Bumper Sticker Watch: War Monger Edition

Tom just called me to tell me about his new all time (least) favorite bumper sticker. It has a peace sign, and the words:

The Footprint of the American Chicken

Clearly the hawk sporting this fine piece of propaganda has never tried to preach peace in our militant culture...

Violence as Communication

In order to combat violence, we must first understand its nature. Of course, a line like that implies that there is a single phenomenon called "violence" with a single, uniform nature. That is, of course, a gross oversimplification. Violence is, like everything else, a complex set of behaviors and events that take on many forms, and are brought about by many different kinds of causes. Even a single violent event participates in "violence" in many different ways, and stems from many different causes.

Some forms of violence are simple expressions of brute power. Violence, after all, is the way that powers hold on to their power. Other forms of violence stem from hatred or fear, from the prejudices that comprise the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. Such hatreds, such fears, such prejudices are so entrenched in our culture that most of us are almost never aware of them, or how we participate in them.

But, beneath all of that, violence is also interpersonal. With the exception of bombs dropped from the sky and the like, there can be no violence without some kind of a relationship, even if it is the most superficial sort of relationship, and even if that relationship begins only at the moment of violence. But, most acts of violence are not random, they are relational. And, at their core, they can be a form of communication used when all other avenues of communication either break down or are, for some reason, left untried.

While there is a disturbing trend of random violence in our streets - rapes and murders and muggings that have nothing to do whatsoever with the victim, but stem entirely from the malice and anger of the perpetrator - it is still the case that such random acts are very, very rare. So, most acts of violence are relational, and all of my peacemaking experience has dealt with, in one way or another, this kind of violence. Relational violence. Violence as a form of communication.

I want to make it clear here that when I speak of my peacemaking experience I am not holding myself up as a model to follow, some kind of saintly example. It may well be that of all of us who have signed up for the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring, I have the least experience actually confronting violence, save perhaps the violence that lurks in my own soul. That is why all of my peacemaking experience has confronted relational violence. In some way or another, all of the violence that I have strived against has concerned persons who were or are in some kind of relationship with me.

As a Youth Pastor I was often called on to help resolve family conflicts. I did this not from a position of authority, as though like some judge I could stand over the conflict, evaluate it, and render some verdict on it, blaming one party and rewarding the other. Rather I did this from a position of being in relationship with each party. As such, I had enough credibility to mediate between parties, encouraging each person to actively listen to each other, without passing judgment. I tried my best to, as I used to put it, translate the languages "teenager" to "parent" and "parent" to "teenager." I did my best to help the Youth that I worked with understand where they parents were coming from, and to help the parents understand how to more effectively communicate with their teenage children.

There are many sources of conflict embedded in each familial relationship, and if these are not addressed in a way that respects the interests of each party, some form of violence can emerge. But this is true of others sorts of relationship as well, even global, political relationships, relationships between groups of people, relationships of oppression, relationships of domination and submission. Like interpersonal and familial relationships, in these relationships each party also has an interest that must be addressed. And, if that interest is not addressed to each party's satisfaction, violence will emerge as the default form of communication.

I say that to say this: If we care about the cause of peace we must wage peace. And, to wage peace we must in part serve as agents who facilitate communication where it has broken down. Those of us in positions of power must lend our voices to the voiceless, allowing their cries to be heard by the powers that have grown deaf to their screams. Because when communication breaks down, violence is the natural recourse. When the marginalized realize they have no way to make the powers listen, they lash out, screaming with each riot, with each firebomb, "I bet you can hear my NOW!"

Of course, all of this is theoretical, and, as such, without concrete suggestions, is without value. Even if you agree with everything that I've written here - and I doubt that everything here is entirely true, though from my limited vantage point I, of course, need help discerning truth from falsehood in my own ideas - you could still say, "Sure, I buy this, but now what? How can we serve as agents of communication. How can we lend our ears and our voices to the unheard and the voiceless?"

That is found in what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "Deep and Compassionate Listening" and "Loving Speech." But that will have to be the subject of another post.

On “Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)” by Stanley Hauerwas

Since joining the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring I've been meaning to post something on one of my favorite little essays, Stanley Hauerwas' “Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)”. I've been meaning to post on it because it combines two hot-button moral/political/theological issues in a really creative way. It seeks to explore

a.) how homosexuality relates to military service, and

b.) how Christianity relates to military service.

