“War is hell,” observed Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. And Steven Spielberg dips us right into its fiery midst in his 1998 Summer release.
The opening and closing scenes in particular are riveting. Says Jamie Portman of Southam Newspapers (Vancouver Sun, July 24, 1998, F1 - 4): "In Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg wanted to show the true atrocity of war, so he created one of the most brutal and graphic battle scenes ever filmed." For his part, Spielberg is quoted saying: "I've seen all the World War II movies, and with few exceptions I've never felt that they were anything more than propaganda tools." This movie puts the viewer right into the action. Adds Spielberg: "I'm asking a lot of an audience - I'm asking them to participate in the real experience of those soldiers who had to do these jobs." Tom Hanks, who plays the central character, Captain John Miller, upon viewing the movie alone in the screening room, commented: "I have never cried harder at the end of a motion picture, I was completely undone." (My dad fought in the last War. He never breathed a word of his experience to us kids. He did all his crying in private too.) The CBC movie reviewer, Rick Staehling, commented that because the movie is so incredibly graphic, it is ipso facto anti-war. The audience with which my sons and I viewed the movie laughed only once during the nearly three hours of running time, and was palpably subdued upon exiting the theatre.
War is indeed hell. Yet, in the long history of the Christian Church, apart from the earliest era, every war engaged in throughout Christendom has been supported by the Church on both sides of the conflict. How in the name of Jesus can this be?
What, for starters, of Christ's express words?: "Love your enemies (Matt. 5, Luke 6)." Further, how can Christians do an end run around Jesus' explicit teaching by reverting to Old Testament endorsement of war when Jesus flatly said?: "So in everything [except war?], do to others [except your enemies? - see Matt. 5:43ff] what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets (Matt 7:12)."; and "...'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor [except your enemies?] as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt 22:37-40)."
Or how can Christians ignore other New Testament voices such as the Apostle Paul's?: "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another [except your enemies?], for he who loves his fellowman [except his enemies?] has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor [except your enemies?] as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor [except your enemies?]. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:8-10)." Or what of James' pithy statement?: "If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, 'Love your neighbor [except your enemies?] as yourself,' you are doing right (James 2:8)." And John's witness?: "We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother [except his non-Christian enemies?], he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother [except his enemies?], whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother [except his enemies?] (I Jn 4:19-21)." What kind of exegetical gymnastics are utilized to dodge such overwhelming and consistent New Testament testimony?
Is it possible that all these witnesses, Jesus included, did not read their Old Testaments? Or is it likelier that many Christians have not read their New Testaments? Are John 1 and Hebrews 1 not really in the Bible, both of which point to the primacy of Jesus as the final revelation of God's will?: "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe (Heb 1:1-2)."
Like Timothy, I was raised on Scripture. From a child I could recite volumes of it, including the all-time favourite verse of evangelicalism, John 3:16 - in my case in the majestic King James Version: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
I discovered only later to my shock that apparently John 3:16 has a footnote inserted into many Christians' Bibles. It is never quoted out loud, however. But it is obviously no less binding dogma. After "world", "whosoever", and "perish" the footnote reads: "Except our enemies!". They must in fact yield or indeed "perish"! Yet, I always was told it was the "Liberals", masters of the exception clause, who played fast and loose with Scripture...
Watching Spielberg's film, with the overwhelming random slaughter and maiming, it occurred to me again that war is the most complete inversion of evangelism imaginable! Not good seed, but bullets and bombs are scattered with abandon, thereby utterly inverting the evangelistic mandate. One means "life abundant", the other delivers "death indiscriminate". In excess of 110 millions have been annihilated in largely Church-endorsed wars this century alone. I doubt if all evangelists worldwide for the entire 20th century could add up their collective catch to match that harvest of death. Yet, many evangelists in their work of "saving souls" have supported the unspeakable carnage. Is this not profoundly disturbing?! What could be more blatantly anti-Christian? Why has no major evangelistic voice spoken out? On the contrary, many evangelists, and all military chaplains, have preached to the troops at war in hopes to see them "made right with God" since tomorrow they might die. But when have those same evangelists and chaplains heeded Jesus by preaching the Gospel, lest tomorrow they might kill? How can their converts possibly be right with God when they destroy the neighbour (I John 4)? Or can "love of brother" somehow be twisted to mandate "slaughter of enemies"? And is such twisting the work of God or the work of the evil one ("Did God really say... (Gen. 3:1ff?"))? Do evangelists and chaplains know better than Jesus? Did not Jesus always call for death of self, never death of the other? Are there not two "greatest commandments", not just one? Is not love of God only half the Gospel?
