Another World is Possible

Volume One: War (Redux)

On January 23, 2007, I recorded the following interview with Jamie Moffett of The Simple Way in Philadelphia, PA. It was included in the 2008 (re)release of Another World is Possible, Volume One: War (redux) by Shane Claiborne.

AI Generated Transcript

Jesus said, if. If you're persecuted, remember I was persecuted. If. If you suffer and you have to. If you're put through pain, remember, I did it. I prepared the way for you as a message of hope. There are several people out there that know better than to obey their country blindly and that our country was actually founded by people that spoke up, that spoke truth to power lovingly. And I think that our country needs more of those individuals to be able to stand up and lead by example, by loving example and not back down from their convictions, be they moral, ethical or religious. My name is in the tree. I was born, raised in Southern California, got through high school. All right, got into college, But I didn't have a way to pay for it. So when I was invited to a an event where an Army recruiter was there, I started listening to him as he was telling me what I could what would be offered by the army to pay for college. And eventually that led. That was the main initial reason I decided to join the Army. And it and other reason, of course, were travel and just trying to get out get out of Orange County for a little while. When I tested high enough to where I was pretty much any job, I wanted the army. And so I looked for the ones that paid the highest, one of the highest paid jobs ended up being a 13 fox, which is also known as a foreign observer or fire support specialist. And they move with an infantry unit. And when the platoon leader trips, the platoon leader needs artillery, mortars, and they were going to fire and close air support. The foreign observers, the one that is a liaison between the infantry and that asset. So I acted as the the eyes for those those assets. I was in Hawaii for about a year, enjoying the sun and everything else. And Hawaii's offer for about a year and two days. I left Hawaii in January 1924 and I spent about 14 months in Iraq, and I have two while I was there as a specialist or a E-4 pay grade in the Army. And my job was essentially to, along with my the job that I had for being the observer for the artillery. We were also utilized as information specialists. So we were the ones that were getting all the pamphlets saying, We're the good guys, these are the bad guys, here's somebody to fix your house. Those kinds of things. But I did do my real job a few times, several times. And again, that included not too much artillery, but a lot of mortars, a lot of close air support and a lot of attack helicopters. And we saw a lot of country where in Samarra, Najaf, they were near Mosul, Tal Afar Syrian border. And I'm forgetting a few of them. And essentially what our job was as a battalion was to respond to high intensity conflicts that they needed light infantry soldiers that as quickly as possible. A good example of what we were utilized as near the end of the year, we thought we were going to be home by the holidays, and that changed in late October. I was in bed in my and in my little contacts, and it was I think it was at ten or 11 at night when my supervisor came in and told me to wake up and start packing. And by midnight we were we had our trucks loaded up and we were on our way out to Mosul to provide additional presence during the election period in January of oh five. I think what I I'd made a concerted effort to do was to understand why I was there, why we were there, what we were doing, did I agree with it. And while I was there, I actually read the 911 Commission report. I started reading Newsweek a little bit more. I started to try and figure out my at least my place in the geopolitical kind of scheme of things going on. And the more I learned the the less complacent and blissfully ignorant I became. And that that objective approach to my place in, I guess, reality, I started learning a lot more about the political structure and and the way things work. So I got back and for a few months I just kind of decompressed. I think we got back in February, mid-February, and in May I met a really great woman. We started dating and by the end of June or July of that year, I met her parents and her parents were were definitely a little bit different than I expected the first time I met them, I was at dinner. I went to dinner at their house, and her dad actually said, you know, I'm going to be honest with you, At that time, my nickname was Lucky. And he said, Lucky, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't really like military guys. And so I kind of held my breath for a minute, like tried to figure out where I was going to go. And I said, But I think that's a weakness I have. I think that that's something that the Lord is calling me to, to fix about myself. So I'm glad my daughter's dating him. As the time went on, I began to see more and more how both of her parents and a lot of her family really live the Bible instead of just read about it. And I began to develop my own spiritual kind of journey. And at that time, that was really all it was for me. And I started to take a lot of things that I read about in the Bible more seriously because of the example that I had from them. So by January of 2006, I enrolled myself in a New Testament history class. I began to be able to understand the historical validity of the Bible and how to a recorded document validated by outside sources. So I was trying to figure out, you know, am I Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? I've heard all the don'ts. I've heard all the, you know, the instructions and everything. But what does that mean? I am if I am a Christian, not what I'm not.

