Identifying the Heart of a Just Warrior

    

    I’ve written a great deal about the primacy of the heart. While the concept has ample scripture and philosophical support the problem then becomes, how can one know if some action in war is really a heartfelt policy? We have some clues in the movie Witness, where an Amish grandfather tells a young boy who wants to use a gun against bad men that the young child can’t see into people’s hearts. But the child, who witnessed a murder, responds that he recognizes bad men by their actions. While that is a good line, it is insufficient because a just war like World War II can kill as many people in as many ways as unjust wars. When warfare is so gruesome that even its defenders say it is similar to a surgeon that has to saw off a limb, how can we tell if the heart of the person waging war is righteous? Here are several of the ideas I have:

    When President Nelson gave his talk about being a peacemaker, the Facebook groups in which I participated immediately weaponized it. They would immediately cite his talk against the actions of someone they didn’t link. But being a peace maker in your heart has to derive from one’s own self reflection and conviction within their hears. This is dangerous because of the tendency of people to self-justify. So Boyd Packer’s insight remains important. He said that the apostles of Jesus didn’t suggest Judas as the betrayer, but asked, “Lord, is it I?” This is a powerful reminder that we use scriptures to scrutinize and change our behavior, not self-justify. And in this case, towards more peaceful resolutions in our personal lives and foreign policy.

    The next solution is context. As I mentioned, a righteous war and unrighteous war look fairly similar in the sense that the government sends its bombers, ships, and soldiers to shoot at people. But it is important to consider context. Imagine a scenario where a grandmother is crossing the road and the brakes on a bus fail. That bus is certainly about to kill her, so a bystander runs and pushes the grandmother out of the way. That individual just pushed a grandmother and broke her hip, but because of the context he is considered a hero.

    But let us take the same scenario, only this time the grandmother is on the curb, waiting patiently to cross the street. The bus is coming, and the bystander takes the same action. He pushes the grandmother. She breaks her hip and then bus hits her. That is the dastardliest action that one can think of.

    Yet the central action, pushing the grandmother, is exactly the same as the heroic action from the previous version of this scenario. What turns the same action from a crime into a heroic action is the context. In this case, the question is if the person is throwing grandma into or out of the way of the oncoming bus.

    Clearly, killing to defend life is a clear expression of Christlike love, while killing to gain power or freedom is not. Alma 43-45 clearly described the dichotomy between the Christlike defense of home verses seeking for money and power, even though both use almost indistinguishable tactics. It is important for us to gather as much information as we can to put actions into context.

    The next item to consider is related to context, and we should look at outcomes. Fighting for more territory and power is far different than fighting to protect an ethnic minority from extermination. There are very clear goals that can show the nature of the person’s heart. The danger in this is that no country ever proclaims its evil motives. Even Hitler planted some bodies in disputed territory to claim a righteous reason to invade. But thoughtful individuals can see the difference between spin and substance, or as Chinese theorist said, the punishments and prohibitions must accord.[1]

    The ability to detect spin, especially in an age of echo chambers and fake news will likely receive its own post in the future. As an academic with access to large amounts of information and what people tell me is a good head, I might overestimate the ability of most people to see through talking points. And yet making sure you can see the difference in context and desired outcomes remains important. While history is often used and abused, knowing history can bring additional information and examples that lets a person judge.

    That leads to the final and most important point. The decision to go to war is often overwhelming. It is the numb, crying, can’t concentrate feeling when you watch the twin towers fall, or the video of Israeli’s being harmed. Your heart, the loving heart of just war, feels incredible pain at the injustice you are watching. And that heart knows that there must be a response that seeks justice. While God holds eternal judgement, that justice is in the state’s hands. So you know and support the use of the military to achieve justice. That’s why Thomas Aquinas cited scriptures like Psalms 82:3-4 as the key of just war: “Defend the lowly and fatherless; render justice to the afflicted and needy. Rescue the lowly and poor; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” Your heart knows, decisively, when the blood of the [innocent] shall cry from the ground against them (2 Nephi 28:5-10).

    So these are some important considerations that help modern Latter-Day Saints see if they have the peaceful, loving hearts required to wield the sword. We must have a “Lord is it I” attitude towards peace making, consider context and outcomes, and remember how we felt on 9/11. We intuitively know when we see a massive injustice that needs correction and justice in the form of a nation state declaring war.

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[1] Robin Yates trans., Five Lost Classics, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), 57.

