There is no one on the planet, save for perhaps some very isolated indigenous peoples, who does not know that Russia has invaded Ukraine and yet another war is under way. The world waits to see what Joe Biden and the American Congress will do in response. A multitude of voices clamor for the United States to intervene. In many media outlets, there is a fevered insistence that our country step forward and help repulse the invading Russian armed forces.

This is just the latest in a long history of the violence of man to man. What is shameful about this history of bloodshed is how many times the conflicts have involved Christians killing other Christians in the name of their king or their country. I have no doubt the same is true in this current conflict as Orthodoxy is the prime religion of both of these countries. Is there anything more horrendous than those who are brothers baptized into the one and same Christ killing each other at the behest of a megalomaniacal leader? Vladimir Putin is just the latest in a long string of such leaders for whom the words of Christ fade into the background when observing the power and glory of their empire, and the potential for more land, more power, and more glory. 

• “We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools…now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One….The more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.”
~ Justin the Martyr (100AD – 165AD)

• “Murder, considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse.”
~ St. Cyprian (200AD – 258AD)

• “We who formerly hated and murdered one another now live together and share the same table. We pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us.”
~ Justin the Martyr (100AD – 165AD)

• “To those who ask us whence we have come or whom we have for a leader, we say that we have come in accordance with the counsels of Jesus to cut down our warlike and arrogant swords of argument into ploughshares, and we convert into sickles the spears we formerly used in fighting. For we no longer take ‘sword against a nation,’ nor do we learn ‘any more to make war,’ having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader, instead of following the ancestral customs in which we were strangers to the covenants.”
~ Origen (185AD – 254AD)

• “It is absolutely forbidden to repay evil with evil.”
~ Tertullian (160AD – 220AD

• “Hitherto I have served you as a soldier; allow me now to become a soldier to God. Let the man who is to serve you receive your donative. I am a soldier of Christ; it is not permissible for me to fight.”
~ Martin of Tours (315AD – 397AD)

• “Christians, instead of arming themselves with swords, extend their hands in prayer.”
~ Athanasius of Alexandria (293AD – 373AD)

• The Christian poor are “an army without weapons, without war, without bloodshed, without anger, without defilement.”
~ Clement of Alexandria (150AD – 214AD)

• “I do not wish to be a ruler. I do not strive for wealth. I refuse offices connected with military command.”
~ Tatian of Assyria (died around 185AD)

• “Above all Christians are not allowed to correct by violence sinful wrongdoings.”
~ Clement of Alexandria (150AD – 214AD)

• “The Christian does not hurt even his enemy.”
~ Tertullian (160AD – 220AD)

• “None of us offers resistance when he is seized, or avenges himself for your unjust violence, although our people are numerous and plentiful…it is not lawful for us to hate, and so we please God more when we render no requital for injury…we repay your hatred with kindness.”
~ St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (died 258AD)

• “We Christians are a peaceful race…for it is not in war, but in peace, that we are trained.”
~ Clement of Alexandria (150AD – 214AD)

• “Only without the sword can the Christian wage war: the Lord has abolished the sword.”
~ Tertullian (160AD – 220AD)

• “You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers with the Emperor even if he demands this.”
~ Origen (185AD – 254AD)

• “We who formerly treasured money and possessions more than anything else now hand over everything we have to a treasury for all and share it with everyone who needs it. We who formerly hated and murdered one another now live together and share the same table. We pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us.”
~ Justin the Martyr (100AD – 165AD)

• “For what war should we not be fit and eager, even though unequal in numbers, we who are so willing to be slaughtered—if, according to that discipline of ours, it was not more lawful to be slain than to slay?”
~ Tertullian (160AD – 220AD)

• “The professions and trades of those who are going to be accepted into the community must be examined. The nature and type of each must be established… brothel, sculptors of idols, charioteer, athlete, gladiator…give it up or be rejected. A military constable must be forbidden to kill, neither may he swear; if he is not willing to follow these instructions, he must be rejected. A proconsul or magistrate who wears the purple and governs by the sword shall give it up or be rejected. Anyone taking or already baptized who wants to become a soldier shall be sent away, for he has despised God.”
~ Hippolytus (170AD – 236AD)

• “Christ, in disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier.”
~ Tertullian (160AD – 220AD)

• Christians “love all people, and are persecuted by all;…they are reviled, and they bless; they are insulted, and are respectful.”
~ Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus (late 2nd Century)

• “I serve Jesus Christ the eternal King. I will no longer serve your emperors…It is not right for a Christian to serve the armies of this world.”
~ Mercellus the Centurion, spoken as he left the army of Emperor Diocletian in 298AD.

