The war against Iraq introduced many new weapons and military methodologies. The first stage of the war was a massive air-strike with the new E-bombs which were delivered by a cruise missile. The E-bomb then exploded to emit a high-energy pulse like a bolt of lightning that fused electrical equipment. On the ground all electricity failed. Air-conditioners stopped. Lights failed. Computers switched off. Phones went silent. Water and sewerage pumps ceased. And Iraq sat in darkness.

The desired effect of the first night’s bombing was to so stun and demoralize the Iraqi Army that they would quickly give up and turn on Saddam. The United States armed forces dropped 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles on military targets. Resistance was aimed to be short-lived. Not all the new equipment worked as planned and in many cases the army remained loyal.

But it was the first high-tech war. No lumbering tanks. No skies filled with planes dropping bombs at random. No great guns booming into the night sky. The army was designed to be a nimble force that can see the whole battlefield at night, to act quickly, using its superior information and its high-precision firepower to disable enemy units before they can respond.

Provided a sandstorm did not blind eye-in-the-sky satellites and crash helicopters. Provided communication links did not go down, and the new gizmos worked! Arab-language broadcasts tried to convince the Iraqi people that American forces came as liberators, not as occupiers. This too was a failure.

The invasion was preceded by an air strike on the Iraqi Presidential Palace on March 19, 2003. The following day coalition forces launched an incursion from their massing point near the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. Commandos launched an amphibious assault to secure the surrounding petroleum fields, and the main invasion army moved into southern Iraq, occupying the region. Massive air strikes across the country and against Iraqi command and control threw the defending army into chaos and prevented an effective resistance.

Kurdish rebels fought several actions against the Iraqi army to secure the northern part of the country.
Most of the Iraqi military was quickly defeated and Baghdad was occupied. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the central leadership went into hiding as the coalition forces completed the occupation of the country. On May 1 an end of major combat operations was declared.

They called this “doing a Joshua”—after the Biblical Joshua, whose trumpets signaled the collapse of the walls of Jericho. The goal was not to massacre Saddam’s Army. Saddam’s soldiers would be used to build the new Iraq.

American forces avoided fighting in cities. Urban fighting is horrendous. Armed civilians resisted all invaders. Young terrorists and street fighters defended their homes and way of life. The allies won the way but winning the peace was more difficult. The main justification for the war had proved to be erroneous: there were no mass weapons of destruction as commonly believed. The protestors against the war were right. Then the photos of prisoner abuse and torture from Abu Ghraib prison showed military victory could be lost in a propaganda war. This unified the Arab world against the West, a bitterness which exists to this day, and encouraged terrorist attacks against Western cities and civilian targets such as passenger planes.

Christians oppose war and seek peace. Yet Muslim extremists saw this as their finest hour, volunteering to be martyrs, gaining world attention, creating fear in countries they loathe, becoming the dominant force in Western regions.

It is hard for righteous people to accept this. It is hard to allow dictators to bully their own and to threaten us. It is easy to chant “No more war” but it is another thing to know what to do with an international terrorist threat.

Can peace be better achieved by preemptive strikes? We disarm them before they get us? History shows that this has sometimes shortened potential conflicts. The Church has rejected the way of the Crusades, the way of pacifism, and usually supports war only if it is just. If we reject the theory of a just war, is doing nothing just? Is that Christian?

Alternatively, can we have a pre-emptive humanitarian strike? That is, bomb them with bread and butter, medical supplies and international aid from welfare organizations? Would that be a better way of disarming a dictator, leading to his downfall? We have to have a motivation beyond revenge, acquisition of more territory, emasculating a dictator or preserving access to oil.

1.An Alternative Way to War

What should motivate us? There may be this alternative way in the story of the father of Jews, Christians and Arabs. Abraham, father of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, was granted “a promised land.” He went seeking it. But what drove him was not power, wealth, or dominance. What motivated Abraham was the vision of a heavenly city! Not the cities of earth but of heaven.

Not doing His will but God’s. Not his power, but God’s. When Abraham invaded the land of Canaan he lived in it, not as its owner, but as a resident alien. His eyes were always on another city whose architect and builder was God.

Hebrews 11:8-10 “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

Abraham’s ultimate goal was not the invasion of Canaan but so acting as to enter God’s heavenly country. Canaan was to be his own land, but Abraham lived there as though “in a foreign country.” He and his household lived in temporary dwellings. Abraham looked forward to “the city with foundations”.

The heavenly city had God as the “architect and builder” of the “the heavenly Jerusalem”. Hebrews 12:22 This thought recurs in The Revelation of St John. 3:12, 21:10. This “city with permanent foundations” is eternal, owing everything to God, who is its “architect and builder.” More than Canaan was in Abraham’s mind when he went out in faith.

