On God, Flag, and Country

Someone recently told our new pastor I would not be at church for the Veteran's Day service. I was a little surprised since I had forgotten Veteran's Day was approaching and no one had said anything to me about it. How did someone else know the plans I had yet to even consider? I guess they were looking at my history. I did miss the Sunday closest to Veteran's Day a year ago because I was at a conference that weekend. The conference had nothing to do with Veteran's Day, but I will admit I wasn't disappointed by the timing. I tend to miss Memorial Day weekend because my mother was born on May 30th (Memorial Day's date before the Monday Holiday Bill set it adrift in 1968). We have a long family tradition of gathering for her birthday. This year I could have left after the Sunday morning service to visit her for her 92^nd birthday celebration, but chose to miss. I was at church for the Independence Day service in July, but apparently my absences for “God, Flag, and Country” Sundays speak louder than my presence. As they probably should. The unnamed person making a definitive statement concerning my plans for this fall was perhaps a bit presumptuous, but not far enough off base for me to take offense. And there is a possibility the second-hand version of the statement that came back to me contained more certainty than the original.

Will I be at church for Veteran's Day? I don't know, but probably. Church attendance is a habit for me whereas conflicting conferences are rare. I have concerns, but probably not enough commitment to them to make alternative plans for the day.

My concerns:

1. War is ridiculous. The leaders of two or more countries find themselves in conflict so they gather up a large number of young men in the prime of life, give them weapons, train them in the art of death and destruction, and see who can inflict enough death and destruction to prompt the other side to give up. How is this still happening in our times?

But, wait, there is more. The warriors, along with their parents and grandparents and lovers, are persuaded that God is on their side of the conflict and that they are defenders of righteousness, truth, and freedom. They must inflict death and destruction for the sake of their families back home, for God, flag, and country. The parents and grandparents and lovers lift up their young men as heroes as they dish out death and destruction on those on the other side of the conflict while the leaders who initiated the military action sit safely in their war rooms. Sometimes civilians are also killed in this process, but this is accepted as a cost of conflict. The young fighters are still heroes. This is seriously messed up!!

If you don't believe me that this is messed up, check in on the mental health of war veterans. The survivors, of course. But not those who serve behind the frontlines. Look at those who walk away with indelible images of war carnage haunting their days. See how they are doing. After the American Civil War, they called such people “shellshocked.” After Vietnam, we just recognized them as messed-up Vietnam vets. Now we have letters to describe it: PTSD. It's still the same. Killing other human beings and watching people die violent deaths has a terrible impact on the lives of those involved. As it should. We are made for protecting human life not extinguishing it, and we overcome that natural bent to our own peril.

2. The glorification of war and war “heroes” bothers me anyway, but even more so when it enters the church.

When I was a young adult, I started my campaign to protect our worship services by taking on the Easter Bunny. Not because I dislike the Easter Bunny. I think colored eggs and candy and bunnies are delightful symbols for celebrating spring and fertility and new life. (Rabbits are my favorite animal!) Outside the church walls. Inside the church walls, Easter/Resurrection Sunday is only and always about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Easter bunny can hop to and fro everywhere else, but can we keep this one sacred place sacred? It is the ONLY place where the focus is on God's power to overcome death with new life as demonstrated by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why would we distract from that focus? There is wondrous beauty in the empty tomb that many struggle to grasp. Why would we interweave light-hearted myths and magic with it? Enjoy the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy! They are great!! But can we please refrain from inviting them into sacred spaces at the most sacred times of the church year?

I gave up on reforming the church long ago. Now I am content to simply not participate when secular interests get folded into worship. But even that is difficult. Even if I could close the church doors in the face of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, I wouldn't want to shut out those who have served in the U.S. military. And the idea that God supports America's warriors and we must do the same by honoring our troops, current or past, as part of our Sunday morning worship is drilled into us from a young age. It is almost sacrilegious to question it. I can disappear on such Sundays, but that exposes me as someone who doesn't support the men and women currently or formerly serving in our armed forces, a serious offense in the eyes of many! Or maybe someone who doesn't understand that the military invites God into the midst of war by means of chaplains and prayers.

The bottom line is that I find war disturbing beyond words. I wish there were alternative paths for serving God and country that didn't involve training young men to kill and maim. I wish we as a country supported and honored service in the Peace Corp and similar programs like we support and honor military service. I wish, if military service remains a necessary evil because our leaders find it impossible to come up with civilized means for conflict resolution, we could at least acknowledge each enlistment as a sign of unspeakable failure on the part of those leaders.

But that isn't where we are. My pastor reminded me that the military supports chaplains and prayer. I didn't remind him that, regardless of those prayers, causing the violent death of another human does permanent damage to the psyche of those doing it. The wreckage on both sides is beyond comprehension. But I had no words to convey that conviction, nor to explain why it bothers me so much to see those involved in the military put on a pedestal rather than wrapped in arms of healing and compassion and begged for forgiveness for whatever extent they were subjected to the horrors of war.

I don't have answers to the incredible puzzle of war still existing in these times. And I certainly can't change the mindset that God is honored when we honor those offering their lives to the service of leaders with such limited skills and imagination for peacemaking that they resort to sending “the boys” out to kill and maim each other in order to “settle” international conflict. I can't fix it. I just wish I didn't have to be part of celebrating it. But even those noting my opposition to such celebrations have shown no interest in hearing my concerns. So I share them here in the blogosphere. And so it goes. . 

