Question 147: About the military
Question 147: What is the view of the Gospel of Oneness on military forces? Can they be abolished?
The military forces that almost all nations think they need are based on and perpetuate the dualistic illusions that we are apart from God and separate from each other. Some of these illusions include the idea that war is an unavoidable reality of social life on earth, so most nations must have a military.
Many people think that war is the only way to solve certain conflicts because you must kill and destroy an enemy or else they will kill you and take over your land and resources.
Some people think you can fight a small preventive war as a way of stopping a potentially much bigger war. That policy has not worked out for the USA when they invaded Iraq. It was a policy of doing evil to prevent a greater evil, a policy of delusion. The United States is not the only country guilty of this policy. Many other nations, tribes, and clans have done the same thing. In a recent Mission Impossible movie, the terrorists had the slogan of “the greater the suffering, the greater the peace that comes afterwards.” This is the lie of let us do evil that good may come.
Some people think they can get some real economic and social benefits by waging war on another country and thereby gaining control of natural resources such as oil, mineral deposits, river systems and agricultural lands. You have to be deep into the delusion of separation to believe that.
Some people think that war is a way for young men to prove their valor, patriotism and to gain honor and glory. They are encouraged by older people who have vested interests in war.
Some people think war can lead to an automatic salvation and glorious rewards in heaven such as being with Jesus for eternity, or, for Muslim men, getting 70 virgins for eternal sexual satisfaction. This is an illusion that young men can easily fall into if they are without much hope for a peaceful alternative.
When people think they have no alternatives left and must go to war, it is because their minds are muddled by the “dualistic fog of war.” They cannot see the spiritual solution. With the infinite wisdom of God there is always a creative alternative to war. In realizing our oneness with God, we are always serving the greater good by seeking justice, mercy, and compassion for all. By resorting to war and violence we only bring more of the same. Even assassinating a tyrant will not lead to any permanent solution as long as people believe that war and violence can bring a peaceful outcome. Killing Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin did not bring an end to war or terrorism.
People who believe in the oneness of all life and trust in the justice and infinite love of God have no need to punish or exact vengeance on people who have used violence. To do so would only enmesh them in the dualistic struggle.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
“This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
― Albert Einstein
“God created every man to be free. The ability to choose whether to live free or enslaved, right or wrong, happy or in fear is something called freewill. Every man was born with freewill. Some people use it, and some people use any excuse not to. Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. And in the end, when God asks you: “Who told you to kill one of my children?”
And you tell him, “My leader.”
He will then ask you, “And are THEY your GOD?”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
