We need a bigger bomb.
The Pentagon recently explained to U. S. officials that our Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a thirty thousand pound bunker-busting behemoth, will not dig deep enough to kill the scientists making nuclear weapons in the Iranian desert. The thing is over twenty feet long, carries an explosive payload in excess of 5K pounds and can burrow two hundred feet before detonation – and it’s too small. The upgrade would run a cool eighty-two million bucks.
But some generals say no conventional bomb can get the job done; we’ll have to nuke ‘em.
History abounds in irony: The only way to stop our enemies from bombing us is to build bigger bombs. We can deter their nuclear weapons only by deploying our nuclear weapons. A bomb for a bomb, a nuke for a nuke.
As God’s holiness whipped Elijah to Heaven, his bewildered apprentice sounded a bizarre battle cry: “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” The new senior prophet of the nation’s ministerial staff acknowledges that Israel cannot compete with her foes by conventional tactics. Elisha falls back instead on the command of God and the promise it contains: Deuteronomy 17.16 forbids amassing cavalry; Deuteronomy 20.1 guarantees that the Lord will fill the gap.
This might seem a little crazy to anyone who hadn’t just seen the divine fire devour repeated platoons. (2 K 1) For Elisha, however, such a confession was history, not mystery; poetry, not prose; strategy, not spirituality.
Several centuries later a Nazarene prophet came along and told his followers to fight the Romans by submitting, to outmarch their enslaving legions by doing double-duty as pack mules for the conquerors. He even said he would strike the coup de grace himself by letting the enemy kill him.
This might’ve seemed a little crazy to anyone who hadn’t stood on a high mountain apart and watched God’s blazing glory burst forth from this very prophet, and seen Elijah himself do homage to the Messiah. For the disciples, however, their Master’s teaching became history, not mystery; prose, not poetry; strategy, not spirituality.
When presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested that America deploy the Golden Rule as a basis for foreign policy, the audience in a state where sixty-five percent of the electorate self-identifies as “born again,” booed him. Actually, they booed Jesus.
Maybe the way to stop chariots isn’t to build chariots. Maybe the way to have a world with less bombs is not to build more bombs. Maybe if we stay in lonely places long enough to see the fire fall, we will believe faith is good for something on this side of the grave.
Bombs Away!
Doug
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