The War Prayer- by Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation


*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.

The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed. See Jim Zwick's page "Mark Twain on the Philippines" for more of Twain's writings on the subject.

Transcribed by Steven Orso (snorso@facstaff.wisc.edu)

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William Tyndale´s famous last words!

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Words We Do Not Want To Hear!

by Jeff Snyder 2001

Now, in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when the President is preparing for a mighty war, when over 80 percent of Americans support him and want blood, whether in the name of retribution or justice, now is the time to repeat the words we do not want to hear.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . .

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

~ Matthew 5: 38-39; 43-45.

This is all you need to know if you want to do what is right in this situation. We should not wage war on terrorists or the Taliban, nor try to bring them to justice. We should, however, pray for them and do good to them.

In the 1800’s a small number of men, including the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, spent a large part of their lives working out the implications of this teaching and trying to spread the word to their fellow man. Much of this good work might have been lost or buried in oblivion but for the efforts of one of them, Leo Tolstoy, who gathered it together in making his own case, still available in the much ignored, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).

According to Tolstoy, the meaning of Christ’s command to "resist not evil" is plain enough: it is wrong to use force or violence to oppose evil. Since Christ’s command is unconditional, there are no exceptions. Not for a "just" war, not for retribution, not for justice, not even for self-defense at the time of the assault. Further, the clear implication is also that it is wrong to participate in any enterprise that employs force or violence against our fellow man (even if only to oppose evil). Christ’s command thus renders government illegitimate. The Christian who follows Christ’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, then, will not be a soldier, or participate in any of the institutions of government, the courts or elections, and will not have any recourse to the authorities, the police or the law.

Christ’s teaching forever severs the question of what is good or evil, just or unjust, from the question of the use of force, and pronounces the latter wrong and evil under all circumstances. Regardless of what is right, good or just, it is wrong, always, to use force or violence to establish, uphold, vindicate or maintain the right, the good or the just, and it is wrong to use force to punish or "reform" the wicked.

Instead, the Christian "resists not." As Tolstoy notes, "To submit means to prefer suffering to using force. And to prefer suffering to using force means to be good, or at least less wicked than those who do unto others what they would not like themselves."1

Tolstoy musters many arguments to demonstrate that Christ’s teaching is the only true and lasting foundation of peace and brotherhood among men, and to explain why violence cannot eliminate evil, but only beget more violence. One of his more powerful arguments concerns the impossibility of settling disputes by recourse to violence when there is no universally accepted, unquestioned criterion for distinguishing good from evil. In the absence of such criterion, the men who are the objects of our violence do not perceive or accept their acts as evil and do not experience the violence directed at them as just punishment for their deeds, but simply as unjust violence and a fresh insult that, in turn, prompts them to respond in kind. Thus, we can expect that a counterattack upon the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and those who harbor them will kindle greater hatred in the Muslim world against us.

Tolstoy was no pie-eyed idealist blind to the nature of man. Although he quotes other advocates of non-resistance who argue on prudential grounds that refraining from the use of violence is, in the long run, a safer course than using violence to suppress evil, since it gives least occasion for the creation of ill-will, he did not maintain that those who adhered to Christ’s command would soon cease being the object of oppression or violence, or would be but rarely the objects of such acts.

Indeed, Tolstoy spends much effort addressing one of the strongest criticisms of non-resistance, namely, that without government, the wicked will oppress the good. It requires a strong disposition to follow Tolstoy here for, to his everlasting credit, he does not endeavor to support Christ’s teaching by prudential appeals to man’s rational self-interest through promises that adhering to Christ’s teaching will soon make life easy or better for men, nor pretend that eliminating government will end man’s inhumanity to man.

The champions of government assert that without it the wicked will oppress and outrage the good, and that the power of the government enables the good to resist the wicked.

But in this assertion the champions of the existing order of things take for granted the proposition they want to prove. When they say that except for the government the bad would oppress the good, they take it for granted that the good are those who are the present time are in possession of power, and the bad are those who are in subjection to it. But this is just what wants proving.

