Of swords and plowshares

My personal views on abortion, open borders, trans surgery, and drag queen story hours for children are pretty uncomplicated: No, No, No, and No. But my views on warfare seem to change with every day ending in a y. Time to touch down on something solid—to the Bible witness!

Where to begin in the Bible? To big-picture it, we find human history bracketed on both ends with peace—in the Genesis garden and also the garden city of Revelation: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

So then, peace is God’s ideal and His ultimate will.

Of course, “the old order of things” hasn’t passed away yet. The tension between is felt in Scripture’s own play on words. In Isaiah 2:4 we have: “The nations … shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

But in Joel 3:9-10 we have it reversed: “Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, ‘I am a warrior.’”

That tells us that refraining from war, at least in the interim, is not necessarily what God wants. In fact, God does not even try to distance Himself from the business of war. He identifies as a warrior: “The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea. … Your right hand, Lord, shattered the enemy” (Exodus 15:3-6).

Not only that, but He trains warriors. Who can forget the sniper in Saving Private Ryan praying from his perch in a tower: “Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight” (Psalm 144:1). Exhilarating scene, you have to admit. Then once you admit it you can hasten to say, with Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg: “It is good that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”

God is also a war strategist:

“And the Philistines came up yet again and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim. And when David inquired of the Lord, he said, ‘You shall not go up; go around to their rear, and come against them opposite the balsam trees. And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then rouse yourself, for then the Lord has gone out before you to strike down the army of the Philistines.’ And David did as the Lord commanded him” (2 Samuel 5:22-25).

Still, it is Solomon, not David, who will build God’s holy temple. Reason? The king has shed much blood (1 Chronicles 28:3). Even from David’s own mouth comes the implication that peace is better than war (Psalm 120), though there is a time and a season for all things, even “a time for war” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8).

To be sure, there are just wars and unjust wars. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a futuristic state of perpetual warfare kept alive by the totalitarian government Oceana for its own self-preservation of power. Accompanied by mass surveillance, lying propaganda, and censorship of free speech, its description feels uncomfortably familiar when read in 2025.

But the most intriguing question is why God has allowed all human history to be a tissue of war, and secondly, why people like my two sons are war history aficionados who get energized discussing the minutia of military exploits. What mysterious element embedded in manhood can account for such an allurement to a business so bloody, or at least to ­cravings for contests of might?

I will never forget women’s Bible teacher Beth Moore pointing out years ago that when you see a little boy dressed up as a knight for Halloween, it is best not to patronize him or to tell him he’s cute, because he is deadly serious. There is something in a man that wants to be brave. It is hardwired in his soul, and when opportunity is lacking in the real world, the trait will come out sideways.

Maybe it is as John Eldredge says in Wild at Heart: “Men … need a deeper understanding of why they long for adventures and battles and a Beauty—and why God made them just like that.” Jesus knows of this, and promises to satisfy it: “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28).