Eastern University

Theology in the Crosshairs

I am grateful to Shane Claiborne and Red Letter Christianity for inviting me to give a guest lecture at Eastern University’s “Windows on the World” speaker series on October 19, 2018.

AI-Generated Transcript

our partners in bringing windows on the world presentations is red-letter Christians and it is my pleasure to introduce to you Shane Claybourne who along with Tony Campolo founded Revelator Christians Shane will introduce our speaker this morning well thanks for showing up to an important conversation and you know the red-letter Christians movement is about asking the question what if Jesus really meant the stuff he said and so we've got a t-shirt that I brought for Logan this is not for you this is for Logan and it says that's got the whole sermon on the mount on the back row such yours man I did bring something for one of you which is Logan's first book reborn on the 4th of July and it's an incredible book about his own story which will give you glimpses of today but I thought I would give this is there a veteran or a current service member in the house that would like this book first I will oh and also this is being recorded so if you know folks that would benefit from this conversation and aren't able to make it this morning that may not be connected to Eastern you can know that that's coming and we're thrilled to bring in some of the voices that we think are so important in the world right now and logan who i've known cheese for over 10 years 15 years or something has been one of my teachers and consistent guides in this because he speaks out of his own personal experience he is incredibly innovative about the way he talks about his passion and he's exposed I think some of the ways that folks that care about peace and non-violence have talked about that in a way that continues to shame soldiers and to exacerbate wounds and morale injuries that are already there he is one of his other books is called for God and country in that order so he puts together things that we've often bifurcated from each other that you know a love for the people of our own country is a good thing but our love is also bigger than just our borders and so join me in welcoming Logan Isaac this morning [Applause] well thank you Shane and red-letter Christians Eastern University I'm gonna get right into a clock myself and I want to leave as much time for Q&A as possible but before I forget tomorrow I'm giving a free workshop on GI justice at the simple way I think lunch will be provided we're gonna be there from about 10:00 to 1:00 and Shane and I are gonna try and spend some time talking about specifically how Christians and the church can think about social justice in terms of soldiers and veterans and so I hope you'll join us I'll be sticking around I'm gonna drive back to Baltimore after that so I've got plenty of time and I hope you'll you'll join us more information is at GI Justus dot-com / tor I I hope you all you'll take an interest and join us tomorrow and so why should you trust me I keep I keep looking over my shoulder because all I see is my screen so today I'm going to be drawing for my dissertation my Master's dissertation at st. Andrews but I've I've been where a lot of you have been I've took my undergrad did two masters degrees first a Duke University master theological studies and Christian ethics was Stanley how are wasps and then the year after I got married and took the name Isaac I went to the University of st. Andrews in Scotland and studied systematic and historical theology with NT right and I also spent six years as a light infantry men in the army including a deployment to 2004 and/or but Christians and academics don't always count that as an intellectual formation so we can ignore that for the time being I'm also it's on social media as at I am logan mi if you want to at me and talk about some of this stuff I'm mostly on Twitter i lurk a little bit on instagram and if you friend me on Facebook I won't accept it that usually people I know relatively personally but you can learn more at called pew pew HQ that has some stuff on sale in the back that I hope you'll check out so I'm assuming everybody read my abstract because I spent time in academia and I think everybody reads abstracts and then doesn't actually read anything else so and if you have you'll know that I start with a problem and that problem goes by the name of the civil or civilian military divide or gap it's been getting some news it's in the headlines lately simply put this names the imbalance between those who serve in the Armed Forces otherwise called the military and those who don't which are civilians the numbers are startling but they're helpful to understand how how things shake out and so in this graphic this pie chart in this tiny little sliver of gray you'll see that there are 1.2 million active service members on the other side of that a tiny little sliver of yellow that represents 800,000 Reserve servicemembers and then in the green are 18 point five million veterans and that's representative of the whole American population that leaves about 305 million civilians so 94 percent of the American populace is civilian about 6 percent of the American population is our military or foreign military themselves this does not include family members the DoD and the VA don't track family members and that's estimated to increase that up to approximately 9% of the population just to give you a sense of the numbers these numbers are problem because the military is becoming more and more demographically concentrated creating a feedback loop and increasing the social distance between military and civilian this first graphic which