“Fire and Fury”

August 10, 2017 Hiroshima August 6, 1945    Nagasaki – August 9, 1945    70+ years after the A bomb.

Having listened to many words this week flung back and forth across the globe, while good people of many countries, children of God, like lambs awaiting the slaughter, wait…

It gives me pause to contemplate the beginning of another world at war and the ending of several nations.  Does anyone who has rationality believe a nuclear war of any kind is a winnable solution to a crisis of communication?  How long before bombastic rhetoric turns into real bombs?  Contemplating the end and the beginning of many things brings me to the point of speech.  Is it inevitable that we do this thing?  Do we really want Armageddon?  There are many who believe President Donald Trump will pull the trigger.

I sat down tonight to write a few statistics which give me pause for reflection:

In the population of the world of more than 6.9 billion souls some 2.2billion (or about 31%) of the population are Christians, some 1.6 billion (or 23%) are adherents of Islam, which leaves 3.1 billion as “of some other faith, religion or non-religion.”  If these numbers are correct, more than half the population of our planet are worshipers of God.  We can assume some of the remaining persons are, but cannot say how many.

As we contemplate going to war with North Korea, the United States, which has 280 million Christians (about 75% of our population) is planning to bomb to hell 406,000 Christians in North Korea, who represent 1.7% of their population of some 8.6million souls.  Since I am of the Presbyterian faith, I am called upon to remember that the North Korean Presbyterian Church once was the jewel of Presbyterian Christian faith before the Korean War and the subsequent divided peninsula.

South Korea has 20,000 Christian churches of which the two largest Protestant denominations are Presbyterian.  29.2 percent of the South Korean population is Christian, which has risen from 26.3 percent in the past ten years (Wikipedia).  There are approximately 15.3 million Christians in South Korea, counting both Protestant (8.6 million souls) and Roman Catholic (6.7 million souls).

The Republic of China boasts 67 million Christians and Japan has from 1-2 million Christians.

No matter how we slice this pie, if war occurs between the United States, South Korea and North Korea, and perhaps involving China and Japan, (and with Australia and New Zealand drawn in to this conflict by the ANZUS alliance) there will be Christians fighting Christians in this conflict.  The Church of Jesus Christ, our holy catholic communion and union of faith and of the faithful will be asked and expected to participate in an unholy conflict between a president who claims to be Christian (but who does not go to church) and the boy leader of North Korea, who claims no faith of any kind.

In the best scenario, these two leaders get to duke it out on an island alone, while the world watches on and the winner takes all.  In a better scenario, both Trump and Kim Jong-un stay on the island forever, or at least until both get tired and sit down for lunch together or separately.  In this way, the conflict is contained and the damage, except for that to both egos, is minimal.  This whole crisis is about two boys, one big and the other not so big unable to play in the same sandbox.  “My sand castle is bigger and better than yours!” both loudly declare!  And failing to prove this decisively, they both tear down what the other has built.

However, in this case the so-called “collateral damage” is horrendous.  We speak not in terms of thousands but of millions of human beings dying, both of the Christian and non-Christian persuasion.  We speak also of the ravaging devastation of not only North and South Korea, but Guam, Japan, parts of the United States and parts of China.  In a nuclear conflict, with many participants, does anyone want to live in these places anymore?  At the end of the day President Trump goes into his underground nuclear bunker.  Kim Jong-un goes down into his underground nuclear bunker.  The rest of us who have no nuclear bunker live with poisoned water, poisoned food, poisoned land and a radiation threat to our bodies and our health which lasts for generations.  Is this not a new definition of madness?  Of those in this conflict, who are the most insane?  Will it be those of us who watch and pray for one another as we are dying or the two men who have propagated this war?

I speak as a Presbyterian Christian minister and as a physician.  There are no winners in this nuclear war.  If we know before we begin no winners will emerge from this conflict, should we not stop this madness before we begin?

As I pray for the lives of my Christian brothers and sisters in North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Guam and the United States, how should I pray?  Should I pray that we all die quickly with only a little suffering or should I pray that those of us who are burned beyond human recognition receive balm for our wounds?  Or shall I pray for the next generation of our children who will live in a world so polluted as to be unlivable by standards of today?  Is there enough bottled water and food set back so we all have something to eat and to drink?

My father lived in a time before the Korean conflict when as a soldier he hung A-bombs on towers in the Nevada desert so they could test them and see if soldiers survived when exposed to radiation.  He lost all his body hair twice, in two separate events.  When he proposed marriage to my mother, he said these words:  “I do not know if I can father children due to my exposure to whole body radiation.”  “I also do not know if they will be born normal or not.”  I am the first of six birth experiments.  As for me, I am very grateful to be in this world and I am grateful to be alive and without cancer.  My younger brother and my sister have not been as lucky as I.

Do we understand that we are allowing President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un to roll the dice with our future on this planet and with our children’s lives?  I for one oppose a nuclear war of any form, shape or expression.  There must be another way to resolve this conflict!  Last night, on the BBC news, an expert on North Korea says the sanctions can be made to cut far deeper into North Korea’s economy than we have done so far.  At the very least, let us exhaust every option first before we consign this many men, women and children to oblivion and many more to suffering beyond description.  Purgatorio, Dante’s Inferno knows nothing like this!

I call upon all Christians and those of any faith in God who loves all of us to pray for God, our Savior and our common Lord and Savior to help us.

“O Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon our world. Turn our madness into sensibility and our despair into hope and hopefulness.  Give us an opportunity here and now to turn away from the madness of war and towards the sensibility of finding peace among the nations!  Let us learn from our past mistakes and gain wisdom for the present and the future hope of all humankind.  Do not allow, O Lord, two belligerent men with little faith to dictate the future of those of us who daily live for expressing our faith in Thee.  Intervene, rule and over rule in the affairs of the children of men and women.  Let your kingdom come, let your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, for we pray in the strong and powerful name of Jesus Christ our only Savior and the only Living God of all humankind.  In Jesus’ holy and blessed name, we pray—Dear God, please hear us and please help us all!  Amen and Amen.”

Let all of God’s people say, “Amen!”

“Amen!  We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ!”

The voice of one crying in this wilderness, “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!”