Body
A potentially very dangerous war for us all has again begun in our world. It begs the question; what are the causes of wars? There are actually two causes of war, the external and the internal. The external causes of war, according to an elder statesman, are three: “to keep, to add, and to recover.” Putin certainly thinks he is accomplishing some of these. It’s Putin’s war. He is the aggressor. Of the internal causes of war St. James in his New Testament letter and the Word of God, gives us the deepest explanation. He writes: “Where do wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain: you fight and wage war” (James 3:1-2). Wars come from pride, egoism and selfishness (Hosea 10:9-15). Every macrocosmic war has its origin in the microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individual people. That is where we all come in as contributing to wars and where we can also come in to contribute to their ending. The civil war going on inside every man and woman is between what he/she thinks he /she is and what he/she actually is, between the way God made us and the way we make of ourselves, between the moral law that ought to govern our lives and the self-centeredness and selfishness that actually determines our actions. When civil wars are waged in the minds of so many of us they produce a pervasive climate of anxiety, fear, distrust, anger, covetousness, avarice and greed. Multiply individual internal strife by the millions, and there you have the genesis of war. These attitudes eclipse God in human hearts. God is forgotten.