I now realize no one's going to be able to read this first graphic shows that the those who are serving in the military are more likely than civilians to have another family member who has served so it's becoming a kind of demographic incest or something where the social gene pool becomes shallower and shallower as fewer and fewer families accept the responsibility of arm service and this is what happens or this when this happens we create a military caste system the second graphic and I can share this online shows how that insularity has shaped this feedback loop the self selecting community has made it even more insular and you'll see that on the graphic and I'm even having difficulty reading it members of the military and their family will say that people don't understand the military at higher rates than civilians will say the same military will say that the u.s. is the greatest country in the world military communities will say that the military is more patriotic than civilians and quite frankly we're also we're becoming we're lacking a certain critical distance and becoming self congratulatory and we're also frankly becoming slightly more xenophobic and military members in 2011 which is when this study was taken military members are more likely to have been disappointed in the in Obama's performance as commander in chief but this happens on both sides of the divides the military can live in a bubble just as much as civilians can in the absence of a draft this bubble is created passively and unconsciously by Americans who lack any incentive to join the military these Americans don't desire what the military sells and if it's not family tradition it's likely college money and that was my story my family I was grew up in Orange County California where the housing bubble began my parents went bankrupt foreclosed on their home and then I was thought I was supposed to go to college and the army was able to do that and so that was why I joined and that is actually statistically insignificant and then finally the nature of the military I want to talk a little bit about what we think of when we think of the term soldier or veteran the nature of the military has always been that there are about four enlisted personnel to every officer so the average soldier lower case s is enlisted they take orders and execute them rather than give them and is anybody in sociology or psychology okay I won't get into any depth but it is important to notice that when we say the average soldier that person is enlisted they also since the end of the draft in 1974 most of them have been poor rather than affluent and uneducated rather than educated and that's why we the military advertises in education social mobility and recent trends are showing that minorities are enlisting at greater rates than whites are and so the divide between civilian military is increasingly not just a function of class an outgrowth of it but it also reinforces systems of poverty I'm curious if this is how you imagine the military of being made up mostly of poor uneducated white people does it surprise you to learn that recruitment is far greater in the south where there is a large number of military bases than there are in the north does this matter to how we perceive the military or should it what does this have to do with a bunch of students and faculty at a Christian College taken as a whole about 70% of all Americans identify as Christian despite steadily decreasing numbers that say the same so we membership and the church is decreasing but we're still a clear majority if you drill down to the military community on the right-hand side you'll see that that number jumps to over 90 percent that means that Christians are entering the military at higher numbers than non-christians the military community is therefore 20% more likely to identify as Christians in the civilian population remember poor uneducated white Christians or what we should be thinking when we think of the military so think about this in theological terms let's turn our attention to Christian soldiers and veterans and the problem of the church military divide so what are you taught or what have you been taught in Christian institutions whether that's churches or colleges don't you think about that just for a second it's likely that you have heard the terms just war it's tradition and its counterpart pacifism it's less likely but still very possible all that you've heard that a Gustin of hippo was the first to use the term just war in the century following the legalization of Christianity by Constantine well technically true this idea is dangerously misleading so in the first part of my talk I want to discuss why we should all put theology in our crosshairs because bad theology needs to die before I get to why bad theologies need to die I want to talk about the good theology that Agustin started that has become corrupt it's true that Agustin City of God this big long book that he wrote in the four 20s not that four 20s that fifth century he was the first to use the phrase just war but he doesn't use it in the way that modern soldier or modern scholars typically do without surrounding context lines like this from the from book nineteen Chapter seven can easily be used to preemptively justify war if you can't read it in English it says but the wise they will say they will wage just wars so reading that it may make it sound like a great idea but that is not what a Gustin is doing at all what Agustin is doing is using an ancient Greek political tradition appropriated by the Roman jurist Cicero to say that at best a war might be justify a bull but even then only as an imperfect good by pagans inhabiting the City of Man which