Theology Of Love 31

 Si ustedes amen solamente a quienes les amen, que recompensa recibirán? Acaso no hacen eso hasta los recaudadores de impuestos?  Y si saluden solo a sus hermanos, demás que hacen?  acaso no hacen esto hasta los gentiles?

In English: If you love only those who love you, then what will be your reward?  Don't even the tax collectors do this?  And if you greet only your brothers, then what have you achieved?  Don't even the heathen do this?

Wednesday, Remembrance Day, I was shopping in my friendly neighbourhood Safeway. just as it was almost 11 am, a voice came on the loudspeaker, telling all customers as well as staff that exactly at 11, a one or two minute silence was to be observed by everyone to honour the soldiers killed in our wars.   I chose not to participate.  Not because I'm a jerk though I'm sure that some of you would think that this could be argued, but for other reasons.

For one thing, I do not like feeling press-ganged.  To do anything.  Even if it's something I like or heartily agree with, something really changes, is ruined, when suddenly it is something that I am told that I have to do, because someone told me to do it.   And if I am being pressganged to do something I don't like, then good luck!

Another thing.  Safeway is a grocery store.  Itis a place where we go to buy food, then take it home and eat it.  It is not a facility for services, religious or patriotic.  Even if it was Remembrance Day, even if an apparent majority of Canadians may have swallowed the kool aid about war and soldiers, what they were doing that day was enforcing or imposing a particular belief or world view upon all their customers, even if some them , like me, might happen to be pacifists, even if some of them might have lost family or loved ones to the same wars but from the enemy side.  

Still, I might have stopped and observed silence, but on one condition, and that condition was not met.  That the millions of civilians and soldiers on both sides of the war be also remembered.  It isn't just Canadian, or British or American soldiers that died in those wars.  And neither is it only German or Japanese soldiers that were killed.  But there were millions more of innocent civilians systematically butchered, slaughtered or bombed to bits as collateral damage, as well as the millions of innocents that perished in Hitler's death camps.  They died in England, in France, in Holland, and they also died in Germany, Japan and Italy.  People who had nothing to do with wars or soldiers or the decisions of politicians or dictators were snuffed out for the war effort.  Those are the people I remember.  The vulnerable, the strangers, the invisible, the unknown,  

If we simply love those who are like us, who like us, who are on the same side as we are, then our love is deficient and wanting.  I used to listen carefully in the coffeeshops where in the eighties they were playing Steve Winwood's famous song, "Give me a higher love".  Yes, let's honour our soldiers.  let's also honour the people that our soldiers killed.  There is no way to peace.  Peace is the way.