I Just Don't Get It

 

I Just Don’t Get It

February 26, 2022

 

I just don’t get it. I read a story about a Ukrainian soldier telling some Russian soldier “Go fuck yourself.” Then the soldier to whom he said it kills him. I just don’t get it. Why isn’t that murder? In civilian life and in peacetime even in the military if a person intentionally kills another person, it’s murder. The killer has committed both a sin and a most serious felony. If the authorities catch him, they’ll charge and try him, he’ll be found guilty, and he’ll be sentenced to prison for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life. Some of our states and our federal government still execute people, though that is murder too. My hypothetical murderer may be legally murdered himself. His mother may still love him, but society has said you have forfeited your right to live among us if not your right to live at all. God still loves him; but he has committed not only a crime, he has committed the gravest sin. All of that, except for the legal murder of court-ordered execution, is as it should be.

Now take a man just like my hypothetical murderer. Put him in an army uniform. Train him to be obedient to orders from people above him in the hierarchy of the military. Train him in the art and science of killing. Numb his conscience so that he sees nothing wrong with killing when ordered to do it. Then order him to go to where you are fighting a war. Order him into battle. Order him to open fire. He obeys, and he kills. He may or may not see the person(s) he has killed die. Either way he knows he has killed one or more human beings. Sure, he’s been told they’re the enemy. He knows that they would kill him if they could. They’re the enemy, but first and foremost they are human beings. They are beloved children of God created in the image and likeness of God every bit as much as our soldier is. And he has killed them. When he comes home we say “Thank you for your service.” We may even make him a hero and give him shiny medals to wear on his army uniform. We would be outraged if someone called him a murderer.

And I just don’t get it. Why isn’t what he did murder? He has killed other human beings. His bullets have torn their flesh and ended their lives. If he did that as a soldier in peacetime, or if he did it anytime as a civilian, we’d call it murder. We’d call him a murderer, and we’d treat him accordingly. Yet we don’t call him a murderer when he kills as a soldier at war, and I just don’t get it.

War is one of the major curses of human life. Over time human beings have killed perhaps hundreds of millions of other human beings. War has been a curse as long as there have been wars. War came with the rise of human civilizations five thousand or more years ago. Ever since, we humans have convinced ourselves that war is a normal and acceptable human activity. We convince ourselves that war is necessary. We say our national security requires it even when what we’re doing with our military has nothing to do with national security. We even convince ourselves that fighting in a war is honorable. Sure, we may say we don’t like war. We may say we go to war only as a last resort, but we keep going to war. We spend enormous amounts of money and human resources developing ever more effective ways to kill ever more people. We build up and keep an arsenal of nuclear weapons sufficient to wipe out all life on earth. Our politicians who won’t spend anything close to what is needed for social programs to help the poor are more than happy to spend billions on what we euphemistically call "defense." We keep on killing, and we keep on honoring those who do it.

And I just don’t get it. Why does wearing a military uniform make killing moral? Why is killing when you’re part of a highly trained and organized military not murder? Why is killing when you’re ordered to do it by someone higher than you in the chain of command not murder” Of course we aren’t all Christians, but those of us who are and a lot of people who aren’t know that Jesus said “love your enemies. The Church of the Brethren, one of the historic peace churches, once put out a bumper sticker that read “When Jesus said love your enemies, he probably meant don’t kill them” Indeed.

All killing is immoral, but not all killing is illegal. Since at least the late fourth or early fifth century CE most Christians have said that under the proper circumstances Christian soldiers may kill enemy soldiers without committing a sin. We call this theory “just war theory,” as if any war could really be just. When Christians say any killing is moral, they betray Jesus. Jesus told us not to resist evil by military force. That’s what the word translated “resist” Matthew 5:39 means. Jesus wouldn’t even let his followers use violence to keep him from being crucified. The earliest Christians knew that being in an army doesn’t make killing moral. It is a great tragedy that the Christian tradition has turned against that divine truth.

A civilian killing another human being is a sin and a crime. A soldier killing another human being other than in a war is a sin and a crime. A soldier killing in war is a sin though not a crime. Society says it isn’t a sin. It says it is perfectly morally acceptable. It puts people, almost always young men, in uniform and sends them off to kill and be killed with no thought that what they are doing is wrong. And I just don’t get it. We don’t make killing in war criminal, but we can’t make it moral. Not ever. Yet we keep on going to war. We keep on killing, and I just don’t get it.