With God On Our Side

While reading the news about the new President’s plans for our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, I happened to think of Bob Dylan’s song, “With God on our side.” Often we hear prayers for victory over [your enemy’s name here]. Whose side is God on anyway?

Both the Qur’an and the Torah teach in this vein. Chapter 48 of the Qur’an, titled “Al Fath” (Victory, Conquest), tells of God’s role in a (then) recently won victory. God had been on the side of the Muslims. Verses 1-3 read, “Surely We have given to you a clear victory, That Allah may forgive your community their past faults and those to follow and complete His favor to you and keep you on a right way, And that Allah might help you with a mighty help.”[1]

A group Muhammad’s followers had gone to Mecca in pilgrim’s clothing, without weapons, to worship at the Kaaba, now the most sacred site in Islam. The Quraysh tribe who controlled the city, and who worshiped the pagan gods of old Arabia, tried several times to provoke a battle, but the Muslims wouldn’t fight. In the end, the treaty of Hudaibiyah[2] was negotiated: The Muslims had won the right to make the pilgrimage (hajj) the following year without a major battle. By their actions, and with God’s help, the Muslims had gained stature as a “force to be reckoned with.” God was certainly on their side.

In the Torah, in Exodus 23:20-33 we read one of the passages in which God tells us He will be on our side. God will be “an enemy to your enemies” and an “adversary to your adversaries” (v. 22). God “will cause them to perish” (v. 23). And worse is forecast in v. 27 and 28: “My terror I will send on before you, I will panic all the peoples among whom you come, I will give all your enemies to you by the neck...I will send Despair on before you...” So the Jews – I’m not sure they were Jews yet -- get God’s help in taking land from the present residents; and the residents (those who survive) “are not to stay in your land...” And in return, the Jews are to “serve YHWH your God,” and not bow down to the other gods in the lands they are entering. So God was on their side too, right?

God’s on our side as He sends us a leader. Exodus 23:20: “Here, I am sending a messenger before you to care for you on the way, to bring you to the place that I have prepared.” The footnote here says that the text suggests the messenger is an angel or Moses himself. The messenger has the authority of God (verse 21). As in Exodus, we read of a messenger in the Qur’an, 48, verse 8: “Surely We have sent [the Prophet Muhammad] as a witness and as a bearer of good news and as a warner, that you may believe in Allah and His Messenger and may aid him and revere him; and (that) you may declare His glory, morning and evening.”[3]

The old Christian hymn preserves this tradition: Jesus, the leader sent by God, will vanquish our enemies. “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ the royal master leads against the foe. Forward into battle, see his banners go!”

Again: Whose side? Bob Dylan concluded his song with, “If God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war.”