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I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.

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Just Justice is to be at peace and act in loving ways toward all

Posted by Don Paine

Yesterday I spent some time with a wise, well read, and well written friend who asked me to dialogue with him about Just War and Holy War.  The context if I understood it right was a dialogue among scholars in both the Christian and Muslim Traditions.  The Christian advocates were defining the idea of a Just War.  I wondered to myself is this deifying war.  The Muslim advocates were defining the idea of a Holy War. I wondered to myself who defines holy.  At the time my only response was to present the idea that no war is holy and no war is just.

When we define justice in our terms and in our perspective and in our side we are in fact I think engaging in an injustice.  Is there such a thing as a just war?

After over 24 hours of thought, my idea on this matter would be to answer no with two quick qualifiers.  I have a part that truly understands that when someone is a menace to society's code of conduct or more particular the "dignity of humanity and human rights" it is a just act to protect the menaced or bullied person or group of people.  I quickly add, while that makes the intervention whether arms or restraint or arms of violence, justifiable that does not make it a defense for a "just war theory".  Justification is not justice.  Justice is when all people's right to dignity and to determine their own destiny are equally respected and any behavior or belief that threatens the rights of any one person in favor of the rights of another is not right.

Similarly, there is no holy war except in the eyes of the one who declares it holy or declares that they have a "holy directive".  The nature of holiness is to be free of "one sided ways of seeing the world" and seeing the world with open eyes to all prejudices and perspectives.  To claim a holy purpose that is self-serving is not a holy war but a war using God.  God's holy purpose is to transform people from over and against thinking that promotes self justifying and self deifying purposes that are counterproductive and violent in nature into an alongside of (parakalein) orientation that sees.  God invites the world to watch as he receives the anger, hostility, and war of humanity against divinity and transforms that war into a war that is won by surrender, sacrifice and serenity.

Whoever is willing to lose his life, will truly be set free to live his life, this is the principle of God.
To argue for a "just war" or a "holy war" is to argue against the message of peace and love.  War may have at times a justifiable or holy purpose but to declare war holy or just is counterproductive to "loving your enemies" so that hey will be free of their need to do violence and live in peace and love toward all.

Violence may sometimes have a justifiable or holy intention but to endorse violence as a way of being is counterproductive to living at peace and with love toward your neighbor.

The crucifixion intentionally receives the violence of humanity with the intention of transforming that way of living into the way of love and peace.

There is no such thing as a holy war or just war.  There is such a thing as holy surrender and just sacrifice.  There is such a thing as a holy or just intervention on behalf of the oppressed, afflicted, and abused.www.peacecripplers.blogspot.com


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