Faith Meets Life: Lest we forget on many levels
Remembrance Day 2008: perhaps you attended a ceremony at a nearby cenotaph or at the college. I have led a number of such ceremonies myself, but always with mixed feelings.
I'll explain that. During Remembrance services we speak and hear words honouring the war dead. We want to pay them as much respect as possible since they have died in circumstances that most of us are able to avoid.
I don't want to contest our desire to honour those who have died in wars. But I do wonder whether in so doing we sometimes miss another key point: Folly hubris and degradation play as much a part in war in honour and courage.
For example, what enormous folly and hubris there must have been behind the enthusiasm with which young men were rounded up and sent overseas in World War I. How many of these entered the military believing they were on the road to glory (indeed, it was preached from the housetops), only to discover that what awaited them was a dehumanizing, gruesome field of battle, something seemingly straight from hell?
Even those returning from less horrible theatres of war such as we find in Afghanistan sometimes return questioning whether what they participated in will really bring any good into the world. Will the violence we generate in that country only beget more of the same in eight or eighteen years? What if the nations spent as much on humanitarian relief, education and development as we do on “defense?”
It is always fascinating to hear the accounts of veterans of war. What I find even more fascinating is that most war veterans do not want to talk about their months of action. What is the story that lies behind that phenomenon?
My father fought in Indonesia. He does not like to talk about it. Is it because he feels that only those who have really been there can understand what it was like? Or is the veterans' reluctance to speak about what they participated in a symptom of other things; things like the destruction of their own psyches, the dissolution of their moral bearings, the breakdown of a thousand precious sensibilities?
Ultimately, I am committed to the words of Jesus, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” as I believe many are. And even of those not committed to the enunciator of that command, many sympathize with the command itself.
Many of my neighbours want the war dead honoured. How many more of them must want us to stop sending men and women to war altogether and to wage peace instead?
Yesterday I stood on the Atlantic shore just outside of Halifax. It was a brilliant day. The sky was blue, with many fast moving small, rounded clouds. The surf broke onto a wind-swept beach. On either side of the vast stretch of sand the arms of the bay reached toward the horizon. From the mouth of each of the breaking waves I heard what seemed to me the sound of life. The scene was full of nothing less than — glory. “The earth is full of the glory of God,” it says in the Bible.
I wonder if someday we will have Remembrance Day ceremonies for Planet Earth. We killed the fish, destroyed the ice caps, and laid waste to billions of hectares of virtual garden that was created to be our home. We will come out of our villages, poorly governed, dominated by rusting factories and pot-holed asphalt, to remember what once was and will not return for a 100 million years.
Maybe there is a connection between our willingness to wage war on people and our acceptance of the destruction of the planet. Human beings were created to image the wonder of God. If we become insensitive to the wonder of each human being, the rejection of the world as the theatre of the glory of the Creator cannot be far away.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
I'll explain that. During Remembrance services we speak and hear words honouring the war dead. We want to pay them as much respect as possible since they have died in circumstances that most of us are able to avoid.
I don't want to contest our desire to honour those who have died in wars. But I do wonder whether in so doing we sometimes miss another key point: Folly hubris and degradation play as much a part in war in honour and courage.
For example, what enormous folly and hubris there must have been behind the enthusiasm with which young men were rounded up and sent overseas in World War I. How many of these entered the military believing they were on the road to glory (indeed, it was preached from the housetops), only to discover that what awaited them was a dehumanizing, gruesome field of battle, something seemingly straight from hell?
Even those returning from less horrible theatres of war such as we find in Afghanistan sometimes return questioning whether what they participated in will really bring any good into the world. Will the violence we generate in that country only beget more of the same in eight or eighteen years? What if the nations spent as much on humanitarian relief, education and development as we do on “defense?”
It is always fascinating to hear the accounts of veterans of war. What I find even more fascinating is that most war veterans do not want to talk about their months of action. What is the story that lies behind that phenomenon?
My father fought in Indonesia. He does not like to talk about it. Is it because he feels that only those who have really been there can understand what it was like? Or is the veterans' reluctance to speak about what they participated in a symptom of other things; things like the destruction of their own psyches, the dissolution of their moral bearings, the breakdown of a thousand precious sensibilities?
Ultimately, I am committed to the words of Jesus, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” as I believe many are. And even of those not committed to the enunciator of that command, many sympathize with the command itself.
Many of my neighbours want the war dead honoured. How many more of them must want us to stop sending men and women to war altogether and to wage peace instead?
Yesterday I stood on the Atlantic shore just outside of Halifax. It was a brilliant day. The sky was blue, with many fast moving small, rounded clouds. The surf broke onto a wind-swept beach. On either side of the vast stretch of sand the arms of the bay reached toward the horizon. From the mouth of each of the breaking waves I heard what seemed to me the sound of life. The scene was full of nothing less than — glory. “The earth is full of the glory of God,” it says in the Bible.
I wonder if someday we will have Remembrance Day ceremonies for Planet Earth. We killed the fish, destroyed the ice caps, and laid waste to billions of hectares of virtual garden that was created to be our home. We will come out of our villages, poorly governed, dominated by rusting factories and pot-holed asphalt, to remember what once was and will not return for a 100 million years.
Maybe there is a connection between our willingness to wage war on people and our acceptance of the destruction of the planet. Human beings were created to image the wonder of God. If we become insensitive to the wonder of each human being, the rejection of the world as the theatre of the glory of the Creator cannot be far away.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
