In a Time of Escalation
A Public Discipleship Discussion, 002
March 2, 2026
Publication Note: 002 is based on current events, not the designed flow of Public Discipleship.
Within the past few days, the United States and Israel have struck Iran. Iran has struck back. Currently the conflict is spreading across the Middle East. And the first word I want to offer is not analysis. It is lament.
Because violence is never only “over there.” It does not stay on the battlefield. It tears into bodies, families, and neighborhoods—and then it lingers. It lingers as grief. It lingers as displacement. It lingers as trauma that changes how a child sleeps and how a parent breathes. And it lingers inside the people who pull triggers and press buttons, and inside the societies that teach them how.
In the United States, across the political spectrum, many people are weary of “endless war.” But even when we share that weariness, we can still avoid the deeper truth: killing does something to human beings—on every side. And we do not get to pretend otherwise.
Scripture gives us words for this. “How long, O LORD?” is not a lack of faith. It is the language of faithful people who refuse denial. It is the cry of the Psalms. It is the prayer of those who can still feel what is happening in the world—and who will not pretend that brutality is normal. How long, O LORD, before the bloodshed ends? How long before grief is not the daily diet of ordinary people?
I’m saying this as someone who, over years and across continents, has been close enough to conflict to smell it—close enough to carry pain that doesn’t resolve neatly into slogans. I have felt the warm tears of those who mourn, and I have stood in rooms where grief was audible—pressing in on every sense, shaking my heart.
In Ukraine, I once shared a meal with a man who delivered humanitarian aid to civilians near the front lines. Like so many people in war zones, he wanted me to see what he had seen. He showed me videos and photos, and he told me about apartment buildings where the war had cut off electricity and water. Many young people had fled, but senior citizens stayed.
Each day, those seniors would step outside their front doors with containers, just to gather water. And some days, he would find them killed—feet from their own doorways—still holding the containers they had carried to survive.
And as always, the poor and the powerless pay first and pay longest—those with the fewest options, the weakest passports, the most fragile bodies, the least room to relocate, and the least ability to absorb loss.
That is the world violence makes. And that is why I want the church to do more than react. I want us to be formed—so that our words do not become moral theater and our actions do not become ideological reflex. I want us to study—not just headlines or history, but the human cost of killing itself.
On Killing
Years ago I read Dave Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. It’s a disturbing book—and, in a strange way, it did me a mercy by stripping away whatever naïveté I still carried about violence.
Grossman is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who taught psychology at West Point, and he writes with a practitioner’s concern for what happens inside human beings—and inside societies—when we train people to kill.
His core concern isn’t “who’s right.” It’s what killing does to the human person, and what repeated exposure to violence does to a culture. The book sits at the intersection of war, policing, trauma, and formation.
If we do not understand what violence does to the human person, we will argue about war as if it is only policy. We will speak as if killing is an instrument that can be picked up and set down without consequence. We will fail to notice the ways violence leaks—back into homes, back into public life, back into the imagination of a nation.
This is not an argument for apathy. It is an argument for honesty: even when force is used for defense, it is never morally weightless.
Competing Voices and Critiques
To those who support this war, or others: you may or may not be right about threats and defense. But war is never clean, and it is never morally light. It does not only kill them; it also remakes us. It trains the imagination to dehumanize, turns civilians into “collateral,” and tempts nations to baptize vengeance as security. When we speak of “strikes” and “targets” without grieving bodies—without demanding clear aims, strict limits, and real accountability—we have already begun to lose something human.
To pacifists (and I say this as someone whose instincts are deeply pacifist): the church has a long and faithful witness to nonviolence, and we should honor it. The danger is when pacifism becomes a way to avoid costly solidarity—when it is practiced under someone else’s protection, while vulnerable people are told to absorb aggression without defense. There are moments when an aggressor is not moved by moral appeal, and people who are attacked face terrible choices. The moral right of a people to defend themselves is not theoretical when the alternative is erasure. Refusing to fight can still mean consenting to someone else’s domination and ongoing abuse—especially when the vulnerable have no other shield.
Every time there is a shooting in a school, gun violence in our streets, abuse behind closed doors, political violence, or violence between warring states, we are dragged back to an ancient truth: in scripture, bloodshed arrives almost immediately after Eden.
Cain and Abel stand near the front of the story because they stand near the front of the human condition. Before there are nations, before there are armies, before there are theories to justify force, there is a brother in a field and blood in the ground. And beneath Cain’s rage is a familiar lie: that blessing is scarce— that if Abel is seen, Cain is forgotten; if Abel is favored, Cain is rejected; if Abel receives, Cain is diminished. When life is framed as a zero-sum contest, the neighbor stops being a gift and becomes a rival in survival.
The scriptures do not treat violence as a modern glitch. It names it as a primal fracture—fear that becomes domination, envy that becomes harm, desire that becomes justification. And the grief is this: we do not merely die like other creatures. We learn to hate, to shame, to exploit, to terrorize—to turn a person into an object and call it necessity. We are capable of cruelty with intention: abuse with strategy, killing with stories that make it feel righteous. That is why the first response cannot be bravado. It has to be truth.
