Now, this is going to be a real mess, but it's been a real mess in my mind for a long time.
The mike_c primitive on Skins's island, the professor dealing with zoology of insects, always makes a big deal about having "rejected," utterly rejected, the "fundie influence" of his childhood and youthhood. The mike_c primitive, circa 60 years old, was born and raised in Kansas, among one of the pacifist denominations, the Mennonites or somesuch (there are many variations of Mennonites in Kansas).
Sigmund Freud says one could never, really, reject those things that have influenced one throughout life, because it would be the same as rejecting oneself. And the only way one can utterly reject oneself is, of course, by putting the barrel of a pistol in the mouth and pulling the trigger.
However, Freud says one can distort or deform such things that have influenced one, and this generally happens in angry bitter sour mean nasty spiteful individuals.
The mike_c primitive alleges his pacifism, his "anti-war" resentments, arise from his adopted liberal values, but it's obvious such sentiments are rooted, really, in the pacifist notions of the church of which he was a part when a little lad on the prairies.
And then of course because of his Hate, he distorted and deformed those things he had been taught.
Now, the real mess; I'm trying to understand the nature of (authentic) Christian pacifism.
Myself being a life-long Roman Catholic, I've always understood that war is a terrible thing, a horrible thing, a wasteful thing, but there are times when waging war is necessary, such as a war for survival, or a war to liberate people from oppression and death. War is a last resort, but in any "last resort," it's probably a justifiable war in the Eyes of God.
There seems to be this notion in Christian pacifism that war is NEVER necessary; that ALL war is bad.
I'm trying to understand this, and I'm not getting it.
Take, for example, the centuries-old Mennonites, with their centuries-old pacifism.
Well, that was all well and good, but at the same time, the Mennonites and like sects were practicing their pacifism with the armed might of the German emperor, the Russian tsar, and the American Republic shielding them from war. As long as these armies guarded them, they could be as pacific as they wished.
They were, for all practical purposes, beneficiaries of military might.
In the absence of such protection, one really doubts they would have been free to practice their pacifism; and surely not in any of the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants.
So how is this pacifism reconciled with the realities of the world?
I'm not putting down authentic well-established long-established denominations of Christian pacifists--no way--but I'm trying to figure out how one reconciles pacifism while under the protection of military might; it seems a case of having one's cake and eating it too, and that's impossible.