Thought for the Week: It’s up to all of us
Niki Todd reflects on individual and collective journeys
‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20:13) This is not a rule to be followed when it suits us. It is an absolute. We have not got the freedom to choose as and when and with whom we apply it.
Mankind has found wonderful cures for all manner of unspeakable illnesses and yet we cannot seem to cure the recurring ill of perpetual warfare, which plagues our planet. Over the last thirty years, successive UK governments have unrelentingly rolled out our nation’s war machine and sent huge numbers of troops off to active service all over the world, only to have those same young men and women come home, many of them as broken souls.
We have not only inflicted mortal wounds on political enemies, we have also wrecked the lives of many of those armed forces personnel, both Us and Them, who have committed atrocities of war on their fellow humans. We have sent our troops out across the world, into active service, for nothing other than political gain and, indeed, it is questionable whether any gain at all has been made, save that of acquiring for ourselves the reputation of being a country of unenlightened marauding hordes.
Is it right to kill one person in order to save another? Who will make such a value judgment? Jesus said, ‘Resist not evil’ (Matthew 5:39). As a member of the Religious Society of Friends, I have a testimony to peace. I am not prepared to make those sorts of value judgments about men’s, women’s and children’s lives and do not want others to make them on my behalf.
We have spent fortunes on armaments that could have fed the starving millions of the world. Instead of arms we could have bought medicine, supplied water for all those who live with a daily grind of extreme want, worry and weariness. We call ourselves the ‘developed’ world. We have certainly developed. We have developed weapons of unspeakable ferocity that we have used to gain power and resources.
‘This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you’ (John 15:12).
How much clearer does this have to be spelled out? Let each and every one of us start with ourselves. Let us look at how we lead our lives. Loving does not involve killing and torture. We do not condone this behaviour on a personal level. We do not consider it reasonable to beat and kill our children. We, as individuals, have not got the right to kill and maim those we disagree with. It’s about time we, as a nation, took a long hard look at ourselves and made a decision whether we are going to ban the British armaments trade, put people before profit and make sure we do not go down as one of the most uncivilised, unenlightened eras in history. Starting small is always enough. Caring counts, but caring is not enough without action.
Perhaps the Peace Prayer of saint Francis of Assisi might help us on our individual and collective journeys:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
I’ll exchange hate for love,
Wrong for pardon,
Where discord, leave concord,
Deceit, find truth.
I’ll exchange doubt for faith,
Despair for hope.
Where there’s darkness, I’ll shine your light,
Change grief for joy.
I’ll not seek consolation, but console,
Understand, but not seek understanding,
Lord, I’ll not seek to be loved, but to love,
For it is in giving that one receives,
It’s in forgetting oneself that one finds.
It’s through pardoning that one is pardoned,
Born again in death to Life Eternal.
- Translation by Niki Todd 2013
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