A Time For War And A Time For Peace

SAT., MAR. 20, 1982, 5:21 AM
FARM, STUDY

Blessed are the peacemakers… and you and all Christians should feel comfortable with that. But what about Blessed are the warmakers? Is war a condition I still bless? Hear, o son, and make known your hearing.

The basic statement is still a legitimate part of the balance and rhythm I recommend. There is a time to compromise, a time to accept oppression, and, of course, a time to live in comfortable harmony with others. Each is a form of peace. Peace is relative… from very genuine harmony to uneasy compromise on to very uncomfortable acceptance of subjection, because resistance seems impossible. Because “peace at any price” is not one of My values, it follows that there can be a time for war in order to try to restore a better balance than peace provides.

Your country and a few others have developed war to such a potentially destructive happening that you almost have spoiled My statement of balance. In the past, war has been a necessary, even a good, part of life. Some innocent people have a shortened life and there is suffering, and these are not “goods”… but means to achieve good. If peace were perfect there would be no need for war. But sometimes, in peace, certain people gain advantages over others… and slowly or quickly extend that advantage. War is one of the ways that such an undesirable balance is changed. But “you have gone and spoiled it”. The destructiveness of nuclear weapons imperils the lives and well-being of those not a part of the conflict and threatens the habitability of the total earth.

Now, on the positive side, the presence and potential use of these destructive weapons does push for other ways of redressing the wrongs that develop in peace. Talking, negotiating, compromising… all of these can be substitutes for war… and certainly should when nuclear war is a possibility.

The sophisticated weapons of war are an abomination from technology. Technology is a basic good. I have no objection to the help that technology offers in the living of life here in the earth. But I do loathe two results of technology. One is its effect in making some humans feel obsolete… taking away the work they could do to feel worthy. The other is in the excessive destructiveness that technology makes possible.

I do not like to have to intervene in the affairs of humans. But the decision about the continuation of the earth as a unique realm for spiritual growth must be Mine. I do not like having to intervene so that the decision, the BIG decision remains mine. But such it is, in the “time” you are in.

It is said by peacemakers that war accomplishes nothing. This is not true. The reason for war is that peace is failing, and new conditions need to prevail. War does not necessarily bring those conditions directly, but it destroys the peace and allows new conditions to develop. To the extent that this can be done by relatively non-violent means… or with limited violence… the time for war, that of terrible technology, will not be necessary.