is doomed to defeat so this is OK for pagans and he talks he uses this idea to illustrate this is this plausible this is not outside the realm of possibilities but this is for the city of people not the City of God in fact the full name of the book is the City of God against the pagans apologists for modern Just War theory may remind you that it isn't his City of God that we should look to but his letter against Faustus the manichaean sure enough Augustine does indeed use this phrase but somewhat dismissively saying in English there is no need here to enter on the long discussion of just and unjust wars if you google this online and go to ccel people probably know what I'm talking about if you know what I'm talking about there's actually a typo it says Justin unjust ways it's clearly says Bellis I don't know who's interpreting ccel but they've not done a great job here anyway if you've taken a course on literature you may have been told that form and genre should inform how writings are interpreted on the one hand a book published for a large audience is more likely to contain a writer's polished and public stance on certain issues on the other hand epistles are more dependent upon particulars like audience motivation context we know that Paul for example crafted unique messages to the many different churches that to which he wrote to use a contemporary example if you add me on social media that will be a message directed at me you're not going to add someone an open letter that's not how that works the reason I bring this up is that Agustin says a lot more about war and soldiering in his letters than he does in his books and this should at least be as informative about the real Just War tradition if it exists then as one animated letter to an adversary if we want to use a gustin's letter to Faustus to pin just war on the good doctor then we should also consider his expectations to others as well as it turns out Agustin wrote a lot of letters and received a lot of letters from soldiers not unlike Shane two of these soldiers Marcellinus and Boniface will help illustrate how we can recover good theology from the bad marshal lioness of Carthage was a Tribune and a secretary for the Emperor that there's a great book that I'm borrowing from here called Agustin military service by Philip Wynn dr. Wynn will dispute whether he was a soldier because his title was Tribune estat note aureus which is a Tribune and a secretary a Tribune is a military rank it's like saying secretary of state without the breakdown between soldiering and I don't know like civilian secretaries that's great rome didn't have that he's a soldier even if in military jargon I call him a Pogue personnel other than grant a desk jockey armchair ranger all kinds of drug Ettore crap but he technically was a soldier anyway in 4:12 he writes to agustin asking the same kind of questions that that still get brought up between Patriots and pacifists like what's up with Jesus telling Christians about returning evil for evil turning the other cheek during the Second Mile etc then as now this kind of behavior seems to go against the responsibilities and the duties of citizenship Marshall Linus even asks if Christianity would have Rome just let the barbarians take over which I heard countless times in the army but about Muslim terrorists Augustine answers in ways that are familiar to those who follow these kinds of debates and he comes off quite frankly as too patriotic he cites John the Baptizer failing to condemn the soldiers witnessing baptism he leans on Paul's letter to the Romans about punishing evildoers etc unlike earlier Greek pacifists Tertullian and Origen Augustine does not conflate military service itself or he doesn't complete war with military service he doesn't think that all warriors are war criminals agustin is careful to note that only in some cases is military violence and military service or I'm sorry military service problematic in other words not all violence is created equal and not all military service is violent that is a key point that we have to acknowledge and interpret and debate not all violence is created equal not all military service is violent Boniface on the other hand is also a Tribune and when he begins writing to Augusta though he does so several years later 4:18 we don't have any of his letters but Agustin the initial reply condemning donatism goes on and on and on apparently ignores the soldiers actual concerns and he stops writing at least for a time nine years later we have another letter from Agustin we learn and that in the meantime Boniface who is the governor over all of North Africa had contemplated a monastic life after the death of his wife which would remove him from military service indeed the same year in 427 Boniface denies an order to go to the Western capital in Ravenna he disobeys a lawful order the same year he's writing and receiving letters from Agustin here we see that Gustin encourages a certain abandonment of military service he clearly suggested is not the same as or equal to Christian service these two examples challenge the selective use of Augustine's works to generically either justify war or condemn soldiers they also give us an example of just war outside a systematic framework one which is contextual responsive and ultimately pastoral what I mean by this is the caters his messages to the people to whom he writes rather than trying to apply the same answer to every individual's experience there's this joke about systematic and pastoral theologians as somebody heard this I can tell the difference between systematic and pastoral theologian one will go on and on about like why you don't cross outside the crosswalk or before the