Over Here Wazza said:
In WW1 most people did not want to kill others, and their are lots of stories of whole battles where the soldiers fired over each others heads.
It got me thinking – why do we go to war when for the greater majority of human beings the thought of killing another human being ourselves in reality is so abhorrent? In doing a bit of research I found the following article and thought it worth re-posting
Has warfare been handed down to us through millions of years of evolution? Is it part of who we are as a species? At the heart of this question is whether humans have a natural capacity to kill other humans. Some social scientists have concluded that evolution has in fact left us with this unfortunate ability.
Primatologist Richard Wrangham, a major proponent of this idea, developed the “Imbalance of Power Hypothesis” to explain how evolution could produce a propensity for warfare in humans. The idea is that our primate ancestors could have gained access to additional food and other resources by attacking and killing their neighbors. Of course, these deadly attacks would have only been worthwhile if the attackers could ensure their own safety. So, Dr. Wrangham reasons, our ancestors would have carried out deadly attacks only when they severely outnumbered their victims. The conclusion is that our ancestors who were psychologically predisposed to cooperatively pick off their neighbors would have had a distinct evolutionary advantage. Or, in Dr. Wrangham’s words, ”there has been selection for a male psyche that, in certain circumstances, seeks opportunities to carry out low-cost attacks on unsuspecting neighbors.” This trait would have been amplified and passed down through the generations until it was eventually inherited by modern humans, who presumably took this predisposition and ran with it, inventing more and more efficient ways to kill each other.
The “Imbalance of Power Hypothesis” is largely based on evidence of violence in the animal world, particularly observations of violent behavior among chimpanzees, our closest animal relatives. But other social scientists have instead studied modern humans in an attempt to discover whether warfare is rooted in evolution. And, contrary to the predictions of the “Imbalance of Power Hypothesis,” many of these scientists have concluded that humans have an innate aversion to killing others.
Evidence of a powerful resistance to killing has popped up in unexpected places. Many people assume that soldiers in a firefight instinctively respond to enemy fire by shooting back, and that soldiers in a kill-or-be-killed situation will choose to kill. But informal interviews conducted with thousands of American combat soldiers during World War II by army historian S.L.A. Marshall revealed that as many as 75% of soldiers never fired their weapons during combat. In recent years the rigor of Marshall’s research methods has been called into question, but his basic conclusion that the majority of soldiers will not return fire during combat if left to their own devices has been corroborated by evidence and accounts from other wars, including the American Civil War, World War I, and the Falklands War.
So why didn’t these soldiers use their weapons? Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a psychologist and professor of military science, looked at this evidence and concluded “that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.” In some ways this isn’t all that surprising. Very few people would seek out an opportunity to kill others. At the same time, you may find it hard to believe that it is sometimes impossible for soldiers to kill others even when their own lives are at risk.
And yet despite this apparent aversion to killing, we still manage to kill each other with alarming frequency. How can this be? For anthropologist Paul Roscoe the answer is that we’re simply too smart for our own good. Humans excel at overcoming our biological limitations using technological innovation: if your arms aren’t long enough to reach an apple in the upper branches of a tree, use a stick to knock it down. Can’t take the square root of large numbers in your head? Write a computer program to do it for you. Similarly, we can find ways to get around our natural aversion to killing if we decide that it’s in our best interest.
Throughout history and around the world people have come up with ways to overcome an aversion to killing, such as dehumanizing the victim, placing distance between the killer and the victim, and using drugs or loud music to induce a trance-like state in a killer. In fact, following publication of Marshall’s findings in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. military embarked on a campaign to more effectively prepare soldiers for combat by employing realistic training exercises. New recruits began to practice shooting at pop-up, human-shaped targets rather than the traditional, stationary bull’s-eyes. More and more elaborate and realistic combat simulation exercises and ’war games’ were implemented. The point of this new training was to make killing an automatic response under combat conditions. And it worked. Interviews with American soldiers during the Vietnam War revealed that somewhere between 80 and 100 percent of soldiers shot at enemies during firefights.
Although we’ve found ways to short-circuit an aversion to killing over the years, this aversion seems deeply rooted in our minds. But where did it come from? Is it an evolved trait inherited from our distant ancestors? Or is it something that we learn and absorb from our social surroundings? Or perhaps it has emerged from an inseparable combination of both biological and cultural evolution. Regardless, this aversion to killing exists, and it reassures us that warfare is not an inescapable part of human life, and gives us hope that one day we might stop fighting wars.