To say any more up front would be to steal from the delight of reading about it. So, here is a slightly edited version of a paper I once wrote on the essay:

________________


In this brief essay, Duke Divinity School Theological Ethics Professor Stanley Hauerwas takes a unique approach to the issue of whether or not gays (as a group) are being unfairly discriminated against by not being allowed to serve in the military. He only briefly addresses of discrimination, saying “I see no good reason why gays and lesbians should be excluded from military service,” but that discrimination does not concern him. In fact, he says “I think it a wonderful thing that some people are excluded [from military service] as a group. I only wish that Christians could be seen by the military to be as problematic as gays.”

While his essay is not, in the end, primarily concerned with either the moral value of homosexual behavior or the discrimination of groups on the grounds of sexual orientation, he does provide at least a cursory treatment of the issue of discrimination against gays, saying “Discrimination against gays grows from the moral incoherence of our lives” and not from “the threat that gays might pose to our moral or military culture.” This is because most people are not “secure in their convictions and practices.” After all, “people who are secure in their convictions and practices are not so easily threatened by the prospects of a marginal group acquiring legitimacy through military service.”

His approach to this issue does not even consider the moral value of homosexual sexual acts. I believe that, given what I know of his theology, and given the subtext of this essay, that Hauerwas does not believe that homosexuality is consistent with Christian ethics. But, on the issue of whether or not gays should be allowed to join the military, the moral value of their actions is, to Hauerwas, irrelevant. Why? I think that there are at least two reasons for this.

The first reason is that, for Hauerwas, the military itself is immoral. In fact, he spends the bulk of his essay arguing that Christians should, on moral grounds, be exempt from military service because their ethics would so contrast with the ethics of the military. Hauerwas asks, for instance, “What if Catholics took the commitment to just war seriously as a discipline of the church?” What would be the result of such a commitment? He says that the result would be the exemption of Catholics from military service, because Catholics would question the nature of the American military, and the way in which the military wages war. They would object to the use of nuclear weapons, even as a deterrent; and they would object to bombing runs which kill civilians. They would even object to having a standing army, because “[t]he very fact of our standing army means too often such discussion [on when to go to war] is relegated to politicians who manipulate the media to legitimate what they were going to do anyway.”

He also asks us to “[i]magine Catholics, adhering closely to just war theory, insisting that war is not about killing but only incapacitating the enemy.” Imagine Catholics deciding “[t]hey could participate only in wars designed to take prisoners and then, if that is not a possibility, only to wound. Killing the enemy is a last resort” for them. If Catholics decided to make just war theory an important part of their religious life, then would they be fit for military service? Wouldn’t they pose a much greater threat to the military way of life than gays?

And, to Hauerwas, Catholics are not the only Christians whose lives should threaten the military ethic. In fact, all Christians ought to live in such a way that their lives are incompatible with, and threatening to, the prevailing ethic of our military culture. After all, “Christians are asked to pray for their enemy.” Could a soldier “really trust people in [their] unit who think that the enemy’s life is as valid as their fellow soldier?” Could someone who views all life as a gift from God, and all people as (at least potentially) children of God, really be effective at the kind of wars waged by the United States? Such wars require the dehumanization of the enemy. Such wars require even the acceptance of some civilian casualties as inevitable.

So, the first reason why Hauerwas refuses to, in the context of this essay, consider the moral value of homosexual sexual acts is because the military is, itself, so immoral. Christian ought to, on moral grounds, be exempt from military service; and, as long as they are not, and as long as gays are, “it seems clear... that gays, as a group, are morally superior to Christians.”

The second reason why I think Hauerwas refused, here, to consider the moral value of homosexual sexual acts, is a more subtle one which is not overtly contained in the text, though some passages hint at it. It has to do with the way that he views Christian ethics, and who is bound to Christian ethics. Evangelical Christians, particularly in today’s culture, tend to want to turn America into an ethically Christian culture; at least in the sense that all Americans should be bound to uphold a Christian sexual ethic. But, given that in a number of important and non-sexual ways (such as the military) American culture is totally incompatible with Hauerwas’s understanding of the Christian ethic; such a goal (to conform America to a Christian sexual ethic) seems ill conceived and totally impossible.

