If the words of Paul sound harsh, it is because they are–and I am glad that they are. To those who treat other people as bottomless vessels for pain, Paul delivers these rebukes: “This is not lawful. This does not please God. Christ is not in this.”
Our dear brother Pete calls himself a “Christian” and is titled the “secretary of war” today. But when it comes to real faith and realist politics, he is woefully adolescent.
For those witnessing today’s televised violence and mass destruction, the collapse of meaning renders nihilism seductive. Can the collapse of meaning be resisted?
“In his struggle against European and American imperialism, and even the post-colonial Pahlavi regime, he believed that the way to liberate oneself and one’s society is to turn inward towards the collective experiences that build a moral heritage of a culture.”
Above and beyond the heartache that recent events in Iran engender among Muslims and people who are in solidarity with us, it harms what we truly and communally care about: finding creative ways to reassert who we are and what we stand for.
In the case of Iran, deterrence looks less like realism and more like nostalgia for another era. The limits of nuclear deterrence push us to reconsider how to limit war and act responsibly in a world given to episodes of madness….