Not that anyone has actually asked me, but again I ask myself: Will I be at church for the Veteran's Day service? Probably. I too am part of this country that believes more in military might than the peaceable Kingdom of God. And I am part of a congregation that supports this worldview by honoring war veterans on Veteran's Day. I am too worn down and worn out to stage a protest. And so we will have God, flag, and country. My convictions will be simply one more (admittedly minor) casualty in a long string of casualties. 

The flag I will be waving is the white flag of surrender and defeat. 

On Generosity

This week I added one more book to the backlog on my Kindle -- The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose by Christian Smith & Hilary Davidson. Even the little I have read thus far in the introduction says what I have already discovered with the help of the Bible and a few decades of living: a generous life is a blessed life.

Having just purchased the book, it was fresh in my mind today as my husband and I headed to WonderLab Science Museum in Bloomington, Indiana, with our grandchildren. We had never been there and took advantage of the availability of children during their fall school break to legitimize our visit. As one might guess from the name, it's a Wonder-full place, full of hands-on science of all types, from simple toy collections to the mystery of a mind challenge game where two people wearing headbands with forehead sensors compete to direct a small steel ball to one goal or the other using only their minds while their brain activity is shown on a screen. (The three-year-old won this game!)

One of the simplest stations was an area with a large collection of plastic cups donated by a local pizza joint. Our fifth-grader started stacking them into a tower, as did his little sister. Of course, they were frequently knocked over as kids came and went, but after a while it was just the two of them building and one kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, who would periodically plow through the area knocking everything down. The grandkids were getting frustrated by this and my (grand)mother bear instinct kicked in, prompting me to position myself as a shield between this "wrecker" and the tower under construction. He then settled onto a stool at the station next to the cup area and didn't try to get past me as the project was completed.

After photographing the finished creation with its architect, I quietly asked my grandson if it would be all right to let this other kid knock it down. He was a little surprised by the suggestion, but his generous nature prevailed and he agreed. The "wrecker" was even more surprised when I asked if he wanted to knock it over, but after double-checking to see if I meant it, he sent the cups flying. My grandson then wandered off, but the 3-year-old and I stayed. The "wrecker" also stayed and started building his own tower, the first attempt to build instead of destroy I had observed.

A bit later, the other kid had moved on again and my grandson returned with the aspiration to build the biggest tower of all. He was a little discouraged, however, by how precarious all this building was. Then inspiration hit. We decided to stack the cups against the wall. Now both grandchildren started working together and soon the other kid came back and started to help. Being an oldest child, my grandson was a bit critical of the work of both younger children, but I persuaded him they were being careful and doing well and the project quickly grew to the point where I had to take over because it was above the reach of the children. The other kid pulled over the stool from the neighboring station and climbed on it to help me with the highest row either of us could reach. We took a photo and I started a search for a taller person to move us up further, having doubts about the acceptability of standing on the stool myself. Help arrived after a while in the form of an employee who stood on the stool and added two more rows before we ran entirely out of cups. (I had not observed it, but the kids noted that the "wrecker" had stomped on and broken several cups. It was fine, though. We had the exact number needed to do the highest row even the employee on the stool could reach.)

It was a wonderful accomplishment. Multiple people had a chance to admire the masterpiece before a toddler did what toddlers do. Moving faster than his mother could follow, he ran over and pulled a cup out of the tower at his toddler level, sending all the cups to the floor in a magnificent crash!

Such a simple building opportunity in a place with many more sophisticated stations. And such a simple act of generosity that turned our "enemy" into a coworker. Instead of ending the day thinking that kid did nothing but destroy our work, we became partners.

One thing that lay behind my decision to buy the book by Smith & Davidson was watching an example of the opposite of generosity. Someone left a faith community after a church vote didn't go their way and over the course of a few weeks collected up and carried out every item they had apparently "loaned," rather than donated to the church during their many years of membership, leaving empty spaces all over the church building. There was talk of changing the locks, but I was glad to hear later no such action had been taken. Responding to miserliness with heightened security simply spreads the lack of generosity. If someone excelling in the “rules” of Christianity as they understand them (including the commandments against theft) is that injured, they probably need to be allowed to do what they feel justified in doing. And as it turned out, someone else was in a position to replace many of the missing items. Both the congregation and the new donor enjoyed the blessing of generosity.

A quote I have seen phrased different ways and credited to different sources says, "We are not so much punished for our sins as by them." When I think of the former church members sitting in their home amidst the clutter of “undonated” items and think about the bridges they burned behind them as they exited, I am reminded again that just as generous, grace-filled living brings joy and blessing, miserly and graceless living brings misery.

Jesus once commented about how difficult it is for rich people to enter the kingdom of God. I think the difficulty of being generous is a big part of that. Being open-handed is especially difficult for people who excel at hanging onto money and material goods, generally a requirement for accumulating and retaining wealth. It is difficult to have the generous and gracious spirit that characterizes kingdom living while clinging tightly to material wealth.

Sometimes we are positive examples. Sometimes we are examples of where the wrong path leads. I don't always make the most generous choices, It is easy for me to cling too tightly to things I could easily give away. Because of this, I try to remind myself often (and find reading material to remind me) that I virtually never regret being generous.