Speaking of Lincoln's war, here's an interesting book review that showed up  on Lewrockwell.com today (http://www.lewrockwell.com/trask/trask8.html).  It demonstrates, to me, the danger of even defending Lincoln's war.  Here's the last paragraph:

Perhaps the most important question is whether a Christian should draw the sword at all except in self-defense (and by logical extension the defense of one’s neighbor or country). Beyond that, choosing violence is usurping a prerogative of God (defining good, delivering retribution, deciding who lives and who dies). Brown acted upon the doctrine that the moral sublimity of his end purified the choice of his means. The Apostle Paul expressly repudiated such presumption, forbidding us from doing evil that good may come. After Brown was hung (no man more justly, wrote Hawthorne), John Greenleaf Whittier, a non-violent abolitionist, penned the morally beautiful line: "Perish with him the folly/that seeks through evil good." Amen.

For Jesus, there was indeed a time to argue. We see him in debate on many occasions with the religious leaders, for example. But have you ever noticed how "tricky" Jesus is in argument? Think of it like this ...

 

Let's say "A" represents the position of someone arguing against Jesus, and "B" represents the position this arguer expects Jesus to take. You can pick your issue ... divorce, punishing an immoral person, where true worship should occur, paying taxes to Caesar. But what does Jesus do? Does he respond to the force of A's position with even greater logic and persuasion for position B? No. Time and time again he asks a question or tells a story or in some other way slips out of position B altogether, and raises the whole line of discourse to a new level, moving to position C, as below.

 

Why does he do this? Is it because he is "chicken"—afraid to lose, conflict-averse, too soft for a good-old-fashioned-knock-down-drag-out argument? You'd only ask that question if you didn't know much about Jesus. No, I think he transcends the normal lines of argument for several reasons, including these two:

1.  Many arguments and questions are not framed in an acceptable way: They make assumptions that are not (from your perspective) valid. If you engage in the argument or answer the question as framed for you, you in a sense legitimize those invalid assumptions. For example, if someone asks you, "You're still drinking too much, aren't you?"—you can't respond to the "too much" and let the "still" stand as an assumption; that is, you can't if you have never, in fact, had the habit of drinking too much. Many times, Jesus will not answer a question or respond to a provocative comment because the whole discussion is not framed in a wise or helpful or accurate way.
2. Sometimes when reading the Gospels, I sense that Jesus will not answer a question or engage in an argument because he does not want to humiliate his conversation partner. He finds a way to back down, to let the other person seem right or retain some dignity, rather than backing the person into a corner and proving, "No, you're wrong! I'm right! You lose! I win!" Jesus does this for reasons of gentleness and kindness and respect, and also for reasons of persuasion. He knows (as Alice does) that when you put people into a win-lose situation, when you don't give them space to think for themselves, they become less open, not more, to your ideas.