I suspect that Hauerwas would say that the goal of evangelical Christians in America ought not to be to conform American culture to a Christian ethic, but instead ought to be to convert individual Americans into Christians. Then, and only then, will they, as Christians, be bound to uphold a Christian ethic, and such an ethic would contrast with American culture in many more important areas than sex. As it is, evangelicals are getting it backwards. They are trying to change society as a whole, forcing their ethic onto people who are not bound to that ethic. Such acts, rather than encouraging those people to convert to their kind of religion, actually serve as a deterrent, turning them off to the evangelical expression of Christianity.

While the essay in question was written in 1993 to address the issue of gays in the military, the ideas contained in it and drawn from it are particularly helpful in the wake of the 2004 election, in which 11 states passed referendums on amending their constitutions to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Hauerwas writes, “Gay men and lesbians are being made to pay the price of our society’s moral incoherence not only about sex, but about most of our moral convictions. As a society, we have no general agreement about what constitutes marriage and/or what goods marriage ought to serve. We allegedly live in a monogamous culture, but in fact we are at best serially polygamous. We are confused about sex, why and with whom we have it, and about our reasons for having children.”

All of these moral confusions create an environment in which we, wishing to establish a firm moral line, come down on people who are different from us. “[T]he moral ‘no’ to gays becomes the necessary symbolic commitment to show that we really do believe in something.” And, of course, the one thing on which we are sure is the one area in which we are not tempted. Christians so often wish to be told that homosexuality is wrong so that they can overlook the ways in which they sexually misbehave. They claim that homosexuality poses a threat to marriage to overlook the more obvious threats to heterosexual marriage; heterosexual sexual misconduct.

As quoted earlier, “people who are in their convictions and practices are not so easily threatened by the prospects of a marginal group acquiring legitimacy.” This quote, of course, was intended to apply to gays serving in the military, but it certainly also applies to the prospect of gay marriage. Legitimizing marginal groups does not threaten those who are secure. Secure heterosexuals who adhere to a morally coherent heterosexual sexual ethic and who live in secure marriages should not be personally threatened by the prospect of allowing persons of the same sex to marry each other. This statement does not depend on the moral value of homosexual sexual acts.

And so, in an essay which concerns issues of import to gays, Hauerwas does not include any statements on the morality or ethics of the homosexual lifestyle. Why? Because, presumably, his audience does not primarily include gays. It primarily includes heterosexual evangelical Christians who use gays and lesbians as a scapegoat for the problems contained within their own heterosexual marriages. It primarily includes heterosexual evangelical Christians who love using the issue of homosexuality to make themselves feel better about their own sexual deviance. As long as they have gays and lesbians to point to and to blame for their own problems, they don’t have to face up to the role that they have played in undermining the sexual morality in their society and in their church. As long as they have gays and lesbians to point to and blame for their martial problems, they don’t have to own up to their own role in the so-called “decay of marriage and traditional families.”

Secure, married, heterosexual Christian couples know that the state and health of their marriage does not depend on whether or not gays, as a group, are legitimized by either being allowed to get married, or by, as a group, being allowed to serve in the military. They know that the state and health of their marriage depends entirely on their own actions and attitudes. And so, to introduce a discussion on the moral value of homosexual sexual actions would be to distract from the main point of Hauerwas’s essay, which serves as a form of moral and ethical instruction to Christians who already have their own opinions on homosexuality, and use those opinions as a means by which to ignore the ways in which they fail to live up to the ethical standards of their own religion.

Non-Violent Resistance in the Teachings of Jesus

Before I actually get to the substance of this post, I'd like to start with a brief personal note. As some of you know, I am going back to school. It is now officially official. I haven't checked my email in over 24 hours, because I spent all day yesterday in new student orientation. Today, at 11 am EST, I have my first class. I am officially an MAR (Masters of Arts in Religion) student at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I've signed up for 15 credit hours this semester, which is a pretty heavy load, but nothing I can't handle, I don't think. Most of my classes, at least at the outset, don't seem worth mentioning. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by them, but at the moment I'm just taking them because they are required - the seminary equivalent of basic requirements, 100 level classes. But there is one class that looks exceedingly promising: Resistance and Reconciliation.

Having just signed up for that course, and having just joined the Christian Peace Bloggers Blog-Ring, I thought I might jot down here, before I leave for campus, a few observations of non-violent resistance in the teachings of Jesus.