References:
ROSCOE, P. (2007). Intelligence, Coalitional Killing, and the Antecedents of War American Anthropologist, 109 (3), 485-495 DOI: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.3.485
Wrangham, Richard W. Evolution of Coalitionary Killing, in Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 42:1-30 (1999) [pdf]
Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. (1995)
Excerpt from “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows”, Melanie Joy
Unnatural Born Killers
There is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating humans’ seemingly natural aversion to killing. Much of the research in this area has been conducted by the military; analysts have found that soldiers tend to intentionally fire over the enemy’s head, or not to fire at all.
Studies of combat activity during the Napoleonic and Civil Wars revealed stirking statistics. Given the ability of the men, their proximity to the enemy, and the capacity of their weapons, the number of enemy soldiers hit should have been well over 50 percent, resulting in a killing rate of hundreds per minute. Instead, however, the hit rate was only one o two per minute. And a similar phenomenon occured during World War I: according to british Lieutenant George Roupell, the only way he could get his men to stop firing into the air was by drawing his sword, walking down the trench, “beating [them] on the backside and … telling them to fire low”.1 World War II fire rates were also remarkably low: historian and US Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall rerported that, during battle, the firing rate was a mere 15 to 20 percent; in other words, out of every hundred men engaged in a firefight, only fifteen to twenty actually used their weapons. And in Vietnam, for every enemy soldiers killed, more than fifty thousand bullets were fired.2
What these studies have taught the miltiary is that in order to get soldiers to shoot to kill, to actively participate in violence, the soldiers must be sufficiencly desensitized to the act of killing. In other words, they have to learn not to feel — and not to feel responsible — for their actions. They must be taught to override their own conscience. yet these studies also demonstrate that even in the face of immediate danger, in situations of extreme violence, most people are averse to killing. In other words, as Marshall concludes, “the vast majority of combatants throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the enemy, have found themselves to be ‘conscientious objectors’”.3
1: Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in war and Society. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996, 12.
2: Grossman, Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door. New York: Broadway Books, 2005.
3: Grossman, 15.
Not quite sure about all that especially relying on eighteenth and early nineteenth century musketry. Some battlefields were full of rifles packed and jammed with 5 rounds of shot. One also needs to remember that in the days before ranged weapons, there was no faking it; it was all hand to hand stuff.
While there was some amazing encounters in World War I especially on the western front, that was quickly stamped out.
It would be interesting to see any evidence on the Eastern Front in WWII which was particularly brutal. Maybe the reluctance to kill is cultural.
I don’t think there would have been many instances of deliberately not shooting at the enemy on the Eastern Front and the Pacific Battles as well as Vietnam. A lot of the jungle warfare you were fighting an enemy you couldn’t see, so soldiers just unloaded their weapons where they thought the enemy were.
One way of course to desensitize someone to killing is to kill in the name of God; kill the heathen, the other, do it for God. You can get people to slaughter whole countries with that eg Old Testament, Crusades.
Bones,
“It would be interesting to see any evidence on the Eastern Front in WWII which was particularly brutal.”
I’ve read an account of a German soldier who was given the task of executing a Red Army prisoner under the terms of the “Commissar Order”. He marched the prisoner into the forest, told him to run, and fired into the ground. He himself risked execution by letting the prisoner go.
Of course, as you would be aware, such acts were the exception rather than the rule. Apparently it was common for off-duty soldiers to volunteer their assistance executing prisoners, and for also for large crowds of soldiers to gather as spectators, many of them with camera in hand.
Then you have the tragic account of the US 504th Airborne division during Operation Husky, the invasion of Siciliy. Their flightpath led them over the Allied invasion fleet, bristling with flak guns while they were transported in slow C-47s and glider transports.
What was supposed to be a straightforward parachute drop became a nightmare when a machine gun opened up as the planes went over the invasion force. Every gun then opened up on their own transports. The C-47s dropped recognition flares to no avail. The transports were only a few hundred feet above and were impossble to miss. Generals Ridgway and Patton stood staring in horror: Ridgway in tears for the massacre of his fine division. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God” he whispered.
Some planes had over a thousand holes in them. Not content with shooting at the planes, the guns turned on the paras as they floated down, some on fire. Of 5000 troops of the 504th, 3000 were casulaties by their own side. For days the bodies of US paratroopers were washed up on the shores of Sicily.
