God is not in the habit of doing for men what he has given them power to do. When Fredric Nietzsche attacked Christianity he never meant to attack Christ until it became inevitable to indict him. He was enraged at the morality of those who gather at the foot of the cross crying to a dead man to do everything for them arguing that the Lord shall provide is a lazy man’s philosophy. The morality of the weak is slavish; they preach love, equality, justice and peace because they can’t fight. For Nietzsche, Christian morality is a conspiracy of the weak to tame the strong and should therefore be supplanted with Superman morality where the winner takes it all. While Nietzsche saw the success of European projects in the emergence of Superman he cautioned that the superman must a Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul. From experience we have learnt that folks who are vicious have very few noble virtues. The vicious have moved world political history more than the virtuous. That Ebonyi State owes its creation to the villain, Sani Abacha is a testimony that noble goals do come from an evil person. Over the years, Nigerian Christians have been languishing in the incessant Islamic Jihad now nicknamed Boko Haram. The church’s response as a community of faith has been largely reactive than active, calling meeting, issuing communiqué, calling for government’s intervention and urging faithful to sit back, watch and pray. Today, there are more spaces to stand for the watch.
God can raise stones to praises Him if men are unwilling. Just as Muslims argue that Boko Haram sect members are not real Muslims, MEND terrorists who have ceased to be Christians in the inner hearts have announced their intention to defend Christianity because Islam understands only the language of violence. The recent statement by MEND reads in part: “On behalf of the hapless Christian population in Nigeria, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), will from Friday, May 31, 2013, embark on a crusade to save Christianity in Nigeria from annihilation. The core mission of the crusade according to MEND’s spokeperson, Jomo Gbomo, is “the bombings of mosques, hajj camps, Islamic institutions, large congregations in Islamic events and assassinations of clerics that propagate doctrines of hate.”
The crusade which is codenamed ‘Operation Barbarossa’ is taken from a military operation of World War II that lasted from June to December 1941 in a bid by Nazi Germany’s forces to conquer the European territory of USSR. The campaign was halted outside Moscow, the Soviet capital. During Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army lost more than 1 million men—killed, wounded, or missing—and although German losses were much lower, they included a high proportion of experienced and well-trained men. This was a severe check to Hitler’s ambitions, but not a fatal one, since he and his generals now began to plan for renewed offensives in 1942. Should MEND suffer like initial Germans, it will not be a fatal one.
Not all Christians will welcome this MEND’s offer. To many, Christ has in disarming Peter unbelted every soldier. Pacifists argue that war entails doing things-above all, killing people- which in any ordinary context were gravely wrong. For them, vengeance is for God alone as St. Paul writes: “if your enemy is hungry feed him, if he is thirsty give him drink; for by so doing you heap burning coals upon his head” (Rom. 12: 20-21).
Take or leave it, defending one’s faith is absolutely necessarily a religious privilege, a service to God and a way of salvation. It surely did not make practical sense- and therefore not moral sense-to demand that the entire activity of defence be dismissed by pacifist anathema that the virtuous abstain from it. The Holy Bible has no prohibition about Christians rendering military service. In the New Testament, there is no instance where soldiers are asked to withdraw from military service. John the Baptist, in his exhortation to the soldiers does not reproach their state of life (Lk.3: 14). And Jesus simply took military service for granted, without objecting to it.
From military ethics, we know that six conditions give content to the just cause principle of just war- three are related to self-defence, and three to the defence of others. The principle is met when one’s own interest is under attack, recently attacked or about to be attacked or when ally’s interest is under attack, recently attacked or about to be attacked. When this is met, proportionality principle helps to estimate costs and benefits of a war. If it can be established that damages to be caused by war are not comparable to those of ‘tolerated injustice’, that millions would die in defence of thousands, one may have a duty to ‘suffer the injustice. A group has right intention if it is guided to enter into war to defend the supreme good of the group which is under aggression.
There is a sense in saying that present Christian persecution in Nigeria meets those. Both MEND and Boko Haram are outlaws and lack legitimacy. MEND deserves to be listened to; we have pretended enough. Islam claims that Boko Haram is not its creation but it negotiates on its behalf. That’s why, the MEND’s spokesperson, Jomo Gbomo, said they may only consider a ceasefire if “the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the Catholic church and Henry Okah, one of the few leaders in the Niger Delta region we respect for his integrity, intervene. Also the assurance for a cessation of hostilities targeted at Christians in their places of worship, made privately or publicly by the real Boko Haram leadership will make us call off this crusade.
My take is that faith is sacred and precious. No effort put forward to defend Christian faith is devalued. Threatened by forces of Islam and heresies of old, the church of old adopted crusade and inquisition. MEND’s offer is a crusade and more than attractive. If that would be the only answer to make Boko Haram leave Christians and concentrate on security agencies as spelt out in their initial mission, so be it.