The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities – pride, cunning, cruelty.

Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be maintained. . . . .

. . . ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him to whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses the force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing wrong.2

Since the good, by definition, cannot and will not wield power, "The wicked will always dominate the good, and will always oppress them."3 Moreover, in holding up the specter of imagined future dangers of violence and oppression by others, those who claim we need the government’s protection ignore or discount the magnitude of the actual existing violence and oppression already practiced by their own government against its own people and others. Tolstoy concludes that government’s ceasing to exist and to provide its "protection" may result in a change in the men who subject the good to oppression and violence, but will not, ultimately, change the overall lot of the good. Thus, good men who see the true nature of their government and its actions cannot be terrorized by specters of the harm that will befall them in government’s absence, because they realize that they already are, ever have been and ever will be oppressed and exploited by the wicked. A change in this state of affairs will come about only after most men have learned, through generations of bitter and futile experience, the inability of violence to put an end to evil, and to accept the truth of Christ’s counsel.

Tolstoy also takes strong issue, based on the evidence provided by history, with the belief that it is possible to subdue a nation, or improve it, with violence: "And indeed how could nations be subjugated by violence who are led to by their whole education, their traditions, and even their religion to see the loftiest virtue in warring with their oppressors and fighting for freedom? . . . To exterminate such nations . . . by violence is possible, and indeed is done, but to subdue them is impossible."4

Much of Tolstoy’s energy in Kingdom of God is directed at answering those who claim that Christ’s teaching cannot mean what it plainly says, or that it is too idealistic for men, because it does not agree with how men want to live, or would require too great a change in "the existing order of things." Curiously, although Tolstoy was apparently unaware of his work, the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, often dealt with this characteristic response to God’s unconditional commands.

True worship of God consists quite simply in doing God’s will.

But this sort of worship was never to man’s taste. That which in all generations men have been busied about, that in which theological learning originated, becomes many, many disciplines, widens out to interminable prolixity, that upon which and for which thousands of priests and professors live . . . is the contrivance of another sort of divine worship, which consists in . . . having one’s own will, but doing it in such a way that the name of God, the invocation of God, is brought into conjunction with it, whereby man thinks he is assured against being ungodly – whereas, alas, precisely this is the most aggravated sort of ungodliness.

An example. A man is inclined to want to support himself by killing people. Now he sees from God’s Word that this is not permissible, that God’s will is, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ‘All right,’ he thinks, ‘ but that sort of worship doesn’t suit me, neither would I be an ungodly man.’ What does he do then? He gets hold of a priest who in God’s name blesses the dagger. Yes, that’s something different.5

Kierkegaard characterized man’s unbelieving or unwilling response to an unconditional demand of the Divine as man’s "sensibleness." It is a reaction that many who staunchly adhere to the Bill of Rights will readily recognize. For example, scarcely is the command, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" uttered, before learned law professors and judges hasten to assure us that the words, despite their unconditional and categorical form, do not prevent the state from enacting "reasonable regulations" in the interest of public safety. All sensibleness consists in this refusal to accept God’s unconditioned command as the binding ideal that distinguishes right from wrong, to build maneuvering room into it so that we can still think well of ourselves while pursuing our own will. According to Kierkegaard, it is human sensibleness that believes that

To require the unconditioned of human beings is basically madness, a ludicrous exaggeration that, like all extremes, as any sensible person easily sees, takes revenge by producing an effect the very opposite of what it aims at. All human wisdom consists in this glorious and golden principle: to a certain degree, there is a limit, or in this ‘both-and,’ and ‘also’; the unconditioned is madness. The mark of mature earnestness is precisely this: it insists that the requirement shall be of such a nature that a person can with pleasure and satisfaction amply meet it though steady effort. Obviously, what none of has done none of us, of course, can do; and if none of us can do it, then the requirement must be changed according to what we have shown we can do by having done it – more cannot be required. Therefore, we insist on a Christianity that can be brought into harmony with all the rest of our life, corresponding to the change that has occurred in the human race through increasing enlightenment and culture. . . .

