Looking to Scriptures for answers to the Korean nuclear crisis

By 
  • November 20, 2006

The Israelites of biblical times could never have predicted that a couple thousand years down the road nations would face off against each other with weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands all at once. But they did know about arms races, and they knew about the relationship of small nations with great empires.

The Catholic Register asked Bible scholars what passages of Scripture might shed some light on the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

Basilian Fr. Timothy Scott, president of St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta suggested we should look at Psalm 146, which reads in part:

"Do not put your trust in princes,

in mortals, in whom there is no help.

When their breath departs, they return to the earth;

on that very day their plans perish." (Psalm 146:3-4)


The problem, as Scott sees it, is that both North Korea and the United States have put their trust in human technology to solve their problems.

"(It's) the fruitlessness of an obsessive dependency on human solutions. Trusting in princes made little sense 2,500 years ago. One wonders if the princes of this world have learned anything from history," Scott wrote in an email to The Catholic Register. "The key word is trust. There is so little of it, humanly speaking. Without trust, there can be no global solutions."

Jesuit Fr. Michael Kolarcik, professor of Old Testament at the University of Toronto's Regis College, finds much the same analysis in the prophet Isaiah.

"Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD!" (Isaiah 31:1).

"The reliance on power, that's the big thing here," said Kolarcik. "Both North Korea and the U.S. are trying to rely on power. The U.S. is tremendously relying on power, especially with its Star Wars type of missile defence."

New Testament scholar Terry Donaldson of the University of Toronto's Wycliffe College also reaches into the Old Testament for an analysis of how power plays out between small countries and large empires. In the Second Book of Samuel, Chapter 12, the prophet Nathan confronts David over his hypocrisy.

"Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom... You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife... Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me." (2 Samuel 12:7-10)

"I am thinking of the hypocrisy involved when countries that have nuclear weapons react with dismay when other countries take steps to emulate them," Donaldson wrote in an email.

Donaldson also finds an interesting parallel in the first four chapters of the Book of Daniel. It's a tale of the greatest, most powerful kingdom on earth gripped by paranoia.

"I, Nebuchadnezzar, was living at ease in my home and prospering in my palace. I saw a dream that frightened me; my fantasies in bed and the visions of my head terrified me." (Daniel 4:4-5).

"Here we find a totalitarian society organized around a leadership cult, and a response in which the king's pretensions of power are unmasked and made to look ridiculous when they come up against people whose loyalties are to another king," said Donaldson.

"The Bible is pretty pacifist if you read it properly," said St. Michael's College Old Testament scholar John McLaughlin in Toronto.

Pacifism is implicit in the message the prophet Zechariah has for Zerubabel, a prince of Judah who led patrician families back into Israel from the Babylonian exile about 520 and then oversaw the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple. Zerubabel's nation-building project was opposed by the Sumerian empire and the Persians, who did not want to see Jerusalem restored.

"Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts," (Zechariah 4:6) is the advice the prophet has for the prince,, who is tempted to turn nation-building into a military project.

The way back to Israel's true self, its sense of identity represented by Jerusalem and its temple is trust in God, and that's a message for both North Korea and the United States, McLaughlin said.

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