Would Jesus wear a uniform -- especially a military uniform -- and carry a weapon? Should we? Some Christians of note state contradictions, I think.

We don't even really know what Jesus looked like, do we?

I made the mistake of chatting with yet another brother of mine, Bill, who is one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Naturally, that raised (again) in my mind the question of whether I should have or should not have, if I had it to do all over again, belonged to the military -- in my case, as a civilian at Tan San Nhut Air Base in Vietnam and twenty years later with the Royal Saudi Air Force in Saudi Arabia?

Before I will ever again (you all remember my previous posting with some Bible verses, I'm sure) look at what I might or might not think the teachings of the Bible are, I think the following quotations of prominent Christians (found on the web) are worth reviewing:

^.Pope Pius XII declared at the beginning of World War II: "Everything is gained by peace, nothing is gained by war."

^.Pope Paul VI stated in 1965 during a UN assembly: "If you want to be brothers, put your weapons down. You cannot love with aggressive weapons in your hands."

^.Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed his viewpoint in this way: "There is only one solution for our generation: It is the return to a life based on Christ's Sermon on the Mount."

^.Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his sermon, "The Most Durable Power": "Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."

^.Then again, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said: "You cannot rule a country with the Sermon on the Mount."

^.A Catholic Catechism, published in 1975 in Switzerland, stated: "The injunctions in the Sermon on the Mount are not to be taken literally, as this would lead to unacceptable circumstances both in private and public life."

^.The Book of Common Prayers reasoned: "It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars."

^.Francis A. Schaeffer said in "A Christian Manifesto": "I am not a pacifist because pacifism in this fallen world in which we live means that we desert the people who need our greatest help."

^.C.S. Lewis wrote in "Mere Christianity": "Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment - even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy."

Complex issue, isn't it?

Yeh, I'm leaning (am already there, in fact) towards an attitude that I would be (would have been) serving my God more properly if I (had) stay(ed) clear of serving some military organization (again), yet I still feel the power of the slogan, "Support our troops," although that doesn't include my desire that we Americans remain as an occupier of Iraq, of course.

why? There seems to be a contradiction in all of this, doesn't there?

But, the verses from the Bible seem awfully powerful in that regard, in my humble opinion.

Just blogging in total confusion ...