A while ago the Insomnomaniac posted insightful comments regarding whether the Christian ethic of love should prevent military intervention.

The post got me thinking: What would the biblical Jesus do? I strongly suspect the answer is along the lines my friend Harry asserts: Something completely unexpected.

For example, looking for a fault, his followers were asked if their teacher paid the temple task. (Is he gonna opt in or out? Answer: Go fish!) Jesus, in one of his tacit assertions of divinity, later said:

When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. "What do you think, Simon?" he asked. "From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes--from their own sons or from others?" "From others," Peter answered. "Then the sons are exempt," Jesus said to him. "But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours." (Matt 17)

While Jesus and his followers never fought, to signal, he said, that his kingdom was not an earthly enterprise, their religious tradition contains quite a lot of conquest. So in thinking about what a God-fearing people would do about Iraq, I thought I'd look to the biblical example. Again, we see this same sort of non-linearity manifesting itself as in Jesus: God has the Jews, in many cases, do something completely unexpected.

Biblical methods of defeating a military foe:

• The usual way, sword, slaughter et al (Joshua 8)
• Walking through a parted sea (Exodus 14)
• Holding a staff in the air as long as possible (Ex 17)
• Send the choir in to sing at the embattlements (Josh 6)
• Hamstrung horses (Josh 11)
• Under a woman commander (Judges 4)
• Creative destruction of ceramics, music (Josh 7)
• With fire-tailed foxes, the jawbone of an ass, and architectural flaws (Josh 15-16)
• Thunder-induced panic (1 Sam 7)
• Single combat, deploying a stone-throwing child (1 Sam 17)

You get the idea; God gave Israel some fairly far-out means of solving military problems. Who knows what would happen if we, as a country, sought His help in this? I just hope many of us remember to pray for our leaders, that they may pray to the one who made them for guidance.