So I was trying to apply this to my life, and I realized in large part that I wasn't applying it to my profession, which was a large part of my life. It was about 24 hours a day of it. So I particularly started trying to figure out what it meant to be a Christian soldier and what it meant to live as live a Christian witness inside the army or as a soldier. And I couldn't find a lot of to justification I needed because the large part of my job is destroying as much as possible of whatever I was told to human life, uh, personal property, enemy equipment. So I couldn't find it.

So I started turning to spiritual mentors. I was asking laypeople, I was asking my professor at the New Testament history class. And one thing he taught us before, before we really got into really the whole class is so when you turn to the Bible, if you think if you believe that it contains the truth or that it's divinely inspired, that contains God work, God's Word and a God is basically better than you and is a lot more trustworthy than you might be, then you should allow the Bible to shape your beliefs as opposed to your beliefs shaping the Bible. And by that I think he meant if I go into it thinking that the world is one way however I perceive it, and then I read the Bible and shaped the Bible to mean what I've already perceived and shaped the world to be, then I'm misinterpreting the Bible because it has a very clear message. And I think when you read it for yourself and you want to really understand what it's really saying, I think it jumps out at you. And it did me in a nutshell. I don't think that with in the post messianic period, you know, after Christ has come and given us a new covenant, I don't think that Christians are called to kill anybody at any time under any circumstances. And so that put me in a difficult position in my job because my professional obligations were pretty much to do that.

So I was still trying to figure out what what the song meant. And I was listening to what a lot of people had said and a few people, including my girlfriend's father at the time, had said it's the morally right thing to do to go to war and end a dictatorship or to go to war to to get Hitler out of power, all these other things. But the more and more they were telling me this, the less and less I found it in Scripture. I shared towards the just war theory. I read Aquinas, Augustine, Grotius and Luther, Calvin, and the more and more they they rationalized the just war theory, the less and less they based it on Scripture, and the less and less they relied on the authority of the Bible. So I began to realize that man's rational mind can be perverted, just like everything else has been. Or can be, and that it must be checked against the authority of the Bible if I'm if I am to trust it, at least personally. So we were we'd actually gotten our orders to redeploy to Iraq was going to be deploying in August of 26. And I was in this process of trying to figure out what it meant to be a Christian and taking it seriously. And I was I was pulled between two different two different masters. You know, there is the way of the sword and the way of death and the way of life, which is the way of truth. And I knew I had to choose one way or another. I felt very strongly that there was a an appropriate answer and an inappropriate answer to what I was trying to figure out in the weeks prior. I had really actually begun to really feel God's presence in my life. I really felt like I'd been forgiven for everything I had done, everything that I felt and everything that I was guilty of. I started to really feel renewed. And this was all this. It all happened in church. So I was sitting on this bus and I was thinking about it, not really praying, just kind of thinking and wondering what might what might I do? Because I had recently learned about being a conscientious objector, and I wasn't sure that really applied too much to me because I felt called to stay in the military because I think it's a great ministry field. I think a lot of people in the Army would would really benefit from a good witness to a Christ that really stands by peace and doesn't waver and doesn't wrestle or rationalize it into a kind of idealism. It was on April 20th at 940 in the morning when I was on this bus, when I kind of got this vision. I saw a few things just kind of in my imagination, but I got the clear feeling that it was being put there, that it wasn't something I had just kind of slowly thought of. I knew I was in the Middle East, but thinking about it honestly, I wasn't sure it was Iraq. I knew it was the Middle East. I knew I was in an area of great conflict and strife, a warring nation. And the second thing I knew was that I didn't have a weapon in my hand.

