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Is God on our side?

Thursday, March 8 at 2:18 PM

This Speakout has not been edited

By David Becker, Pueblo

I wonder if this Omnipotent God of ours has not come to the conclusion who the winner should be at the culmination of the war in Iraq.

A man of great personal faith, George W. Bush certainly prays each day that the coalition forces are on the right side of the Almighty. Of course, he prefers the horrible circumstances in the Middle East to settle down as soon as possible so American troops head home and the killing ceases. However, with his political capital squarely on the line, the President speculates that God favors an allied victory.

On the other hand, the many Muslim clerics go to their mosques each day and pray that Allah favors their side. They now see the arrival of the coalition forces as an invasion of Iraq, on the wrong side of the Righteous One and, given enough time, the enemy will be defeated and sent packing with their tails between their legs.

Or is it possible for God to be on both sides in a war?

One hundred and forty years ago, President Abraham Lincoln struggled with the same vexing question when he took the executive oath for his second term of office. On Saturday, March 4, 1865 Washington DC suffered weeks of wet weather (unlike the streets of Baghdad where it is scorching hot)! Pennsylvania Avenue was muddy, a metaphor on how the Civil War progressed for President Lincoln. After Chief Justice Salmon Chase administered the oath of office on the east portico of the Capitol, Lincoln stood in a puddle and informed those gathered that neither political party “expected for the [CIVIL]war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained.

Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each [PARTY]looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered.

That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes....”

President Lincoln evoked the name of God ten times in his short inaugural address in March of 1865. Did he feel that he had no where else to turn? On that day Lincoln thought that the outcome of the war between the American states rested in God’s hands because he remained flummoxed about how it might turn out. The United States was a young nation and this president, Abraham Lincoln, considered that the wounds of war went so deep and the divide between the people was so serious that the future of the country lay in peril.

Sound familiar?

Lincoln considered himself the nation’s cheerleader and, like George W. Bush, he knew that the people who heard his words would parse each one of them with a sharp knife looking for nuances that were not present. The Northern United States in the Civil War fought with an army plus some volunteers. The Southern states fought the war with the equivalent of National Guard troops, led by trained military officers.

On that dreadful March morning, President Lincoln spoke words of hope, which resonate today. “With malice towards none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

President Lincoln did not live to see the conclusion of the Civil War. A month after delivering his second inaugural address, he died. It is a perplexing problem for Americans at war to plan each day. Politicians make speeches as if they know the answers when it is all such a mystery to all of us whether we are people of faith or not. Faith and hope worked in the past and, as Americans, we have faith and hope that the same formula works for our future.

READER COMMENTS

All religion is a mental illness.

Posted by on March 12, 2007 10:29 AM

When faith is substituted for reason, war has been, and is, the result in human affairs, not just now but for centuries.

Posted by Wm Brandom on March 11, 2007 06:08 PM

It is patently NOT "possible for GOD to be on both sides in a war"!!
At least not this war.
For your question assumes that the muslim God is not a false God, which is wrong.
I may support the right of people of different faiths to worship whatever 'deity' they choose. But it does NOT mean that I accept for a second that their 'deity' is God.
And therein lies the problem between muslims and ALL other faiths. It's really very, very simple.

Posted by Jim in Erie on March 11, 2007 07:32 AM