Happy 15th Anniversary to Warfare in the Book of Mormon

    Take yourself back to January 2009. The fallout from the housing crisis was ongoing. Barrack Obama was inaugurated. The people loved the movies Taken and Paul Blart Mall Cop. This new singer, Lady Gaga, topped the charts. Personally, I was serving in the Virginia National Guard. In fact, my unit was activated for Obama’s inauguration. That Christmas I got dragged to my in-laws for what was the worst break ever. (The journey from my wife to ex-wife was filled with lows actually.) Most importantly, in January of 2009 I finished my last official semester of grad school. I thought I would soon be attending my PhD program, and full of excitement, I figured I should finally start that Book of Mormon warfare blog I always wanted to when I had the chance.

    Here we are 15 years later and I’m still blogging. When I first started, I had lots of ideas, but I didn’t know it would be enough to talk about over a decade and a half. My steady and lengthy progress remind me of a story from the Chinese philosopher Xunzi. He was a major Confucian thinker often called the Chinese Aristotle. He wrote that not everyone can be a mythical war horse that travels 10,000 miles in a day. But if you measure its pace an old nag can go 10,000 miles.[1] So like any good anniversary I suppose I’ll buy myself some crystal, enjoy how far I’ve come, and then give you some highlights during a retrospective look at my blog:

Early Posts:

    My early posts were rough. I had lots of good ideas, but they were all over the place and unrefined. I saw one spot where I didn’t capitalize the Bible! But there are also many jewels. For example, compare my desire to look at the average soldier in this post, with my journal article about the experience of battle within the Book of Mormon. I couldn’t find it, but early on I discussed the danger that nuclear weapons pose and the need for preemptive war as a result. That line of thought has blossomed into articles like this. One of my very first posts, responded to a website, Mormon Mesoamerica, that no longer exists! (The link is safe; it just doesn’t go to Mormon Mesoamerica.) I guess that means my arguments win by simply outlasting the critical website. Seriously though, in the age of 30 second viral videos and auto erasing texts, I’m proud of having something like this blog that has the extra credibility of being around for 15 years.

Purpose and Place of Blog:

    The best description of my blog past that early stage was this post about being an insurgent. I know it’s strange to call myself an insurgent but the term is neutral. I thought it was an accurate example of using my blog to share ideas that bypass gate keepers like editors. You’ll notice on my author page that I prefer self-publishing. I like to control the pace, pick the picture, set the price, and most importantly, keep the royalties. The added prestige of a publisher would be nice, but in most cases, it doesn’t seem worth the hassle.

    Looking back, I would have also described how my blog is often a feeder for more serious publications. The toughest part of writing for me is going from my mind to paper. And with a blog post I already have the preliminary thoughts written down and some kind of draft to polish pieces for conferences and journal articles. I also put a good deal of work into the footnotes, which saves me time in the final product. The lengthy footnotes work to show that I have a command of a wide range of material. In some cases the extensive sources also combat misinformation.

Rebuttals:

    Even casual readers should notice that this isn’t a fluff blog. I have good ideas, and I’ve put in years of study and lots of thought going 10,000 miles in my career. I’ve encountered lots of people, mainly libertarians for some reason, who haven’t put in that thought. For example, one author literally said that he skipped school (because its “establishment pap”) and put in just a few months writing his (lousy) book.

    I learned two important lessons from these engagements. The first lesson can be compared to an experience from General Grant. During his first engagement he unexpectedly bumped into an opposing officer leading his men into battle. When Grant saw the look of fear in that commander’s eyes, he realized that the enemy wasn’t monolithic and all powerful. In fact, they are just like him, but since Grant came prepared and trusted his leadership skills and strategic acumen, he had no reason to fear. In short, I’m not intimidated by someone that has lots of degrees and titles and smugly assumes they are the smartest person in every room. I am well read, academically trained, and thoughtful, so I often find people like Patrick Mason, who are big name scholars that haven’t read critical texts and make poor arguments.

    The other lesson I learn from rebutting random trolls is how even the saddest internet poser still apes the language and methods of academia. They’ll begin by talking about the danger of academics or with insults. But then they offer their own thesis statements, (or mislabel my thesis statements), provide very short bibliographies filled with specious texts, and somehow talk about research. Yet their posts aren’t really scholarship because they mostly rely on dogma, catch phrases, cliches, and shallow thought. Without rigorous thought, sound methods, and a spirit of free inquiry, they deny themselves the power of scholarship and only have the appearance of it. In short, they hate academics, still have an intuitive need to look like one, but fail because they misunderstand the underlying methods that makes a real scholar.