Who will deny that the world has changed! For the better? Well, that remains a question. . . . But it is eternally certain that nothing so offends sensibleness as the unconditioned, and . . . the immediately obvious mark of this is that sensibleness will never unconditionally acknowledge any requirement but continually claims itself to be the one that declares what kind of requirement is to be made.6

If you are like me, it is sensibleness you will feel welling up within you when you read Christ’s words to "resist not evil." It is sensibleness that will question whether they really mean what they seem to say, that will hasten to assure you that there are, there must be, just causes for which violence and resistance are righteous, that will not be willing to accept that we cannot avenge our murdered citizens, or bring the men responsible to justice, believing that somewhere, somehow, there must be maneuvering room in Christ’s command to love one’s enemies sufficient to kill them.

It is sensibleness that renders Tolstoy’s work an obscure volume relegated to the status of a curiosity penned by a great novelist who should have stuck to writing fiction. People do not try to answer his arguments. They are just sensibly ignored. When the Massachusetts preacher, Adin Ballou, died in 1890, after spending fifty years of his life writing about and preaching non-resistance based on Christ’s teaching, his obituary in the Religio-Philosophical Journal made no mention of this his life’s work. Sensible, surely, for why malign the man by pointing out how much of his life was spent in foolishness, and why disturb readers by raising concerns over what can only be an improper interpretation of the meaning of Christ’s command?

Similarly, you are not likely to hear Matthew 5 : 38-45 preached this, the next or any other weekend soon, though if the Christian religion were supposed to have relevance to men’s lives, it would appear to be timely.

For those who can accept and have the courage to pursue it, however, the standard has been laid down. While we may admit (I admit) that we do not (I do not) feel Christian love for our enemies, we can at least partially act as required: we can refuse to go to war; we can refuse to try to bring the perpetrators to justice. And if we cannot quite bring ourselves to heed Christ’s counsel in full, perhaps we can at least take George Washington’s advice to avoid foreign entanglements, bring our troops home from across the globe, stop selling arms to foreign nations and cease meddling in foreign affairs. Not, be it noted, because we hope or believe that we will thereby gain release from further terrorist assaults. Those who destroyed the World Trade Center hate us, and it is possible that nothing we can do will change that, and that they will not stop until they exhaust themselves in their hate. If it is to be done, it must be done only because it is the right thing to do. And this would be a good start: to not go to war.

There is one other consideration that ought compel those of us who believe in God to give this matter the thought it deserves. That is the knowledge that, although God is longsuffering and of great mercy, He by no means clears the guilty, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation.7 President Bush is warning us that this war will not be over soon. But I wonder how far his vision extends.

Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), translated by Constance Garnett, Nebraska University Press, ©1984, at p. 243.

Ibid, at pp. 241 – 242.

Ibid, at p. 244.

Ibid, at 259.

Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon "Christendom" (1854-1855), translated by Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, © 1944, tenth printing, 1991, p. 219.

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge For Yourself!, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, © 1990, pp. 154 – 155.

Exodus 34 : 7; Numbers 14 : 18.

September 21, 2001

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in mid-town Manhattan. His website is www.nationofcowards.net.

Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com ( used for educational purposes only)

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Transforming Credits- Anchor

A compilation

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Transferring credits can be a maddening process.

I experienced this once. I started seminary in one place and then we moved to start [a] church, so I had to end up changing schools. And sure enough, some of the credits that I earned at the first school wouldn’t transfer to the other. It was frustrating, to say the least. It felt like my scholastic achievements were for nothing.

There’s a similar credit transfer problem that happens in the kingdom of God when it comes to our accomplishments. It can be even more frustrating and maddening because we’re so accustomed to operating according to the world’s standards of measuring success. But it’s something we have to take to heart because it’s the way God works.

The credits of men on earth don’t transfer to the kingdom of God. What I mean is that just because the world says you’re successful doesn’t mean you’ve impressed God one bit.

God really doesn’t care about how much money you’ve earned.