What of the Apostle Paul's declaration?: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds (2 Cor 10:3-4)." Is war not the ultimate worldliness, a "total depravity", according to the New Testament? How can something so patently anti-Christian be so blessed by so many Christians throughout so many centuries? What kind of awesome brainwashing, what potent spell, is at work here? Dare we call it, simply, sin?
Is it possible that on this issue we have for centuries tended to be equally blind as another group of believers to whom Jesus said?: "Why is my language not clear to you? [How could Jesus' language about "love of enemies" be any clearer?] Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me (John 8:43-45)!"
Now the truth that sets us free (John 8:32) is obedience to God's will summed up in the two greatest commandments (Matt. 22; Mark 12; I John): love of God and love of neighbour. As believers, failure to love in this way is to invite Jesus' warning: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock (Matt 7:21-24)."
Can it be, that after all, many proclaimed followers of Jesus are in fact not? Is it possible that many Christians who claim "...not I, but Christ... (Gal. 2:20, KJV)" on the contrary embrace religious nepotism, of which patriotism is its most hideous expression? For all our protestations, despite our reputed allegiance to what "The Bible says!", do we in the end deny it like the "Liberals"? Have many Christians been far closer to the spirit of Pharisaism, one of murderous prevarication, than we ever dare to admit (John 8)? Does this spirit not directly contradict the "weightier matters of the law": love of God and neighbour (Matt. 23:23, echoing Micah 6:8)? Was Gandhi right?: "The only people on earth who do not see Christ and His teachings as nonviolent are Christians." Is it thinkable that we Bible-believing Christians stand in danger one day of hearing Jesus' words: "...'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41).' ", for "... 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these [except our enemies?], you did not do for me (Matt 25:45).' " Is that not hell: the failure to love (Jesus in) the neighbour and the enemy (Matt. 5 - 7, Luke 6, I John 4)?
War is indeed hell. In the movie, Captain John Miller comments: "For every man I kill, the further I get from home." Of course! A Nazi defendant at the post-War Nuremberg Trials said: "You have defeated us Nazis. But the spirit of Nazism has arisen like a Phoenix amongst you." Precisely! We always become what we hate. When the U.S. dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and obliterated instantaneously 100,000 lives, then three days later thousands more were slaughtered in Nagasaki (in sheer death-dealing magnitude utterly dwarfing this decade's Oklahoma City bombing), President Harry Truman declared: "That was the greatest event in human history!" This from a lay Baptist preacher and Sunday School teacher... Astounding! What, in God's name, could be a more blatant denial of the Resurrection than those bombs and that statement?! The Resurrection alone is the greatest event in human history! And it means everything war does not: life abundant and everlasting. What business did that Bible-believing Christian have in so utterly contradicting the very centrepiece of Christian faith? And did not the majority of Bible-believing Christians at the time cheer Truman on? Do not the vast majority of Bible-believing Christians still applaud the continued development of post-War weaponry and its deployment, which, in 1996 dollars in the U.S. alone, has amounted to 5.5 trillion dollars and countless lives for whom Christ died snuffed out? Where are the leading Christian voices opposing this anti-Christ obscenity? Why, in Jesus' name, are they silent? Why?! "In God we trust"? Balderdash!
"Home" (Captain Miller) ultimately is where love is. Where God is. Its opposite is hell. So hell is also war! For hell is in the end the obstinate refusal to love God and neighbour; the endless attempt at doing end runs around the two greatest commandments (Matt 25). The biblical witness is: the only test case for love of God is love of neighbour (I John 4). And the test case for love of neighbour is love of enemies (Matt. 5 - 7, Luke 6). Failure to love the enemy is failure to love God is hell.
Spielberg gets it right: war is hell, and (in this case) hell is war. The question begs asking: What business have Christians ever had propagating hell?
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