“A Veteran’s Druthers”

• Scriptural Reference: Various and Sundry Biblical Passages
• November 11, 2007
• Listen to the audio

There are many good, theological reasons for not celebrating Veteran’s Day. First and foremost centers in the fact that veterans of any military swear loyalty to a nation-state, their loyalty to any form of Christ’s body becoming, therefore, secondary and in many cases, irrelevant. A follower of Christ will never treat his loyalty to his Lord as irrelevant, and it is most certainly never secondary to anything.

A second reason for not celebrating Veteran’s Day lies in one of the most central tenants of Christian worship; the worship service must always be rooted in scripture and there simply is no scriptural reference, command, or even description of a service that celebrates military service. In fact, most of what the Bible says about the military and the penchant of nation-states for war will only disquiet the serious reader of Holy Scripture.

And a third reason lies in the historical reality that for the first 300 years of the Christian movement, service in any military was considered to be problematic at best. Only in the wake of the Emperor Constantine when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire was service in the military seen as acceptable for a follower of Christ. Since Constantine, we have carried and suffered from a wound, a wound passed down through the generations. When the called-out people found themselves in power, they traded the servant-hood of Christ for the lordship of secular authority. That ethos has infused every Christian society since, an ethos we have inherited. Those voices who would challenge the moral authority of any nation-state to wage wars of conquest, or even so-called defense, have been seen as subversive, even evil. Imagine: in our own nation, those who have insisted that following Jesus closely and finding ways of loving our enemies have been ridiculed as being naïve, even unpatriotic.

On the other hand, soldiers and military maneuvers show up repeatedly in the Bible, 98% of them in the Old Testament. Note, though, that God’s way of doing military engagements runs directly counter to the way our so-called Defense Department reasons.

To begin with, all the military engagements mentioned in the Bible have ambiguous results. Gideon provides one prominent example. After his victories, the prosperity and faithfulness of Israel proves fickle – again. Also, the story of Gideon belies the notion of a military build-up. Clearly the story pushes the point that Gideon’s faithfulness to God was proven by a military build-DOWN. Read Judges 7:2: “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her, announce to the people, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’”

So under God’s direction, Gideon proceeds to reduce his troop strength – from around 30,000 down to 300, or 1% of his initial strength. Gideon then took this tiny force against Midian and her allies, described in verse 12 this way: “The Midianities, the Amalekites and all the other eastern peoples had settled in the valley, thick as locusts. Their camels could no more be counted than the sand on the seashore.” In conventional thinking, in terms of our own thinking, to engage such an army with Gideon’s force was absolutely crazy. But the whole point of the engagement is to prove God’s strength, not human strength.

It was the same with David and his proverbial giant. David defeats Goliath using stones – NOT state of the art fighting technology. With it, he wins a victory for Israel which can only be attributed to God. Later, when he has conventional armies at his beck and call, he falls into power manipulation and uses his authority to cover over murderous intent aimed at allowing him to give vent to his lust: he orders a tactical withdrawal at just the point when a general, Uriah, is most likely to be overwhelmed by the enemy. At Uriah’s death, instead of an enemy city, David sacks Bathsheba. You can read about this in I Samuel 11. Actually, it makes real good reading, as good as anything Hollywood screen writers could invent.

Now, those aren’t stories that you can use to stoke up patriotic passion, are they? To tell you the truth, no combat veteran really much appreciates the blithe patriotic rhetoric of clergy and politicians. Real soldiers, on the other hand, apparently know enough of the harsh reality of war to really appreciate someone like Jesus.

For the most part in the gospels, military people are usually bit players, almost always cast as almost innocent pawns of the imperial thinkers who use them as their shields. In Matthew, it is the centurion overseeing the proceedings, apparently reluctantly, who exclaims that Jesus was the Son of God. On the other hand, in Luke 22, the Roman soldiers obeying their orders to flog Jesus in preparation for crucifixion mock him, adding a bit of torture of their own, evidently for their own amusement – a clear example of soldiers probably exceeding their authority when they have a helpless shill in front of them on whom they can vent their frustration.

In Luke 7, however, we have a startling scene play out.

After Jesus had finished teaching the people, he went to Capernaum. In that town an army officer’s servant was sick and about to die. The officer liked this servant very much. And when he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish leaders to ask him to come and heal the servant.

The leaders went immediately to Jesus and begged him to do something. They said, “This man deserves your help! He loves our nation and even built us a meeting place.” So, Jesus went with them.

When Jesus wasn’t far from the house, the office sent some friends to tell him, “Lord, don’t go to any trouble for me! I am not good enough for you to come into my house. And I am certainly not worthy to come to you. Just say the word, and my servant will get well. I have officers who give orders to me, and I have soldiers who take orders from me. I can say to one of them, ‘Go!’ and he goes. I can say to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes. I can say to my servant, ‘Do this! And he will do it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was so surprised that he turned and said to the crowd following him, “In all of Israel I’ve never found anyone with this much faith!”