How did the Christian faith go from such an understanding of the faith to being ready to kill anyone who disagrees with us? These were men who would accept death before violating the instructions left by Christ. They were willing to follow Him into death, to accept as their cross the most horrific torture and death at the hand of insane rulers before they would pick up the sword and commit violence against another human being. In 1700 years we have come full circle, heeding the ravings of George Bush as he stands on the ruins of the Twin Towers and goads us into attacking a country which had nothing to do with the terror attacks. Every Bible-thumping Evangelical in America was calling out for blood instead of saying, “Wait a damn minute, it was Saudis who attacked us. What’s going on here?”

Somehow the Christian religion went from this self-sacrificial paradigm to a history of serious and severe violence against all perceived enemies, particularly in the Western regions where Catholic armies happily killed anything not Roman Catholic, such as they did in Constantinople in 1204. I am hard pressed to understand why Christianity has attracted so many followers. Perhaps it has been the insistent preaching of a fiery hell of judgment which awaits anyone foolish enough to not come under the loving protection of the one and same kind God who will throw you into hell if you don’t submit to Him and the pope of Rome. Fear is a persuasive motivator, but a person who converts because he is afraid of an eternal barbeque is acting in complete selfishness rather than cruciform love for a loving God who died for him. The behavior of so many people who have happily sliced and diced their way through legions of fellow Christians in wars promoted by kings and emperors on behalf of “God’s glory” (or some other benighted folderol like that) convinces me that too many converts have been no more than baptized pagans unchanged in heart. It is small wonder Gandhi said of the religion, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  

In my anger and disgust, I digress. There is a war to be fought, but it is not one of this earth, accomplished with tanks, guns, and missiles. It is the war of the soul, the battle to change one’s heart, the doing of violence to our sinful nature by means of fasting, prayer, and the Sacraments of the Church. In some ways, this is a much harder battle to fight. For some men, it especially those without conscience, it is easy to kill another human being once that man has been identified as “the enemy.”  But the killing of the self – that is another story entirely. The flesh, the old nature of which St. Paul spoke, is not only our enemy, but is a deeply entrenched part of our very being, so that we are divided in our loyalty between Christ and the world. 

Another battle in this war looms on the horizon of this never-ending struggle. In a couple of weeks, the Great Fast of Lent will be upon all faithful Orthodox Christians. To keep the Fast and keep it well is an intense struggle. I can only speak for myself – it is one that I have lost much more than I have won. I have fought, but not with my whole heart. I cheat. I eat fish instead of meat, but fish is proscribed also during the Fast. Some days I have entirely refused to fight the battle and have given in to my hunger rather than submitting to the discipline of the Fast. At the end, when Pascha is celebrated with the beautiful repetition of the hymn, “Christ is risen from the dead, by death He conquered death,” I look back with regret that I didn’t do better – and hope that next year I can make a more concerted effort.

THIS is the war we have been called to fight. And if all men were fighting it with the energy and enthusiasm, we see for throwing bombs at other countries, we would not see on television the bodies of little children littering the streets while their parents cry out in agony and despair. The goal of this war is the killing of the self – the self that demands, takes, intrudes, and steals. St. James said, “You lust, and have not: you kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain you fight and war, yet you have not, because you ask not.”

One of two powers will rule each one of us:  lust with its insatiable desire for acquisition, no matter what the cost in human misery and suffering, or Christ, who is cruciform love embodied. In following Christ, the early Christians were willing to follow Christ into death that they might live eternally. 

Today, we are willing to send others to death that we might live comfortable lives in disregard for the poor, for peace, and for the righteousness of the love we have been commanded to give to all mankind – including our enemies.