Pastor Devin Strong

Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church

A dear friend who is a long-time newspaper man and one of the most faithful Christians that I know recently saw a bumper sticker like this one and sent me the following text, “If that doesn’t give a peace-loving Lutheran pause, nothing will. It’s like an onion that I can peel any number of ways.” 

My friend is right. I have been thinking about it ever since. A quick search of the Internet showed me that these bumper stickers are “a thing,” so I thought that they might be worthy of a few words, especially in these days when a number of Americans and thousands of our allies are potentially in harm’s way.

It seems that asking the Almighty to bless American snipers is not much different then praying for our soldiers—something that Lutherans, and most Christians, do regularly, but the specificity of the requested blessing can make those of us who abhor violence more than a little queasy. It’s a little like having lamb for dinner. We like the way it tastes, but we don’t want to think too much about where it comes from!

Of course, if there were any snipers in the Bible, they were wielding slingshots rather than long-range rifles, and the Bible gives us mixed messages on war. There are countless stories in the Old Testament about God’s people conquering whole nations deemed to be “ungodly” while Jesus says little on the subject but does challenge us to “love our enemies” and “bless those who persecute us.”

Martin Luther, the sixteenth century founder of our denomination, believed that there is a bonified vocation for the Christian soldier, and Luther’s mentor, fourth century scholar, St. Augustine, devised principles for godly conflict that came to be known as The Just War Theory. Augustine’s rules say, among other things, that war must be an effort of last resort; it must make a clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and it must defeat more evil than it creates.

I have been the pastor to any number of soldiers over the years and have known even a few snipers. Of course, as believers, we want to pray wholeheartedly for their care and protection and even their military success, insofar as it protects the vulnerable and thwarts evil. More than that, people like me who are uncomfortable with bloodshed need to be forever grateful to the few of us—only six percent of the American population!— who are willing put their bodies on the line by serving in the military.

The challenge is that we human beings are experts at convincing ourselves that what we are doing is always right. We assume that, of course, God is on the side of our snipers, our soldiers, our politicians, our spies, our businesses, and anything else that we want to engage in.

Rarely, if ever, do we ask the crucial question, “Are we on God’s side”?