When Kings Go Forth to War

The Bible is left over from an earlier era where war was just considered a normal part of leadership. The most recent portions of the Bible were written almost two millennia ago. And while the total weight of evil has increased in the world during that time, so also has the universal awareness that war, oppression, injustice, and slaughter are evil. Much of this new awareness has come from people who have been inspired by the Bible; but they chose this awareness because of their preferred interpretation of scripture, not because of the Bible itself, which has remained unchanged.

I recently visited a memorial to the war dead in Germany and France [photo]. Originally built in 1925 to call for the Great War to never be repeated, it was only a little more than a decade later that the whole story occurred again. The memorial is now to the war dead of two world wars. All the government of Germany had to do was to add a couple of new dates to the stone entablature. In the rising world awareness of the evils of war and oppression, religion followed rather than leading. The peaceful countries of Europe are largely secular. There are many Catholics in France where I now live, but their government is secular.

One passage of the Bible that we often read without noticing it was the beginning of the passage about David and Bathsheba in Second Samuel chapter 11. “And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab…” It was just part of the mindset of people, even those who were supposedly God’s chosen (in particular, of King David), that spring was the time for war. War was just part of the circle of seasons of the year.

That is the point I wanted to make here. If you think that we can do something better than to make war in the spring, when the wildflowers emerge from the hills for some reason other than to drink the spilled blood of soldiers and civilians alike, you did not get this idea from the Bible.