Instincts:

    I like the comments I made on this post more than a decade ago. As I’ve studied just war, the primacy of the heart has been solidified for me. It resolves the tension between how a Christian can have a peaceful heart and wield the sword. Ten years before I did that research in the comments of that blog, I already noticed how love can be manipulated. So I simply continued that thinking: If its loving to not fight, how can it be loving to not fight and then accept the consequences of a Nazi victory. Even before my official study I had an instinctive knowledge of that fact.

    Beyond my comments, the post itself is quite ironic in more ways. I’m clearly better read than Geoff B. He claims to have read the authors I cited, but if he did, he would have addressed them instead of repeating shallow isolationist cliches. (They’ll say “war is a racket”, but haven’t even read the Smedley Butler piece from which the phrase derives.)

    Years later Geoff has run the conservative Millennial Star into the ground. He purged most of the perma-bloggers for being insufficiently orthodox. As he bullied those that disagreed with him, he bragged about how many unique visitors the site used to get but now I think my solo blog outproduces and gets more unique visitors than him.

    The second irony comes from the “diplomat” that invited the post. I audibly guffaw every time I hear that term, because my only memory of Scott was him sending a series of flaming emails in the middle of my divorce. I was only going through the worst event of my life, and he claimed to be my friend (and again, a diplomat), but somehow, he thought it was a good time to vomit outrage and unfair insults over an alleged faux pas of mine. He’s so bad at diplomacy he reminded me of that scene from Office Space where the guy yells, “I’m good at dealing with people…what the hell is wrong with you!!!”

    Sadly, his behavior is fairly typical of my experience with people from By Common Consent and the Mormon blogging world in general. If you are liberal or critical of the church, they love you and they all need rotator cuff surgery from patting themselves on the back over how amazing, smart, and nuanced they are. As I found during my time with Wheat and Tares, if you are conservative and orthodox you are met with disdain and condescension. But the best revenge against the super sophisticates of the bloggernacle is to continue my great career. After every success I’ll admit I indulge in a little chuckle at the haters. Reading 15 years’ worth of insults, I know I’ve earned it.

Conclusion:

    If this were a tv special at this point the music would swell, and the highlight clips would flow a little faster but I’m not that cool. I can say that I don’t see anything that would end my blogging. My divorce and brief homelessness didn’t even stop my blogging. I still have ideas. My latest book on just warfare in the Book of Mormon has essentially been published. There is always another idea, another conference, another paper. Publishing one post a month, in the first week, if possible, is a steady groove and easily achievable. Maybe someday I’ll look at my creations, feel proud, and then rest. But I can’t say when that is coming.

    Thanks for reading. I joke that I only have about ten readers. But I appreciate every one of you. Thanks for being with me for any part of the last 15 years, and I look forward to linking to this blog post in my 30^th anniversary post.

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[1] Eric Hutton trans., Xunzi: The Complete Text, (Princeton University Press, 2014,) 13.

Straightening the Warped Wood: A Confucian Reading of 2 Nephi 2:25

The following is my application to the Mormon Theology Seminar. They asked for a creative and close reading of 2 Nephi 2:25. 

Lehi begins his blessing by telling his son Jacob that he was born in the wilderness and “suffered afflictions and much sorrow.” V.1 But, Lehi promised, those afflictions would be “consecrated for his gain.’ V2 because he was redeemed by his Savior. V.3 This blessing and explanation of Jesus’ role culminates in the famous couplet: Adam fell that man might be and men are that they might have joy.

The joy of mankind’s purpose immediately contrasts with Biblical verses who emphasize the conditions of the lone and dreary world that would be cursed. Adam would eat by the “sweat of his brow” (Gen 3:17) and women would bring forth children in sorrow (Gen. 3:16).

But when viewed through Confucian teachings, that sorrow is what leads to joy. This Confucian lens bridges the gap between the Biblical account of the fall that emphasizes tribulation, and Lehi’s version, which quickly pivots from tribulation to joy and omits the tribulation all together in his famous couplet.

One of the leading Confucian thinkers Xunzi, often called the Chinese Aristotle for his command of a wide range of topics over a similar time period as the Greek thinker, discussed fallen human nature and its relation to self-improvement and joy.

