Realizing that most Christians aren't strictly anti-violence pacifics is like realizing Santa isn't real.

I told Jack that would be the first line of my blog tonight, and so it shall be.

I know that most Christians are not strictly non-violent. I’ve heard of the crusades. But I also have known that most Christians covet, lie, and are imperfect. It is in the striving that I am most interested, not in the success. I thought there was at least a striving towards radical non-violence. Non violence and, y’know, loving thy neighbor. 

The last time I got into a real debate about something regarding Christianity, it was about wether or not the OCA should have shifted to the modern calendar. I suggested that it should not have. We do not know what is arbitrary and what is not, we are not equipped to be making those calls, what we should be doing is preserving as much as we can as cleanly as we can.

It isn’t very satisfying to most people, but I don’t think thinking deeply about subjects is helpful. To a point. 

I’ve been thinking about this subject pretty deeply. I want to understand it better. Mostly I want to understand how other people have misunderstood it from my, and Father Mark’s perspective. 

I’ve spoken with Jack a bit about this subject, once while we were moving a freezer and then a washing machine, and then once over Discord, just now. Both were very interesting, engaging, thoughtful conversations. I have very little doubt that another hour of that would have me believing that “Just wars” are possible.

What’s really interesting here, what’s unique in my history as a learning, growing, changing person, is that I don’t really want to change what I believe. That’s new. For a long time I’ve thought that changing beliefs was good, or almost always good. But I don’t think that anymore. 

It might be my newfound faith, but I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s more to do with my experience at work, doing brand and marketing work. 

If you want to convince someone of something, it just takes time. It’s like torture. Eventually a person just cannot take it anymore, they will break. If you subject yourself to videos, books, analysis at a high enough rate, you’ll buy into it, almost certainly. 

Now, maybe that’s exactly what happened to me with Christianity, but I don’t think it is. And even if it is, you’ve eventually got to choose a place to stand, and I guess this is mine. 

Even if, in a TRUE sense, Just war is possible in the eyes of Jesus Christ and the church, I don’t care to know that. It does nothing good for me, as a Christian or a man, to know or believe that. Now, maybe that’s a wrong way of thinking about truth. I don’t know it’s late and I don’t intend to shoot anybody, even if they really, really suck. 

Of course if someone breaks into my house and threatens Abby or Roby and they don’t accept a threat of violence I will follow through with it. But I don’t think Jesus would approve of that.