Wars and rumors of war ... thoughts on Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I – “the war to end all wars”. But, as the first name I used for it implies, this war did not accomplish the intended goal since it was followed very shortly by another one that was even more extensive and destructive. In the 95 years since the signing of that armistice, it seems instead that the world has been defined by conflict and only rarely interspersed with disappointingly brief periods of peace.

The march of human history appears to be largely shaped through the footsteps of war. These violent disruptions send societies and individuals lurching and detouring in unplanned directions. Any pre-war settledness turns into a nostalgic memory. Home and habits, places and projects are counted among the victims as much as the numbers of dead and wounded.

Part of my own family’s trajectory was radically changed by the eruption and disruption of war. My Mennonite/farming ancestors were doing what they did best – farming. War in Europe in the 1870’s pushed this community of pacifists to do the unthinkable. They abandoned their land, their farms, their horses and equipment and barns – their known places. They picked up their families and headed into the unknown. Leaving the controllable, tillable earth they risked a difficult voyage over the uncontrollable ocean to find a new place where they would be freed from the threat of the far-away war.

This radical change was a risk that paid off for my great-grandparents who again became farmers, now in the New World with its rich soil but rather harsh climate. But even traveling such a great distance at such great risk was not a guaranteed buffer against the intrusion of war. A few short decades later my grandparents’ world was shaken by the “Great War” in Europe, the “War to end all wars”, a.k.a. World War I only because the following generation – that of my parents – was the one that fought World War II. The destruction of this second conflict was so numbing and devastating that one of its victims was actually the “conflict mentality” that had been fueled and repeated in Europe for generations. Burying this victim led to the formation of the European Union, a co-dependency economic alliance which has actually been effective over the past fifty years as an anti-war buffer in that part of the world.

Just as we think that some form of durable peace has finally arrived, the nature of conflict itself mutates and generates a new one. The POWs of WWII had hardly been released when new ones were being taken on the Korean peninsula. As that geographically limited conflict was ending through a truce, the seeds sown by geo-political discord were again sprouting to create the conflict that would mark my generation:  the Viet Nam war.

Whatever the political reasons for waging war, in retrospect they appear to be puny excuses in light of the avalanche of uncontrollable unintended consequences that result from each conflict. The Vietnam War is a glaring example. Beyond the military engagement, it marks the “before” and “after” in American society. The assumed values that had endured since my great-grandparents made their perilous journey were swept away. Just one of the unintended victims. War had again led a society to move in a new direction with its attendant unknowns and new genres of victims.

And now my children’s generation is mired in the longest war in American history. Again the bitter roots can be traced back decades before these children were even born, when the Cold War superpowers were using proxies to fight in ways that let them avoid direct conflagration. Today’s young men and women are the direct victims of those decades-old geo-political decisions with an ever-escalating arms race. We try to control conflict by changing the nature of the battle. Without general conscription in Western countries, the fighting is done by a miniscule part of the population. Set battles have been replaced by small patrols, sleeper-cells and IEDs, suicide vests and drones. The triggering factors are less geo-political and more ideological and ethnic radicalism. If fewer soldiers die, more are maimed – or commit suicide as a result. Psychological destruction has become as rampant as physical destruction. Societies are not just transformed by war on their territory, but completely decimated. Refugees number in the hundreds of thousands or millions. The difference from the conflicts of previous generations is that these new homeless and hopeless have no possibility of ever returning, because there is really nothing to which to return.

This present type of war is not just a reflection of the march of history. It doesn’t have a defined beginning and doesn't end on a certain date followed by a settled period. Such a cycle doesn’t even seem to be thought of as a possibility any more. There is no end in sight. It is a situation to be managed, not resolved. This new type of unending war shows to what extent the human heart really is “desperately wicked and can do no good”.

Sadly, I find no reason to not fear for my grandsons and their generation. When Jesus was asked about the march of human history he said there would be “wars and rumors of wars … nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom”, but he also said that isn’t indicative of any special situation. That’s just how it is. I guess the need for dedicated soldiers will continue.

