Lux Lucet

North Korean dictator Kim John-un and one of his missiles.

The conflict between the US and North Korea, long simmering on the back burner, has in recent times threatened once again to come to a full boil, with the war of words between North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump threatening to become a war of bullets and bombs and ICBMs.

In August, Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress lent his support to the war option, saying in an interview with the Washington Post
that God has given Donald Trump the go-ahead to “use whatever means necessary – including war…to take out Kim Jong Un.”

Jeffress justified his stance by appealing to Romans 13, which, he said, “gives the government…the authority to do whatever, whether it’s assassination, capital punishment or evil punishment to quell the actions of evildoers like Kim Jonh Un.”

What are Christians to make of Jeffress’ statements? Do they comport with what the Bible teaches about war and foreign policy or not? Before exploring those questions, a little history is in order.

The Forgotten War

Squeezed between WWII and the Vietnam War, the Korean War is something of a forgotten conflict for many Americans. My great grandfather served as an army chaplain in Korea and the father of a childhood friend of mine served a paratrooper there, but apart from those examples, my personal connection to the war is nonexistent.

But even though the war is largely forgotten, it was by no means and insignificant conflict for the US. Running from June of 1950 until July of 1953, the war spanned over three years. a longer military commitment for the US than WWI. Here are a few other fast facts:

• North Korea was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of WWII, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was proclaimed on September 9, 1948.
  
• The DPRK has had only one ruling family in its 69 year history. It was first governed by Kim Il-sung, then his son, Kim Jong-il, who was followed by his son, Kim Jong-un, the current leader of North Korea.
  
• American soldiers killed in battle in the Korean War combat totaled 33,739, with 2,835 other deaths in theater, bringing the total number of Americans killed during the war to 36,574 (Source, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs).
  
• It was the first war in which the United Nations played a role. Military action was initiated by President Harry Truman based upon a UN Resolution, not a declaration of war as required by the US Constitution.
  
• 90% of the UN troops sent to help South Korea during the conflict were supplied by the US.
  
  

  American F-86 Sabers landing at Kimpo AFB, 1952.

• It was the first war to feature combat between jet fighters, notably the Soviet built MiG 15 and the American F-86.
  
• The inflation adjusted cost of the war to the US was $341 billion using 2011 dollars.
  
• Fighting was stopped by an armistice, not a peace treaty, so technically the war never ended. A 2.5 mile wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has separated North and South Korea ever since.
  

Over the ensuing 64 years, the armistice has held. But due to the nuclear ambitions of the North – US officials are of the opinion that North Korea has eight to 10 nuclear weapons – and the reaction of the West to these ambitions, the truce has come under increasing strain. Here’s a timeline of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Added to the nuclear arsenal is the growing rocket capability of the North. That, coupled with a Kim Jong-un’s aggressive words and behavior and President Trump’s willingness to answer in kind have brought the two nations the closest they have been to renewed military conflict.

An Evangelical Argues for War

Above I mentioned that Robert Jeffress was interviewed by the Washington Post concerning his views on renewed military conflict with North Korea. That interview was prompted by an earlier statement issued by Jeffress. His statement reads,

When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil. In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-Un. I’m heartened to see that our president — contrary to what we’ve seen with past administrations who have taken, at best, a sheepish stance toward dictators and oppressors — will not tolerate any threat against the American people. When President Trump draws a red line, he will not erase it, move it, or back away from it. Thank God for a President who is serious about protecting our country.

As Christians, what are we to make of Jeffress’ words. Is he correct in what he says? He appeals to Scripture for his foreign policy views, so to that extent Scripturalists would not find fault with him. But does he correctly apply the Scriptures to the situation in North Korea? In my view, the answer is no.

An Evaluation of Jeffress’ Argument

Jeffress bases his argument for a US attack on North Korea on Paul’s statement in Romans 13
where the apostle tells his readers that the civil magistrate does not bear the sword in vain, but is an avenger to execute wrath on evil doers. In my view, there are several problems with Jeffress’ application of this passage.

In the first place, the primary focus of Paul’s argument in Romans 13 appears to be the relationship between the civil magistrate and those under his authority. This is not to say Romans 13 cannot be combined with other passages when formulating a Christian doctrine of war – it does establish that the civil magistrate is permitted to use physical force, “the sword,” a necessary condition for waging war – but by itself it is insufficient for establishing the magistrate’s authority to conduct war.

A second problem with relying strictly on Romans 13 to justify war with North Korea is that, even if we consider only its importance for establishing the magistrate’s right to punish domestic crime, it says nothing about what activities constitute a crime – not all wrongdoing is a crime; in ancient Israel, all breaking of God’s law was sinful, but only sins to which civil penalties were attached were crimes – or what the fitting punishments are. To make these determinations, one must appeal to other passages in the Bible.

And so it is with questions of war. For the sake of argument, even if we grant that Romans 13 gives the civil magistrate the authority to wage war, it says nothing about under what circumstances war is permitted or by what means it should be carried out. Again, we must appeal to other passages to determine when and how to wage war. After all, there’s not a government on earth, including the government of the United States, that does not practice evil in one form or another. If simply practicing evil were a sufficient cause of war, then this would be justification for Trump to wage a Global War on Evil, which, come to think of it, is not that much different from the ongoing Global War on Terror. And of course, using this same logic leaders of other nations could appeal to Romans 13 to wage war on the United States.