little guy shows up and give you all the municipal codes and da-da-da-da-da pastoral theologian will grab you by the collar if he sees a car is coming who do you want by your side it's only been in the last 100 years or so that some Christians have used agustin to try to justify preemptively the use of marshal or military violence ignoring the entire argument that he advances in the City of God as well as clear evidence of a more nuanced and complex theology in his epistle Ettore literature it should be noted that his most pro-military rhetoric came toward the end of his life as he watched as he witnessed war for the very first time as vandals repeatedly sacked roman provinces Agustin's more patriotic theology for lack of a better word was a response to what he saw as a direct and unprecedented danger to civilization as he knew it because you know Rome is the only civilization likewise was just war which only took shape about a hundred years ago right in the run-up to World War one the American Civil War the first large-scale conflict after the Industrial Revolution had forced Christians to reckon with a new and startling reality never before had weapons achieved a scale seen in the war between the states automatic and armored weapons that could destroy at previously unimaginable rates with larger than ever munitions some have argued that it was Church propaganda from the Confederate States of America that pave the way for modern violence in the West to be to justify war using Christian scripture and theology and pacifists aren't innocent just look at John Brown he was a rabid pacifist and he thought the slaves did revolt and he started he it was his attempt at Harpers Ferry that gave birth to the civil war eventually leading up to World War one the weaponization of theology and everything else continued unsurprisingly the use of the term Just War increased dramatically in public discourse a betrayal of Agustin's own use of the phrase some christians began calling themselves realists using agustín's writings to advance the cause of war in Europe and to D legitimize pacifist claims that had emerged until the Civil War pacifism had been a relatively obscure phenomenon birthed from the radical Reformation by so-called rebaptised we thought loser Luther had not gone far enough to condemn the Catholic Church Christian pacifism gained popular attention in direct correlation to the rise of so-called Christian realism as each engaged in endless debates an argumentation that persists to this day pacifists have rarely done much but respond to realist claims trying in vain to win arguments rather than hearts resorting to the same cherry-picking instincts to defend a predetermined ideology to each their own bubble I suppose how do I know all this what makes me so sure because I tried in vain for years to believe what I was told by both pacifists and Patriots after my return from Iraq this is me on my 22nd birthday I won't talk about myself because it just goes against my formation as a member of the military that's probably why I'm horrible at plugging my own book and why I need people like chained into it for me but anyway partisan theologians had all kinds of rationale to help me ignore the nuance and complexity of my own military service pacifists thought that I should feel shame while realists thought that I should feel pride partisanship however has no place in Christian theology and it took years for me to realize that pacifism is it is inherently no closer discipleship than patriotism I had to develop my own set of beliefs from scratch so I got to work reading my Bible interpreting it through a marshal or military lens I had to develop a uniquely Marshall hermeneutic when we allow ourselves to receive Scripture as gift and guide rather than wield it as a weapon in some ideological fight God can start to surprise us this is this is the first Bible I bought yeah it's kind of blurry this is the first Bible I bought with my own money outside the military people give you Bibles all the time and they're horrible translations are boring but anyway this is a keyword Greek and Hebrew key word study Bible that I found in an old mom-and-pop shop and Hawaii right after I got back from Iraq and I was starting a New Testament history class and I don't like Christian bookstores on like Christian coffee shops if you have to rely on a blindly loyal customer base it's because your products suck like let me just make that clear I do not like Christian stuff I like Christians but anyway so I have I clearly have a bias against Christian bookstores anyway so this woman is behind the counter and she says oh you know we can put gold engraving on then what would you like to have on there he's like well that's a great idea I like gold and so she said well you know people usually put their name and I thought why do I that doesn't belong to me fine I put my name on a Bible it's just I didn't say that but you said you know cuz if people lose it they can find it again I saw I thought well someone will find a Bible that would be great I don't I can get another one I got money so I thought and thought and thought and I was so proud of myself I still have it to this day I look to it whenever I can and I I had this thing popped in my head and I had it engraved in gold in my Bible it said I I thought to myself Lord grant me wonder and may wisdom follow and I hope that it's a reminder to me to be humble to be receptive of other beliefs and I know I'm doing a good job but I'm pissing off pacifist as much as I am Patriots and vice versa and when I still have passive his friends and Patriot friends were a willing to engage in some of these difficult conversations found out later that