Past Essays

Past Winners: [ Zoe, 2002 ] [ Neil, 2003 ] [ Lee, 2004 ] [ Cassandra, 2005 ]

"We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we live together we have to talk."
Eleanor Rossevelt

2003 THEME: The case of any war can be traced to a difference of beliefs between groups of people. There can be political, economic, geographic, religious, or racial wars, to name a few. If war is justified by one’s beliefs, can there ever be a lasting peace? If so, how?

It Does Not Seem Right

by Neil C. Jackson
Allison Park, Pennsylvania

“War, what is it good for?” Absolutely nothing.” Besides causing death, destruction and hatred between nations and peoples, war does nothing. In fact, the very purpose of war is often asserted as being to create a lasting peace. This is a contradiction.

A force inside urges, compels me to speak out concerning war and the need for peace. As I reach the age of eighteen many doors have been opened to me, and I have looked inside most of them. The path I have chosen leads to college, but I have reflected on the ghastly sights that lie through the door that leads to military service. Inside this door is a room that would be bathed in darkness if it weren’t for an artificial light, a great many persons exist in this room and are spared concern for the darkness of military service, participation in organized violence, and war by the light of propaganda; rationalizations contrived to make what they do seem right so that they need not doubt. Be ware of the door that leads to this room and pause to think before entering.

War is a reality supported by rationalizations and justifications. IN most cases it is a crime and a sin, but there seem to be certain instances when we are asked to believe that it is permissible. Actually, in times of ware violence turns from bad to good, from cowardly to heroic, and it is the poplar opinion that nothing could be better than dying for one’s country. What a sacrifice! But before becoming a hero through courageous murder, it is necessary for a person to be changed into something else. In order to fight a war, an army and a soldier must be prepared to kill fellow human beings, sometimes on a large scale. This means taking moral and religious values that oppose the notion of murder and cleverly and systematically burying them beneath military doctrines aimed at desensitization; numbing men and women until they are malleable enough to be shaped into whatever the military sees fit.

People are changed thus so that they are read for the hideous shadow of war that looms always around the corner. The shocking preparations for military conflict and war are justified as requisite for the creation of a lasting peace. But what is a lasting peace? Is it five or ten years without open hostilities but with a multibillion-dollar army lying in wait? It cannot be. The idea of using war to establish peace is a contradiction because violence only widens the rift between justice and injustice, peace and discord. Leo Tolstoy very appropriately asserts in A Confession and Other Religious Writings that “violence produces something only resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.” We cannot hope to create peace and justice by inflicting violence.

It would seem that those leaders who call for war and those who participate in military violence have either overlooked or ignored some of the most important teaches of the Christian faith. One of the ten commandments is “thou shalt not kill,” and the most fundamental idea Christ sought to convey is “love they neighbor as thyself.” Never does Jesus say “under these special circumstances it is permissible to make war on a country or kill a fellow human being.” With this in mind I wonder how a Christian man can call for war. Moreover, how can a Christian enter into military service to carry out the will of his country but go against the will of God? It does not seem right.

Military service and war are viewed in many ways and are supported by endless justifications. Most acknowledge the blatantly obvious evil in war but feel it is a means to an end. Unfortunately this end is often obscured by extenuating circumstances and convoluted explanations as the result of war fall far short of its aim.

By fighting violence with violence we achieve nothing. If only we could acknowledge, as Tolstoy does, that “wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” And come to understand the real nature of war. With peace as the true national and global motivation there would be no use for war.

Top