Читать книгу The Mennonites in WW1 - Jonas Smucker Hartzler - Страница 48

Numerous efforts were made by newspapers and public speakers to define the position of the nonresistants, but in most cases they utterly failed be cause they wanted to place it on the basis of, "Passive resistance," "Noncoercion," "Cowardice," "Pro-Germanism," etc. The Church would have spurned any of these. Since her organization she has based her position entirely upon the Word of God, and not on any psychological proposition. "Thus saith the Lord," was her basis. She takes it that Christ meant what He said when He commanded us as His followers to love our enemies, to bless them which curse us, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us (Matt. 5 :44); that "All they that take the sword shall perish with (not by) the sword" (Matt. 26:52); that in John 18:36 He laid down a rule which all Christian people should obey; that Paul's teaching regarding revenge (Rom. 12: 17-21), going to law (I Cor. 6:1-8), and "The weapons of our warfare" (II Cor. 10:4) were for all people and for all time; and that no argument, however plausible, could ever form a substitute for the plain teaching of God's Word.

Most Mennonites hold that it is inconsistent for Christians to support war measures; that there is really no such thing as "noncombatant" service in aid of war; but that the man who made the gun and the man who pulled the trigger, or the man who drove the team and the man who loaded the cannon, all of them having in mind the overcoming of the enemy by means of violence, share in the responsibility before God.