To those on the ground it was like a ‘turkey shoot’.
Geoffrey Regan Blue on Blue: A History Of Friendly Fire pp150-156.
Sure, we are not arguing against the notion that huge numbers of people got killed in the war. Obviously they did, and other people killed them.
But there was a surprising amount of resistance to killing from the soldiers, especially in earlier wars like WW1. As technology progressed the military found ways of making it easier for people to kill.
Nowdays some soldiers and airmen can feel as if they are playing a particularly violent video game. They are pumped up with drugs and have loud heavy-metal music blaring in their ears from integrated stereo systems with headphones in their tanks or vehicles.
The video from wikileaks showing a particularly heartless and pointless killing of innocent bystanders shows exactly how people have been made into mindless killers.
The use of drones also makes killing safe and clinical, for the US at least.
Bones, I saw that story on TV last year. Terrible.
I think WWI was a particularly senseless, stupid war. I think most soldiers didn’t have the hatred of their opponents as evidenced in WWII. That could be seen at Gallipoli with Ataturk’s amazing compassionate quote. This quote won’t be found in Berlin or Paris or Stalingrad or Nanking or Singapore some of the scenes of invasions of WWII.
“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
That is amazing forgiveness for a foreign invader.
There wasn’t the ideology which was the undercurrent of WWII. There was also some sembleance of chivalry and honour with truces to evacuate the wounded. To think that the assassination of Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne would precipitate war with Serbia and then a whole stack of cards falling as country after country declared war on each other in support of the other was bizarre. It’s hard to think of what the point of it was. Most wars are a result of expansion, possession of resources, ideologies. World War I had none of those but a rivalry between Germany, Great Britain, France and Russia.
The royal families of all the protagonists (the Kaiser, the Tsar and King of Great Britain were all related!) should have been locked in a room and told not to come out till they sorted their crap out. Not destroy generations of young men.
I wonder how the crew of the Enola Gay felt as they turned back to base knowing that their act of releasing the atomic bomb would cause more deaths than any single event in the history of war. The only way to help them psychologically would be to have had multiple release stations, so no-one knew for sure that it was their hand that released the weapon.
Back to motives – jealousy, revenge, power – Cain had them all. The first premeditated act of killing. Of course, there was no LOAC, just God’s judgement, but while legal boundaries are supposed to exist in battle, you still will always get the Abu Graib’s. Legitimate targets and precision execution is what it’s all about today. How Bomber Harris slept at night I will never know, but he must have been convinced that the German people were the key to creating the conditions for a swift German capitulation.
Zeibart, Bomber Harris was a believer in the post-World War One military doctrine that the war would be won by area bombing. That was the great fear in Great Britain in the years after World War One. How could they stop the hordes of bombers that were going to destroy the cities in England? The solution: blow the other countries’ cities up.
How did he sleep at night? Probably the same as the crews who unleashed the firestorms on Dresden and their cities. They had a job to do and they did it. My school teacher was a rear gunner in Lancasters in WWII and he had no doubts that they were doing the right thing.
Harris’s belief in that doctrine cost Allied pilots many lives as well as the lives of many helpless civilians.
Harris certainly had his detractors at the highest ranks of the RAF. There was clearly a good measure of disquiet over carpet bombing as a tactic. Harris was adamant it would provide the breakthrough, but has history has borne him out as correct, do you think Bones?
No way, Zeibert. It was definitely a false doctrine. Didn’t really do much to undermine enemy morale. It may have destroyed some essential war industries but a lot of those were out of the cities proper from my understanding.
Vietnam has shown that superior air power and carpet bombing is no guarantee of victory. It’s the grunts on the ground who do that.
Yes ‘Butcher’ Harris had many detractors, not without reason.
I suspect that air power went out of vogue with the generals for that very reason because of Vietnam, until it made a spectacular return softening up the Republican Guard in GW1. The recent Libya campaign was all air power bar some dodgily supported SF activities on the ground.
“I think WWI was a particularly senseless, stupid war.”
And yet the casualty rates were incredible. Like most other people I have relatives who died somewhere in France. Not sure of where I read it, but some say that the church has never recovered from Britain’s experience in WW1. i.e., so many people simply lost faith.
I guess you’re aware of the Pals Brigades?