Where you’ve gotten your degree from.

Or what letters make up the title in front of your name.

The things that we think are major accomplishments aren’t to God.

For at least two reasons.

First, it’s kind of hard to brag to a God who spoke the universe into existence. I just can’t see God being blown back by our résumé. Especially when the source of all of our accomplishments is Him. Also, it’s kind of insulting to His grace to think that any amount of achievement could earn the love and favor that has already been achieved for you.

Second, I don’t think God is looking for the same things we are. If you take a cursory look through the Bible, these were the kinds of people and things that stood out to Him:

A young shepherd on the backside of nowhere whose heart was after Him (1 Samuel 16).

The faith of a man who shouldn’t have had any (Luke 7:1–10).

The meager but total generosity of a peasant woman compared to the lavish but incomplete giving of the rich around her (Luke 21:1–4).

I’m not saying you need to downgrade your job. Or make yourself poor. Or that your success and accomplishments can’t be used for God’s glory.

I’m just saying that you shouldn’t assume that you’re at the front of the line to be used for His glory because of them. Besides, in God’s order of things, the front isn’t necessarily where you want to be anyway:

So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Matthew 20:16.1

*

Someone was wondering how the Lord looked at them—how He saw them when He looked at their life, what His evaluation was. They didn’t feel so great about themselves or their accomplishments.

Here is what He told them. If this resonates in your heart and you can imagine Jesus saying this to you, then let this be an encouragement to you, too, because Jesus has enough love to go around. Or you can ask Him for His personal words just for you.

Jesus said:

Let Me tell you what I see when I look at you.
I see My beloved child. As a parent gazes into the eyes of his child and feels nothing but love, so I look upon you. I feel such pride in seeing how you’ve grown from a child to adulthood, and the wise and mature choices that you’ve made over the years.
I see a yielded heart, one who has said yes to Me time and time again, even when you felt incapable or as if you didn’t have the strength to go on.
I see a sacrificial life lived for Me. You’ve laid your all on the altar of sacrifice countless times, even though it cost you dearly.
I see one who has been willing to follow Me no matter where I lead, who has had the faith to take the steps I charted for you, even though you often couldn’t clearly see the path ahead or what the final destination would be.
I see an unselfish and giving soul, one who puts the needs of others before your own and gives even to your hurt.
I see a humble vessel who has been willing to go through My refining fires so that I could make of you even finer gold.
I see one who is strong in faith, even though you may feel differently. Your faith has endured the test of time; you’ve stayed true to My calling, to the still, small voice speaking to your heart, to the fundamentals and the foundation principles that I’ve taught you these many years. I know that your faith is built on a solid rock and will not be easily tossed to and fro.
I see My honored messenger. You’ve given your life to the cause of spreading My message of love to others so that they too can find the joy of My salvation.

When you’re tempted to wonder if your accomplishments have been valuable or whether you have lived your faith well, just remember that I see your life differently than the world does. I see the true values of your life that you and others may overlook or that may not be as plainly visible—qualities that make a character that is worthy of admiration, contributions that will live on in the lives of others and will continue to make a difference in the world.2

Published on Anchor June 2012. Read by Simon Peterson. Music by Michael Dooley.


1 By Pastor Steven Furtick.

2 By Maria Fontaine. Originally published February 2011.

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Putin Fears Civil War in Syria!

Putin Fears Civil War but Rejects Intervention in Syria

By Nicholas Kulish and Neil MacFarquhar, NY Times, June 1, 2012


BERLIN—President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said Friday that he rejected outside military intervention as an answer to the increasingly horrific bloodshed in Syria, and the Kremlin publicly sided with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in blaming Mr. Assad’s armed rebel opponents for a massacre there last week that incited world outrage.

But Mr. Putin said he agreed with fears expressed by Western leaders and United Nations officials that the 15-month-old Syria conflict is hurtling toward civil war, and he asserted that Russia backed neither side despite his country’s longstanding support for the Syrian government, its last significant relationship in the Middle East.

