A Letter from Iraq

    A very good friend is currently serving as a chaplain in Iraq.  He and I have been corresponding off and on whenever he is deployed.  Yesterday he sent a very thoughtful letter, and I asked him if I could share it.  He said that I could; so, here it is (I've only modified it to remove a beginning and ending personal note):
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    For me, Yoder placed me before Christ and asked me, “what will you do with Jesus?” The ideas of not returning evil for evil (a main theme in Leo Tolstoy as well), of loving one’s enemy, etc. caused me to ponder deeply. The question I had to ask myself after his book The Politics of Jesus was this: have I really seen Christ and his Kingdom, or have I been looking at a strange definition of his Kingdom that has been made to look like American interests (complete with a McDonalds, a Wendy’s, and a Burger King competing for market share just down the street from the Tree of Life and the River that flows from the throne of God)? I had to come to terms with the reality that the Church as the presence of the Kingdom to come cannot adopt uncritically the values of the society around it when those values run counter to Christ himself. Our tendency is to adopt the values that keep us comfortable and in control, while we cry “persecution” when the values do not keep us comfy.

It seems to be a universal understanding that force begets resistance and violence begets violence. I was reading the Tao Te Ching the other day in preparation for a series of conversations with a soldier of mine who is searching for truth. He has been reading the Tao and has questions. What I noticed in the Tao is the nearly word for word reflection of the fact that violence gets us nowhere. Our military has failed, I think, to keep its interests under control, and we do not know when to say enough is enough. We keep reaching farther and farther out, manipulating the entire world either militarily or economically, and the Church says nothing because such efforts protect our comfort. Make no mistake, I like being free. However, I fail to see how much of our activity around the world facilitates that. We don’t know when to stop. And far from being satisfied with being free, we want more of the world.

It occurs to me how much help we could offer to the world if we really cared, but we spend our time fighting and securing our stability; staying on top, loaning money to poor countries and then entrapping them, invading countries with an overwhelming military without a moral reason, toppling governments and their leaders when they no longer serve the purposes for which we established them. When do we get our hands into things that are not in our lane? When do we come to the place where we have our noses into other people’s lives and ways?

I think the key to the defeat of Islamic militancy is to be different; show it for what it is and be different. Right now, we are raising the stakes, strike for strike, and escalation is the inevitable result.

Yoder showed me some things about Jesus Christ that fit his profile much more closely than the football player, laughing, power hungry super-Jesus that Americans like to sing love songs too. Incidentally, the Jesus of Orthodox iconography does not match the American jock Jesus image that I often see in conservative evangelical circles. These are things that you and Yoder challenged for me, and the second, third and fourth look at these issues has revealed that I was living in an American dream, not the Kingdom of God in Christ. And the reflections continue.

As I approach the end of my tenure in the Army for this go around, I think of that student you mentioned, the female from the Friends or some other pacifist denomination, and I feel the same; I don’t agree with this use of military power, but soldiers need Jesus too. I have “Caesar” all over me; he prints my paychecks, and this is sometimes hard for me to justify, so I have stopped trying—there is no justification. Yet, I have been able to touch many, many, many lives, and I have had countless chances to shine the light of the Gospel into the darkness I encounter here. I continue to be conflicted here, but at the end of the day, soldiers need Jesus too. And every one of them that has to take an enemy life will be wounded forever; some have sat with me and cried. We have an entire generation of young people who will never be the same, many of them missing limbs and eyes. Having been in the “trenches” with them, I will have credibility to serve them when others will not. So, soldiers need Jesus too. It is my pleasure to serve them. My prayer is a constant, “Lord have mercy upon me a sinner.”

So, there I am. Yoder raised my awareness, and your conversations with me did as well. Given the world of modern warfare, I agree with Densel Washington’s character in the movie Crimson Tide, “The real enemy can’t be destroyed??.the real enemy is war itself.”

Comments

[jerry]

Chuck: thanks for posting this. I for one will have to read this letter perhaps many times as it sums up a number of conflicts (and priorities) we are faced with as Christians in our "land of plenty".

I like how Clapp puts it in "A Peculiar People": we should be more of an 'ambassador', not 'citizen'.

