Today’s Scripture Reading (January
13, 2014): Hosea 5
One of the
innovations of the American Civil War was the invention of a more accurate gun.
If you watch Civil War re-enactments, the one thing that might have stood out
was that the two sides would form a line and slowly start to fire their guns as
they walked toward each other. The only reason why this was practical was
because the weapons they were using were horribly inaccurate. If you happened
to hit a soldier on the long line walk toward each other, chances are it was
not the soldier that you were aiming at. But during the Civil War great
advancements were made in the area of guns and ammunition. Not only were the
new guns more accurate, they also inflicted more damage. And it changed the way
that war needed to be fought. The long walk was no longer a logical way to
fight a war. Now it was advantageous to hide in a house or behind a tree.
By the time
that World War I began to be fought, infantry wars could only be fought in
trenches. But the problem was that trench warfare was hugely impractical. The
war was fought with very accurate guns and the no man’s land between the
trenches was basically a death zone. Increased accuracy of guns had resulted in
the development of Trench Warfare, and Trench Warfare would necessitate other
ways of fighting wars; shelling enemy positions, the use of tanks and aerial
bombardments were all developmental reactions to the changes in the ways that
wars had to be fought.
But they are
also were all following the same scenario. They involve ways of inflicting
death and ways of defending ourselves from the weapons. In this case, the
development of either defensive or offensive weapons made necessary changes in
the other to enable combat. But all we really seem to be doing is becoming more
effective in finding ways to kill people.
Hosea says
that the problem is that Israel was so committed to one course of action that
they could not see any other way – and so they were doomed. They had lost sight
of God for so long that he was no longer even a blip on their consciences. And
the ways of God were far from them. And I am afraid that Hosea would probably
have the same thing to say about us.
Following
World War II the world reached its highest (or lowest) point. For the first
time we were able to destroy the entire world with the weapons that we had
created – and there was no way to build a defence against those weapons. For
the past few decades we have been diligently trying to back away from that
point of universal death. But the only real answer might be for us to consider
the ways of God one more time – and to seek and his peace. To change the way we
think about international conflict on a very basic level. Our reality is that
the answer for war is really an equality for all people – knowing that each one
of us is a son or a daughter of the living God. I know, it sounds like too much
of a jump in logic, but unless we can voluntarily restrict ourselves to Civil
War Weapons, war seems to be a ridiculous answer to conflict. We need to
consider the peaceable of our God.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hosea 6
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