That Jesus taught non-violence is not exactly new, though by their behavior some Christian could learn a refresher course in it. As my dad wrote in one of his songs, shortly after explaining how as a PK growing up he had to go to church 4 or 5 times a week:

But I must have been sleeping in
When Jesus taught us to kill

But it takes many Christian by surprise when they realize that the non-violence that Jesus taught was neither passive nor meek. In fact, it was radical and revolutionary, such a strong form of resistance that it got him killed by the authorities. If Jesus had been safe, and if his non-violent teachings had been as domesticated as the must have seemed when they were used by whites to teach slaves not to rebel, or when they are used today to support a growing empire, it is highly improbable that anyone would have been threatened by him at all, much less threatened enough to publicly execute him.

But Jesus was crucified. And, as Marcus Borg writes, we can safely assert that Jesus was crucified because of the sins of the world, even if it is not literally true that he was crucified for the sins of the world, as a kind of substitutionary atonement. Jesus was killed because of the sins of the world, because Jesus opposed the sinful powers of the world that exploited and oppressed the poor. But Jesus opposed those powers not with power, not with revolutionary violence, but with the wisdom of non-violent resistance.

In our cultural context, with Christianity as the dominant thought-world, (what I mean is that, in the West, everything responds to Christianity - it shapes our thought when we agree with it, and it shapes our thought when we disagree with it) the teachings of Jesus often become conventional, domesticated. After all, we have been reciting them to each other for almost 2000 years. But, in his own cultural context, Jesus' teachings were radical, and seen in their context they can retain their power in our own context. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in Jesus' teachings on non-violent resistance.

Two of the most commonly quoted teachings of Jesus concern going "the extra mile" and turning "the other cheek." These have often, and rightly, been interpreted metaphorically and applied broadly to all kinds of situations. In our conventional wisdom now, going "the extra mile" means going out of your way to accommodate someone who is being difficult, in the hopes that such an extravagant gesture will shame and perhaps help shape them. If we "go the extra mile," perhaps the person that we "go the extra mile" for will be impressed with our witness, and be somehow touched, somehow moved, into becoming a more positive person.

Sometimes there is also a measure of constructive pride in going "the extra mile." Sometimes it means doing something that, strictly speaking, isn't required, motivated by the pursuit of excellence. In either event, going "the extra mile" has become conventional, part of what is expected of a Christian; part of one's Christian witness.

The same is true of turning "the other cheek." It is again interpreted metaphorically, and applied broadly. And, again, I see nothing wrong with this - you should know by now my opinion of the religious value of metaphorical interpretation. So, to "turn the other cheek" means to patiently endure an insult. It means to not allow harsh comments to get you down or make you angry.

Both of these teachings, however, in becoming conventional wisdom, have lost their subversive power. They are no longer seen as revolutionary, as dangerous. Of course, this is not true in all cultural context. Gandhi, for instance, based his method of non-violent resistance on these and other teachings of Jesus. His Satyiagraha, his "spirit power," was based on his interpretation of these and other teachings of Jesus. And, he used these as a kind of moral force to shame the British into seeing their own barbaric cruelty, and granting Independence to India.

In the same way, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others applied the methods that Gandhi learned from the teachings of Jesus to the struggle in America for Civil Rights. Non-violent resistance became again a revolutionary way to shame violent oppressors into realizing the barbaric cruelty of their position; into seeing the basic humanity of those they are exploiting. It became the most efficient path to freedom. To fight violence with violence, power with power, was to fight a losing fight. But to resist violence with peace was to undermine the moral authority of the violent and to shame the oppressor.

This is very much more like what Jesus probably had in mind, but it too fails to totally capture the potency of Jesus' teachings in their own context. We can certainly understand how these teachings might have gotten Gandhi and King killed, but that still doesn't show us exactly why they and others like them got Jesus killed. To understand that, and, as such, to understand the potential potency of these teachings, we have to better understand what they might have meant when Jesus taught them.

Marcus Borg's newest book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, has an entire chapter devoted to resistance in the life and teachings of Jesus. In it he outlines how Jesus' teachings and activities would have been seen by the religious and political authorities of his day, who were the power structure in what he calls a Domination System. At the outset of that chapter Borg argues that "the way of Jesus was both personal and political."

