When all the arguments are stated and heard, whether military, strategic, historic, or even moral, I am much more persuaded by the theological solemnity of the late George Macleod's contention that atomic warfare is a blasphemous abuse of God's creation and of nature's energy.
The photo is of a mother and children praying for surviving victims 68 years on from the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The only nation on earth that has been attacked with nuclear weapons speaks and acts with a different authority when addressing the problem of nuclear weapons, human fallibility and our capacity as humans to self destruct. Such voices can never be on the side of deterrence; they are on the side of peace.
For myself, I too want to place my hands together, and love this world with all its brokenness and possibility, and hold a wounded creation before the loving Creator, and align my hope and trust with my faith in the God of resurrection whose gift is life, and whose light is not the blinding flash of nuclear death, but the brilliance of love magnified by the splendour of holiness, earthing its energy and power in our world in the stable, the cross and the empty tomb.
And my favourite prophet points to an alternative reality:
Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that we may walk the
paths of the Most High. And we shall beat our swords into ploughshares
and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword
against nation – neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.
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