In contrast to other Confucian thinkers like Mencius (whom Xunzi names in his rebuttal), Xunzi believed that human nature was fallen. Sounding much King Benjamin about the carnal, sensual and devilish “natural man” (Mosiah 3:19), Xunzi wrote: People’s nature is bad…goodness is a matter of deliberate effort. They are born with feelings of hate and dislike in them. If they follow along with these, then cruelty and villainy will arise.[1] (Xunzi also believed that a sage ruler would supplant a mere hegemon by recognizing his people’s nature, teaching them what is right, and guiding them on the way, again sounding like King Benjamin’s role in Mosiah chapters 1-3.)

This sounds negative at first glance, but his message is positive because this fallen or sinful nature can lead to great joy. Xunzi explained that recognizing man’s fallen nature is like a craftsman that sees a crooked piece of word, potter adding water to raw clay, or a smith that sees unrefined metal.[2] “Crooked wood must await streaming and straightening…only then does it become straight. Blunt metal must await honing and grinding, and only then does it become sharp.”[3] The people, honed by Confucian rituals and behavior, find themselves living in a blessed and happy state as gentlemen, being able to overcome the vicissitudes of life.

The most applicable part of being a gentleman is maintaining composure during toil, such as those experienced by Jacob, Adam, and everyone living in a fallen world. Xunzi thought that even people “on the streets” or in the lowliest gutter of fallen life could apply these principles.[4]  Once perfected, the Confucian gentlemen retains peace and happiness no matter the situation. “Even if living in poverty, the gentlemen’s intentions are still grand. Even if wealthy and honored, his demeanor is reverent. Even if living at easy, his blood and qi are not lazy. Even if weary from toil, his countenance is not disagreeable. When angry he is not excessively harsh, and when happy he is not excessively indulgent.”[5]

The Confucian lens thus makes an explicit connection between man’s fallen nature, and their capacity for joy. It not only shows some congruency with Lehi’s teachings, but adds much more, filling in the blanks of what specific actions within life leads to joy, as simply as a crooked piece of wood being straightened by a craftsman. The fall leads to trial, which in turn leads to joy because of the perfecting actions prescribed by rituals and proper conduct.

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[1] Eric Hutton, trans., Xunzi: The Complete Text, (Princeton University Press, 2014,) 248.

[2] Ibid., 65, 201, 204, 209, 210, 250.

[3] Ibid., 248.

[4] Ibid., 254.

[5] Ibid., 15.

Sidelining Jesus: Appraising Mason's Thoughts on Peace and Ukraine

 

        Patrick Mason didn’t attend the LDS National Security Professionals earlier this year but his planned remarks have been published in Public Square. As with his very poorly argued book, he thanks a prodigious amount of people for providing feedback and guidance, but still produced an extremely flawed argument. Mason sidelines Jesus in favor of his own deeply flawed interpretations and misquotes while showing a shallow knowledge (and rejection of) just war.

Sidelining Jesus

        You might think that “side lining Jesus” is a rather harsh thing to say to a fellow Latter Day Saint but that line is used by Mason to denigrate the theories and people who disagree with him. Other people might have different theories than him, but they don’t follow Jesus any less.

        For example, Mason quotes President Nelson as saying, “Any war is a horrifying violation of everything the Lord Jesus Christ stands for and teaches.” But it was actually President Hinckley who gave the most comprehensive discussion of warfare to date. Unlike Presidents Nelson and McKay he recognized and respected other points of view. Moreover, President Hinckley quoted Alma 43:46-46 before saying, “there are times and circumstances when nations are justified, in fact have an obligation, to fight for family, for liberty, and against tyranny, threat, and oppression.” According to Mason, we have to believe that President Hinckley “sidelined” Jesus by quoting the war chapters and recognizing the just causes to use force.

Misquotes

Mason thinks that Jesus should be the center of nonviolent theology, yet Mason shows himself to be a mercenary by using (and often misusing) a variety of quotes. For example, he quoted Tertullian when he said, “In disarming Peter, Jesus unbelted every soldier.” But the problem is that Mason has never read Tertullian![1]

         Tertullian isn’t that hard to read. I found a translation online in a matter of seconds and spontaneously read it in a single sitting. If Mason had bothered to read Tertullian, or any other Christian fathers instead of out of context proof texts in pacifist volumes he would have been more cautious in quoting him. Tertullian rejected the danger of idolatrous military ceremonies and clothing. But many Christians still fought as Roman soldiers and many other Christian fathers like Clement supported the state’s right to use force and Clement prayed for the success of the emperor’s army. The summary of the dominant positions was to that a “vengeful spirit is denounced” not force itself.[2]

In summary, Mason admits he hasn’t read his source, applies it in isolation from Christian fathers, and then uses it to provide a veneer of classical education and the respectability of church fathers to his theories. But he shows the same slipshod style with all of his quotes. For example, in some places he quotes Martin Luther King and the liberal, Catholic Pope in a more privileged position than most of scripture. But in other places, when their words are no longer useful to him, Mason implies that non-LDS thinkers are less than restoration texts. At one point he quotes a Catholic and then says: “On the other hand…most authoritative scripture.”