The officer’s friends returned and found the servant well.

You’ll notice that Jesus said this about one of Israel’s bitter enemies. The centurion was a Roman soldier. Evidently, this soldier had learned through his own experience the nature of true authority. He recognized true leadership when he saw it.

In fact, the men I know about who’ve seen combat first hand can perceive human integrity quicker than most other people who’ve never encountered the particular brand of human suffering that combat inflicts. The spirit of that integrity inspires loyalty. And that loyalty inspires unequaled courage. Think of those soldiers who marched out behind Pickett into that open field in Gettysburg between Cemetery Hill and Seminary Ridge on that July day in 1863, knowing that they’d be exposed for long minutes to artillery firing grape. Think of those soldiers right over there at Cold Harbor who pinned their names to their jackets, absolutely certain that they’d die, but walked into withering Confederate fire anyway. As Lee observed a similar carnage at Fredericksburg he commented that the waste of life was indeed terrible and admired the enemy troops for their courage. And my uncle Ben, who fought at Bastogne, told me that no finer soldier existed than the Germans he fought on that cold Christmas of 1944-45.

J.R.R. Tolkien served in the British army during the First World War. The Great War, as it has been called, made a lasting impression upon Tolkien, as it did anyone who suffered through the long years of trench warfare. One event had a particular effect on the future author of The Lord of the Rings. A German assault on the line Tolkien’s unit occupied had fallen short with hundreds slaughtered in the machine gun fire. One German soldier had made it to the edge of Tolkien’s post before he was hit. He fell only a few feet away, his face turned and concealed by his helmet. Tolkien preserved the experience in a scene from the second book of the Lord of the Rings. In that scene, enemy soldiers, men from Harad, have been ambushed by forces of the good guys, men from Gondor. Sam and Frodo, those little hobbits who are on that proverbial journey to destroy the evil ring of power, have been caught in the crossfire and barely miss getting killed themselves. As they hide, a soldier from Harad is felled by an arrow from Gondor. He falls right next to Sam. Tolkien tells us Sam’s thoughts:

It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much.

He was glad that he could not see the dead man’s face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace (p. 667, LOR, Part II).

From all accounts, combat veterans share Sam’s thoughts. They’ve witnessed battles of men against men and they do not like it much; and many of them who have ended up killing the enemy, did not enjoy the experience at all. If they had had their druthers, they would have stayed at home in peace.

Listen to this account from a combat veteran of Viet Nam. You can find the account in “Triangle Tunnel Rat” by Michael Kathman. One of the most terrifying and dangerous duties American soldiers had to perform during Viet Nam was searching for Viet Cong troops who’d hide in elaborate systems of tunnels dug underneath the jungles. Using those tunnels, the VC would frequently appear behind an American position to ambush, kill, and harass, and then vanish. The tunnels were small and cramped spaces where the average American soldier had barely enough room to move his elbows, let alone carry a weapon. Suffice it to say that the space was also tremendously claustrophobic. Only the smallest of GIs could operate in those tunnels, and their life expectancy was lower than average, too. Hear what Kathman says about one of his tunnel searching experiences.

“. . . I cautiously raised the upper half of my body into the tunnel until I was lying flat on my stomach. When I felt comfortable, I placed my Smith Wesson .38-caliber snub-nose (sent to me by my father for tunnel work) beside my flashlight and switched on the light, illuminating the tunnel.

There, not more than 15 feet away, sat a Viet Cong eating a handful of rice from a pouch on his lap. We looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity, but in fact was probably only a few seconds.

Maybe it was the surprise of actually finding someone else there, or maybe it was just the absolute innocence of the situation, but neither one of us reacted.

After a moment, he put his pouch of rice on the floor of the tunnel beside him, turned his back to me and slowly started crawling away. I, in turn, switched off my flashlight, before slipping back into the lower tunnel and making my way back to the entrance. About 20 minutes later, we received word that another squad had killed a VC emerging from a tunnel 500 meters away.

I never doubted who that VC was. To this day, I firmly believe that grunt and I could have ended the war sooner over a beer in Saigon than Henry Kissinger ever could by attending peace talks.”

Kathman was anything but a coward. He was anything but disloyal to his unit or to his country. On the contrary – by doing tunnel duty, he proved his extraordinary bravery. Kathman recalls this incident, however, to drive home something that every veteran knows: the guy on the other side of the rifle is a human being the same as you. When Kathman saw the VC eating rice, doing that basic, elemental thing that we all do, it was impossible to see him as evil. When he made eye contact with him, Kathman chose to not kill. They could see it in each other’s eyes: both would rather have stayed home in peace.

Here’s another story. My dad had surgery some years ago and while the procedure, uh, proceeded, my cousin Johnny came to visit. My brother-in-law, Randy, was there, too, still one of my favorite people on the planet. I also have to note that my cousin Johnny has always ranked up there, too.