my favorite theologian already asked that Abraham Heschel I asked for wonder it's an anthology of his work I'm very humbled by the fact that I share that at least in common with him but when I set out to think and read for myself which is an exercise out of the military I quickly found that I read the Bible differently than my friends on either side of the political aisle I asked questions they didn't I noticed things they didn't I valued things they didn't I was captivated by soldiers in the Bible I identified with them reading Luke 3 where John talked to Roman soldiers which Agustin uses I didn't seem to receive it the same way that he did and that others do I wanted to know where the soldiers came from temple garden and why they were there protect the tax collector more importantly as someone who watched soldiers being baptized in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers I knew that you go to the water to repent and be washed of your sins knowing that John is a pragmatist and the assumptions that we make about the military and killing I figured John wouldn't have wasted time stating the obvious stop killing I was struck that the Baptizer didn't seem to dismiss them out of hand and that they saw him as a legitimate Authority they asked a question they they respected him enough to think that he may have an illegitimate answer and he doesn't condemn them in return he says stop exploiting people stop stealing money in Iraq that wouldn't have been the case for soldiers watching an indigenous shaman dousing people in their area of operations if you want to read more I have stuff on my medium profile I have an essay dedicated to Luke 3 but also in acts 10 a soldier gives Peter the answer to questions that Jewish followers had been asking the Apostles is known as the Council of Jerusalem how restrictive should membership in the body of Christ be not only does Cornelius the Centurion provide the key to interpreting Peters vision about eating habits he becomes the first Gentile baptized into the church without the expectation of circumcision so a little asterisk there the Ethiopian eunuch being a eunuch wouldn't have been eligible for circumcision depending on what his unit Ness entailed so technically the Ethiopian eunuch is first Gentile Cornelius is the first one for whom this question of circumcision is active and Peter says no or the church eventually kind of decides together he had been praised Cornelius have been praised by many Jews in the city even though to some he legitimately represented the oppressive and violent Roman occupation two things can be true at once no textual tradition survives to suggest that Cornelius ever left military service and the wealth that he shared with his neighbors would have come straight out of the coffers of Rome in Paul's letters as well details stuck out to me that seemed integral to properly interpreting the significance of epistles but which interpreters seemed to casually brush over including professor Wright Philip I for example was no ordinary town just a generation or two before Paul visited this the city was known as a victory colony because Julius Caesar's murderers a tu brute a they were defeated there in 42 BC II several legions were then quickly retired and Mass not far from the battlefield and the city quickly became a popular destination for veterans with Octavian retiring his own elite guard there twelve years later in fact when Paul writes to the Philippians it's the only place where the imperial guard is mentioned by name and the entire Bible no Christian Bible Dian the Hebrew Bible because Paul knows his audience and he takes time to praise those virtues that military service has instilled in that community he doesn't however shy away from vices condemning vices that they had acquired by military service and he gently works in an encouragement to flip the military pecking order to consider others better than yourselves I also have more on Paul's letter to veterans on medium if you want to look it up it is actually the @ symbol and that will take you to all of my essays and Marshall hermeneutic does not just affect how we read the New Testament though Kaine is the prototypical murderer even if you think war is murder war is an act whereas soldiers are people guilt attaches to an act performed by a person it pricks one's conscience motivates change Cain was guilty of murder some soldiers are too but not all guilt is an opportunity to repent and seek reconciliation shame on the other hand attaches to a person for a long time that's what I thought that Cain's mark is about everybody would see it and remember the evil deed he did and want to murder him in return but Cain is not reducible to one act any more than any of us are reducible to our own worst mistake God does not shame Cain even if other people might scripture is very clear the mark is for protection so that none may kill Cain shame undermines the dignity we are all born with shame says you are not like us you are not a full person it can easily be internalized becoming I am NOT like the rest I am not worth what others are worth shame insists that these less than people are problems to be solved monsters to be slain and abominations to be condemned say what you will about original sin we are not born with shame it must be taught and learned over time when we talk in simplistic derogatory ways about soldiers we are teaching them shame teaching them that they are not quite fully human teaching them to hate themselves nobody killed Cain because God made it clear to everyone that even murderers are humans Cain didn't kill himself because God's mark served as a constant reminder that he was also still human if you can beef