The Obscenity of War in This Present Evil Age
‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death,’ and that enemy is insurgent in the Israel-Hamas war.
Less than a week into the Israel-Hamas war, the casualty count is already in the thousands. Around 1,300 people have been killed by Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel as of this writing, with another 1,300 killed by retaliatory Israeli strikes in Gaza and more than 9,000 wounded.
It is difficult to fathom that many bodies. It is even more difficult to fathom that at least some of them were children.
The most shocking report is an allegation that Hamas beheaded babies and toddlers, a claim that was walked back by the Israeli military and the White House, then seemingly confirmed by The Jerusalem Post. We can hope this story turns out to be false. But it may be true, which is terrible to contemplate, let alone to endure it.
In either case, there are many evils in this war that are not coming untrue. Our world since the Fall has always been infected with sin, death, and devilry. Sometimes we can forget or ignore this sickness and suffering, especially we fortunate few in the safe and wealthy West. But that ignorance is not possible for many of us right now. This war has brought our sickness back to the surface, opening anew a putrescent wound we cannot heal.
In 1755, the Spanish city of Lisbon suffered an earthquake so devastating that it cast doubt on God’s very goodness. Wars like this one give a similar shock. The disputed story of beheadings flew fast around the globe because it is uniquely unintelligible: Who could behead a baby? How bent would a soul have to be to do violence to an infant, a toddler—a babbling little being who should know only care and comfort, not war and death? My youngest is five months old. It is obscene that those babies are not as safe as she.
But then I remember Psalm 137, perhaps the darkest ...