If the church is going to speak faithfully, we have to refuse two temptations:
- the temptation to romanticize violence as if it is clean or righteous, and
- the temptation to outsource responsibility for protection as if the vulnerable can simply “choose peace” and make an aggressor stop.
And we should admit what we wish were not true: there are no easy solutions that end bloodshed without cost. In recent decades, our tools have grown more advanced—and so has our capacity to rationalize harm at a distance. Preemptive aggression can start to feel normal. “Risk reduction” becomes a moral cover. That is exactly why the church must refuse denial and speak with restraint, truth, and trembling.
So lament does not end in despair; it becomes the soil where faithful action can grow.
Pathways to Faithful Action
As we face complicated realities, we can start to feel hopeless. And from that place the question rises almost on its own: What can we do?
The church’s first word is not analysis—it is lament. Not because lament is passive, but because lament refuses denial. It keeps us human. And if lament keeps us human, faithful action keeps us from despair. Both are forms of connection to God.
Faithful action is rarely a single gesture. It is a portfolio—a set of practices we hold together over time. A people formed by Christ will usually live in more than one of these pathways at once. As you read, ask: What is missing from this list in my context? What do we avoid? What do we need to grow?
- Mercy and care (immediate, tangible): Support victims. Refugee aid. Trauma care. Hospitality. Sustained giving. Listening that does not hurry pain toward resolution. War shatters more than bodies; it shatters livelihoods and identity.
- Restraint and moral seriousness (public witness): Refuse triumphalism. Refuse dehumanizing speech. Demand clear aims, limits, and accountability from leaders. Advocate for humanitarian protection and de-escalation where possible—without pretending the world is free of aggressors. Faithful public speech does not require pretending we can solve geopolitics in a paragraph. It does require insisting that human beings are not expendable.
- Formation (what we allow violence to do to us): Study what violence does to the human person. Tell the truth to our children. Notice how entertainment, rhetoric, and political identity can train our nervous systems toward contempt and cruelty. This is exactly where On Killing belongs—not as a curiosity, but as discipleship work—work grounded in Christian theology that takes sin, fear, and the fragility of the human heart seriously. We are not only debating what is happening “over there.” We are guarding what violence tries to make of us—here.
- Prayer as endurance: Pray for peace, yes—but pray in a way that keeps you human. Lament until you can no longer speak of enemies as less than human. Pray until your actions become steadier, not louder. Keep returning to the ancient cry: “How long, O LORD?”—until our prayers become courage, and our courage becomes mercy.
What other faithful actions belong in this portfolio in your context—especially actions that protect the vulnerable and resist the slow normalization of cruelty?
And remember: trauma is not always visible. In war zones, people break down behind closed doors. But in public, life often keeps moving with unnerving normalcy—mothers pushing strollers, grandmothers going out for daily bread, children playing soccer—while drones fall from the sky. One of the church’s callings is to refuse the lie that “normal” means “fine,” and to become a community where truth can be spoken and borne.
Invitation: let’s read On Killing together
If you want something concrete to do this week beyond doomscrolling and arguing: read On Killing.
And if you would find it helpful, I’m willing to host conversations (online or in-person) for anyone who wants to engage the book honestly—especially veterans, first responders, caregivers, pastors, and anyone trying to think with theological depth about violence without collapsing into a camp. This is not about winning arguments. It is about telling the truth, refusing denial, and practicing a faith that can hold grief without surrendering our humanity.
Discussion Questions
Use these with a friend, a small group, a session/board, or a clergy cohort:
- When you hear about Israel, the U.S., and Iran escalating, what do you notice happening inside you first: fear, anger, numbness, certainty, sorrow, or something else?
- “How long, O LORD?” is a biblical prayer. What does it make possible that quick answers cannot?
- What is the difference between lament and analysis? What happens to us if we skip lament?
- Where do you feel pulled toward the lure of certainty—either in justifying violence too quickly or rejecting complexity too quickly? Why?
- Who is most exposed in this conflict—poor communities, the displaced, the elderly, children, conscripts, the oppressed—and who is most insulated? What does that reveal?
- What do you believe a nation may do in self-defense—and what must it never allow self-defense to become?
- Which of the four pathways of faithful action (mercy, restraint, formation, prayer) do you practice most naturally? Which do you avoid—and why?
- Name one additional faithful action not listed here that your community could realistically take in the next month.
- In your community, where is trauma carried behind closed doors while life looks “normal” in public? What would it look like for the church to become a safer place for truth?
- If we read On Killing together, what kind of conversation would be most faithful: a book study, a listening circle (especially for veterans and refugees), or a structured forum with clear ground rules?
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© Church Commons. 2026
Written by Rev. Matthew J. Skolnik unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
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