Today we remember those who served and sacrificed, and we are thankful for them and that there was an Armistice we can commemorate. But our hope is and must continue to be in something more than mankind’s capacity to resolve conflict and end wars through imperfect agreements. From the time of Cain and Abel we have rather proven that we find it quicker and easier to hate and destroy than to build and resolve. Genuine peaceful living requires personal and social humility, moral courage, self-denial, and usually a good bit of time investment. Yes, truly “blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God.” So, on this day Christians can also remember that peacemaking, on all levels of human relationship, is part of the vocation of those who God adopts into his family and are now known as ‘sons of God’.

Illegal and/or just plain wrong

A mother in PA who worked for a school system and had access to the school’s computers went into the system and changed her children’s grades to better ones.  When the police confronted her with what she had done, she responded that she knew that what she had done was “unethical but did not think that it was illegal”.  So, even though she knew it was “unethical”, she went ahead and did it anyway because she thought it was “not illegal”!  My first reaction was:  ‘Really?  You knew it was wrong but you went ahead anyway because you thought you couldn’t be arrested for it?’  But, the more I thought about it, the less it surprised me.

Our sense of right and wrong depends on a reference to a standard.  If there is no ultimate, exterior, objective standard defining what is right and wrong, then we have to come up with one on our own.  When we are left with inventing our own subjective standards, we will most likely choose ones that are convenient for us in one way or another. After all, the only person we have to justify them to is ourselves! The only other limits we have to recognize are the ones imposed on us by society in the form of laws.  For this woman, as for an overwhelming and scary majority of people around us, there is no internally-felt necessity to answer to an objective external standard as a reference.  There is only the exterior constraint of law.  The fence limiting our behavior must then be an ever-stronger and higher external one because more and more of us believe the internal fence can be moved wherever we like according to whims and circumstances.

In addition to the unpredictability of people’s actions when each one follows his own inclinations with no limits, it leads to a multiplication of laws within a society.  Since the individuals in that society cannot be counted on to “do what is right” on their own, they must be constrained from the outside.  A law must be promulgated for every conceivable situation that humans can confront. And since human beings can be very inventive in interpreting and sidestepping laws, new laws must be continually set for each of these new behaviors or possible behaviors. Public decision-making and conversation can then only take place in the forum of laws and lawsuits.  If a person’s responsibility is not codified, he is not seen as – and frequently does not see himself as – being responsible. ‘It might be wrong, but I am not guilty’. Thus, the normality of the mother’s reaction. Poor mother.  Poor children.

The recent financial breakdown was a demonstration of how far this philosophy has gone.  Financial institutions, whose very existence depends on trust, did all kinds of things that were manifestly “wrong” and which led to great harm for a very great number of people and for society in general.  This did follow a period of decreasing regulation and the resulting lack of rules or “laws” in this area meant, apparently in the minds of many, that if something isn’t illegal it is ok to do it – no matter what the consequences for others. Confronted by the results of their actions, the response by the heads of these institutions has been to say “I’m sorry for the consequences you suffered, but we didn’t do anything illegal, so it’s not our responsibility”.  A sidebar on page 7 of the July 30, 2012, issue of TIME magazine states:  “24% -- percentage of Wall Street executives who say illegal or unethical conduct may be necessary to be successful in finance.”

Since we are still handicapped by the on-going crisis, we are quick to denounce this kind of selfishness and greed.  But, these financiers are only applying the same ethical orientation that most of us have also adopted and blithely apply in our personal choices as well.  Notions of Truth, Right and Wrong that don’t depend on us have been supplanted by Individual Choice, the god of this age.  The intrinsic value of Freedom has been pushed to its logical conclusion when applied by fallen human nature:  freedom…for me. Period.

  

Since people want this ultimate “good” of their Individual Choice be protected, those who have access to some form of power work very hard to get laws passed to protect their right to make whatever choices they deem personally useful, even if it involves lying.  Should we be shocked when the Supreme Court of the land upholds someone’s right to lie about having received military decorations, on the basis of that person’s freedom of speech?  This is the philosophy of the land translated into the law of the land.