It was about personal transformation. And, it was political, a path of resistance to the domination system and advocacy of an alternative vision of life together under God. His counteradvocacy, his passion for God's passion, led to his execution. The way of the cross was both personal and political.

Seen in this light, Jesus' teachings, including and especially the ones concerning turning "the other cheek" and going "the extra mile" can be seen as radical ways to help bring down the Roman occupation, as well as the native collaborators with the occupation that were mainly comprised of the religious authorities.

Matthew 5:39b has Jesus say, "But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Of this Borg notes:

The specification of the right cheek and the awareness that people in that world used their right hand to strike somebody provide the key for understanding the saying. How can a person be hit on the right cheek by a right-handed person? Only by a backhanded slap (act it out and see for yourself). In that world, a slap with the back of the hand was the way a superior struck a subordinate. The saying thus presupposes a situation of domination: a peasant being backhanded by a steward or official, a prisoner being backhanded by a jailer, and so forth. When that happens, turn the other cheek. What would be the effect of that? The beating could continue only if the superior used an overhand blow - which is the way an equal would strike another equal. Of course, he might do so. But he would be momentarily discombobulated, and the subordinate would be asserting his equality even if the beating did continue.

Matthew 5:41 has Jesus say, "and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile." Borg says that this statement "refers to a known practice of imperial soldiers."

Soldiers were allowed to compel peasants to carry their considerable gear for one mile, but no more. The reason for this restriction was that soldiers had been abusing the option by forcing peasants to carry their gear all day (or even longer). The result was not only popular resentment, but peasants ending up a days journey (or even more) from home. And so the restriction was introduced, and soldiers faced penalties for violating it, some of them severe. In this setting, what are you to do when an imperial soldier requires you to carry his gear for a mile? Do it - and then keep going. This situation, [Walter] Wink [a scholar, and author of Engaging the Powers, The Powers That Be, and Jesus and Non-Violence] suggests, is almost comical - imagine an imperial soldier wrestling a peasant to get his gear back while the peasant says, "No, no, it's fine. Let me carry it another mile."

That we understand these metaphorically is, of course, appropriate. Any teaching that is so far removed from our historical, cultural, and social setting cannot be taken entirely literally if it is to be in any way meaningful to us. Additionally, it is hard to imagine that these teachings, even in their original setting, were to be taken as hard and fast rules to be applied to any situation without some metaphorical interpretation. Walter Wink argues, for instance, that it is very hard to imagine the literal practice of turning the other cheek to work for very long without the superiors picking up on it, and saying something like, "Oh, its the old 'turn the other cheek' trick," and adapting their behavior accordingly.

However, to properly understand these and other teachings metaphorically, we have to also understand what they might have meant when Jesus first taught them. Understanding that, we see that they are much more powerful, and much more subversive, than our conventional wisdom will allow them to be.

Christian Peace Bloggers

Fellow Louisvillian Michael Westmoreland-White of Levellers has started a new Blog-Ring for "Christian bloggers who care deeply about peacemaking," Christian Peace Bloggers. Following the leads of PamBG and Patrik, I've decided to join up, committing to post something on peace at least once a week.

That will be hard for me for more than a couple of reasons. First, I don't know what will happen with this blog when I start back to school - and I have orientation tomorrow! I'm sure that I won't be able to keep up my current pace of writing something (not all of it for this blog, however) every day. I just hope that I will find the time to do any writing in addition to my work for school.

Additionally, while I often preached on peace when I was both a Youth Minister and later a pastor, I have posted very little on the subject since leaving ministry and starting this blog. I'm not sure why. Mostly, I suppose, it is because I rarely plan out my topics in advance. I love the freedom of blogging - it keeps me from having to chart too tight a course. Whatever I am going through, whatever I am reading, whatever I happen to think of, whatever happens in the course of the day - this is what I post on. So, while I post on any number of diverse topics, really I am the topic here.

That said, I have on occasion written about the War in Iraq, including this post, which applies Just War Theory to both the arguments made in favor of the war and the facts of the war as it develops. I also posted a Christmas devotional, Prince of Peace, that explores cultivating personal peace in the hectic holiday season. Neither of those posts, however, amount to the sort of powerful rhetoric I had on peace from the pulpit.

