Reflections on Memorial Day and Christian Nonviolence

 

Reflections on Memorial Day and Christian Nonviolence

March 31, 2021

 

Today is Memorial Day. Here in the United States we have three days each year dedicated to different people who are or were associated with the United States military. Armed Forces Day is meant to honor people currently serving in the military. Veterans Day is dedicated to people who once served in the military but no longer do. Memorial Day, which we observe today, memorializes the men and women who died while serving in the military. Let me say right at the beginning of this post that I intend nothing I say here to disparage anyone who is serving, or has served, or who died while serving in the US military. I mean in no way to minimize the loss suffered by the families of those who died while in the military. I intend nothing I say here to judge or disparage those who have served and are serving. My late father served in the United States Navy during World War II. I have been pastor to many US military veterans. I respect them. I don’t believe God judges them, and I don’t judge them either.

But here’s the thing. I believe in, advocate, and try to live out Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence. He told and showed us that nonviolence must be our way because it is God’s way. I am convinced that violence, hunger, and disease are the great banes of human existence. I also believe that the only way to stop violence in the world is to have to courage to stop being violent in the world. Not to be violent in our personal lives, not to be violent in our national life. The entire purpose of any military forces, including our American military forces is to be violent. Those forces therefore by their very nature contradict what I believe to be God’s call to all of us.

I once heard an American soldier say on television that his job was to kill people and destroy their stuff. Precisely. We always hear that the purpose of the US military is “to protect our freedom.” I don’t believe that that is primarily what our military does. I think its primary function is to project and protect American political and economic power in the world. Yet even if the purpose of the military were to protect our freedom it would do that through the application of massive amounts of violence. Military units may at times do things like serve people suffering from natural disasters. Today the US Air Force may be flying desperately needed oxygen to India. That’s all very well and good, but it isn’t the military’s raison d’être. The US military, indeed every military, exists to kill and to destroy.

We so universally fail to think of the military that way. We don’t say it inflicts death and destruction on people, we call it “service.” When someone identifies himself as a veteran the cultural expectation has become that we respond “Thank you for your service.” We don’t say that to teachers. We don’t say that to doctors and nurses. What? Is what they do not better service than killing people is? People serve other people in so many ways that are constructive not destructive, but service in our country has come to mean military service and not much else.

The purpose of the military is to kill and destroy. It is to inflict pain, misery, and loss on other people. What it does when it is doing what it is there to do is brutal and bloody, and we don’t much like brutal and bloody. So we cover up the horror of military violence by calling it “honorable.” We perform elaborate ceremonies at the funerals of military people who have died in war. We give their widows neatly folded American flags in little triangular boxes. We give those to any deceased veteran. We call mothers who have lost daughters or sons in our wars “Gold Star Mothers,” as if a gold star could compensate for the loss of a son or a daughter even if it really were gold. On formal occasions we dress our military people up in striking dress uniforms in which they don’t even look much like fighters. And it’s all a sham. It’s nothing but an attempt to hide from ourselves what the military really does so we can continue to send our people out to do it. We make the infliction of death and destruction honorable so we can convince ourselves that it’s OK for us to keep inflicting them on people.

There is only one fitting memorial to our women and men who have died serving in the military. It isn’t a neatly folded flag in a triangular box. It isn’t the president in civilian clothes giving a military salute even though he’s supposed to be a civilian commander in chief. It is one thing and one thing only. It is the creation of a world in which there will be no more Memorial Days or Armed Forces Days or Veterans Days because there will be no more military violence. It is for us to have the courage as a nation to stop fighting. To pursue peace through distributive justice not through war. It is be use our country’s massive natural and human resources to build up rather than to blow up. The only meaningful and appropriate memorial to the ones we call “fallen” (as if they had tripped not died) is peace. Is nonviolent resolution of disputes. Is the people of the world caring for and about each other not trying to kill each other. People will say it’s a dangerous world, and we must be prepared. It is a dangerous world, but the an end to the violence must start somewhere. We’re the strongest nation in the world. It has to begin with us.

Saying that may cause some to call me a coward, but in this world in which violence is the norm it takes as much courage not to fight as it takes to fight. Preaching peace through distributive justice not peace through destructive violence takes the courage to be called a coward and not back down. To take being called naïve and unrealistic. In some places to endure social ostracism and scorn. And sometimes to take violent assaults on one’s person without responding in kind. Jesus held to his teaching of nonviolence and justice though it led him to the cross. Here in the US we’re lucky I guess. Nothing like that is likely to happen to us. But I have to ask: Do we have the courage to take it if it did come to that? Do I? I don’t know. I just know that nonviolence is the path to which God calls us. I pray for the courage to stay on that path no matter what, and I pray that more people will catch the spirit of our national saints Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis and join me and lots of others there. May it be so.