeed choose sides? Surely, we think, good twenty-first century Christians that we are, God must have chosen the side of the Union in its struggle to end the scourge of slavery! The same with World War Two: God had to have been on the side of the Allies against the inhumanity of the Germans and Japanese. These were good wars, righteous wars, justifiable wars, and the moral lines were clearly drawn. Of course God honored the side fighting for freedom over the slavers and genocidaires. Right?

But when we make those assumptions we find ourselves on slippery ground. Just because God opposes slavery and genocide, it does not necessarily follow that God endorses the tactics we choose to fight against those evils. Did God endorse the bloody futility of Grant’s campaign in the Wilderness, or the Americans’ decision to fire-bomb Dresden or drop the atomic bombs on Japan? Must we imagine that God countenanced the slaughter of more than 600,000 people in the fight to end slavery (especially when you consider that a significant percentage of those who fought on the Union side actively objected to the notion that they were giving their lives to free the enslaved “Negroes”)?

Wouldn’t it be closer to the truth to imagine that God grieves every war, from the completely unjustifiable invasions of Ukraine or Iraq to those conflicts we romantically but erroneously term “just wars”? (No civil or international war in our history has ever met all the criteria of classical just war theory, not even World War Two.) In my understanding God is innately nonviolent; it’s not an optional feature of God’s nature, like a moon roof or cruise control, but rather an essential part of God’s character. Jesus, who incarnated God more fully than any other human being ever, pursued a nonviolent course even to the point of a gruesome, unjust death at the hands of violent powers. He did not defend himself violently, and he forbade his followers from using violence on his behalf either.

So I get a little wary when I read things like Psalm 124, which assumes that Israel’s unlikely victories came because God fought on their side against their enemies. I find myself wondering how they would rationalize the times that they lost the battles. Had God switched sides? And I remind myself that the other side was praying to their version of God as well and making the same assumptions as the psalmist’s side. I rather think that God chooses neither side in violent conflicts either then or now. God desires justice and right dealing, which if we really took seriously and implemented consistently would stop the wars before they started. If we would simply listen to God’s voice and put into practice God’s clearly revealed will, we could avoid the violence altogether. Then there would be no question of whose side God was on, because there would be no sides in the first place.

“Everyone seems to think you’re on their side, / but I don’t think you’re that small.” Me neither, Uncle Terry. Me neither.