I remember, for instance, a sermon that I gave just after my best friend returned from Iraq. Titled "Sowing the Seeds of Peace," it focused on the role of faith in cultivating both internal, personal peace, and just as importantly the corporate peace that should characterize Christian communities. It called on Christians to experience the peace that comes from God, to allow that peace to transform them, and then to be agents of peace in a world too often marred by violence. It saw cultivating peace as one of the most powerful expressions of the Christian faith.

This sermon was, in part, the product of my wrestling with my friend's letters from Iraq. After struggling to work his way through college, he decided to join the Marine Corp Reserves in part to relieve some of the financial pressures of trying to pay his own way through school. Of course, there was much more to his decision to join the Marines than just this, but one of the big factors was their promise to help pay for school. With that promise they have bought the loyalty of more than a few struggling young men, hoping to make a better life for themselves.

I remember seeing him right after he came home from boot camp - full of the pride that came from having remade his body and his mind. He was a fine-tuned precision instrument, in the best shape of his life, his self-esteem boosted from having survived rigors that he couldn't have imagined before he set off for Paris Island. His long hair shorn, his beard shaved off, and his body reformed, he glew with pride. The Marines gave him a self respect that no one could take away.

But, by the time he was shipped off the Iraq, he was a different person. His wife had left him, and left him semi-homeless. For a time he lived in my basement, before trying to start a new life in his native Arkansas, on the family farm that his parents had been so eager to leave. Still a reservist, he drove from Arkansas to Fort Knox, KY for his weekend drills, while using the money that the government had promised him to pay for some community college classes near his new home.

Just as he was getting settled in, just as he was beginning to reclaim the bright, promising life that almost died when his wife left, he was called up for active duty, shipped off to drive a tank in the first wave of our invasion of Iraq. Here is what he wrote to me from the ship that took him off to war:

... the guys all talk about killing ragheads. To them it's like a game, just another training exercise, except the targets are shooting back. The targets don't have names or faces or families or friends who love them and want them to come home. They're just part of the "evil regime" that must be overthrown. They're, many are, simply focused, with no thought to the why's and the wherefor's of what they are doing. They simply accept the propaganda against these people. To them, you either believe in what you're doing or you don't; you're either a patriot or you're not. There's no middle ground.

But it's not that easy. People die in this exercise. It's not a game. These people have homes and families and friends, just like we do, and, no matter how we try, no matter how good we are, the innocent will suffer as well. If we think we're doing them justice, might we be wrong? Might our efforts to bring down tyranny create, in the death, destitude, starvation and bitterness that ensues, a greater tyranny of its own?

Hell, I don't even know for sure why we're going. Some say it's to bring down a dictator. Some say it is to finish a war that never really ended. Some say it is to prevent a future, more terrible war. Some say it's for the oil and economy. Perhaps, to us, it's all these things. Perhaps we'll be heroes back home. Perhaps we'll never know.

I know one thing for sure. To the people we have come to "liberate," it's nothing but an invasion of their homes.

I could write more from that letter, post marked Jan. 21, 2003, but my heart breaks reading it now just as it broke reading it when it finally arrived in my mail box the first time. There was so much conflict in all the letters; the internal conflict of a man pulled between competing values, competing priorities. While he was off to war he spent his nights laying on the desert sand, reading Thomas Merton, remembering St. Francis, and contemplating what it means to live a life of faith. In his heart and mind, peace, love and compassion waged war with loyalty and duty. The letters he sent reflected a love and concern for his fellow soldiers. He feared for both their physical and moral state.

What kept him sane - as sane as a soldier can be - during the fighting was his bond with his comrades. He fought with them and for them rather than against anyone. His struggle was to ensure that his friends survived.

When he returned I heard his stories, and I saw the pain in his eyes. He was proud that he and so many of his companions survived. He was proud that he did his duty, and did it well. But there was a deep pain under all of that pride; a pain that reflected that perhaps he gave up too much of his soul just to ensure that his body survived.

That his story is not a tragedy speaks to the resiliency of his spirit, and the redeeming power of grace. He is now free and clear of his commitment to the military, living in Dayton, Ohio, and working on a very different front line. He now fights to reclaim the lives of urban teenagers, operating his own missionary youth ministry. He fights the violence of the streets with the grace and peace of the God who somehow brought him out of war a whole man.