And despite that, despite being in this conflict, an area without any form of defense or offense, I knew I should be afraid, but I wasn't. And I was walking in this in this kind of very brief epiphany. I was walking with a confidence I'd never felt before and a surety or a certainty that it didn't matter what happened, that I was doing, what God was calling me to. And that was all I knew. I was in the Middle East without a weapon. So on June 5th, I put in my formal application to be a conscientious objector.

And that process lasted just over a month. And in that month, there are two things that are required among many others. And one of them is a chaplain's interview. Who is to determine your depth of sincerity. And right after I turned in my formal application, I went home on leave. And the second that I was home, my girlfriend and I were we were having dinner to discuss relationship stuff. And when I got her, got time to be here, turn to to kind of bring something up, she said. In essence, we left that conversation no longer a couple. And one of the reasons that was given was that we were headed in different spiritual directions.

So I got back to the unit, and when I went to see the chaplain, I had all this stuff in my head and I tried to explain to him why I felt the way I did and what I wanted to do and and how I didn't think the just war theory was justified based on my understanding, the New Testament. And for the first time in many different discussions I'd had with other military members for the first time, he respectfully disagreed. But he said that he admired my conviction and that he did not doubt that I had a sincere belief that I was ready to go to Iraq no matter what the consequences were. But I would not carry a weapon.

So the second interview that is required is a psychiatrist interview. And when I went to the psychiatrist, I explained real, real in-depth what I hope to do. I want to go to Iraq. I did not want to carry a weapon. I would not carry a weapon. And based on his based on the first 20 or 25 minutes, as I was explaining this to him, he so he told me pretty bluntly that I was the probably one of the most mentally stable people I'd ever met with. But because what I had hoped to do and because of a conflict between my religious convictions and my professional obligations, that it it basically by definition was a it was a failure to adjust to the military standards or that my duty in the military. So he recommended not punitively or derogatorily he he knew that the army wasn't the best place for me or that was his diagnosis, that I would not remain fit for duty and that the my moral or my my goals represented a very real threat to my physical security, that if I saw my if I saw this through, it would very clearly be a threat to my physical life. I took it back to my unit who who quickly accused me of trying to get out of a deployment. I was told that I lied to a psychiatrist. I was told that I found a perfect scheme to get out of the military. I can remember a lot of the other and that my actions benefited the enemies of America. And of course, I took that as an affirmation. And I actually left the office with a smile on my face, because this command is to love our enemies and bless them and pray for them. So as a result of the mental diagnosis, they reassigned me to a unit that would not deploy, which is not what I wanted and not what I expected. I actually did think that I would get to Iraq without a weapon.

And so I was struggling with, well, I thought I'd switch to Iraq. I thought I was supposed to do this. And I was kind of settling mentally into this idea of being in Hawaii long term in Garrison while the rest of my hand was deployed. And I knew that I was called to be a missionary. I knew that God wanted me in the Middle East, and I knew I didn't want to wait because a versa kept popping up was I want to stay. John 960 somewhere where Christ says he places hands on a platter and looks back is not worthy of me. So I didn't want to wait. I knew when God calls me, He calls me at that moment or, you know, start acting or not later when it's convenient for me.

So I found through a bunch of different people. Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson, Hargrove. A few other people had gone to Iraq with CPT. Christian Peacemaker Teams and Curious. I looked them up and I was looking for delegation to Iraq and they didn't have any more after Tom Fox had been kidnapped and later executed in Iraq. And so I was trying to figure out where God wanted me and Israel that week. And I was looking at the city began bombing Lebanon. So I figured, why not Israel?

