re doing the work of god desiree bradley desiree bradley mindlink bc ca asked us whether we should think of the serbs as doing god s work in bosnia i ve refrained from posting in hope that someone who is more familiar with the ot than i would answer but at this point i feel i have to say something many things about this posting bother me i know of not the slightest suggestion in the nt that christians should use force to propagate the gospel and the idea that we should not be concerned about the death of moslems violates the heart of the gospel christ died to break down these distinctions in him there is neither jew nor greek there is neither slave nor free there is neither male nor female if moslems do not know him we may preach to them but we don t kill them furthermore the attack is between states not religions there are christians being attacked as well one of the towns under attack is one of the few places where christians and moslems are living together peacefully the precedents being suggested are from the ot there are in fact two different things being alluded to the first is from the entry into canaan for that to be a parallel we would need for god to have promised this land through a prophet and we would need the war to be a holy war there were tight constraints on behavior in those attacks any violations were likely to cause the israelites to be defeated rape would not have been tolerated while the accounts in joshua emphasize towns that were totally destroyed note that it was possible for a town to make peace with the israelites and that once that was done even when deception was involved they were expected to honor it in contrast there have been many violations of agreement in this incident i see no evidence that god has granted bosnia to the serbs as a promised land and if he had their behavior would have disqualified this from being a holy war the other ot parallel is from later when israel was defeated by assyria and babylonia the prophets saw this as a judgement on israel for her sins someone asks whether we shouldn t see this as a judgement on the bosnians for their sins this sounds like a replay of the old claim that we shouldn t have doctors or hospitals because illness is god s judgement yes even bad things may be used by god for good that includes actions of bad people but that doesn t justify them if you read the prophets you find them very clear that in attacking israel the assyrians and babylonians were acting as unintentional agents of god their intent was to attack god s people and they would be judged for it the fact that they were actually carrying out god s plan didn t excuse their action furthermore we shouldn t conclude from this that all attacks are judgements from god god explicitly interpreted that case through his prophets as far as i know he did not send any prophets to bosnia while i find it hard to see any good in the current fighting i am sure god will eventually make good come out of bad but that doesn t justify it and it won t save the people who are doing it from judgement i am particularly concerned about the implications of this issue because of current tensions between the west and moslem oriented nations what we do not need is for moslems to conclude that christians think it s ok to kill moslems the implications for the mid east and even relations with american moslems could be quite serious