“I wonder how the crew of the Enola Gay felt”
A year or two ago I watched a Japanese TV show where they brought over one of the crew members of one of the planes (forget whether it was the one for Hiroshima or Nagasaki), It was painful to watch as it was a complete setup. They introduced him to a man who remembers watching the plane fly overhead, and who had lost family members. He was no doubt expecting some kind of apology from the US airman and thought there would be some kind of closure – feel good TV. They asked the American whether he had some words for him etc… One of those terrible TV moments. But the guy basically said that he was sorry that civilians had to suffer, but they started it – and he lost lots of friends leading up to it. So he didn’t regret what he did.
If you haven’t been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you’ll find that the people are incredibly friendly.
Just going back to the thrust of the article, the author is in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks that there is a basic AVERSION to killing that will eventually lead to the cessations of wars. He forgets that an army is merely the extension of a government’s will to achieve something. If they can’t get what they want by diplomacy, threats coercion or sabre-rattling, they send in the military to get what they want by force.
Obviously, it’s in each country’s interests to have a force in place to deter and prevent this from happening. The only way wars will stop is not because no-one has the capacity to fight, but because governments (despotic or otherwise) don’t resort to military action to achieve their strategic aims. A bit like Mission Gainsborough…
SM, my grandfather’s cousin, sailed halfway around the world, got off the ship and copped a bullet in his head on the first day of the Battle of Messines Ridge.
The loss of the Pals Brigades in the Battle of the Somme must have been heartbreaking for their communities. Bit like the five Sullivan brothers who died on the USS Juneau in 1942.
Zeibart, I’ve been thinking about that episode all afternoon as well as when he describes Haig’s attempts at an advance as no more than “another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin”.
btw Bones, did you watch the World at War series like I did back way back in the day.
On the subject of killing, it’s obvious that people don’t want to do it, but it’s scary how people get used to it. From the concentration camps to the Japanese 731 units etc.
The whole course of wars is really always in the hands of a very small number of people. Japan was on the Allies side in WW1 and treated their POWs very differently to WW2. (And the germans they captured were the ones who trained them in warfare a few years earlier).
If only more good people weren’t more ambitious. It always seems to be the villains who have the ambition, but they lead countries to ruin.
Bones, are you a history teacher?
Zeibart, that Blackadder series just amazes me.
SM, I think the guy from Enola Gay had a good point. Yes it was terrible but I don’t think Truman had a choice. Or his choice was drop the bomb or wait 3-6 months for a forced invasion on Southern Japan while the Soviets invaded the North.
Remember the Soviets only declared war on Japan on 8 August, 1945. And in a week defeated a million strong Japanese army. Taking the Home islands would have been no issue as they had also captured North Korea, southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the space of a week. They were closer than Okinawa and Iwo Jima and had the ability to set up bases at North Korea and Manchuria. Soviet intentions were clear. They wanted a piece of Japan as well. There were also communist sympathisers in Japan.
To see how close the Soviets were to invading the Home Islands see here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_of_Okhotsk_map.png
SM, I’m a teacher, but not a history teacher. I’m fascinated by military history though. That includes my family history.
SM, the World at War was mandatory viewing in my house when I was a child.
SM,
Did you know there was a man who survived the bomb in Hiroshima, and went as a refugee to Nagasaki?
He was in Nagasaki when it was bombed, and he survived that as well.
He is the only person known to have survived *both* atom bomb attacks.
”that Blackadder series just amazes me”. It is great. They just got better and better. For those with attention deficit disorder, these clips give an impression of WW2′s ’20 minuters’.
Sorry Bones, just refresh my memory. The Soviets were US allies in WW2 werent they?
So they had to bomb the crap out of the country so that their allies didnt get there first?
Wazza, i totally understand your point. But if you were to ask japanese today nobody would have wanted to be Russian for all these years. As it is now there is no love lost there. As a bit of trivia, Japanese POWs were kept in terrible condition for years after the war finished in Siberia etc. Some men never came home until the 50′s. So they have their stories too.
Wazza, the Soviets were Allies with the West. But the Western allies always had suspicions on Stalin’s design for European conquest. Towards the end of WWII there was much mistrust of Soviet intentions hence Chruchill’s comment that an Iron Curtain was being drawn over much of Europe. Any territory that the Soviets ‘liberated’ remained in Soviet control until the break up of the USSR.