use a person with her actions then you will shame people and disrupt the natural healing qualities of guilt so why is this important because the way that prominent Christians have been talking about war and military service is totally nonsensical both pacifists and realist speak in broad sweeping ways that assume that the only morally relevant distinction is between soldier and civilian that a cook where a medic is the same as a sniper or a bomber pilot this logic fails to differentiate between war and soldiers because there is no reason to think in any more specific terms than high-level abstractions and concepts divorced from the lived reality of military service any soldier and I mean any soldier will tell you that this is utter nonsense but most Americans prefer talking listening to talking heads than boots on the ground the closer you get to the ground truth you begin seeing less in black and white and more in shades of gray soldiers and veterans already know the difference between them and civilians instead and more importantly many of them are literally dying to know the difference between a sniper and a spotter this is not hyperbole or embellishment every day 20 people like me will take their own lives remember that 91.5 1% I mentioned earlier that means that 18 of those suicides are committed by people who identify as Christian let that sink in I cannot escape or change my past my membership in the Marshall fraternity is with me forever this is personal these are my people but are they your people to the theological recklessness practiced by so many Christians is like having to fix a problem with a bludgeon when you need to be using a scalpel put more simply if Christians cannot tell the difference between war and the military then anti-war pacifists cannot escape the accusations of being anti military and pro military Patriots will continue to justifiably be called pro war and veterans will continue to be caught in the crossfire the best perhaps the only way forward as I can tell is to put bad theology in the crosshairs and move toward a Marshall harm hermeneutic thank you for your attention

[Applause] I'm not sure how questions are usually done if you want to shout it my this I'm not as good on that side as this side but I'm sure I've pissed off some hopefully I've pissed off everybody won't be new to me you're not gonna say anything that will offend me but I'd really love to hear what kind of feedback or questions this leaves with people

yeah so the question was the story of Cain and Abel and and the nuance there and and the extent to which that helps soldiers and veterans or civilians think use Cain and Abel as an archetypal story I it's an excellent question so the debate about Genesis whether it's real six days fourteen I like that's fine I take Genesis to be a myth a story that we are supposed to use to help shape the meaning in our lives the way that the Israelites distinguish themselves from say Roman historians as they deliberately tried to make meaning of their own history so the modern instinct to say well this happened then like military history boring I it's stupid I hate it I think it's stupid because it assumes certain things about truth whereas the Israelites our spiritual forebears said we're supposed to see God in that right now and back there so the way I read Cain because he's a murderer pretty clear doesn't hide it and the curse that God leaves him lasts all of three verses or something you will you will be a wanderer in the land he gives him a mark and then he immediately goes off and settles and nod and so that should tell us that God a is forgiving and that curses are not forever that you are not that human beings creating the image of God are not static at the very least morally static so I know internally and I've shared with people I love therapists there are things I'm guilty of there are a lot more things in combat that just bored me I beat Halo 3 like 17 times because that's how bored you get in combat but the way that our culture shapes us our myths Pearl Harbor like the movies I hate are like Randall Wallace movies I feel bad but like war movies are horrible you have like to make movies available they have to be profitable to be profitable you have to elicit emotional exchange the Greeks they're theater was actually cathartic it was meant to be cathartic so a bunch of vets which in Jonathan Shay has done work on this a bunch of vets would be on stage reenacting what they did before a bunch of women children and elderly and men who couldn't or didn't fight and they actually absorbed that moral responsibility in the replaying of that that scene now when we go to theater we we pay our 20 bucks and we think wow yeah you know I don't know what's going on with this on Thanos I don't get it but like man that Captain America so we've lost sight of like the significance of story and Caine like he's I say prototypical and proto is just first he's not the intended the archetypal person is Seth or Abel and then Seth if you read it Regenesis it's an amazing story Seth replaces Abel and then we get these lines of names of people who are like loves God walks in the path of God honors God and in Cain's line even though God is maybe not forgiving him but like certainly been very lenient with Cain they're like abhors God walks against God and then he his line is wiped out and this is who were supposed to remember that we I've inherited this is humanity right Seth slime and we're supposed to remember that we're good people and part of my and I'll close with this on Genesis and I think that another of Augustine's theological contributions I think has been taken too far is original sin our story begins in Genesis 1.