In her article “The Gospel is more than a Story” that appears in the July/August 2012 issue of Christianity Today, Professor Leslie Leyland Fields talks about this cavalier approach to truth in the field of literary narrative.  She says:  “As a writer and creative-writing teacher, I see a parallel movement in the halls of memoir, a genre plagued by scandals.  As writers recount events from their lives, they hear the siren call to craft a “better story” than the one actually lived. Many answer the call.  Some of the most egregious deceptions… [she lists some of them], are explained by a thirst for fame and fortune.  But some are undoubtedly the consequence of the postmodern shrug toward truth.  The text, and truth itself, is forever malleable by the supreme authorial self…” (page 43).

In this exercise of promoting oneself through Individual Choice, those who do not have access to power often turn to violence, either physical or psychological, as a means of protection against and reaction to perceived intrusions on their “sacrosanct right” to Individual Choice.  Even though they appear to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, the arguments used by both Gun Rights and Gay Rights are, in my opinion, expressions of this philosophy.

In Isaiah 59:14-16 we find this analysis of a society in which the respect for absolute (God’s) truth is absent: “So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter.  Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice.  He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene…”

When everyone determines his or her own “truth”, the Truth is nowhere to be found.  One consequence, as pointed out in the Isaiah citation, is a glaring lack of genuine justice – no matter how many laws are passed.  If there is no outside, objective standard that applies to everyone, the definition of justice itself must submit to the “greater good” of Individual Choice and ultimately means only “justice for me”.  There is no one else to whom one can ultimately be held answerable.  Justice = a law on the books, nothing more.  If it isn’t on the books, it can’t be declared just or unjust by any other standard.

Those of us who claim to be followers of God the Son who describes himself as being “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) must think about who or what we are really following.  The ambient cultural climate is very compelling.  It is a mistake to think that we can somehow control it to gain an advantage for “our camp”.  In the American context this is particularly tempting in the political arena.  “If only we can elect the right people…, if only we can get the right laws passed…, if only we can gain enough power to make everyone do the right thing…”  -- or whatever the argument is.  Over the past 25 years a lot of Christians have been seduced by this message.  The result is that they have been sucked into the system, which means “taking sides” and “choosing bedfellows”, rather than maintaining the critical distance from the system that is necessary in order to apply the Truth with genuine justice and impartial equity.  They have put their hopes in the wrong “solutions” and end up being continually disappointed, by both people and results.  The justice that we end up defending is as self-interested as that of non-believers.  We fight for “justice” for our party’s agenda (using “party” in a large sense) rather than, as God demands, fighting for justice for the voiceless, the vulnerable, and the powerless who live around and among us.  Justice shouldn’t just be about personal advantage for me.

Truth honors God, the author of truth, no matter who utters it; and falsehood is just that – falsehood – no matter who says it.  The result of not recognizing this is that many American Christians are seen as partisan players rather than as references to whom one can turn for honest, careful, nonpartisan analysis of situations that are necessarily complex.    Our compromises with the god of Individual Choice have tainted the sweetness of Truth and Light with the bitterness of a judgmental spirit, arrogance, criticism, rejection, and division.  Instead of being known for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, evangelical Christianity in America is choosing to be defined by what it opposes!  This neither honors the Truth nor testifies to its transforming power.  Ephesians 4:14-15 describes the goal: “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.  Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.”

The only way to detach ourselves from the all-consuming god of Individual Choice is to consciously yield to the one who is Truth and Love, Truth and Grace (John 1:14), Truth and genuine Freedom (John 8:32).  The one who is Truth is the only one who can ever teach us what truth really is. Through submission and the willingness to learn, eventually our inner conscience can be trained to actually serve as a guide.  But it must first be tuned to be answerable to the Revelation of right and wrong that is true, here and now as well as forever.  With such a dependable exterior guide, we won’t be reduced to just wondering whether or not our behavior is “illegal”.