What is the place of the Christian in all this? Is he simply to fold his hands and resign himself to the worst, accepting it as the inescapable will of God and preparing himself to enter heaven with a sigh of relief? Should he open up the apocalypse and run out into the street to give everyone his idea of what is happening? Or worse still, should he take a hard-headed and “practical” attitude about it and join in the madness of the war-makers, calculating how by a “first strike”, the glorious Christian West can eliminate atheistic communism for all time and usher in the millennium? . . .
I am no prophet and no seer but it seems to me that this last position may very well be the most diabolical of illusions, the great and not even subtle temptation of a Christianity that has grown rich and comfortable, and is satisfied with its riches. What are we to do? The duty of the Christian in this crisis is to strive with all his power and intelligence, with his faith, hope in Christ, and love for God and man, to do the one task which God has imposed upon us in the world today.
That task is to work for total abolition of war.
