Figuring it Out as One Body
This post is brought to you courtesy of The Work of the People, a video production company led by my friend Travis Reed. I was honored to have been interviewed by him during the COVID-19 pandemic and he has graciously allowed me to share his edited work on my own site. If you like what you see, check him out at out TheWorkOfThePeople.com.
This video is one of four he produced for me, and it remains as relevant as the day we spoke. Enjoy!
The Emotional Divide of National Holidays
Because the Fourth of July is so intimately linked in America with military service—we have parades and everything—I really think a much deeper conversation may come out of Memorial Day and how we often confuse Memorial Day with Veterans Day.
As a veteran, it's disappointing that for many of my fellow citizens, Memorial Day is just a time to barbecue and celebrate and get outside—which is great, but for me, it’s something different. Every year, I go to a bar, order two drinks, and leave one sitting there—to pour one out for the homies. A lot of guys I know who still keep in touch with their units go to the veterans cemetery and visit their friends. That’s where they barbecue.
There’s this juxtaposition of grief on Memorial Day and joy on the Fourth of July. And I think that’s actually good.
Emotional Nourishment and the Church
One of the things that has formed me—being a soldier and a veteran—and that I wish the church understood, is the idea of being emotionally well-nourished. Combat is full of emotional highs and lows: terror, joy, elation, shame.
If you ever really get a vet to sit down and talk with you—I'll share from my experience—one guy who went to Officer Candidate School almost made a confession. He said that when he looked at someone through his scope and pulled the trigger, knowing the guy had a weapon and that he had to do it, he felt both overwhelming elation and crushing shame in the same moment.
Rebirth on the Fourth of July
So, if we’re going to be “reborn” on the Fourth of July—if we want to understand more deeply what it means to be Americans in moral or social debt to our service members—we need to listen to them. That takes time.
I just got off the phone today with a friend from divinity school who still is only now telling me things he’s never told his wife, never said in seminary. I hold those things in confidence. I still don’t share a lot of the stuff that might otherwise help me make a case for... whatever.
Creating space for this kind of truth-telling means civilians—especially Christian civilians—have to be prepared to face the full range of emotions that military service and combat entail.
The Paradox of a God Who Fights and Forgives
This helps us get into the paradox of a God who commanded Joshua and the Israelites on a military campaign that looked a lot like genocide—but who also died on a cross, and who promised Noah peace with an archer’s 🌈 bow pointed up at the sky.
Somehow, we’ve gotten it into our heads that God is never angry, that God is unchanging. We borrowed that from the Greeks. But just open the first few pages of Genesis and that belief crumbles—God says explicitly, “I was angered, and I destroyed the earth by flood in anger.”
On Sin, Emotions, and the Forgotten Role of Virtues
Part of my research is getting into the seven deadly sins—or rather, the vices. Talking about vices without virtues was new when it began. Augustine reminds us that sin is nothingness—like cold or darkness—merely the absence of a thing.
Evagrius Ponticus, writing in the late 200s, wrote about the eight evil thoughts—he was writing to monks about temptations. Around the same time, another Christian poet named Prudentius wrote about the virtues and vices battling each other. That imagery became popular in the medieval period, especially during the Crusades.
Somehow, though, we lost sight of the virtues. In trying to avoid being “bad,” we forget the goal is to be something—or someone—good.
The Misunderstood Emotion: Anger
Anger is one of those misunderstood emotions. It’s one of the “deadly sins,” right? But anger is just an emotion. God has emotions. The point of emotions isn’t to avoid or deny them—it’s to experience them. Anger and violence aren’t the same thing. Wrath and anger—we conflate them, but they’re not interchangeable.
This disallows Western Christians from expressing or even dealing with anger. And so, I’ve told friends before: as a veteran, the one emotion I’m not allowed to show is anger.
If I raise my voice, if I get animated—it’s not because I’m out of control. It’s because I’m passionate. If I show anger to you and get in your face and point a finger, that’s me being vulnerable. That’s how we interacted in the military—with friends and battle buddies—because you have to. You don’t get to pick your unit. You don’t get to pick your family. You deal with the beauty and the ugliness of the people you’re in communion with.
The Church's Fragility and Veterans' Pain
But the Western church doesn’t want that. It clutches its pearls if I say “fµ¢k.” Meanwhile, in the last 76 minutes, two of my friends—both trying to be Christian—have taken their lives. And some of my civilian friends can’t even hear an f-bomb.
One of the first things the church has to do is wrestle with the reality—and goodness—of anger, and be willing to receive it, especially from veterans. But really, from anyone. There are a lot of angry Americans, and instead of receiving and hearing them, we retreat into our echo chambers.
If someone says, “I’m angry because I live in a rural area and all the resources go to the cities,” well, yeah—I'd be angry too if I hit 13 potholes and my tire’s flat. Anger makes sense. But we need to listen and respond.
A Neighbor’s Funeral and the Courage to Face Pain
I now live in a community where our next-door neighbor lost her boyfriend to heroin. Their house had a Confederate flag on Google Maps, and it didn’t sell for a long time. We were invited to his funeral, but couldn’t make it.
Still, we have to be willing to face one another. We talk about dividing grief and multiplying joy—but we have to be ready to face some real difficult shit, and Christians often don’t like to. Veterans have to—or we bottle it up and keep it to ourselves. That becomes theologically and socially incestuous.
Making Space Means Making Room for Discomfort
To open up real space, Christians—especially well-intentioned civilians—have to be ready for some harsh words, hard questions, and self-indictment.
Veterans need to be heard. We’ve seen this need in movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. People have done some fµ¢ked up shit. And if you were part of that, or stayed silent, it's hard to hear—but necessary.
Veterans need to share. Many of us aren’t ready or willing, because when we do, we get shut down. Told to calm down. Asked if we’re okay. People threaten to call 911. And it’s not just dramatic—it happens in subtle, banal ways.
A Story of Misunderstanding
Here’s one example. My wife and I were in our van with the dogs in the back, and a car slammed on the brakes. I had to do the same. The dogs flew forward, and I pushed them back—I didn’t want them stepping on our kids.
I didn’t yell, but I was clearly angry. My wife said, “Logan, you scared me.” And I said—maybe not right away—but I said, “If we’d been in an accident, and you called 911, and you said, ‘My husband scared me, he’s a combat vet,’ I would’ve been treated differently.”
This is my wife—who’s lived through a lot of this with me. But even she didn’t understand in that moment that I was just solving a problem, the way we’re trained to. The dogs flew forward, the kids were vulnerable—I reacted. That’s it.
Veterans as an Underprivileged Class
This kind of misunderstanding happens in small, unintentional ways. But we’ve seen this with sex, gender, race. Now we need to see it with veterans. We have to start thinking about military service members and veterans as an underprivileged group.
Until we do, this divide—this anxiety, this alienation—between military and civilian will keep growing. We’ll stay in our boxes.
And for some of us, that isolation leads to the quiet hope to depart and be with Christ, instead of staying here and figuring it out together—as one body.
