Just War Theory & Gravitation from Above- a Christian Way of Seeing

Just War Theory & Gravitation from Above- a Christian Way of Seeing

Unfortunately, most who've read and responded to my article on "My Reflections of the Death of Osama Bin Laden", on or offline, have my missed my point, though my brother Jose grasped and articulated part of it. I was not making a campaign of sympathy for Osama; nor was I suggesting that his death was unnecessary. In fact, I made it explicitly clear that I believe in the "Just War" theology; that it was a Necessary Killing; and that as a former soldier I would probably have taken the shot- though I would hope I could have done it from a deeper place of "being in Christ" than mere hate and vengeance.

As a side note what is Just War Theory? It deals with the morality regarding the Use of Force, and moral reasons and conditions for "legitimate defense by military force" which justify war under those certain conditions. Some of these include:

* when it is right to resort to armed force?
* what is acceptable in using such force?
* the justice of war termination and peace agreements, as well as the prosecution of war criminals.(jus post bellum)
* the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
* all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
* there must be serious prospects of success;
* the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power as well as the precision of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

However, what I was referring to was a different level of consciousness or awareness that Christ calls us to- the Unitive Vision when our Eye is Single ("when your Eye is single you shall be full of light") and not caught up in duality and our false-self system of Ego -based grasping and aversions; and that many Christians who are called to love even our enemies (from a higher source) were manifesting hate.

Not sure who said this, but its true nevertheless: "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."


We see an example of this in Peter when Jesus bids him to walk on the water with him. Cynthia Bougeault tells it like this:

"As the narrative unfolds in Matthew 14:22–33, the disciples are making a somewhat stormy late-night boat passage across the Sea of Galilee when they suddenly see Jesus walking toward them on the water. “Do not be afraid,” he tells them; “for it is I”—or as the biblical Greek literally reads, “for I Am.” Peter, always the impetuous one, plunges out of the boat and starts walking across the water toward his master. In the language of the tradition, he is under the sway of “gravitation
from above,” his heart so pointedly fixed on Jesus that he rises briefly to Jesus’ level of being, a level of being at which the laws of the physical universe are transcended. He nearly makes it, too—but suddenly he feels the storm against his face, realizes that what he’s doing is impossible, and becomes frightened. And of course, at that moment he sinks. It is a vivid metaphor, not only to help us grasp what level of being means but also against which to measure our contemporary shortfall."

We cannot live out the true depths of Jesus Christ's teaching from the false-self system of egoic consciousness; nor from just mere going to church and singing praise songs (wonderful though those are). He calls us to a different kind of Mind, what Paul both calls the "Inner Man" of the "Mind of Christ." Having the Christ Mind is not just mental assent to Creeds and Doctrine; it is the unitive experience of the Singleness of the Eye, where we can love our enemies (which again doesn't mean being doormats) from this higher dimension of our being-which is exactly what Christ calls us to.

Christ did not come to be merely our Lord and Savior but also as the "moshel meshalim (Master of Wisdom)” and the Life-Giver. But we have over emphasized his role as Savior to the exclusion of his being Life-Giver; and have made Christianity nothing more than moral platitudes and an Evacuation Plan for the Afterlife (I got my ticket to heaven!); and so, we end up making excuses that we are not Jesus to justify our hatred-which is a contradiction of everything Christ calls us to be.

But Christ also came to Give us Life, to Awaken us to the higher reality of being in Union with God, to be Partakes of his Divine Nature, to existentially experience the transformation of our egoic consciousness to that of Having the Mind of Christ, and putting on the Inner Man. He came to "MIRROR" for us who we are to "Be" in and through Him.

As he said to the woman at the well (John 4),

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water....“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

When we truly begin to "Recognize" Christ, and ask for that drink of Infinite Life, then out of our own innermost being comes forth this living water. This transformation comes from prayer and learning to be Still-to still our normal and fallen egoic way of thinking through meditation and contemplation). Be still and know God.

Maurice Nicoll speaks of the faltering steps of learning to See like Jesus when she says: “As one’s level of being increases, receptivity to higher meaning increases. As one’s being decreases, the old meanings return.”

It was out of one of those moments when I was caught up in the "gravitation from above" and could see and feel things from that deeper well of being where we begin to experience the Mind and Love of Christ that I was speaking.

If only I could learn to live in that state of being but "As one’s being decreases, the old meanings return."