War as Metaphor
“The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.”
-George Orwell
The culture war. I’ve always felt like I’ve been caught in the middle of this one. In part this is for the simple reason that I have a great deal of difficulty supporting the idea that we attempt to legislate good behaviour. What I really want to address though is why this is treated as a war. We use war metaphors a great deal, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terror. Paul used war images and metaphors in his letters too, so it’s not exactly new. But, in this case, is it helpful?
I sort of twigged on to this idea when reading Andrew’s post here where he suggests that the tendency for Christians to see the gay community in “us vs. them” terms as a sort of consequence of the culture wars. As much as I understand the desire to change our culture (something that both liberals and conservatives seek to do), I wonder what the consequences are for us to frame this as a war.
War is a nasty affair, there are casualties, sides are taken, those who don’t sufficiently take sides are viewed suspiciously, there are spies, betrayals, propaganda, wild accusations and all manner of other unpleasant things. Is this how the church wishes to interact with the world? War makes people rotten, look at the caricatures of Japanese people made by Allied press in World War II.
Such things happen in culture wars too. I remember a Christian speaker in 1998 at the height of the Clinton impeachment furor speak of the affair. Make no mistake, this was not some sort of explanation that no one is immune from temptation or that wrongs done in private usually have a way of coming to light, no, this was lurid smear. This was insult and innuendo of a type that was thoroughly mean-spirited – more of a gloating than a moral lesson. This was a middle-aged woman becoming a high school gossip right in front of our eyes. But hey, it’s a war out there right?
I think we need a better paradigm.
Hmm… I’m not sure it’s a bad term.
Abortion alone would seem to make it worthy enough to be called a war, from a conservative Christian perspective (i.e., if pro-lifers are right, and I assume you were speaking to pro-life type Christians when you decided to ask whether their use of the term “war” was appropriate, then the U.S. and Canada have topped Hitler many times over in murder-count; I’d say that justifies some harsh language).
Sure the “war” mentality can lead to less than desirable actions, but as you point out, St. Paul used this language and in that context also mentioned that the war the church wages is not against people but against the powers; further, the weapons mentioned are anything but the kind of actions you mentioned. This means that Christian war ought to be fought in a different way against different opponents, but not that the sense of urgency that comes with labeling a conflict a “war” never should be invoked. At least that’s my .02.
You’ve given me a couple things to think about, but quickly, I will say that it appears much easier to separate out “powers” from “people” in theory than it is in practice.
True enough, and I don’t think we are necessarily even supposed to try to do that, in practice. But it at least tells us something about how to interpret the actions of the people who serve the powers we are opposed to: there is an element of bondage and mental control here, which would prohibit us from painting these people as purely and deliberately evil.