yeah yeah unless anybody else have questions I can definitely talk about that yeah there's a question is if there's a difference between murder and how to define if there's between murder and killing and other violence and other violent acts and how do i define it one part of the debate about violence is the sixth commandment depending on your Protestant Catholic Jewish anyway one of the commandments one of the middle ones is like don't kill straightforward Hebrew is an ancient language it had fewer words so each word had to carry more meaning some people argue that that the commandment is do not do not murder but killing is okay that murder implies intent and in our society in our legal society that is the case assault and other forms of battery are there's a different class when there is intent involved but we also have crimes that involve not know intent right manslaughter second and third degree murder I so and you asked what how I define murder I I don't have a definition it does not it does not interest me the ending of another human life with or without intent is a morally culpable act that's what I think so there I was in artilleryman so some infantry got and there's a whole lot of backstory I'll try not to get into a lot of entry guys have like numbers in their head or faces or names I don't have any of that I did my job I called for fire a lot I don't have a number I don't have a face is it likely that I killed people very likely I'm not statistician but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty short and that is enough for me to say I'm morally culpable in that I didn't kill anybody well I don't know I have no idea but the distinction part of the the insistence on making a distinction that some scholars make I think as representative of the problem of like if at the end of the day we want to say that it's okay to kill but not murder we're still doing the same thing we're trying to get away from the fact that we have sinned so like I'm in artillery men I have I have sinned and I go to my priest pastor whatever I share that story with them it is absorbed by my community it doesn't remain in private and then I process that with my community different denominations and traditions do it differently but I've done something wrong and that's not the end of the that's not the end of the story that that it's it's not okay but as I was saying earlier like in 70 some-odd years whatever our lifespan is I'm gonna do a lot more stupid stuff and I might do some decent stuff and taken as a whole I think is what we saw especially guys in the military I think can tend to we focus on these acts a lot of Vettes my 8 on 36 I'm not that old but I'm getting there I'm like an old millennial I'm like the oldest millennial a lot of vets will talk about those are the best days of our lives [ __ ] that's a problem civilians reinforce that by taking an interest in those moments and forgetting the rest and that's part of the problem that that all of this well well that's what really matters I am a I am mostly a veteran I'm mostly a soldier like no I'm also a dad like if you want to know who I am don't go to the VA VA pisses me off VA pisses off a lot of vets if you see me at the VA you do not see me you see a reasonable person pissed off at unreasonable circumstances you want to see me come to my house and eat dinner with me and my daughter right and I'm gonna do stupid stuff and what's important is to res is to not hold so closely to my own rightness that I have to say no no it's actually okay that I did that Nigel Biggers a UK ethicist he wrote a book defending war who what and he's Christian ethicist at Oxford what Christian defends sin i I he does I guess I don't know I don't get it but I'm I ant I give long answers to short questions and I want to stop there I want to see if there's any feedback or if I answer your questions sufficiently okay yeah yeah so we we live in a hyper partisan culture and it's been going that way since 9/11 and that's why I think it's on the one hand unfair and yet reflective to talk about Patriots and pacifists or realists anyway and so the we create our own bubbles and we have difficulty actually so there is a white supremacy rally in DC recently on the mall in DC and there's a black lives matter group that came up and the the the organizers of the event had the black lives matter come up and they gave them five minutes I cried I'm not even joking I cried watching that because we're missing that ability to cross these threshold we just kind of law bombs over a brick wall without actually encountering the other and so in in light of that Patriots typically say Europe you're a hero you're you know you should feel pride let's clap you know Veterans Day is Sunday this year don't do that please don't do that there's just ask me why later don't have them stand up in clap military service is morally complicated and standing up to take applause for a day that's just veterans you know don't do it and so on the other hand pacifists or progressives are filling the bike whatever bubble and there's all kinds of shades gray but they'll say well you know the military is bad you just need to get out of the military or now that you're out tell me about that and you know don't you feel bad but they we don't always want to acknowledge the fact that there's both right the to illustrate my point really quickly because I've got a couple minutes the proudest is going to disturb some people I'm this is like four pg-13 and above maybe even are my proudest moment in Iraq I watched my platoon in Mosul in the elections of January 2005 we were in enforcing the curfew and we were the only light infantry men that had been in there in two years because the ancient city Nineveh everybody heard of it really small alleyways and so we were on foot a lot and one night sooner somebody was out of sight curfew and my platoon probably bored toxic masculinity whatever they went and they were yelling at this guy and he you know language berries know what the heck they're saying maybe doesn't know about curfew I have no idea and they start beating him up because he's there's some kind of communication thing and all that most of what soldiers know is I'm in charge you know police