Mason not only fails to read many seminal thinkers and selectively use others, but he also demotes restoration scriptures! He sidelines most prophets in the Book of Mormon by focusing on the anti-Nephi Lehi’s and Ammon. He redefines words to ignore explicit scripture like DC 134:11.” We believe that all men are justified in defending themselves.” He reinterprets Doctrine and Covenants 98, particularly verse 32 that says this law was given to Nephi and Abraham as a way to ignore the example of the Nephites and Abraham. The latter of whom, didn’t follow the Lords law of war but was blessed as a prince of peace and as the father of the faithful!

Thus his argument boils down to his thesis statement with my edits in italics: “Both incredibly selective and cherry-picked scripture and history, therefore, attest that self-defense can effectively take nonviolent forms.”

Just Read It

Most annoyingly, when he does discuss just war Mason uses “the list” or “the menu.” Its use here is ironic because I remember sitting at the 2011 conference on war and peace, and listening to presenters complain about the use of the “list.” This is what I call a rote listing of the just war criteria and its use here seems more like a straw man than engagement. My gut feeling is reinforced because he already listed a secondhand veneer of church fathers.

If he did have a good understanding of Just War he would realize the foundation is the heart. The heart of the Israeli baby about to be beheaded. The breaking heart of the parent that cries for justice as their soul is ripped in two. The heart of the soldier that wishes he could have been there to stop it, and the heart of the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ story, who would have intervened if he had the chance. And Mason ignores that heart filled with love and pain and denies it’s just expression in the form of wielding the sword to stop those abuses.

Failing to understand this is what allows him to ignore just war so easily. But he tries to conflate nonviolent resistance in Ukraine while piggy packing on those who wielded the sword to defend their country. Just like he tries in his piece to piggyback off millions of allied soldiers during Second World War to give Danish nonresistance credit. (He also uses a false cause fallacy; Denmark was likely least damaged because it was the less strategically important for the allies to target. The narrow peninsula made it incredibly unsuited to military operations and the Germans would not relocate key industries CLOSER to allied airbases.) Nor does Mason recognize how many Ukrainians disappeared in the night only for their broken and raped bodies to be found in basement torture chambers. And he doesn’t understand how impotent his theories are in stopping those atrocities in the first place or rescuing them.

As I wrote here, the list or menu given in perfunctory fashion represents how just war theories have been watered down for the masses, to the point that many of their positive aspects of the theory, such as the protections for women and children are assumed, without giving credit to just war theorists. But the abuses of the theory by tyrants like Putin are attributed to just war theorists and the entire theory is dismissed as too basic or unhelpful. So just war theory gets blamed for the bad and given little credit for the good, and blithely dismissed by people like Mason.

Moreover, what’s left out of the discussion of just war theory are very specific prohibitions and guardrails designed to stop abuses of espoused principles. For example, while the principle of just war is recognized, every discussion of it in theory is followed by a lengthy series of warnings about the chaos, bloodshed, and factionalism that can happen when it is applied and a suggestion to pursue alternatives. The interaction of just war theories with the Book of Mormon provides the very kind of discussion and insights that are often lost in rote proof-texting and goes deeper than “partisan allegiances and the urgency of battle” that still permeate the discourse among Americans and Latter-day Saints 20 years after the start of the most infamous preemptive war in American history.[3] Mason doesn’t recognize any of the above nuances of theory. How could he when the closest he got to actually reading the theory was a second hand quote of Tertullian and straw men “list” of just war?

Bring Me a Higher Love

        Duane Boyce once talked about the need to clear away weeds so the seeds can grow. It serves an important function to dispatch Mason’s bad arguments. But there is an argument in favor of force that accounts for all scriptures and not one series of (pacifist or just war) scriptures.

