Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: June 3, 2006
Good Sabbath
June 3, 2006
"War, that mad game the world so loves to play." (Swift)
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing. "(Dwight D. Eisenhower)
What is war? Why is war? War has many definitions: war is the absence of peace; war is God at His worse; war is a shallow victory, always, that leaves a people in ruins. War makes anything else possible, especially inhumanity and the cancellation of the Golden Rule. Yet, my memories of WWII were of the necessity of defeating Hitler and his tyranny of hatred and slaughter. It was quickly followed by the expensive Cold War, Korean conflict and dozens of little wars, and then Viet Nam, where disillusionment became part of our vocabulary.
Franklin wrote that there never was a good war or a bad peace, though no one who studied WWII could agree with that. War is nobility of brave soul and failure of all that Christ and God stand for, though modern prophecy has evolved into a more destructive future tense (or tense future).
My youthful memories of WWII were of my best friend's brother, who became a Marine, was wounded several times, survived-still young-but changed forever. We worshipped our Marines, not as gods, but as brave warriors who assured our freedom. My memory of Korea was my client's only son (Marine) trapped by the Chinese as they pored into North Korea, trapping thousands of Marines. He survived, although his dad lost his health.
Youth is accompanied by unpredictability, for immaturity is the companion of the adolescent. Perhaps machismo is the connecting rod that allows boys to be boys and become bigger boys searching for mature manhood--more than an age--a value system that learns to love and want peace even if they have to fight for it. There is always a tyrant; there is always evil alive and well, preying on freedom's weakness and immaturity, as well as political machinations.
Boxing used to be our greatest sport, filled with blood and punishment of face and body; we grew tired of its corruption and turned to baseball where violence was unnecessary and hero worship was a driving force, for the young need role models, whether in football or any other sport. Winning is everything, until we learn that it's how we play the game that counts. Of course sport's writers believe that winning is everything and losing is for losers. Money is the real power-no surprise there.
Marines are young men, still boyish and immature in most ways. On home Sundays they come to our baseball park, accompanied by D.I.'s, who teach obedience, when to stand, how to sit, and what is expected. When the recruits stand and salute the Marine's Hymn, the crowd grows wild with affection and admiration and sings the hymn twice and all us men stand with tears hardly hidden, tears of pride at a new generation of warriors, as the grown men's wives yearn for real peace this time.
The young recruits are taught to kill and disable the enemy. They are taught to follow orders as a commandment, yet we are proud when an individual emerges as a hero, above the call of duty, whether it costs his life or not. Human nature is supposed to prize self-preservation until religion demands suicide as a role in combat. Human nature has the power to substitute rationalization for thoughtfulness, for a rational human cannot hurt a woman or a child as it is against everything he or she has been taught through religion or parent or teacher until the religion orders it.
Yet in this war that approaches WWII in length, with little nobility to it, with hardly any definition to it, with no draft to make it a democratic war, where profits and taxes are played as if there were peace, where greed becomes prime motivation and where the young are attacked by fanatics and others who believe that they are the wrong religion or are the occupiers, the final value system becomes one of survival rather than the ambiguity of politically defined victory.
It is like "we win when I say we win and it's over when I say it's over" and the timing is always in doubt as cruelty and shame spread into the bravest heart as nobility crashes into ambiguity.
O God
What are we doing
And why allow us to do it?
Or is Your vote cancelled by the Devil,
Or is freedom only won through blood
(Like boxing)
Or is freedom a state of mind
Rather than the beauty of peace?
Have a special Sabbath this week, filled with understanding and perspective and yes, love.
sandy
