The Two Futures Project: Who Would Jesus Bomb?

by Shane Claiborne 05-06-2009

In light of headlines that dozens of kids and families were killed in US bombings of Afghanistan on Tuesday, this conversation seems as urgent as ever. God help us. It was a beautiful thing to join my friend and brotha Rob Bell, Baptist minister Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, former Secretary of State George Schultz, author and mega-church co-founder Lynne Hybels, and Southern Baptist leader Jonathan Merritt as we launched the Two Futures Project last week, an ambitious new initiative to abolish nuclear weapons. Several folks have asked for transcripts of the two-minute statements we made at the press conference (via phone). So we threw mine together here:

Forgive the background noise …. I’m sitting in an airport coming back from Taylor University, a typical Christian liberal arts college in the Midwest. But last night hundreds of students built a cardboard shantytown in the middle of the campus quad and slept out in the rain to remember the homeless, undocumented, and displaced people in the world. They will continue to sleep out as part of an entire week of faith and social justice, bringing attention to issues like nuclear weapons, immigration, and poverty.

It was one more sign of the changing face of evangelicalism in post-religious right America, where young Christians are not limited to the hot-button issues and stale debates of the past — but are convinced that our faith has to connect to the world we live in, that we have to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

And we are aware of the glaring contradictions – that the U.S. continues to try to be a credible voice for peace while maintaining the largest weapons arsenal in the world, with a military budget larger than the combined military budgets of the next 30 countries…

We are convinced that Dr.King was right when he said, “A country that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching a spiritual death.”

We have seen the mistakes. Harry Truman thanked God for the atomic bomb and prayed God would help us use it wisely, as he dropped it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A new generation in the church is saying our God does not bless bombs. Our God is the One who lived in Jesus and said if we pick up the sword we will die by the sword… if we trust in the bomb we will die by it.

It is this Jesus who said we are to love our enemies, and we are convinced that it is impossible to simultaneously love them and prepare to kill them en masse. When I was a teenager we wore bracelets that said WWJD — What Would Jesus Do? Now young people in the church are taking that a step further, wearing T-shirts like the one I saw last night — WWJB — Who Would Jesus Bomb? And the answer is clear. It is time to imagine another future than the one doomed to us by nuclear arms — one that the prophets foretold where people beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, one where we turn the instruments of death into things that bring life. That is why I am excited to endorse and champion the Two Future’s Project… because I think it gets us one step closer to God’s dream for the world.

For more info and to join the movement, check out www.twofuturesproject.org.

Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.

Categories: War & Peace

Josh_Rowley

Thanks for this good word and good work.

SisterMarie

Sorry Shane, you're going to have to do something more drastic than sleeping outside in a cardboard box. MLK did not highlight the civil right struggle by sleeping in a box, and those of my generation who protested the war in Vietnam showed a little more moxie that the box protest.

If you're serious about this, you need to risk jail time. I think you've already done this once. Our country keeps making the same dumb mistakes, and now the absence of the draft maintains a huge gulf between those who daily risk their lives and those who demonstrate their courage by sleeping in a box.

captainplanet

I think the cardboard box reference was more anecdotal. Just something they were doing at the campus he was recently at. Not something related to this new project specifically.

talitha_koum

point taken, but I think sleeping outside in a cardboard box IS pretty drastic for young college students in America, who don't have to do anything at all to empathise with those less privileged if they don't want to. Let's encourage them rather than criticise the first steps. Sleeping in a box may be the most courageous thing they do all year - and that's ok. At least they are doing SOMETHING. Way better than the alternative.

letjusticerolldown

To me your comment sounds very 'ungenerous.' Is that what you want?

koalamasala

Hello, Sister Marie,

Actually, Shane has risked both jail time AND his life by going to Iraq with the Christian Peacemakers (see his book "The Irresistible Revolution").

And I agree with talitha koum, that college students sleeping outside in cardboard boxes -is- meaningful, as it may mean a life of service and compassion to those living in cardboard boxes on regular basis (esp. up North!).