[chuck]

Check on his "Border Crossing" and just about anything by Yoder or Hauerwas--Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus" and "The Original Revolution." They would be good additions.

[Brad Anderson]

Now we're talkin'... :-)

[Matt]

Wow, that is powerful. I often wonder how military chaplains deal with these ambiguities, and this is a great example of the struggle. It's amazing to me how the Gospel cuts through even the darkest situations. Thank you and thanks to your friend for sharing.

[emily.n]

Wow. That was seriously intense. And, it really does make you wonder about how America views 'assistance' in such distorted fashion.

Thanks for sharing...

[chuck]

I'll pass your thanks on to my friend. The soldiers are fortunate to have a chaplain like him!

[David Beasley]

Makes me want to ask of our present government, "Keeping us safe from what and whom?"

[Philip Koplin]

An answer to David's question:

"Two Pakistani nomad women have been killed after a rocket fired across the border from Afghanistan [by US-led forces] landed on their tent."

[David Beasley]

Philip,
I have to take a moment or two to center after an answer like that.

You know, a breath thing! In out. Given taken.

Silly of me, but I want to know their names... the two nomadic women. But then there is a futility I feel like looking for my own brother's name on the great black wall in Wash. DC, (or wherever the Vietnam Memorial sits and sits). I need a Military Chaplain to talk to and pray about this matter and for x & y. "Gone to God," I tell children in the hospital about death. But this is so much more about guilt and wrath and salvation and such matters where wrath and judgment/peace and consolation come into our lives thru mercy. What about the blood of x & y?

And you know I am the government too... this of the people by the people in America where I prosper now and pay my taxes or get a credit this year in lean times. Thinking about the rocket knoll in some far off place in Pakistan I consider John Donne's commentary to the worms.

"My soul would like to ask one of the worms my dead body will produce, "Will you change with me?" That worm would say, "No, for you are likely to live in eternal torment. As for me, I will not change when I die. Indeed would the Devil himself change places with a damned soul? I cannot tell." "
-- end JD's quote.
And I pray to be given the knowledge in Christ's sweet heart about forgiveness so that the morbid can be enlightened. :)

peace.david.

[beth]

Excellent letter. This is exactly how I feel. Expecially the part about Ceasar being written all over us.

[chuck]

David, interesting quote.
Beth, glad to have you join us!

[Philip Koplin]

David:

I had the same response. I wanted to know their names. I wanted their humanity to be known and felt. I wanted the obscenity of their deaths to be set before the faces of all those who claim to be protecting us and our values.

I would settle for having the media put aside the Nancy Kwan stories and the Cheney hunting stories and the people stranded by the blizzard stories and pay attention. But I don't think Larry King or Oprah or Katie and Matt will devoting too much time to this.

I don't know why, given all the criminal acts commited by the Bush regime, I wanted this one in particular memorialized, it just struck at me and made me want to cry enough! and I feel helpless and miserably saddened before it.

[David Beasley]

Philip,
it is a strange process to me to mourn and see those mourn and consider being blessed. Jesus' kingdom, Upsidedownedness, makes the proverbially strange rabbit hole seem logical. (I don't ask Father, "Are we there yet?")

Chuck,
I often turn to John Donne when I need cheering up! :) Your friend's letter reminds me that Oswald Chambers wrote his daily devotions while ministering to soldiers of the English Empire in Egypt, I believe.

[Boyd Collins]

Indeed, the real enemy is the inner and outer war in which comfort begets violence. I want to echo your friend's gratitude for the value of our conversations. You may not realize how valuable it is for those of us laboring in the corporate trough to have voices like yours and that of your chaplain friend which keep our eyes on the light shining in darkness, but for me anyway, it's a lifeline to sanity and mercy. Like the soldier in Iraq, whose story moved me because I seem to hear in it a deep, untrained cry for peace, we are often surrounded by a wall of seemingly impenetrable violence, but you remind us of another world.

[chuck]

Thanks, Boyd, you don't know how much your kind words mean. There are days when one wonders if the time invested is benefiting the kingdom in anyway, but all it takes is one kind voice to make one realize that the kingdom is like good plants growing amongst the weeds....or something like that:>)
blessings, brother!