"In times of armed conflict laws stay inactive". Those words of the Roman lawyer and politician Cicero were written in 52BC during one of the most turbulent periods of ancient Rome's history. Law and order in the capital had broken down and central government was in turmoil. Armed gangs, funded by rival politicians and led by unscrupulous mercenaries, clashed frequently with violent, often lethal, consequences. Another generation was to pass before ancient Rome would regain stability under her first emperor, Augustus; and that would be at the expense of the very limited democracy that Rome had hitherto enjoyed.

Rome in the first century BC is but one example of the truth that violence begets violence, a truth that is now being tragically revealed by the events in Iraq. Whatever the provenance of the photographs that have been published in the UK press, there seems little doubt that many Iraqi prisoners of the coalition forces, both military and civilian, have been subject to inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of American and British troops, treatment that is not only illegal under international law but which increasingly undermines the claims of the coalition for the moral legitimacy of their continuing involvement in Iraq. Now, as I write, comes news from Baghdad of the beheading of an American civilian: revenge, say his captors, for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US guards.

In the face of such terrible events it is facile to speak of 'a Christian response', as though Christianity were able to provide an off-the-peg solution to this, or any other, crisis. To speak in such a way also ignores the fact that there are Christians, both amongst the coalition forces and amongst the Iraqi population, who are struggling to be faithful to their calling in the midst of unimaginable pressures. However it is not facile to remind ourselves that all Christians everywhere should be concerned before anything else with the Kingdom of God, seeking to build that Kingdom through lives of prayer, of love and of service and in faithfulness to Jesus Christ, through whom God seeks to reconcile the whole world to himself.