TheBig3

This sounds great... I just visited the website for the Two Futures Project and have this question. Why did the leadership feel the need for a "faith statement?" Can't we agree that if you say that you're a Christian, that's great?? There were several parts of the faith statement that I didn't agree with. What does that mean for people like myself who can see getting involved in TFP but don't like the idea of drawing lines around our faith?

As an aside, when I was in college, I learned this definition for a feminist: "one who holds women in high esteem." It's a pretty broad definition. Can we say that a Christian is "one who holds Jesus in high esteem?"

Thanks for this good work. Despite my qualms about faith statement, I hope TFP gains traction.

http://thebig3.typepad.com

djames_abi

"Who would Jesus bomb?" Is that a rhetorical question? It is a difficult one, but the expected answer is probably not the biblical one.

Here is a list of those that Jesus would (and did bomb):
The Amalekites
The Canaanites
The Egyptians
The Amorites
The Edomites
The Babylonians
In general, all the nations that stood against the God of Israel, YHWH, the pre-incarnate Christ.

The question as put, is loaded. and straw-man - bait and switch argumentation at its best. It completely ignores the testimony of Scripture. During the brief 33 years of Jesus sojourn on the earth as the incarnate Son of God, his message and missions were temporarily modified for a specific purpose. But the testimony of history past - and the promise of history future, indicates that Jesus' approach from AD 27-33 (depending on your chronology) was the exception, not the rule, in how God deals with those who have rejected Him.

squeaky

Seems to me you contradict yourself. If Jesus' ministry was vastly different from the interpretation of Scripture you just laid out (you said His ministry was the exception, not the rule), then in fact, Jesus still wouldn't bomb who you claim He would bomb.

You also seem to be arguing that since Jesus' ministry is the exception, we can therefore disregard His ministry and message. He fulfilled the law, however, and that act alone set us all free from the apparent condemnation and judgment in the OT.

Alternatively, perhaps the OT should be viewed through the light of Christ rather than the other way around. Given that Jesus came to Earth to put a face and personality to God so we can see Who He really is, it would seem the former might be the better approach.

The condemnation you see in the Bible is not what I see when I look at Jesus.

And even if the OT judgment were still in effect, where does God give us the mandate to mete out that judgment? We cannot judge perfectly, and thus don't have the authority to do so, unless given to us, and it has not been.

JamesM

Okay. Thanks. Time to look for another god. I don't want any part of the one you described.

canucklehead

Whew, I'm feeling better already!!!! BOMBS AWAY!! YEE-HAH!!

I MAY NEVER MARCH IN THE INFANTRY, RIDE IN THE CAVALRY, SHOOT THE ARTILLERY; I MAY NEVER FLY O'ER THE ENEMY, BUT I'Z IN THE LO-WARD'S ARMEE, YEE-HAW! (repeat**)

ALTOGETHER NOW

I'Z IN THE LO-WARD'S ARMEE, YEE-HAW! I'Z IN THE LO-WARD'S ARMEE, YEE-HAH! (to repeat**) - and repeat ad nauseum until Squeaky tires of squeezin' the accordion YEE-HAW!

SisterMarie

Wow. I actually know that song. Citing it does reveal something about your age.

djames_abi

My point was that Jesus / God carries out his will in various ways - and that the "turn the other cheek" message of Jesus is only part of the picture - but is the one that is primarily or exclusively being promoted - to the point that with regard to the future, preterists like Bell and McLaren and others, say that Jesus can't return as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah to mete out judgment because it is against his character and message. That characterization of Jesus is flawed because it only focuses on a very small portion of Jesus' actions in history and declares that as normative and exclusively the way God works. My point is that Jesus' actions prior to His incarnation and those that will take place in fulfillment of prophecy in Daniel and Revelation clearly show that there is more to the way he acts than what he did in the Gospels. I'm not suggesting that we are perfect - or can perfectly mete out justice - however, we can see principles that indicate that part of protecting the relatively innocent might require force against the wicked. It is one thing if I turn the other cheek if I am attacked. It is quite another if I have the ability to stop someone from raping my daughter. I may turn my own cheek, but I have the right and responsibility to protect someone else's in the face of evil.

