Swords into Plowshares

On December 20th, 2008, I turned eighteen. United States law demands that every male between 18 and 25 register for the Selective Service (aka the draft). This was my 'civic duty'.

I am a pacifist.

I believe that participation in war is essentially incompatible with an attempt to emulate the example of Jesus Christ. Jesus says, 'Blessed are the peacemakers' and 'Love your enemies' and 'Turn the other cheek'. He lived this out in radical subservience (but not obedience) to 'authority', spreading a message that ultimately undermines temporal power; for, to quote N. T. Wright, if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. And Jesus, a King who knows no borders, rules over a Kingdom that exists most fully at the margins of empire

Thus I am a pacifist.

Many will say that nonviolence is not 'practical', not 'realistic'. But the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from his grave after a death by crucifixion was not practical, not realistic. My hope, my life, is in that resurrection. Christ's resurrection renders the impossible, possible; the fantastic, realistic; the idealistic, pragmatic.

My faith in nonviolence is not a blind one. It is shared by people of many faiths (such as Ghandi), and backed by scholars who ground it in non-religious research (such as Gene Sharp). Nonviolence is increasingly gaining credibility as an alternative to warfare, killing, and destruction.

Thus, I am a pacifist.

So my obligation to register with the Selective Service proved to be a moral quandary. I cannot kill. But I was required to enroll in a system that could ask me to. So I did some research, and stumbled across the Center on Conscience and War. There I learned that though there is no way to register with the Service as a conscientious objector, many young men do choose to write in their opposition to war on their registration cards.

As I prayed and thought about this process further, I remembered the words of the prophet Micah: 'They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not rise up against nation, neither shall they learn war any more' (Micah 4.3-4). The Selective Service registration card is a sword. But I could feel God's guidance, that when my time came to fill in that card, to wield that sword, I could beat it into a plowshare.

So yesterday I went to the Post Office. I asked for a card, and took it home. I filled it out. But in a blank space, I wrote: 'I am a conscientious objector to war because of my faith'. In another blank space: 'Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.' On the back: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God', and 'They shall beat their swords into plowshares'. I prayed and mailed it.

Merely symbolic? Perhaps. Meaningless? No.

I hope the empire likes plowshares.

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