Also keep in mind that intelligence had estmated that an Allied invasion of Kyushu would have claimed anywhere from 250 000 to 500 000 Allied casualties. As a comparison, the combined casualty figure for the campaign through the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa was 133 000, for the Normandy campaign 63 360 and for the Battle of the Bulge 59 000.
It’s thought that almost one in three Okinawan civilians died during that conflict.
Many suicided, and many killed their kids before killing themselves.
That would have happened all over Japan. Bones, if you ever go to Japan, Okinawa is one place that’s out of the way, but worth it.
Anyone who debates Hiroshima etc should look at what happened at Okinawa first.
btw, The leader of the Pearl Harbor raid who later became an evangelist is reported to have said that if japan didn’t surrender after the atomic bombs they would have certainly just kept fighting.
As it was even after the second bomb the war cabinet was divided. The emperor stepped in, and ordered them to accept the peace terms.
And ironically, for all the talk of emperor allegiance, some were going to arrest him so he couldn’t go ahead with the surrender – and it was a bombing raid that stopped them.
Just out of interest … how many of you have actually had military experience?
I have … nearly got deployed to Gulf War 1.
I do not believe that soldiers are turned into mindless automatons who continue to shoot to kill. However, the mentality drilled into soldiers is to look out for your mates, they will look out for you and you all become a family. In such circumstances, it is possible to kill to protect your brothers.
I know I could. That’s one of the reasons I left. I was a believer and realised I couldn’t continue doing what I was doing while trying to grow as a Christian.
Heres the thing: does God sanction a state to defend itself through military force, or even to have an expansionist foreign policy?
In short, Does God allow a state to have a military force?
Can individuals kill if it is for the state?
Can individuals fight to protect the church or the families in the face of oppression when it is for their faith in Jesus?
Terrible things are done in war. If you want to quote the American Civil War, I think you need to actually know what you are talking about. Check out the casualty statistics of the Battle of Antietam, The Battle of Gettysburg, the Battle of Shiloh.
Also consider Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg and the WIlderness campaign.
Much of the casualties were in hand-to-hand fighting. However, it became apparent that the bayonette charge had become obsolete.
AT fredericksburg, the union Army of the Potomac charged up a slope at a fixed position occupied by the Confederate Army of Northern Virgina. Very few, if any, Blue Uniformed troops made it to the low stone wall that the Confederates were shooting from.
No one in Europe learned the lessons from the ACW. They made the same mistakes in Flanders. However, massed tank brigades smashed the Germans and they were beaten on the Western front.
It’s our fault for believing the lie that the Armistice was unjust … the germans effectively surrendered unconditionally as their front line had disintegrated due to the mobility of the tank. The deal they got from defeating Russia was more punitive and damaging than the one they signed with the Allies.
Having said all that, the bayonette made a come back in iraq.
The brits had taken over a route usually patrolled by americans. Like the americans, they came under RPG fire. UNLIKE the americans, they did NOT run away and call in an air strike. They stopped the APC and deployed out the back. A firefight ensued.
The Jihadists kept firing. So did the Brits. Eventually they both ran out of ammunition. The sargent major ordered the men to fix bayonettes and they charged. They killed everyone.
So … while there is a reluctance to kill, we are all capable and indeed, the military trains men to work together as a unit, as a family. They build in reasons to protect one another.
Shalom
Great post Bull. The value of the study of history is debated by some, but I keep coming back to point that if you can be inspired by
the good, and learn from the bad, then knowledge of history is invaluable.
Kids should learn the good, the bad and the ugly, so they understand not only their own country, but the attitudes of people from other countries.
There is a woeful lack of general knowledge of history AND religions for that matter.
It’s worth asking if some wars could have been avoided entirely. Some battles within wars were unnecessary.
I believe in the right to self defense for a nation, just the same way I believe in having a police force, and not letting someone beat up my grandfather etc.
But as a Christian, we obviously cherish life and want to minimize any casualties. It’s obvious that things could have been done differently.
There are also some clumps of rock in some parts of the world that I wouldn’t bother dying for, and wouldn’t send my kids, or their friends to die for.
Well … I will answer my own questions.
I believe that God has sanctioned the use of force by STATES.
Jesus has declared that the church is NOT to defend itself through military force.
So it is possible to be a patriotic citizen and be in the armed forces. However, it would be wrong to use any kind of force to defned your church building, for example.