There is no contradiction in my understanding - they are complementary - as opposed to deficient. Mine takes into account the witness of both the NT and OT - while the "meek Jesus" view picks and chooses only portions of the Gospels alone - and doesn't even account for Jesus' words that he came "not to bring peace, but a sword."

I'm not advocating violence. Nor am I advocating attempts to establish a theocracy - which can't happen until Christ is sitting on the throne of David in Jerusalem. I am simply suggesting that we not take away from Scripture - for which there are ample warnings.

TylerWS

Thanks for the love, Shane! Interested parties can check out Shane's comments -- as well as our other speakers, here:
http://faithinpubliclife.org/content/feature/fa...

Tyler @2FP

CStat

I cannot comprehend how so many Americans think that our military actions during all the wars the US has participated in following WWII "protected the innocent"! In the Old Testament when God was carrying out his plan of establishing the Israelites as his chosen people, wars were fought by soldiers meeting and fighting man to man on the battlefield. Today bombs are dropped from planes manned by individuals who do not see the people who are killed below which include many, many innocent civilians and small children. Fighting on the ground also causes many civilian deaths and serious, agonizing injuries. This is no more a God-sanctioned war than was the Viet Nam war. Wars today are fought for political reasons and for keeping the military industrial complex in business. No one can convince me that God is approving of the Iraq war. Our country is going to reap what the proud and reckless Bush Administration has sown. Until Americans fear the Lord and seek to do his will more than they fear a handful of terrorists, we are in trouble. Anyone can see that God has not particularly blessed us lately. Our economy and morale are both failing. Iraqi and Afghanistan people are, on the whole, victims of cruel people coming from various places, but mostly from the US. These people are suffering and are in despair! Their lives have been in a state of turmoil and on-going trauma, as have the lives of our military men and their loved ones at home, for 7 years now! If any American truly believes that we are doing good in the Middle East instead of evil, he or she must be either delusional or woefully uninformed. Please seek the truth and connect with the reality that close to 200,000 unnecessary deaths as a result of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have occurred with an estimated 2 million refugees fleeing Iraq and nothing positive has come of it. I would love to see our country as the protector of innocents. Let us all pray that we can become that. There is nothing more blessed and moral that we can ever hope to be.

ando

"God has not particularly blessed us lately. Our economy and morale are both failing. Iraqi and Afghanistan people are, on the whole, victims of cruel people coming from various places, but mostly from the US. These people are suffering and are in despair!"

I'll agree with you on that point. Would you also add the 50 million aborted children and a promiscuous society to the mix? Then we can move past ideology and onto a holistic view of scripture.

djames_abi

CSTAT: Does this mean that you see it in WWII and before?

keithsmith

While it is absolutely true that Jesus said those who live by the sword, die by the sword but that Scripture is often not a complete thought.

Because that exact sword that Jesus got onto to Peter about came from where/when?

Jesus telling the disciples to sell their cloaks and buy a sword during the Last Supper. They responded that they already have two and he said that would be enough.

So, absolutely, we are to not live by the sword but equally and absolutely Jesus indicated there would be times we would need a sword.

It is time for Christians to use Scripture in their full context and not the only parts that makes THEIR point.

CStat

Exactly where is all the proof that the Bush administration was doing God's will by invading Iraq or even interested in what the will of God is? Do you think you can just slap the Christian label on anything that suits your fancy and call it justice? Do you think the United States has the right to slaughter and torture because we are more valuable than other people? Women choosing to get abortions and the choice of our government to lie and manipulate us into a war are two entirely separate issues. Abortion is always the lame excuse everytime you don't have anything relevant to say. I repeat my earlier statement: Until Americans fear God more than they fear a group of terrorists our country is in great peril.

CStat

"Jesus indicated there would be times we would need a sword"

Jesus only approves the sword when the cause is righteous and just. There is no point in wasting my time to speak of the insanity of invading Iraq. The facts speak for themselves. There were just reasons for going into Afghanistan and if we had stayed there and prevented the Taliban from regrouping we would not be in the position we are now. The last news report I heard today stated that the Taliban are 70 miles outside of Islamabad. If they gain access to the nuclear weapons in Pakistan, our discussion may be cut short. But then some of you won't notice since you are so busy out fighting abortion.