Third, Jeffress’ unqualified assertion that Romans permits civil governments “to use whatever means necessary” to punish foreign evil doers, leaves him open to the charge that he is promoting activities such as torture and pre-emptive war, both of which fall under the category of “whatever.”

Perhaps this is not what Jeffress intends to say, I hope that he simply misspoke, but he has gone on record as downplaying the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, one of the greatest reigns of terror in human history. In response to comments made by Barak Obama at the 2015 National Day of Prayer breakfast in which then President Obama stated that terrible things had been done in the name of Christ, Jeffress went on the Bill O’Reilly show and said, “The Inquisition lasted 450 years. There were 2,200 people who died. That’s about five a year. More people died on 9/11, in one day, at the hand of Muslim terrorists than in all of the Inquisition.”

So because Antichrist didn’t kill as many people during the Spanish Inquisition as the Muslims did on 9/11, the murders and tortures carried out by Rome really weren’t all that bad. Good grief! Not to get too far off subject, but the Spanish Inquisition is the very sort of thing Christians should be denouncing as a sign that Rome is a false church, not defending as if Torquemada and his gang of thugs were fellow believing Christians for whose misdeeds we are required to give a defense .

Pre-emptive war, an attack intended to repel an impending, and supposedly unavoidable, act of war by an opponent is one of the favorite doctrine of aggressive neo-conservative thinkers. But where does the Bible ever countenance such a thing? Pre-emptive war is a doctrine of the foreign policy mystics, men who think they can somehow intuit what the right course of action is apart from any reference to the Word of God, men whose arguments John Robbins effectively refuted in his essay Truth and Foreign Policy.

Fourth, by saying that, “God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-un,” Jeffress forgets that not even the Constitution of the United States gives this power to the President. According to Article 1, Section 8 of that long-forgotten document, “The Congress shall have Power To…declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” So if anyone in the US has the power to “take out” Kim, it is the members of Congress who must make the declaration. By himself, the President has no such power. It seems a bit ironic to this observer that the Korean War, a war fought, not with a declaration of war by Congress as the Constitution requires, but under the authority of a resolution by the globalist United Nations, is nearly seventy years later coming back to bite us. Maybe the men who wrote the Constitution knew what they were talking about after all.

Fifth, According to Augustine’s Just War doctrine, war is only in accordance with God’s law as a last resort after all other options have been exhausted. Based on his remarks, Jeffress’ seems to think that this is the case. But is it? According to Ron Paul, the answer is no.

Newly-elected South Korean president Moon Jae-in has proposed direct negotiations with North Korea  leading to a peace treaty. The US does not favor     such a bilateral process. In fact, the US laughed off a perfectly sensible offer made by the Russians and Chinese, with the agreement of the North Koreans,    for a “double freeze – the North Koreans would suspend missile launches if the US and South Korea suspend military exercises aimed at the overthrow of the North Korean government (How to End the Korea Crisis, September 25, 2017).

No one is saying that Kim Jong-un is a great guy, that he is without blame, or that North Korea is a wonderful place to live. But if diplomacy is still an option, why the rush to war? If the Cold War could end peacefully with the breakup of the Soviet Union, is it impossible to think that the same could occur in Korea?

Sixth, by casting Donald Trump as a righteous avenger and Kim Jong-un as a maniacal madman bent on wanton destruction for no particular reason, Jeffress fails to consider why it is that Kim is pursuing his nuclear program. Again, Kim’s not a great guy. He’s done terrible things, heading a communist regime whose principal achievements are the impoverishment and enslavement of an entire nation. But there is a method to his madness.

In short, Kim doesn’t want to be the fool who brought a knife to a gun fight. Consider the case of two of Kim’s predecessors, Saddam Hussein and Muamar Gadafi. Both men had nuclear programs, both agreed to give them up, and both were destroyed by the US and its allies. On the other hand, nations that have developed nuclear weapons don’t get invaded. The message to leaders the world over is clear, get nukes or end up as a geopolitical version of Rodney Dangerfield, a man who famously got no respect. Is it not possible that, by overthrowing dictators it claims were at threat to its security, the US has created the very security threat it sought to eliminate? If so, would it not be wise for American to reconsider its approach to foreign policy?

Conclusion

Toward the end of his second epistle to the church at Thessalonica, the apostle Paul commanded the “busybodies” in the congregation to, “work in quietness and eat their own bread.” In so many words he told the busybodies to MYOB. And as this author has discussed elsewhere, one of the tenants of the Westphalian World Order, the system of international relations which emerged as a result of the Protestant victory over the forces of the Roman Church-State in the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, this principal same principal of MYOB applies to nations just as much as it does to individuals.

This many seem like a radical idea to many Evangelicals, steeped as they are in the aggressive foreign policy prescriptions of the neo-conservatives and dispensationalists, the sort of men who constantly augur for war. But earlier generations of Americans were quite familiar with this notion. Indeed, they took it to heart.

Consider the words of one of the wisest of our nation’s early presidents, John Quincy Adams. “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own.”

Well said. If only today’s politicians and Protestant pastors had as much biblical wisdom and yesterday’s presidents, perhaps we wouldn’t be on the brink of playing a real life version of Missile Command with a dictator on the other side of the planet.