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(Kaieteur News) – From the Gulf War of 1991 and the first TV war from CNN, reporting of war has become the new social media star. Missiles racing from all directions, clashing in awe-inspiring, and exciting (and frightening for some) collisions and explosions leaving trails of smoke in an increasingly crowded sky. The US-Israel and Iran war resembles one of those sci-fi intergalactic battles. There are aggressions and retaliation. A Red Cross member died trying to save a life. A paramedic met the same fate while engaged in infusing hope in the wounded. In the Middle East, and straight out of the Book of Revelation, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are marching forward relentlessly. There is grimness in the heart, the lust for blood and bodies in their eyes.
In this time of Lent, Peace of Christ to all. Even more so, because it is needed so much more; something to which to cling, place faith and the hope that springs from that virtue. Amid any savoring the Peace of Christ, there is the brutality of war.
Almost the equivalent of an international spectator sport on the television, and from the vast reaches of cyberspace. Despite its barbarity, war has become the kind of competition that brings out picking a side, cheering its warriors on, and then sitting back contentedly waiting for the next round of bombs and sophisticated missiles unleashed in barrages. And that inevitable ingredient of war. It is death. One of the four horsemen feared. God so loved the world that he gave his own Son, his only Son, so that the world may be saved, and have life.
Man has war. Men declare war on neighbor, on distant objector and competitor. Men are forced to make a pick, and staunchly support, without too much care as to the damage inflicted by it. Death from life snuffed out. Famine that follows in the wake of destruction. And fostering a deceiving, misleading, sense of peace. It is not the peace of Jesus. It is the hell of the devil, and who dares to stand against, lift a finger in protest?
In good times and bad times, Jesus counseled peace. In times of madness and sanity, Jesus projected peace. In times of rage and recklessness, Jesus stood as a lighthouse of peace. And compassion. And mercy. Jesus was about what was just, what is right for those who have no standing, those without rights, those lacking a champion. The language of bombs and bullets should be one that is foreign, not understood, by any Christian of any denomination. Yet there are those disciples of the Messiah, who find peace in silence. Then, there are those who breakdown the doors, rush in like human versions of the Antichrist, to join with one group or the other in support of what extinguishes life. God gives life. Man takes life. To satisfy dark ambitions and the deformed visions that prop those up, set them loose on civilians and innocents, on caregivers and bystanders.
All the conventions of war now suffer from dismissal, seemingly have been grounded into the dust. For all of its devastating power, there is a growing love for war. Here it is that in the Season of Lent, when the call is to repentance and sacrifice, there are those followers of the Christ, who are among the most bloodthirsty of arrogant warmongers. They see glimpses of that final fateful reckoning on the plains of Magog. Scriptures coming to past in our time, or the twisted nature of devious men, who now have fallen in love with war, and those who love waging it?
Guyana finds itself dancing on the head of needle. A side must be chosen. One has. Amid all the sweet words about peace and order, there is the tragic irony that, out of these local confines, there is another contribution to the disorder and chaos (and death and human agony). I call it self-preservation and self-perpetuation. Whoever dies, dies. Whatever the price that has to be paid, so be it. And we say that we are about people, and what is just for them. These are the traps and tangles which Jesus was wise to avoid. Wisdom and that human instinct for peace have both fled, with cold calculation as to what serves the interests of power and personal prosperity taking first place and reigning unchallenged.
In the midst of war, men forget God, have no time for him. Until they do.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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