Psalm 91 on War & Ethnic Cleansing

ETHNIC CLEANSING, WAR, AND PLAGUE
David, the Psalmist, wrote, “A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you (from Psalm 91).” The statement describes the feelings of a lone survivor after a battle or the event of a plague. It is a Biblical promise for God’s servants, but the real intent of the promise is to keep us from the power of sin over our lives. To the degree that sin has no power over us, to that degree we become invulnerable to the natural disasters that fall on the world. Jesus was truly free from sin in every respect, and in Luke 4 he was able to face down an entire mob bent on killing him and walk away unharmed. He has given this same authority to those who follow him with a pure heart, undistracted by other unworthy ambitions. He promised his disciples they would do even greater works than he himself had done.

One hundred and thirty-nine years ago my Friesen/Fast grandparents
arrived as children in Minnesota from Russia. The great grandparents on both
sides of my family left property and livelihoods in Russia to carve out a new life
on the Minnesota prairie in order to avoid military conscription in Russia. I doubt
they would have come with a clear conscience had they known the land they
bought in Minnesota had just been blood soaked by the ethnic cleansing of the
Lakota Sioux. It is such a paradox that those who left their homes to avoid
military service in Russia bought property taken by force through military action
here! This paradox is complicated even more by the fact that a similar situation
occurred in the 18th century when previous ancestors had left Prussia to settle in
the Ukraine for similar reasons.

One point of view says we need to thank the American army for making a
place for Mennonite settlers to settle. But we do not thank the American army.
Instead we thank God whose sovereignty rules all human affairs. The witness of
my family is that God honors faith and obedience. By faith one may walk
unarmed and unharmed through a world bristling with weapons and fear.

Here is the fuller context from Psalm 91 describing David’s experience, a
passage Jesus would certainly have memorized:
You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.

You will only look with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

Because you have made the LORD your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling-place,
no evil shall befall you, and no scourge
come near your tent.

Moses also gave witness to the same truth. He taught that if Israel lived in
obedience to God, then God would protect them from their enemies and care for
their economic necessities. They wouldn’t even need an army. But they would
have to trust God completely and show that trust by their obedience, something
they found too difficult to achieve, and the consequences were disastrous. Twice
in history they lost their lease on the land God gave them, and ethnic cleansing
removed them elsewhere, just as it had removed the Canaanites before them.

Today we Americans are in danger of losing our lease on the land God
gave us. We have sold ourselves in slavery to the love of money, and foreigners
are waiting and ready to buy up all our assets and put us in slavery. If Israel’s
experience reveals God’s righteous judgment, then those who resist with
violence will be destroyed. But Jesus tells us, “Never fear, for I am with you, even
to the end of the world.”

The experience of my ancestors has been my experience as well. After graduation from college the most difficult moment of my youth was facing my own father to declare I no longer shared his Mennonite convictions about war. His response exceeded my wildest hopes. In essence he said, “I gave you to God and you belong to him. You follow him wherever the Holy Spirit leads and I will support you.” With these words he set me free from mere religious tradition.

In 1967 the Vietnam War was raging, and all young men my age were being drafted. Had I actually been drafted I would have gone, but just at that time I was invited to serve as a missionary teacher in East Africa, and when I accepted the invitation an exemption from military service was quite miraculously granted. There was no clever calculation on my part to avoid military service. It was clear God had something else for me to do. Like my forbearers who left Germany in the 18th Century and again left Russia in the 19th Century, God had a different place for me. (These last two paragraphs are taken from the preface to my book, THE OLD TESTAMENT ROOTS OF NONVIOLENCE, published 2010.)

This is my story of God trustworthiness. It no doubt will not square up with many people’s experience, but for those who know our God through Jesus Christ & daily walk with him, they will be able to affirm the character of the God we know as I have testified, even when their experience may be different as to the specific ethical issues involved.