Mr. Putin’s remarks on Syria, coming during stops in Germany and France as he began his first foreign trip since reclaiming the Russian presidency, were scrutinized for any hint of a shift in the Russian position on Syria that could help change the course of the conflict, which has become the most protracted and violent of the Arab Spring revolts.

Russia’s objection to any effort by the United States and its allies that could lead to a forceful United Nations Security Council intervention in Syria and the ouster of Mr. Assad has been a major source of contention. But Mr. Putin showed no sign of yielding to pressure from either Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, or later with François Hollande, the new president of France.

“We are seeing nascent elements of a civil war today. This is extremely dangerous,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference with Ms. Merkel after their discussions. At the same time, he dismissed the idea that outside military power was a solution, telling reporters, “You cannot do anything by force.”

He also said: “Those who say that Russia unilaterally supports the Assad regime are mistaken. We and Syria have maintained good relations for years, but we do not support either party from which a threat of civil war emanates.” As for reports that Russia is arming the Syrian military, Mr. Putin said, “Russia is not shipping weapons that could be used in a civil conflict.”

In her remarks, Ms. Merkel told reporters that they had both made clear that they supported the Syria peace plan by Kofi Annan, the special representative from the United Nations and the Arab League, and both she and Mr. Putin “have the same interests regarding stability in the whole region, even if there is the one or the other odd difference in the path to get there.”

Later in Paris, the contrast between the Russian and Western positions was more pronounced. Mr. Hollande told reporters that United Nations sanctions were probably necessary and that “no solution is possible without the departure of Bashar al-Assad.” Mr. Putin said sanctions did not work and that removing Mr. Assad was no panacea. “Do you think that just by removing the president there will be happiness across the country?” he said. “Just look at what has happened in Libya.”

In Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement with a hard tone, blaming unspecified foreign countries for the Houla massacre, the worst known atrocity so far in the conflict. The statement said the killings “showed what can result from supplying rebels with financial aid and smuggling modern weaponry to them, hiring foreign mercenaries and flirting with different kinds of extremists.”

Russia’s resistance to pressure on Syria reflects an anger that has grown since the beginning of the Arab uprisings, which hard-liners in Moscow view as largely orchestrated by the West. They are particularly resentful over the case of Libya, in which Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the president, agreed not to block a Security Council resolution that provided the basis for NATO airstrikes and the violent death of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Mr. Putin fumed over the military campaign at the time, but was powerless to stop it.

“If it hadn’t been for Libya, maybe things would be different with Syria,” said Georgy Mirsky, a leading Middle East scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Intense discussions on Syria also continued between members of the Security Council in New York on how to salvage the cease-fire plan negotiated by Mr. Annan, which has basically been ignored since it took effect in mid-April. Mr. Annan, who was visiting with officials of neighboring Lebanon on Friday, expressed frustration.

“I think perhaps I am more frustrated than most of you because I am in the thick of things,” he said at a news conference in Beirut. “We really want to see things move much faster.”

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Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer- Leo Tolstoy

You are surprised that soldiers are taught that it is right to kill people in certain cases and in war, while in the books admitted to be holy by those who so teach. there is nothing like such a permission, but, on the contrary, not only is all murder forbidden but all insulting of others is forbidden also, and we are told not to do to others what we do not wish done to us. And you ask, Is there not some fraud in all this? And if so, then for whose sake is it committed?




Yes, there is a fraud, committed for the sake of those accustomed to live on the sweat and blood of other men, and who therefore have perverted, and still pervert, Christ's teaching, given to man for his good, but which has now, in its perverted form, become a chief source of human misery.

The thing has come about in this way:




The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work., need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defence against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germane; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbours or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world. The Government and the upper, governing classes, to excuse their domination of the labourers, behave like a gipsy who whips his horse before he turns a corner and then pretends he cannot hold it in. They stir up their own people and some foreign Government, and then pretend that for the well-being, or the defence, of their people they must declare war: which again brings profit only to generals, officers, officials, merchants, and., in general, to the rich. In reality war is an inevitable result of the existence of armies; and armies are only needed by Governments to dominate their own working classes.




