The question, I'm afraid, is too vague to answer. It's like asking 'is New York a hot city?' -- to which the answer will depend on whether you visit in February or July.

Continue »

Same as any other time. Say your prayers, study the scriptures, keep close to Christian fellowship (especially at the Eucharist), hold the whole situation up before the God who groans with the pain of the world (Romans 8) and has promised to wipe away all tears from all eyes (Revelation 21). War sharpens some of the horrible things about the way the world currently is but doesn't change the basic structure of a good world in rebellion and longing for redemption -- with humans caught up in the middle of it all.

There is a peculiar aspect to contemporary war because of broadcasting and so on; people can become voyeurs, captivated by scenes of suffering and devastation while they sit in comfortable homes drinking coffee or beer in front of the TV. Like all voyeurism, this can deaden genuine human reactions and give a quite unhealthy sense of false involvement which then breeds the wrong sort of detachment as its reverse. Enough to find out basically what's going on, pray about it, and get on with your real work and the rest of your life.

The idea that wartime somehow suspended all normal human life was undermined two generations ago by a splendid essay by C. S. Lewis entitled "On Learning in Wartime." It's in one of his volumes of collected essays somewhere.

The answer is that it gets murkier and murkier by the day.

Only the diehard commentators are still maintaining that it was absolutely the right thing for us to go in when we did. (Remember the war has now been going on longer than the First World War did.)

I opposed it from the start, to the fury of my right-wing friends, and now I find a lot of them saying 'You told us so'. But granted we have made a huge mess, a quite new argument can be made for saying that we have to stay and see it through.

At this point it becomes a nice political judgment as to whether the region is likely to return to stability with us or without us. On that, granted the continuing horrible chaos, opinions will differ, but it is vital that our leaders get as broad and impartial wisdom as possible in assessing the possibilities.

There are still, alas, those on the one hand who insist that because we westerners know what's what we must of course stay and impose our way of life (dream on!). And there are still, alas, those on the other hand who insist that it's the Iraqis' mess and we have no business there -- though the present mess is at least as much of our making.

For the Christian the main obligation must be to pray; and then, to try to help at whatever point in the forming of that wise public opinion which will inform the decision-makers. And to help that same public opinion to learn from its mistakes.