You can defend yourself and your family, unless they and you are being persecuted because of your faith.
Wanna debate that?
Anyhow, I recommend the following book(s):
Decisive Battles of the Western World. (may come in a few volumes)
by JFC Fuller. He was a major general in the British Army and teh ‘inventor’ of the tank. Eventually, he got the General Staff to agree to not drip feed the tanks to the front line but to build them up into a very large force. This mass tank attack was first used at the Battle of Cambrai. Subsequently, a mass formation of tanks was used on the western front, leading to the disintegration of the German Front … game over.
Fuller became a Fascist, as well as an associate of Alistair Crowley, the infamous satanist. He knew Hitler and indeed, the German General Staff developed Blitzkrieg from Fullers Tank Tactics and military theories.
Ultimately, he states that WAR is a continuation of the foreign policy goals of a nation state that cannot be attained by other means. He bacame a fascist as he believed that democracies were ultimately too weak on foreign policy in contrast to totalitarian states.
Fortunately, he was wrong on that. The relative weakness was more than counterbalanced be the economic strength of democratic capitalism.
==================================================
So, should Britain be prepared to fight for the Falklands again?
Yes.
However, we can’t do it without french help now. We would have to borrow their aircraft carrier for a start.
Argentina had an agreement with the UK to jointly exploit the mineral rights around the Falkland Islands. They unilaterally tore up the agreement. Everything they are doing is particularly agressive and oppressive.
Britain has the right of every state to use military force to defend the people of the Falklands and to defend its mineral resources.
===================================================
some mention was made of strategic bombing …
well for the last 75 years, command of the air has conferred an enormous advantage. The Battle for Normandy was a classic example. Destruction of roads and bridges prevented Nazi Armour from getting to the front to face the allied landing. Air power was also used against armoured concentrations.
Now, after Libya, we know that the Tank is now obsolete. smart bombs are so good, that all tanks and vehicles can be wiped out on the ground. Massed Tank battles are now a thing of the past.
Planes that fly very high and can carried large numbers of smart weapons now control the battlefield. You don’t need tanks to take out tanks. You don’t need heavy armour plating. You don’t need large caliber guns. YOu only need 50-cals for dealing with enemy combatants.
===================================================
yeah … I could talk all day about this.
Shalom
I was part of both Gulf campaigns and a few assorted arguments in between. I guess you could say that I have been complicit in supporting a military force whose job it is to ultimately take life, if proportional and necessary. Is that against my Christianity? I don’t believe it is. If I had to kill, it would be because me or those near me were about to be killed. I am part of a defence force, on a mission that my military and political leaders have deemed of benefit to my country and the region I am operation in. Any aggressive act towards me will be met appropriately. I am more useful to God alive than dead, so I can be employed in an armed force as a Christian acting on behalf of an elected government.
I can still operate in a humane and compassionate fashion, use minimum force, respect the regional society and environment, ask God to work through me to affect the local situation, trust in his protection towards me and so on.
Furthermore, war is bounded by internationally agreed legal boundaries with most countries being signatories, and war is simply the extension of government policy when other means have been exhausted. To take the ‘support for warriors’ even further, if you vote for any government that has an armed force at its disposal, you are voting for the possible use of military action some time in the future, so should Christians abstain as well? I don’t believe so.
We are called to support a legitimate, orderly, essentially non-aggressive national government (if that is what we enjoy), who may use their military to carry out self-defence or use it in the extension of its foreign policy, regional and global objectives. Would I disobey an illegal or inappropriate order that could lead to unnecessary loss of life? You bet. So the military are far from being mindless automaton killing machines, as you said earlier Bull.
Having said all that, I can understand those who hold an opposite view that being part of an organisation that could take life (police, defence force, intelligence services, even sections of border patrols etc) is mutually exclusive to being a Christian. Each has to weigh their conscience before God I suppose.
for me, it was a case of not wanting to wear two faces actually.
As I have already said, it perfectly acceptable for a Christian to be in the military. However, while we can defend earthly kingdoms or states with military force, we cannot use military force to defend or extend the Kingdom of God.
Jesus has expressly forbidden that. So ‘Kingdom Now’ junkies can go to hell, or repent of their wicked ways and put their trust in the real, almighty, risen Lord Jesus.
Shalom
Zeibart, no problem with what you said at all. And I don’t think military people get paid enough.