The thing is a crime, but the worst of it is that the Government, in order to have a plausible basis for its domination of the people, has to pretend that it holds the highest religious teaching known to man (the Christian), and that it brings up its subjects in this teaching. That teaching, however, is in its very nature opposed not only to murder but to all violence, and therefore the Governments, in order to dominate the people and to be considered Christian, had to pervert Christianity and to hide its true meaning from the people, and thus deprive men of the well-being Christ offered them.




This perversion was accomplished long ago, in the time of that scoundrel the Emperor Constantine, who for doing it was enrolled among the saints. All subsequent Governments, especially our Russian Government, do their utmost to preserve this perverted understanding, and to prevent people from seeing the real meaning of Christianity; because having once seen the real meaning of Christianity, the people would perceive that the Governments, with their taxes, soldiers, prisons, gallows, and false priests, are not only not the pillars of Christianity they profess to be, but are its greatest enemies.




In consequence of this perversion, those frauds which have surprised you are possible, and all those terrible misfortunes occur from which men suffer.




The people are oppressed and robbed, and are poor, ignorant, dying of hunger. Why? Because the land is in the hands of the rich; and the people are enslaved in mills and in factories, obliged to earn money because taxes are demanded from them, and the price of their labour is diminished while the price of things they need is increased.




How are they to escape? By taking the land from the rich? But if this is done., soldiers will come, and will kill the rebels or put them in prison. Seize the mills and factories? The same will happen. Organize and maintain a strike? It is sure to fail. The rich will hold out longer than the workers, and the armies are always on the side of the capitalists. The people will never extricate themselves from the want in which they are kept as long as the army is in the hands of the governing classes.




But who compose these armies that keep the people in this state of slavery? Who are these soldiers that will fire at peasants who take the land, or at strikers who will not disperse, or at smugglers who bring in goods without paying taxes? Who put in prison and guard there those who refuse to pay taxes ? The soldiers are these same peasants who are deprived of land, these same strikers who want better wages, these same taxpayers who want to be rid of these taxes.




And why do these people shoot at their brothers ? Because it has been instilled into them that the oath they were obliged to take on entering the service is binding, and that though it is generally wrong to kill people, it is right to do so at the command of one's superiors. That is to say, the same fraud is played off upon them which has struck you. But here we meet the question, How is it that sensible peopleoften people who can read, and even educated peoplebelieve such an evident lie ? However little education a man may have, he cannot but know that Christ did not sanction murder, but taught kindness, meekness, forgiveness of injuries, love of one's enemies; and therefore he cannot help seeing that on the basis of Christian teaching he cannot pledge himself in advance to kill all whom lie may be ordered to kill.




The question is, how can sensible people believe- as all now serving in the army have believed and still believe-such an evident falsehood? The answer is that it is not this one fraud by itself that takes people in, but they have from childhood been deprived of the proper use of their reason by a whole series of deceptions, a whole system of frauds, called the Orthodox Faith, which is nothing but the grossest idolatry. In this faith people are taught: that God is triple, that besides this triple God there is a Queen of Heaven, and besides this Queen there are various saints whose corpses have not decayed, and besides these saints there are icons of the Gods and of the Queen of Heaven, to which one should offer candles and pray with one's hands; and that the most important and holy thing on earth is the pap which the priest makes of wine and white bread on Sundays, behind a partition; and that after the priest has whispered over it, the wine is no longer wine, and the white bread is not bread, but they are the blood and flesh of one of the triple Gods, etc. All this is so stupid and senseless that it is quite impossible to understand what it all means.