So I put in an application for CBT for Israel. I spoke with a few people in the office that were concerned that a an active duty soldier may not be the best. They were concerned that there might be a conflict of interest between my professional duties and their mission of a direct nonviolent action. And I explained to her why I wanted to go explain why I couldn't go to Iraq. After a brief phone conversation, she said, Well, putting your application and we'll see you in November. That's the next that would have been the next available delegation. So I'm thinking, hoping that I would go to Israel on what I expected to be able to take a two week block, a leave, go to Israel, come back and, you know, go right back to active duty army. So I went to my commander, my new commander, and to be granted a leave outside the country, I have to have a special request approved. So I asked him what I had to do to get that. And when he asked me where I was going and why, I told him I want to go to Israel. That part of it had to do with their bombing of Lebanon. Part of it had to do with me wanting to get back to the middle East and also that I want to be in Iraq. But it just didn't happen. And he told me that it would not get approved because an American soldier would not be welcome in a combat area on leave. So I tried to struggle through figuring out how to get out there, how to fulfill this commission. I never withdrew my application from CPT. I considered changing my request to discharge. I spoke to a new chaplain and he was a guiding me and the right way to do that. And after a few weeks of really struggling with how do I get out there and and what did what did this vision mean if it wasn't me in the Middle East? I got my pay stub for the month of August at the end of at the end of the month. And my separation date, which had been bumped back to October of 2007, now reflected in November of 2006. So it was pretty surprising. And I went to the proper agencies to figure out whose mistake it was and how to correct it. And the more I asked and the more I tried to just get this kind of one single thing on my to do list done, the more I asked, the more I realized that it wasn't a mistake and that I needed to get ready to get out of the Army. And it just happened to be three days into my hopeful CPA delegation in Israel. So the the the the coincidence of the date was a little too coincidental to excuse us as coincidence. So I kind of went on faith that, okay, I guess I'm getting out. I'll start my stuff. My command can still reject it and they can still keep me in. But I did it anyway. So I put in my packet shortly before coming out to Philadelphia to to visit with Simple Way in Cannon House and Missing Dinner and all these other things. When I got back from that, I was told the first warning that came back that you're either deploying or you're getting chapter it out. Basically, you're getting kicked out because of a mental disorder.

So they asked me once again, you know, you can deploy if you want. I said, Of course I want to, but I'm not picking a weapon. They didn't like that too much. So we considered a chapter and I realized that the separation paperwork had already been started and could very easily save everybody a lot of paperwork. And so I ended up going with the option of allowing me to separate normally from the Army. So I got out of the army. I was using my vacation days. I essentially got out October 19th of 2006, but I was effectively still on active status until November 21st of that same year. And on November 19th, I was in Israel Palestine on a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation. One thing that I've found that a lot of people in the Army are still are very concerned about what's going on, not necessarily strictly Iraq, but also very a lot of people are concerned about Iraq and their place in it, their role in it. They want to know more about about their options, about what can be done, what what rights do soldiers have? Reservist active National Guard. And I know of a number of organizations that could help among the one that would probably be a good way to start with. It would be the research GI rates hotline or objector board. Another really, really good one is the Catholic Peace Fellowship. I think that's Catholic Peace Fellowship Board. They have a really comprehensive site. I use that. I'm not Catholic, but they have an enormous amount of resources, both Catholic and just early church history. They've got a podcast called Word War Cast on iTunes. You can probably search on iTunes for a podcast called A Workout for Catholics or a Catholic Peace Fellowship. If nothing else, you can contact me or Objective Lord. But a good one to start with is probably the G.I. Rights Hotline. There are a lot out there that don't make it to the headlines. There's plenty of people that I've been in contact with that may never get heard from. I'm surprised that I was heard from. I think the bottom line that service to your country includes recognizing when that country is in need of a of a moral voice, of a of a routed of a voice rooted in love and peace for not just our own country and not just for our own interests and not just our own our own little boxes. I think what our country needs most in times of war are the voices that are that remind them that we are a moral nation, that we are a peace loving nation. And that means that we will we want what's best, not just for ourselves, but for the world. And I think the way to do that is to gently, reverently, lovingly remind our country that there are better ways than than war to solve problems. That war needs to be the last resort, that even the just war theory was meant to restrain violence, not to justify violence. Augustine and Aquinas, they are. It was all meant as these are the guidelines and this is what makes the war justified. This is the only reason that we can go to war. I mean, in the Catholic peace tradition, um, it's actually I don't think any war has ever been justified by the just war theory ever. In one way or another, we've broken it, and that makes the entire war unjust.