officers I think are increasingly reflecting this all that we know is that we're in charge and if you're not in charge it's it's your problem like look it's your fault if you run and so the I mentioned that because the my platoon sergeant went out there and I I drove for my platoon sergeant so we spent a lot of time together and I was not okay with beating up on a guy because he was out past curfew I tried to get him I tried to get them back in the vehicle and move on I faked a radio call and tried to get the petition started back in he didn't and so after a couple minutes of this they finally get out of their system and my prints aren't comes in sits next to me in the vehicle and I put my rifle my m4 on the dashboard and I say if you ever do that again and or if you don't stop that the next time that happens I will and I move my selector switch from safe to semi and I made sure he saw it I I was saying I will shoot you if you do not stop this in the future I proud of that yeah and it's it's complicated I don't feel good about that but I doubt it that was something like the right thing to do the and the the question of venerating and vilifying assumes binaries moral binaries right good or bad nothing in between and I'm I'm really interested in myth lately I think it's really important so the the image of that is Heracles and you can find a book and I have one more minute I promise I'll close on time Heracles gone mad by Robert Marr and he takes an old Sophocles play and he interprets it through the lens of the military because remember they were all military veterans who display it and he talks about softly fascinating stuff about Sophocles military guy working on his [ __ ] through screenwriting basically and Heracles was Hercules how many of us know him he was a war vet and he goes to hell his battle buddy Theseus drags him back out of hell and he comes back and he's kind of torn up and in a rage he kills his wife and children in a blind rage madness Heracles gone mad and his friend Theseus and his adopted human father because Heracles was half was Zeus raped his mother I can't remember his mother's name but Zeus raped his mom and here's the off he was a product of that so he wasn't human it wasn't fully human and he wasn't God the gods were like no I'm sorry no and humors like oh my goodness right which is what we do to our servicemembers you're not you're not me you're not some vets want to believe their civilian there's come tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. to talk about why soldiers are not civilians veterans or not civilians fascinating stuff but that's what happens we want to put them in a box and we think and in terms of social justice we we get caught up thinking about veterans as a marginalized population because hey thank you for your service that doesn't benefit me that makes someone who's saying it feel better about something maybe not serving maybe serving and think it's compulsory the VA I swear to god it's got to be like a requirement like us ripped he said every time and I want them to stop doing it but what that does is that says you're over here you're you're a demigod Zeus is your father but to others to progressives whoa I mean you did some stuff over there I played halo a lot I mean that's what I did I'm not even joking I can probably the accumulated total combat is hours and hours of tedious boredom percolated by moments of sheer terror that's it and so the the veneration is just as dehumanizing just as other ring as villain ization it's easy to say you're a monster and think oh yeah that's kind of messed up but our heroes are pushed back just as much against that I have some significant objections to the whole heroes as synonymous with military like don't do that and I will close by saying just again thank you for everybody - everybody come who came out and listened to me for all of 52 minutes attention is a premium now and I'm so grateful for y'all for showing up I hope we'll come out back that I have some products for sale I give them away a lot but I hope you all visit back there and then also stick around for lunch with with Shane and me and everything else I it would be really I know folks got class but it seems like really important to close in prayer and I know for some of us like that's exactly what windows in the world are an opportunity to kind of see the world through somebody else's eyes so if there's something that was uncomfortable to you like Logan I've been having an uncomfortable conversation for 15 years so he's an incredibly wise guy come talk more at lunch come to the simple way tomorrow or just come say hi afterwards but the urgency of this conversation with twenty lives a day being taken shouldn't just swipe over us you know and and and we as Christians many of us have contributed to some of that shame that that Logan talked about so he's going to close us in prayer as you go to class or hanging out at lunch or to think for the time that you've given us to sharpen ourselves against others to listen and be heard give us the strength to have these difficult conversations with one another well civilians with civilians and civilians with soldiers and veterans for families that have lost loved ones to war in war and after war for communities that are forgetting how valuable we all are in your sight murderers criminals and everyone in between give us the patience and the clarity and the humility to continually ask how we can better ourselves and better our communities for those men and women we're opening their arms and opening their wrists and the dark hope that this world doesn't have anything for them we pray that you all show us how to make our communities and our families places where these difficult and painful and grotesque and obscene conversations can take place we pray that you will lift that burden off the shoulders of the few said they can be shared amongst many I pray that we look more and more like you in it every day with our words and with our deeds I pray for forgiveness for the things that we haven't said the things that we haven't done things that we have done and things that we have said give us grace give us mercy show us justice and show us love and your son's name we pray amen