Bones, you amaze me.
I agree Bull. Hence the Crusade were anathema.
But, do you think God supports one warring nation over another? Under the direction of King, government and church leaders, Britain prayed consistently ahead of the RAF’s finest hour in September 1940, and those prayers were answered.
What about the Angel of Mons? Strange how battle and religion intersect often. That reminds me of the Nazi obsession with religious artifacts (Raiders of the Lost Ark was not far off the mark, I suspect [excuse the eschatological and currency pun]), and Hitler met with the Mufti of Jerusalem, dabbled in Kabbala and had various new age leanings.
God, despite being invoked by the German high command, was never going to flourish their cause.
Zeibart, I guess it comes down to faith. Was the story of the Angel of Mons a unique experience that showed that God was on the Allies’ side – or was it a story that grew up out of the Allies’ need for the belief that God was on their side?
The first conscript of any side in a war is God. I dont think its very strange that religion and battle are often mixed. If you are asking someone to possibly sacrifice their life, one way that they can be convinced to do it is to say that they are on the side of the Creator (and the other is on the Devil’s side)
On a related matter, do you know why the US Pentagon building was built in that shape? There are two major theories:
1. It contains a pentagram from which the US commanders summoned a demon to help them win WW2
2. It was designed in that shape to contain larger numbers of offices with window views, which the US commanders requested as a sign of their status.
I don’t know which is the true explanation but they both seem pretty scary to me.
God, despite being invoked by the German high command, was never going to flourish their cause.
How do you relate that to the Muslim Conquests of Genghis Khan, the Roman Empire, Conquests of Alexander the Great, even Vietnam etc?
1. It contains a pentagram from which the US commanders summoned a demon to help them win WW2
Wazza, have you been reading some of Ian Williams’s stuff?
”How do you relate that to the Muslim Conquests of Genghis Khan, the Roman Empire, Conquests of Alexander the Great, even Vietnam etc?”
Dunno. Did they call on YHWH to assist? The Nazis believed their concept of God was on their side, as did the others. Misplaced faith I guess.
“How do you relate that to the Muslim Conquests of Genghis Khan, the Roman Empire, Conquests of Alexander the Great, even Vietnam etc?”
Good question. But, this is an oversimplification, but I really believe that in the case of WW2, Germany and Japan really were evil empires. If they did win it would have been a dark world. It was a clear case of democracy and light versus barbarism.
I know that sounds like an old John Wayne version of things, but to me it was clear cut.
Japanese were liberated by being defeated as strange as that sounds.
It was a clear case of democracy and light versus barbarism.
Stalin would have been happy to be part of the forces of light. Definitely a case of my enemys enemy is my friend.
Dunno. Did they call on YHWH to assist? The Nazis believed their concept of God was on their side, as did the others. Misplaced faith I guess.
The Muslims kicked a lot of Christian butt for centuries. Constantinople, the pinnacle of the Eastern Empire and which contained the largest churches in the East, was sacked and became Istanbul. The legacy still continues today.
Allah was more powerful for a long time.
Sort of rules out that God is on any side.
In the OT, Israel didn’t always win their battles.
In the OT, Israel lost battles becuase of their lack of faith and going after other Gods.
However, it is also true that God performed miracles to help protect Jerusalem.
e.g. the invasion of Sennacherib and the Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem.
from the Wiki “The Old Testament states that during the night, an angel of Yahweh brought death to 185,000 Assyrians troops. When Sennacherib saw the destruction wreaked on his army, he withdrew to Nineveh. Jerusalem was spared destruction.”
In the wiki you can see that Sennacherib left Jerusalem intact after going hell for leather to destroy the Jewish state by smashing many cities. Why did he leave Jerusalem alone?
The only explanation that makes sense is that much of his army got very ill and died, meaning that the defenders could sally forth and have a good chance of defeating him.
His withdrawal showed that Yahweh was superior … but Hezakiah smashed the idols and restored the primacy of Yahweh in Judah.
Meanwhile, israel was no more … they had been unfaithful and ignored all the warnings.
I need to remind us all that only Israel was a theocracy. All other states are not. We can defend the state we belong to, but not the church.
Shalom
Just on the original topic, I was reading about this incident the other day.
Amazing, Bones.
So Bull, you don’t think God works the same way anymore?
I won’t ask about modern Israel, cos that will open a whole other can of worms.