Oswald Chambers and Thoughts on War
All photos from Wheaton College Special Collections
I’ve been writing a novel set during The Great War for the last sixteen months, which has affected my thoughts on war.
How should we see war? How should we react? What is war?
Oswald Chambers, a noted Bible teacher in the years leading up to World War I, had interesting insights which bear examination.
He believed elements of war are inevitable, as recorded in the December 4 devotional of My Utmost for His Highest:
“Life without war is impossible either in nature or in grace. The basis of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual life is antagonism. This is the open fact of life.”
Antagonism is always apparent in men and women and has been with us since Cain and Able. On a broad scale, that will lead to war and certainly that’s what happened in 1914.
Oswald Chambers presented an interesting angle on what war is and why it occurs.
His article in the September 1914 issue of Tongues of Fire, addressed these thoughts:
Is war of the devil or of God?
It is of neither.
It is of man, though God and the devil are both behind it.
War is a conflict of wills either in individuals or in nations, and just now there is a terrific conflict of wills in nations. Click to Tweet
Our Lord insists on the inevitability of peril. Right through His talks with His disciples, without panic and without passion and without fear He says, ‘you must lay your account with this sort of thing, with war, with spite, with hatred and with jealousy, with despising, with banishment and with death. Now remember I have told you these things that when they happen you may not be scared.’ [Luke 21]
We are not only hearing of wars and commotions, they are here right enough. It is not imagination, it is not newspaper reports, the thing is here at our doors, there is no getting away for it. War, such as history of the world has never know, has now begun.
Jesus Christ did not say: You will understand why the war has come–but : Do not be scared, do not be in a panic. Click to Tweet
There is one thing worse than war, and that is sin. Click to Tweet
We get tremendously scared when our social order is broken up, and well we may. We get terrorized by hundreds of men being killed, but we forget there is something worse–sinful dastardly lives being lived day by day, year in and year out in our villages and towns . . . these are things that produce pain in the heart of God, not the wars, and devastation that so upset us.
Are the terrors, that are abroad producing panic? You never saw anybody in a panic who did not grab for themselves whether it was sugar or butter or nations.
Jesus would never allow His disciples to be in a panic. The one great crime on the part of a disciple, according to Jesus Christ, is worry.
Whenever we begin to calculate without God we commit sin.” Click to Tweet
(Taken from David McCasland’s Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God, pp 194-195)
Chambers, as always, goes to the heart. The root cause of war is sin, individual sin.
It’s an interesting concept, because our own sin is something we can control.
Once it starts in one person’s heart, however, and is allowed to grow unchecked, it can spread to another and another until the whole world is up in flames.
He was not a pacifist, Oswald Chambers “enlisted” in the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) chaplaincy corps, to help those going to war. He closed down his Bible Training College in 1915 and headed to Egypt where he served at the Zeitoun YMCA camp, six miles north of Cairo. He spoke to tent-loads of soldiers at Zeitoun, teaching them from the Bible and helping prepare their hearts for their service in battle.
“They” say there are no atheists in foxholes. Chambers worked to ensure everyone who crossed his path understood his significance to God and what that meant, before they faced eternity.
On Wednesday nights, Chambers preached at Ezbekieh Gardens in downtown Cairo, not far from the famous Shepherd’s Hotel. The YMCA rented three acres of grounds at Ezbekieh as a rest and recreation center for the troops. Chambers lectured, much like Billy Graham, after hymn singing, piano playing and other entertainment. His was a popular ministry.
How do you deal with war? Particularly war you did not bring upon yourself?
Oswald Chambers took it upon himself to use that war, those circumstances, as an opportunity for men and women to examine their personal consciences and make choices about their lives–both then and in eternity.
He did not take up a rifle, but he laid down his life.
When Oswald Chambers died on November 15, 1917, the British military command in the Middle Eastern Theater understood the significance of his death. He may have been a YMCA chaplain, but in that heat and humidity, they delayed Chambers’ burial for a day.
They wanted, and they did, bury him with full military honors.
Have you ever likened your own personal sins to war?
How should Christians respond to war?
Do you agree with Oswald Chambers that “Life without war is impossible either in nature or in grace?” Click to Tweet
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