City Of God 43

Our species has a very long history of warlikeness to reckon with, that is, if we really want to learn the ways of peace. This probably isn't going to begin anytime soon. But begin it must. There must surely be some way more effective than a bunch of gentle and meek Quakers or peace activists sitting in a circle singing "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." About as effective as singing Kumbaya, methinks. Or using a walk signal to stop a buffalo stampede. We have all the historical baggage, the millennia of toxic masculinity (and femininity too. Has anyone ever heard of Boadicea? Golda Meir? Margaret Thatcher, anybody?) It seems that throughout history, nations or tribes always reach a certain tipping point, and war becomes inevitable. There are even some pacifists who would agree that the Second World War was one of the few, if not the only, examples in history of a truly "just" war, and there is much to lend to that argument. I even find myself feeling conflicted over that one. Who can think of anything to compare to the horrors that the Nazi Germans unleashed on the Jews, the Roma, homosexuals and other people they didn't like? How else could they have been stopped? But so goes the narrative of the victor nations and I am still left wondering how much of our perception of the war and its outcome is influenced by this, that we were the winners? I don't think this notion has really been given its due, and this needs to be explored, or we are never going to acquire empathy for those who ended up on the wrong side of history. And empathy, if it is only confined to those who look, think and dress like us, isn't going to get us very far either. I wasn't there. I was born eleven years after the war ended. I don't know what I would have done, if I were a young man of combat age during the later thirties and forties. In those days, people did not tend to question or doubt their governments the way we do now. And the government told the people everything they wanted them to know about Germany and Europe. I wonder to this day what wasn't being told. As a Christian, I find war repugnant. But I have never lived through a war, so it is something I really cannot speak about with authority. As a Christian, I think that not even then, as now, could I have in good conscience participated in the killing, even if it was to drive back Hitler's armies. Being a Christian, I cannot kill. Under any circumstances. That is not the way of Christ. But war still happens, and for some time to come, is going to go on happening. And I think it can be said with some truth that we owe our freedoms and privileges to the Allied victory. Carrying this festering stewpot of mixed emotions, I decline to wear the red poppy, which only remembers and honours the fallen soldiers and, by extension, glorifies war. I am sticking with the white poppy that I am wearing even now pinned to my shirt while I am typing this. To remember all the victims of war, and to believe that there is a better way. Might there have also been a better way eighty years ago when the drums were already beating in Europe? I don't know. I don't have all the facts of what really was happening then, and you know something, Gentle Reader? I don't think that anyone really knows for sure. But it happened. Seventy-five million deaths throughout the world. It happened. The incineration of cities and human lives. It happened. The mass slaughter of Jews and other innocents. It happened. It wasn't just the soldiers that died. Honour them yes. But don't forget to include all the others who also were killed, and some of whom were killed by our soldiers.