Lifetime Peacemakers and Nuclear War

From TIME Magazine obituary section:

"Though he took his most memorable picture--the iconic image of young JFK Jr. saluting his father's coffin--as a White House photographer, Joe O'Donnell began documenting tragedy nearly 20 years earlier when, as a Marine sergeant, he was assigned to capture on film the effects of the atom bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. For the rest of his life, O'Donnell, who became an activist against nuclear arms, carried with him such images as the classroom of children seated at their desks reduced to cinder, aswell as long-term health problems from radiation exposure. He was 85."

From a Marine to an anti-nukes activist; a living testament to the horror of war, truly this man was a saint in his own right.

The image of children incinerated at their desks though raises for me one of those things in a category of sins I struggle to believe that God really will forgive. These include abuse of clergy power (it is better for a millstone to be hung around their necks and they be cast into the sea); and bombing another country into endless misery. Yes, I believe it would be have been better for these human beings to have killed the Son of God! I know what grace doctrine teaches; I know what I'm supposed to teach as a pastor; still, my conscience is not calmed.

I think too about all the times I've heard people, even people I'd have considered to be good people, church people even, casually--or not so casually--remark that they wished we'd just nuke our enemies and be done with them all. Russia, Iraq...nuke them. Let us kill their children at their desks? Let us kill their babies in their hospital beds? Let us destroy their soil and water and air forever? I never know what to say in these situations, wanting to 'keep the peace' in the moment, in that congregation. But now I say, may God have mercy on their souls, to desire such a terrible thing. To want sheer death for people you have never met, innocent people. Prayer and fasting are the prescription for these matters.