Abraham acted justly in his invasion of Canaan and showed benevolence towards the local inhabitants because he kept his eye upon heaven. The antidote to war lies in the spiritual commitment of our people. Mankind has always built cities. At the dawn of history the Bible records the first cities being built. Genesis 4, 10 As soon as mankind achieves the level of civilization he builds a city.

2.The City of God

We have children and build cities. We cannot do without our children and our cities. Even those destroyed by wars are rebuilt on old guidelines. The destiny of Christians lies not in conquered cities on earth but in the New Jerusalem in Heaven. This is an amazing fact – that when the world ends it will be with a city.

Heaven in the Christian concept has nothing to do with an earthly paradise, a rural scene, floating clouds, green pastures, or idyllic, primitive Edens. Other religions of the world see a return to a primeval state of bliss, or an Islamic oasis.

But the Christian believes the world will end in the city of God! The Greek and Latin myths of Arcadia were all of a return to a primitive state of Eden. But the Christian concept begins with a garden and ends in a city. The Romans never pictured a heavenly Rome, nor the Greeks a divine Acropolis, but the prophets of Israel saw a New Jerusalem.

The Christian concept is that God takes into account man’s creativity and transcends it to perfection. God accepts man’s concept into the divine, not because of the brilliance of men, but because of God’s grace. The new heavenly Jerusalem requires no effort of man. It is the creation of God.

Here is a great insight: all of our activities centering in earthly cities lead ultimately to death, but God brings life in the creation of a new, eternal city. God does not reject our buildings. It is the city as a spiritual force that God rejects. God separates us from the principalities and powers of the city and glorifies the city of His own making.

3.Attack the Cause of Conflict

Spiritual darkness still rules this world forcing nations to fight. We can draw up beautiful plans for high-rise flats, cloverleaf freeways, and underground railways, but good intentions lead only to greater slums, higher pollution, and underground passages for violence and obscenity. We can never improve humanity by our own efforts by either building new cities or bombing old ones.

The problem lies within the unregenerate forces within people and the spiritual darkness of the human heart! That is what we must attack in Iraq and at home – the spiritual darkness in the human heart!

The attack must be a spiritual one. Only God can free us from being the playthings of spiritual forces. God in Christ frees people to live in this world, to seek the welfare of others and to work for the common good in anticipation of a New Jerusalem. God has made all things new.

He chooses a new setting for humanity as we wanted, except that instead of us wanting to be away from God, we will now rejoice in God’s presence as the very centre and light of the new city. All things on heaven and earth are to be united in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 1:10 “The greatness and the wealth of the earth’s nations will be brought into the heavenly city” Revelation 21:26

Peace then reigns. Then we will live in harmony with ourselves, our environment, and our God. Until God brings forth his New Jerusalem, Christians are to work within the cities of mankind for the welfare of all. We are to be witnesses to God, remembering that everything ultimately depends upon God’s grace and pardon.

While we await the new Jerusalem, the Church lives as part of God’s colony in the cities of men working for the welfare of all. An early Christian writer in “The Epistle to Diognetus” Chapter 10 makes this clear: “Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country nor language nor the customs which they observe. They neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, but inhabit Greek as well as barbarian cities, and following the customs of the natives in respect of clothing and food, they dwell in their own country, but only as aliens. As citizens they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland and every fatherland a foreign land.” For when we desire heaven, we treat earth differently.

Our destiny lies in a heavenly city. “They were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:16

Meanwhile the West may make war on the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan to control the Taliban, to limit the drug trade and to establish nations that will not tolerate terrorists. But ours should be the most amazing response of humanitarian aid. The cities of those countries require our mercy, and the people in our cities must be ready to help.

Those who are refugees and asylum seekers, coming from the most horrendous persecution, should find Australia a hospitable destination, after all our nation is populated by people and their descendents who came here to escape persecution, legal retribution and for economic opportunity. With less than 6000 asylum seekers per annum, we can afford to be more generous.

The power of love ultimately triumphs. There is no city on earth worth the price of war. Not to do anything in the face of a madman bent on murderous acts against nations may increase the suffering of all people. But our response must always be to love those who persecute us, and rebuild their lives with our love. We have to keep our eyes looking towards the city of God.

4.An Australian Example

In the meantime we must make our cities a home of peace. Perhaps we have an example close to us. Adelaide is showing the way. The very founding of South Australia was characterised by what we might call “religious pluralism”.

The colony was established at a time of great conflict, in Britain, between the Church of England and the so-called “dissenting” denominations – such as the Baptists, Congregationalists and Methodists. The Dissenters bristled at the restrictions imposed on their churches and at what they saw as daily inequalities and humiliations.

