The God of Battles by C. P. B.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · Mar 29, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 15, No. 13.

The God of Battles.

By C. P. B.

ONE of Lord Roberts’ recent dispatches runs as follows:—

“By the help of God and the bravery of her majesty’s soldiers, the troops under my command have taken possession of Bloemfontein.”

Upon this the Chicago Journal remarks:—

“It is curious with what persistency the old idea, that God is on the side of battling armies, sticks in the mind. It is a thing people seem loath to give up, no matter what their cause.

“It is just as strong in the last year of the nineteenth century as it ever was. Oom Paul believes it. He has repeatedly assured his people that if they would be faithful God would give them the victory, and they have accepted the doctrine. . . . It is the habit of people to think that God interferes in their wars. The American people generally believed it in their conflict with Spain, and probably would if they went to war again. The mere fact that God can’t be on both sides, though both implore his aid, makes no particle of difference. Probably not until a nation goes to war believing it is in the wrong will there be a change in this particular.

“But the theological theory of war is having a rather disastrous effect on the Boers, it is said. With more simplicity and less ingenious sophistry than their foes they are beginning to believe in the converse proposition to President Kruger’s, if we may credit the dispatches. If God gave them victories because he was pleased with them, why does he now give them defeats? ‘Obviously,’ says the simple, psalm-singing, praying farmer, ‘because he is displeased with us.’ And if we may believe observers in the field, it has only taken a few defeats to take the heart of the South Africans and shake the faith of many of them in the righteousness of their cause.

“It is part of a large problem, and one that from the beginning has puzzled more learned men than the Boers. The only way out of it seems to be to conclude that God has some designs he won’t permit mortals to spy upon, and understand completely, through ordeal of battle or in any other way.”

It seems never to occur to a great many people that it is possible that God does not take either side in some wars.

Nobody ever suggests that God favors the highwayman who is successful in robbing his victim and making good his escape, and that he is displeased with the poor victim who is assaulted and plundered.

Nor do men think that the winner in a prize fight or in a street brawl succeeds because of the divine favor. It is only when nations fight, when the robbery is conducted on a gigantic scale, that God is supposed to be a party to it.

In every quarrel, whether personal or national, there is wrong on one side, and not infrequently on both sides. Nor is there anything in the Word of God to justify even the individual or the nation that is in the right in wreaking vengeance upon the party in the wrong. To do this the aggrieved party, or at least the aggressive party, must be at once accuser, judge, and executioner. But according to the Bible God is judge and executioner, neither does he permit any man to sit in judgment upon a case to which he (the man) is a party.

Doubtless God does often interpose and by his providence restrain or punish the transgressor and deliver the oppressed; but in very many cases both in individual and in national wars, victory is not with the right, but with the physically stronger party. It is time we were done with making God responsible for the wholesale murder of wars made possible only because of human greed of gold.

C. P. B.