Trinity and Humanity

Veteran’s Day is coming up here in the States this Friday. I must admit that I have some mixed feelings about it. On the one hand I have a great respect for all those who have served our country and, especially, for those who have paid a high price in suffering to do so.

On the other hand there is an underlying idea behind Veteran’s Day, and war in general, that troubles me. We often say something like this:

We owe our freedom, and even the good life we have (economic and otherwise), to those who have served in our armed forces.

We usually focus this sentiment on the sacrifice they made to protect our way of life. But there is another side to it as well – not only what they sacrificed to protect our society but also what we asked them to do on our behalf. Not only have brave men and women laid down their lives for us but we have also called upon them to take the lives of others.

This is my question: is killing hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings the only way for us as a society to preserve our freedom and protect our prosperity? Or, is there another way, a way rooted in the Christ who has included all humanity – even our enemies – in his life with the Father?

I honestly don’t know, but I do think that we owe it to our Veterans during this time of remembrance to acknowledge that we not only asked them to lay down their lives (as Jesus did) but also to take the lives of others (as Jesus did not). That tension between who Jesus is and what we have asked of our Veterans creates a profound moral question that our society – and especially Christianity – needs to seriously wrestle with in the years to come. It is especially urgent that we wrestle with this question if we do not want to repeat our mistakes in places like Vietnam and Iraq.

~ Jonathan Stepp