So when the South Australian Association was formed in 1834, and when Dissenters became prominent among leaders of the putative colony, the topic of religious freedom was clearly on the agenda.

Well before the first ships left Britain for the long journey to South Australia it was resolved that this new colony – this radical new society – would be a place of “civil and religious liberty”.
Circulars promoting the new colony were distributed among Dissenter congregations across England. This would be a land without an established church, the theory went, a place without state endowments or grants for religious purposes.

As one historian has written, it was intended that South Australia “should be neutral in religion but not secular”. This principle more or less held in those early days and the range of faiths being practised led Adelaide eventually be become known as the “City of Churches”. One visiting writer from Victoria noted that, within a radius of less than 1,000 yards of the city centre, there were no fewer than 22 places of worship.

There were plenty of non-Christians, too. The Jewish community established a congregation in 1848 – one that has been going strongly ever since and recently celebrated its 160th birthday.

Members of the so-called Afghan cameleers – who opened up the vast outback with telegraph lines- established Australia’s very first mosque. That was built at Marree, in the far north of South Australia, in 1888 and it was followed just two years later by construction of a mosque in the south-western corner of Adelaide’s “square mile” – a magnificent structure that remains standing and is still used today.

Of course, throughout the 20th Century the range of faiths present in South Australia grew with the arrival of every new group of settlers. There came Sikhs, for example, along with Hindus, Baha’is and Buddhists, some of the latter group hailing from Vietnam.

Today, this state’s religious profile is vast and fascinating. Indeed, in the 2006 Census, South Australians identified themselves as being followers of almost 150 categories and subcategories of faith. Albanian Orthodox, Rastafarianism, Taoism, Witchcraft, Animism, Druidism, Atheism – all these and more were given as answers to the question “what is your religious affiliation?”

Mr. Le writes: “We in South Australia are proud of our religious diversity and the generally harmonious way in which faiths get along”. From my point of view, as someone who arrived here as a refugee after fleeing war and tyranny, this diversity should be seen in a wider context. That context includes the model of multiculturalism that exists in South Australia, an ethos covering all aspects of identity and culture, not just religion.”

The bigger picture also includes the establishment of a stable civil society – a system of justice and democracy, of rights and responsibilities, that allows different religions to flourish in the first place and for everyone to worship as they wish, unhindered.

Mr Le continues, “I must confess that I am not expecting the imminent arrival of a multi-religious utopia, either here in Adelaide or anywhere else in the world and I am enough of a realist to know that the mere collection of different religions in the one place does not, in itself, constitute dialogue or harmony.”

Being conscious of the existence of other faiths is not the same as talking to one another – to genuinely appreciating one another. Christians have a command to preach the Gospel, and so we must, seeking to win all peoples to faith in Jesus Christ. But that should never be at the right of people to have their own faith.

South Australia has used its history of religious pluralism as a solid basis on which to build understanding and freedom of worship.

As early as the 1940s, the various Christian groups started to come together and cooperate on matters of common interest and this led to the setting up of the South Australian Council of Churches. This has continued ever since. In more recent times Adelaide has been home to many valuable examples of genuine inter-faith and multi-faith dialogue.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide has recently extended the hand of friendship and understanding to the state’s Muslims through the successful “Building Bridges” program. The Intercultural Dialogue Society was established in South Australia in 2007 and it has held dinners and other events that have been attended by political, religious and community leaders.

Adelaide’s Muslim ‘Ayn Academy’ recently embarked on its “Mosaic” initiative, which is designed to achieve what it calls “faith harmony in Australia”.

One of the more high-profile multi-faith initiatives to come out of South Australia recently has been Project Abraham. This has brought Christians, Muslims and Jews together to create an ongoing discussion among members of the three Abrahamic faiths.

The purpose of the project was to explore the common elements of these three faiths, and to educate the wider community about their practices. The group used this accord a s launching pad for a series of seminars, a school program, a travelling exhibition and a DVD and book.

After visits to various South Australian centres, Project Abraham expanded its membership and support base and then went national – eventually holding events in places like Gosford, Shepparton and the Gold Coast.

There are many other examples of multi-faith dialogue occurring in South Australia – some of them quite small and unheralded but no less important.

What a magnificent vision, so superior to that of some Christians, who fearful that their faith can not stand before the pressure of other faiths, want to ban all others, close down their schools and places of worship and restrict their immigration.

We have to keep our eyes, looking towards the city of God. In the meantime we must make our cities a home of peace.

REV THE HON DR. GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C.

Friday, 16th July, 2010, 2:43 pm | Abrahams Legacy, Bible Studies