For instance, 60,000 dead in an explosion does not communicate the magnitude of the matter unless you recognize that you are talking about 60,000 lives made in the image of God himself. The pollution of vast stretches of land and water is awful, but worse is the recognition that we would wreck the earth that God shaped for our flourishing. The economic consequences of a blast on the poor and vulnerable are horrible, but unless you see Christ himself in the least of his brothers and sisters you cannot truly know what evil has been wrought.

And yet even these issues, which are so popular with Christians today — sanctity of life, creation care, concern for the poor — do not arrive at the heart of the matter. Each of these issues instead points to the fact that nuclear weapons are fundamentally about theological anthropology; that is, who we understand ourselves to be before God. We were made to tend a garden and now have built a device that could destroy it. These things are a transgression against life and its Author. They are enacted blasphemy: who do we think we are to claim authority over life itself and the welfare of all future generations? “The LORD reigns,” says the psalmist — “let the nations tremble” (Ps 99:1 TNIV).

If you read the transcripts of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1986 Reykjavik summit, for example, the most startling quality to them is that they are so clearly a record of two men talking — in C.S. Lewis’ terminology, two sons of Adam — rather than two heads of nuclear powers. There is humanity in their speech, in Reagan’s proposal that they abolish all nuclear weapons and throw a “party for the whole world.” This would be one thing if nothing came of it, but out of that very mortal conversation came one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of nuclear negotiations.

When we remember our humanity, the goodness of God shines forth. In Christ’s earthly ministry, he encountered a Roman centurion who said, “I myself am a man under authority,” to which Jesus responded, “I have not found such great faith even in Israel” (Lk 7:8-9 TNIV). This apprehension of our profound under-authority-ness is a sine qua non of God-given faith in God: we recognize that we are under God; thus seeing that he is holy and we are not, we repent of our sin and walk in his way.

I attend many conferences with top nuclear experts, people versed in the minutiae of nuclear strategy and science. They are often committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons, but in the course of conversation they talk about possible scenarios that involve the deaths of tens of millions of people, without a single eye watering or a single voice shaking with horror.

This dispassion is not uncommon and may actually be necessary for such conferences. I get it. In order to consider these world-destroying instruments that we have wrought, you have to check your humanity at the door. You can’t imagine it’s your grandkids getting vaporized. Our suits and prestige and professional expertise insulate us from the radioactive poison of our topic.

But when discussing the sudden death of millions, how close can a dryeyed assembly truly be to the heart of the one who wept over Jerusalem? “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:4 TNIV) — but blessed, too, because in a fallen world the kingdom of God cannot be perceived clearly but through the lens of tears.

It is this lens that gives clarity. Consider for a second the devastation of a nuclear blast, and the horror you feel in contemplating it. Is your grief based on the fact that all those people killed in this hypothetical nuclear attack would have otherwise lived forever? Is it mortality itself that undoes you?

But of course it can’t be. We know that death comes for us all, the final paycheck cut by a sinful world. So it is not mere death that shocks our consciences. No: when we think of mass slaughter in any form, it is the wickedness of the killing deed from which we recoil. And the wickedness that we intuit, theologically speaking, is the evil that it is to interrupt in such a way the common grace of life that God sovereignly pleases to shower on the wicked and righteous alike.

This is why only Christians have the vocabulary to call nuclear weapons what they are: sin. This is the crux. Without that word you can always find some way to justify their continued existence. But having named them as sin we discover that our choice has been made for us. When we behold the truth of a thing our response is not up for debate.

And so we arrive at what Baptists call the moment of decision. Hold on tight.

Possibility

When I talk about the nuclear issue with people, Christians or not, the response often takes the form of a “but what about . . . ” question. “But what about Russia? Iran? Cheaters? Human nature? Nuclear energy? Etc.”

These are legitimate questions that demand legitimate answers. But I think there’s more going on here. I think that at least part of our skepticism comes from an unwillingness to reexamine the fundamental assumption that most of us carried over from the Cold War: namely, that the Bomb is a necessary evil that equals ultimate security.

Yes, yes, people will say, nuclear weapons are of course bad and it would be better to get rid of them, but what about X and Y and Z? What they are really asking is whether it is safe to believe in that which is morally righteous.

The short answer is yes. I believe with absolute conviction that the abolition of nuclear weapons and the steps needed to get there will be good for national security — ours and others. But the danger for Christians — a danger for me — is to be lured into endless conversations about the security merits of this plan, and forget what it is we’re really talking about, which is good and evil.

Our Christian practice requires us to live presently in a kingdom that’s not yet fully here. Sojourners in a world that is not our true home, we pitch the tent of our lives on a taut line anchored by twin pegs: on the one side, the cross and resurrection, and on the other, the eschaton and consummation of God’s kingdom. We live between two realities that we haven’t seen, so the only defense we have against the winds of the present are our imaginative capacities for visions and dreams, our faith in what God has done, and hope for what he will do. Those who have faith, says the Hebrew prophet, will wait on God (see Hab 2:3-4).

It is far too easy to dismiss this goal as unrealistic and impossible. But to declare that which is righteous to be impossible is not an act of realism, but rather one of cowardice and faithlessness in God’s power to redeem.

And God does just that. When the battle to eliminate slavery was joined, both in England and the United States, abolitionists there, too, were met with the accusation that what they proposed was impossible. Slavery was too profitable, too important to the economy, and if we don’t keep it — opponents of abolition said — enemies would get an advantage. And, in fact, the arguments of slavery’s supporters were totally reasonable and eminently realistic at the time.

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