Faith And Collective Trauma 9

One has to work hard in order to understand the kind of thinking, or lack of thinking, behind those Christians who want to justify the use of the military and war. There always appears to be some essential piece lacking in their personal experience of God. I am not referring here to the emotional responses of joy and warmth and fuzziness when your favourite hymns are being sung, or when you really like what the preacher said. Here's an idea. I tried to explain to one of my Anglican priest friends about a theology of love. He didn't seem to get it and even disagreed at first. He couldn't wrap his head around the concept that God is love. Truth, justice, holiness, and most important of all orthodox theological correctness, yes, but first and foremost God is love, and that is how we are meant to understand and experience truth, justice and holiness. This is a very important distinction, because Cristian warmongers can support the military for one simple reason: they do not really know God, or they do not know the God of love who is God. Really, because of the kind of toxic masculinity that hobbles their spiritual and psychological growth. Toxic masculinity (and women suffer from this syndrome as well!) leaves one embarrassed and ashamed of any show or betrayal of weakness, and the toxically masculine have a very distorted view of love. To them it is something feminine (which to them means weak and inferior) and emotional (which it is not really, or not exclusively) and toxic masculinity worships and adores strength. Those same Christians would far rather uphold the violent and genocidal campaigns of the armies of Israel of the Old Testament, than really focus around God, their God, my God and your God, as a vulnerable and suffering human being, being impaled naked on a cross and breathing his last in the presence of his grief-stricken friends and mother and jeering onlookers. That is love in full display and in full action in all its raw human divinity and divine humanity. There is no indication of this God-Man and Man-God taking up arms to defend himself, and his answer to his most devoted apostle who drew a sword and struck off the ear of the servant of the high priest in the defence of his saviour and friend was in these very simple and succinct words: put away your sword; those who take up the sword, by the sword shall perish. We are called to be pacifist Christians who love and follow a pacifist saviour. Guns, bombs, bullets and swords are not part of the Christian arsenal, but love, and the thirst and work for peace, justice and mercy. Nor must we, as pacifists and Christians, seek or accept the protection of guns, bombs, bullets or swords. Just as Jesus commanded Peter to put down the sword so does he say now the very same to us, his disciples and followers. There are no military solutions to our national nor for our global problems. That has been tried over and over throughout our blood-drenched history as traumatized and traumatizing humans, and it is still being tried. We cannot even claim whether things would have gone worse had we refused to go to war in 1939, because our view and thinking of the Second World War is so distorted by the victor`s lens and victors' justice. It may yet be several generations more that have to pass before the descendants of the allies have really got a clear-eyed picture of what really happened, and it is finally revealed that our soldiers also committed crimes and atrocities against the enemy. Do I believe that Canada should dismantle and scrap its military? Well, why not? They did the same thing in Costa Rica seventy years ago, despite their bellicose neighbour, Nicaragua, and they only have been invaded by tourists while enjoying the best standard of living and the stablest social infrastructure in Latin America, as well as one of the happiest citizenries not just in Latin America but in the world.