Saturday, May 30, 2009

Jesus Killed Mohammed--from Harpers



This article from Harpers Magazine by Jeff Sharlet is another in a series of good articles I've been reading lately about how religion (specifically Christianity) has become woven into the structure of the US military, and yeah, I found it somewhat disturbing.

It also is about Mikey Weinstein, who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation--of which I heartily approve. It seems to me that if a soldier is fighting an enemy of his or her country, he or she has enough to do, without also having to fight a religious war in one's own barracks.

Anyway, I tried to find just a snip of it that impressed me--there really isn't any one thing that stood out--except that as a whole, looking at the idea of an evangelized military, one can see where it is unhelpful in a war where religious sectarianism plays a part, and is also internally divisive. But I was struck by this interchange:

That cheered Hrabak up. Over dinner afterward, he told me he believed that all suffering, that which he endures and that which he inflicts, has a purpose. He felt this truth was of special solace for soldiers. I asked what he meant. “Well, you’re pulling a trigger, you know?” He thought about that a lot. Not the shot fired or the bomb dropped, but the bodies, the souls at the other end of his actions. In his classes, he watched videos of air strikes. At night, he pictured the dead. He was not as afraid of dying as he was of killing unjustly. He was afraid of sin. His double identity—as a spiritual warrior and as an officer of the deadliest force in the history of the world—was his redemption.

What would he do if he ever received an order that contradicted his faith?

Hrabak looked shocked. He giggled, then composed himself and took a big bite of pizza, speaking confidently through his food. “Impossible, dude. I mean, I guess it could happen. But I highly doubt it.”

What if he was ordered to bomb a building in which terrorists were hiding, even though there were civilians in the way?

He shook his head. “Who are you to question why God builds up nations just to destroy them, so that those who are in grace can see that they’re in grace?” A smile lit up half his face, an expression that might be taken for sarcastic if Hrabak wasn’t a man committed to being in earnest at all times. What he’d just said—a paraphrase from Romans—might be something like a Word of Knowledge, a gift of wisdom from God. It blew his mind so much he had to repeat it, his voice picking up a speed and enthusiasm that bordered on joy. “He”—the Lord—“builds up an entire nation”—Iraq or Vietnam, Afghanistan or Pakistan, who are you to question why?—“just to destroy them! To show somebody else”—America, a young man guided to college by God, distrustful of his own choices—“that they’re in grace.”


And all of the bloody Book of Joshua and the meaning of "Amalek" and the reality of "Blessed is he who seizes and dashes thy little one's head against the rocks" suddenly makes a little more sense. Might making right is preordained, or as Napoleon put it, God is on the side of he who has the biggest cannon. And we are justified by God when we win--or when whoever wins, wins. Right?

I'm not a pacifist, by any stretch, and I can appreciate as much as anyone the desire to throttle an enemy. But I don't see the grace of God in napalm and nukes, or attribute success to much more than strategy and superior firepower. And it seems a curious approach to morality to not ever suppose that an order might be contradictory to one's faith.

Really? Torture? Rape? (Because maybe these things have now been done by our side.) The deaths of civilians--women and children?

I've always been concerned that religion might pose as an obstacle to conscience, as opposed to an encourager of it. This article reinforces that. It's also an obstacle to sense. It's an obstacle to coming to grips with the cultures in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan and Iran and many other countries, with which we currently are at odds, because so long as "they" = Satan and "we" = godly, we aren't seeing things straight.

Anyway, check the article out for your own conclusions.

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