        There are two significant impulses, I would call natural rights, and both are correct. The first is that war is wrong. No man should be killed. Laozi said that even victorious warfare should be treated like a funeral.[4] If Adam and Even hadn’t fallen, or Nephi and Laman kept the family together, there would be no evil and no war. But we don’t live in a perfect world and because people are in danger of losing their fight right, they have an obligation to fight for the second right.

        Good-hearted people everywhere have the impulse to wield the sword to stop injustice. And while Mason gives lip service to the second impulse, he prioritizes the first. In his tortured word games of “justified” he splits the two. But they are connected. Moreover, he denigrates the second by calling it a “sin.”

        His argument is constructed by boiling the frog. The urban myth says the frog will jump out of boiling water, but if you put him in water and gradually raise the temperature he’ll stay in the pot and get boiled. He starts with something broadly agreeable, just war in Ukraine, stopping murderous bad guys and praising the World War II allies as partners of nonviolent Dutch resisters. He then does some word games about the term justified to make just war something sinful that God needs to justify. He builds upon those ideas to then suppress all sorts of clear scripture that justifies warfare. All the time he is including tons of caveats and exceptions to try and appear sensible, he then concludes by calling war a corruption and sin that should be avoided. At one point he even said we need to “[invite soldiers] into a space of repentance and reconciliation.” In other words, he calls them unjustified sinners. He seals it with a proof text from a single modern, non-doctrinal source in President Nelson’s Ukraine war talk.

        In the real world his theories indicate his sympathy and praise for Tank Man, (the Tiananmen Square protestor that stood in front of the tank) but offers impotent solutions to an authoritarian state that sends him to a concentration camp before killing him. He even contends that if Tank Man picked up a rifle in revolt against his authoritarian regime he would need to repent. Or to use a more recent example, he condemns the defenders of Israeli women and children. Those defenders tried to stop the beheading of their children and similarly depraved acts of terror. And for their troubles, Mason calls them to repentance.

        He does this in such conciliatory language that you don’t notice it. But his rhetoric spits on the military service of every good-hearted soldier that fought for freedom. I don’t need to repent for defending my family nor do Israeli soldiers for defending theirs. Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and are therefore universal and inalienable, despite Mason’s wrangling of scriptures.

        So Mason complains that just war feels right but isn’t right. But I’d counter that it feels right because the defense of liberty comes from an innate or natural sense of right of wrong. And Jesus agrees. Assuming the Good Samaritan came upon the beaten traveler in the middle of the attack, no reasonable person would turn the other cheek of the beaten traveler, renounce war, proclaim peace and stand idly by, wait until the traveler was attacked three times, or question the legitimacy of action by citing long-standing ethnic tension in the region or perhaps the culpability of the traveler. The love of the Good Samaritan for his neighbor, and the love that we should have, would compel violent intervention! That is why I agree with all the scriptures that Mason cites. You should love your enemies (Matthew 5:44), but can defend, or love, even unto bloodshed (Alma 43:14). We overcome evil through righteousness (Romans 12:14-21), but also by resisting it with the sword (Alma 61:14.) As the many church fathers that Mason ignored would argue, wielding the sword is an expression of love not a corruption of it.

        At the end of his piece he calls for us to love our neighbor. I agree, the problem is he spent thousands of words ignoring dozens of scriptures and people explaining the fundamental role of love in taking up arms. If he wants to be seen as less, in his words, “smug, self-assured, arrogant, and judgmental in the supposed righteousness of my near-absolute nonviolent position,” he should start by not accusing his opponents of “sidelining Jesus.” He might also stop laughing and snickering at his opponents while among fellow peace proponents. Take it from someone who was bombed with a gotcha question from Mason at a war and peace conference in 2011, and believes the loving heart is the foundation of just war, recognizing his smugness is a good step, but he has a long way to go.

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[1]His footnote reads: Idolatry 19, p. 73, quoted in Lisa Sowle Cahill, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019), 77. Updated: See also: fns. 6-10 in Patrick Mason, "Zionic Non Violence as Christian Worship and Practice," in How and What you Worship: Christology and Praxis in the Revelations of Joseph Smith, Rachel Cope, Carter Charles, Jordan T. Watkins eds., (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 2020. In fact, every footnote in that piece referencing Christian fathers refers to a secondary source. 

[2] David Corey, J. Daryl Charles, Just War Tradition: An Introduction (ISI Institute, 2012), 47.

[3] Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, (New York, Basic Books, 2015,) xxix.

[4] Gia Fu Feng et al., Tao Te Ching by Laozi, (Vintage Press, 1989), 31.