And the very people who teach this faith do not ask you to understand it, but only tell you to believe it; and people trained to believe these things from childhood can believe any kind of nonsense that is told them. And when men have been so befooled that they believe that God. hangs in the corner, or sits in a morsel of pap which the priest gives out in a spoon ; that to kiss a board or some relic and put candles in front of them, is useful for life here and hereafter-they are next called on to enter the military service, where they are humbugged to any extent; being first made to swear on the Gospel (in which swearing is prohibited) that they will do just what is forbidden in those Gospels, and then taught that to kill eople at the word of those in command is not a sin, but that to refuse to obey those in command is a sin. So that the fraud played off on soldiers when it is instilled into them that they may, without sin, kill people at the wish of those in command, is not an isolated fraud, but is bound up with a whole system of deception without which this one fraud would not deceive them.




Only a man quite befooled by the false faith called Orthodoxy, palmed off upon him for true Christian faith, can believe that it is no sin for a Christian to enter the army, promising blindly to obey any man who ranks above him in the service, and, at the will of others, learning to kill, and committing that most terrible crime forbidden by all moral law.

A man free from the pseudo-Christian faith that is called Orthodoxy, will not believe that.




And that is why the so-called Sectarians-Christians who have repudiated the Orthodox teaching, and acknowledge Christ's teaching as explained in the Gospels, and especially in the Sermon on the Mount-are not tricked by this deception, but have frequently refused, and still do refuse, to be soldiers, considering such an occupation incom atible with Christianity, and preferring to bear a kinds of persecution, as hundreds and thousands of people are doing: in Russia many of the Doukhobors and Molokans; in Austria the Nazarenes, and in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany some members of the Evangelical sects. The Government knows this, and is therefore exceedingly anxious that the general Church deception, without which its we could not be maintained, should be commence with every child from early infancy and be continually maintained in such a way that none may escape it. The Government tolerates anything else: drunkenness and vice (and not only tolerates but even organizes drunkenness and vice-they help to stupefy people), but by all means in its power it hinders those who have escaped out of its trap from assisting others to escape.




The Russian Government perpetrates this fraud with special craft and cruelty. It orders all its subjects to bap tize their children during infancy into the false faith called Orthodoxy, and it threatens to punish them if they disobey. And when the children are baptizedthat is, are reckoned as Orthodox-then, under threats of criminal penalties, they are forbidden to discuss the faith into which, without their wish, they were baptized; and for such discussion of that faith, as well as for renouncing it and changing to another, they are actually punished.. So that it cannot be said of Russians in general that they believe the Orthodox Faith-they do not know whether they believe it or not. They were converted to it during infancy, and kept in it by violence -that is, by the fear of punishment. All Russians were entrapped into Orthodoxy by cunning fraud, and are kept in it by cruel force.




Using the power it wields, the Government perpetrates and maintains this fraud, and by means of it retains power.




And, therefore, the sole way to free people from their many miseries lies in freeing them from the false faith instilled into them by Government, and in their imbibing the true Christian teaching, which this false teaching hides. The true Christian teaching is very simple, clear, and obvious to all, as Christ said. But it is simple and accessible only when man is freed from that falsehood in which we were all educated., and which is passed off upon us as God's Truth.




Nothing useful can be poured into a vessel that is already full of what is useless. We must first empty out what is useless. So it is with the acquirement of true Christian teaching. We have first to understand that all the stories telling how God made the world 6,000 years ago; how Adam sinned and the human race fell, and how the Son of God (a God born of a virgin) came on earth and redeemed man; and all the fables in the Old Testament and in the Gospels, and all the lives of the saints with their stories of miracles and relics- are all nothing but a gross hash of Jewish super-stitions and priestly frauds. Only to a man quite free from this deception can the clear and simple teaching of Christ, which needs no explanation, be accessibleand comprehensible. That teaching tells us nothing of the beginning, or of the end, of the world, nor about God and His purpose, nor, in general, about things which we cannot and need not know; but it speaks only of what man must do to save himself-that is, how best to live the life he has come into, in this world, from birth to death. For that purpose it is only necessary to act towards others as we wish them to act towards us. In thatis all the law and the prophets, as Christ said. And to act in this way we need neither icons, nor relies, nor church services, nor priests, nor catechisms, nor Governments, but, on the contrary, we need perfect freedom from all that; for to do to others as we wish them to do to us is only possible when a man is free from the fables which the priests give out as the only truth, and when he is not bound by promises to act as other people may order. Only such a man will be capable of fulfilling- not his own will nor that of men., but- the will of God.




