On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM local time, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Everything within 500 yards - three football fields - of ground zero was simply - and totally - vaporized. In all, 45,000 human beings were killed that day. Five months later, another 45,000 had died. Others have been dying of radiation poisoning each year since; In 1995 the total number of victims was up to 192,000 and by 2000 the victims -- with names recorded on a cenotaph, numbered over 217,000.

Leading up to Hiroshima, the commander of the airplane carrying the bomb named it Enola Gay in honor of his mother. After the bomb, one of the B-29 pilots wrote in the log book, "My God! What have we done!

But three days later, we also bombed Nagasaki.

At the 50^th anniversary observance in 1995, Mayor of Hiroshima Takashi Hiraoka said, "Nuclear weapons offer no security to the nations that possess them....As long as nuclear weapons exist, it is inevitable that some country, at some point, will experience the horror that Hiroshima and Nagasaki already know.

This week, however, the British Broadcasting Corporation reports that a secret two-day conference is being held at the US Strategic Command in Nebraska to plan the future of the American nuclear arsenal, including the development of so-called "mini-nukes," which, at 5 kilotons or less, would have one third the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. These weapons are being justified on the grounds that they would give the President options. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved money for research and development of such weapons. The House Armed Services Committee is to vote soon. Approval by Congress as part of the $400 billion Defense Authorization Bill would overturn a ban on such developments.

When we are confronted with such troubling news, it can help us to be aware of the defferent levels of our personalities with which we respond. What I've just presented is at the factual, or intellectual level. Beneath that level is an emotional level.

When I read such facts, my emotional response is pain. When I hurt, I want to lash out and fight back, do something to stop the pain. I have a suspicion that much of the conflict in our world is caused by people who are trying to stop the pain that they feel. It becomes even more painful to realize that many responses to stopping the pain end up simply causing more pain.

Beneath the emotional level I think there is another level and I would call that a spiritual level. When I am confronted by facts like those we just heard, I also have a response of fear. We could call fear something emotional, but I think we do better to call it something spiritual. Where pain focuses on a sensation in the present, fear reaches into the past for all the things that have ever worried us and reaches into the future to all the terrible things that might happen. Fear is not so much about bodily sensations but about life itself, and life itself belongs to God. Fear is existential; it is about our existence.

Fear is spiritual because its only antidote is spiritual. We imagine that fear can be overcome by protections. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with a protection, like a lock on a door, which does something for us without hurting others. But ultimately, protection will not address fear. The only antidote to fear is making our peace with the issues of our own life and death. It is coming to terms with our own mortality. It is coming to terms with the God who gave us life and who will, in the end, take it back. It is forming a relationship with God who intended life, no matter what its outward circumstances, to be rich, to be satisfyingly challenging, and to be filled with loving relationships. It is accepting the grace of God who loves us so much that God took on our fears and pain at the cross and transformed them into eternal life.

On this anniversary of Hiroshima, our newspaper accounts give us a devastating picture of a crisis of fear affecting our land. Ultimately, the multiplication of weapons reflects the multiplication of fear, and the passionate development of more weapons of mass destruction by the world's only superpower exceeds any legitimate standard of self-defense.

If I am right that fear is a spiritual thing, then to the extent that any leader is promoting fear in order to achieve any political end, we are encountering something which is spiritually demonic, a literal pact with the devil, a corrupt deal with Satan in which the gains are illusory but the losses incalculable.

When God calls us to respond, the call comes to us at all three levels. Of course we must engage the facts which come to us on a factual level and advocate for a change in the facts. We must be alert to the pain under the facts and do what we can to ameliorate the pain. But when we encounter the fear, the fear that may easily overwhelm us, the fear that seems so clearly behind the multiplication of nuclear weapons, we must also be aware that, in St. Paul's words, "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against...the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Eph 6:12, NRSV)

In the 6^th chapter of Ephesians, Paul then goes on to turn military imagery on its head, substituting for each element of the armor of the day, "the whole armor of God" - a right relationship with God; the gospel of peace; faith; salvation; God's spirit; prayer. Ultimately, only these will be our protection, and to the extent that these can transform the actions of those who are planning weapons and voting authorizations, only these will give us a Hiroshima anniversary that truly carries hope.