Modern day Persians March 19, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Military, Movies.Tags: Middle East
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I haven’t seen it, but the movie “300″ may provide the United States, my beloved country, with an important reminder. That reminder will not come from the movie itself, I suspect; but it will come if people learn about the true story of the battle of Thermopylae. The reminder — the arrogance of the powerful will lead to destruction.
In America, we want to identify with the Greeks of this battle; but I fear we have much in common with the Persians. They had the greatest empire of their time, unbelievable in scope and power; and, from what I can tell, the Persians were not terrible rulers. They allowed a measure of independence and religious freedom in the lands they ruled.
The problem with the Persians was that they got mad and sought to teach the Greeks a lesson. The Greeks had burned Sardis, a city under Persian control, and the greatest empire in the world sought to teach the Greeks a lesson. Their first attempt, a sea invasion, failed; so Xerxes sent a giant army and navy to do the deed. The army won the land battle at Thermopylae and then burned Athens, but their navy was damaged to the point where Xerxes had to tuck tail and run. The Greeks eventually, over a number of decades, pushed the Persians back to central Asia and gained an empire of their own.
The United States is now the world’s largest, most powerful nation. And we have made the Persian mistake — we have thought that we can do whatever we want because we are the biggest and the baddest.
Greece stood because the Persian threat brought the various warring Greek city-states together in common defense. With our uncalled-for attack on Iraq and our threatened attack on Iran, the United States is on the verge of doing the same thing in our time. (Afghanastan was a different matter. It really was part of a war on terror.)
The victory of the Greeks over the Persians made possible the flowering of Western civilization. If the West, read United States, is not careful we will doom Western civilization. Just because we have the power to pursue certain ends does not mean we should.
The United States of America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. I pray we can learn again that principles of right and wrong must govern the use of our power.
The way of peace in the Middle East March 10, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Jesus, Military, Peace, Politics.Tags: Middle East
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I’m not an expert and am only informed at the popular media level, but I think the United States will never be “successful” in the Middle East as long as we continue to pursue military solutions to the problems there. With the military, we solve one problem and create others — more difficult and more intransigent.
As with just about everything else in life it seems Jesus has an answer. N.T. Wright captures this well. Wright helps us see that Jesus, in talking about the kingdom of God, was primarily talking about the here and now, not the hereafter.
“… [J]udgment would come, not as an arbitrary ‘punishment’ by God for Israel’s failure to obey some general moral standards but as the inevitable result … of Isreal’s choosing the way of violence, the way of resistance, rather than following in the way Jesus himself had grasped and articulated in his own life and message. If they would not follow the way of peace, they would reap the consequences,” Wright says. (The Challenge of Jesus, pp. 49-50, IVP Academic)
Many Israelites in Jesus’ day thought the way to overthrow Roman rule and restore their national pride was to fight the Romans’ at their own game. Jesus had another way. Just imagine, what if the Israel of Jesus’ day had followed Jesus’ example. History would be very different. As it was, they didn’t and their temple and their national hopes were destroyed within about 30 years.