And the will of God is not that we should fight and oppress the weak, but that we should acknowledge all men to be our brothers and should serve one another.




These are the thoughts your letter has aroused in me. I shall be very glad if they help to clear up the questions you are thinking about.

[1898.]


This page has been accessed by visitors outside of Pitzer College times since February 27, 2000.

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The Tough College Years

By Dennis Edwards: Chapter 2

Moving to Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio in September of 1967 was the beginning of a new life. I was thrown into a society in which I was a nobody. No one knew I was president of my senior class. No one knew I was on the Central Jersey Group III State Champ football team. No one knew my girlfriend was secretary of the student body and cheerleader. No one knew my best friend was president of the student body. No one knew what or who I was. Identity crisis was in full gear.

It was some time in that first year, that my former girlfriend came and told me she had another boyfriend. I was destroyed. Here I had been trying to keep all the church rules against pre-marital sex and the thing that I loved the most, my girlfriend, "God" took from me and gave to another. I fell into a deep depression. I was mad at "God." I stopped believing in Him and threw away my "religious" faith and threw myself into atheism, evolution and political anarchy. I had been taking a geology course that first year that fed me evolution and billions of years. I swallowed it all in like the dumb sheep I was. I began attacking the faith of Christian girls I would date. I tried to convert others to my new found beliefs proving through science that the Bible was wrong.

But with time my furry subsided and while smoking hash with a close friend a few years later, I had my "God" experience.(I want to make it clear here I am not advocating taking drugs to find God, but God used this experience on my path to Him). A ball of light touched me and I was enveloped in an energy of love, a spiritual orgasm, a spiritual epiphany. My whole being had been transformed in an instance. My first thought was "Is this what Jesus is all about?" But from that moment I knew Love was the power and the force of the universe. On that day, I went home and apologized to my parents for the way I had acted as a rebellious teen, even having fought with my father. All I wanted to do was love others. But now I had to consolidate my experience and find out where this power of love came from.

I started searching through different religious philosophies for truth. Buddhism was one of the first to catch my interest. I studied the eight fold path of Siddhartha. I read Herman Hesse´s books which contained Buddhist philosophy. I became an organic vegetarian. I also dabbled in Judaism as I had a Jewish girlfriend for a time. I read heavily on transcendental meditation and used as my Bibles the books Be Here Now by Ram Dass, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and Erich Fromm´s The Art of Loving among others. I steered clear of Christian Evangelicals and Christianity and Catholicism which I had assumed to be false because of the hypocritical actions of their followers and my previous experiences in childhood.

However, the question of war and my involvement in it, as I was due to be drafted after my four year deferment during college, led me to start reading heavily on the subject of conscientious objection to war, and draft resistance. I came across Leo Tolstoy's "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," [1] and The Kingdom of God is Within You.[2] As Tolstoy mentions the teaching of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, I started to read and study Jesus´ words found in those chapters specifically Matthew 5-7 in the New Testament.

But by October of 1971 I had been refused conscientious objector status by the military and after refusing to take the various examinations had been ordered to appear for induction into the US military or face the consequences. My mother, God bless her soul, telephoned me at the end of October telling me the FBI had been around to arrest me as I had not appeared for induction. I was working as a low salaried teacher of retarded children in Marietta, Ohio at the time. However, when I put down the phone from speaking to my mom, I dropped to my knees and with tears falling called out with all my heart to "God" if He indeed existed to save me. I was not asking Him to save my soul, but to save me from the problem of having to go into the military and having to kill and be killed in Vietnam. But after having prayed, I rose from my knees and spit on the floor and said, "There´s no God, so why am I praying?"

But I was soon to find out that God does answer prayer when we call upon Him with all our heart even if our mind sometimes gets in the way.

[1] http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/tolstoy/officer.html

[2] http://www.kingdomnow.org/w-inyou01.html 

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