Both Johnny and Randy served in Viet Nam. Johnny flew F-4 Phantoms. Randy led a platoon of soldiers as a 1 st lieutenant in the 9 th Air Cavalry. I knew of both of their service and was fascinated as they began to talk about various towns in Viet Nam. Johnny asked Randy where he had been and as they remembered places and realized that they had been in related engagements, I felt like a true outsider observing a sacred fellowship. They could talk about stuff I’d never understand and in which I’d never be included. It’s not that they intentionally would cut me off. It’s just that I had no clue.

But something blatant happened. Johnny asked Randy if he knew anything about an engagement a Ma Dong. Randy suddenly got this blank expression on his face. “Yes,” he said, in a suddenly faint tone. I could tell he was looking past Johnny, that his eyes had quit focusing. “I was there.” Randy barely whispered it.

Johnny was effervescent. In rollicking tones he said, “Yeah, we were called in on that, support for some GIs who’d gotten pinned down. I guess that might have been y’all?”

Randy said, “Probably.”

Johnny said, “Yeah, I came in just above the trees and saw the gooks deployed behind a ridge. We circled back and they were trying to run – looked like roaches.” He giggled. “I dropped my napalm on that second run and when we circled back to give ‘em some cannon rounds, I saw nothing but crispy critters all over that hillside.”

Randy remained quiet. “Yeah,” was all he said.

Johnny said, “What was it like for y’all?”

Randy said, “We left.”

Johnny waited. I waited. I could tell Johnny wanted what I wanted. We wanted Randy to fill in some details from on the ground.

Randy didn’t say anything else, though: just dead silence.

Johnny scratched his head as the discomfort level grew. Then Johnny caught my eye. He said, “How’s church going?”

I felt the men had suddenly quit talking business and had asked the little kid what he wanted for Christmas.

But I started telling him about FBC Winchester.

Randy focused his eyes on my, leaned toward me, and began asking all kinds of questions about the church, hanging on every word as if I’d just returned from sitting in on a presidential cabinet meeting.

Eventually, Johnny had to leave. We shook hands amid some hugs and smiles. Johnny said to Randy, “We’ll have to get together and talk more some time.”

Randy nodded.

After Johnny had left I told Randy about my observation, about how much more willing Johnny had been to talk about the combat than he had been.

Randy said, “I don’t know what we would’ve done without the guys in the F-4s. They saved our butts many times.” The he lowered his voice back to the whisper that had silenced us; “But they never saw their faces.”

In my mind, that’s why we honor veterans on this day. We need to hear them as they tell us about the face of the enemy. Except for a tiny few, most military personnel loathe killing the enemy, which is the primary way in which the military wields its power. Shock and awe. Overwhelming force. It’s inelegant, but simply true – if you’re in the military, you want your adversary believing that if they oppose you, they’ll get vaporized. You do that by vaporizing a few of them.

Only trouble is, the vast majority of people who compose the military have an in-bred, God-given aversion to killing other human beings. The job of boot camp is to get rid of that reluctance – under certain circumstances. As has been noted, especially in recent years, the process by which the military desensitizes predominantly young, adult men so that they will be willing to kill in carrying out their military objectives exacts a very heavy psychological and spiritual toll on both them and the society that sends them into combat.

This is why we have Veteran’s Day: not to repeat slogans but to acknowledge our debt as a nation to how those in military uniform have paid a huge price for the failures of our politicians. And, in a democracy, the failure of the politicians is none other than OUR failure as a populace to exercise our constitutionally mandated responsibility of being informed citizens. When soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines go into combat, it’s always because we sent them to do the violence we as a nation have chosen. This means that even those of us who oppose the current war have a responsibility to our country’s veterans for we did not muster the wherewithal to advocate an alternative path.

It has always bothered me that the greatest sacrifice we have been called upon to make for the sake of this current conflict is to keep on shopping. It bothers me that while we are comfortable here at home, while we continue to burn up ridiculous amounts of oil, while most of us entertain ourselves with a television world where they sell us our next president the same way they sell us toothpaste and extended cab trucks GM is stuck with, over 3800 men and women have died in Iraq, the average age being 27. Over 30,000 have been wounded, many of them gravely.

We honor veterans today because it is they who have seen and known the faces of those who have died. The veterans have paid the price for our national will. So, today, we say, “thank you.” We honor you, men and women of the navy, air force, army, and marines who set aside your own druthers to stay at home in peace in order to remain faithful to your countrymen. You remind us that our national life is not cheap. For your sake, we pledge ourselves anew to be vigilant citizens, to inform ourselves regarding the circumstances that create the conflicts you must settle, and we promise to you that we will do our best never blithely or ignorantly to send you to be our proxies in war. You remind us that this government, temporary on the stage of the human drama though it is, while it is here is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We, the people, in our gratitude for your service, pledge to you and to each other, our faithfulness. As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who through word and deed commands us to speak truth to power, we will not remain silent. Your sacrifice speaks volumes and we add our voices to the chorus.