Normally I keep my mouth shut and fingers off the keyboard when it comes to military holidays. Vaughn Thompson’s post, though, got me thinking.
I had never quite looked at Memorial Day as a competitor for the Gospel, but what he writes makes sense. I know you can take different views of anything, that’s why I call my blog “A Different Perspective,” but I must agree that looking to the military as the providers of our liberty and freedom is at best forgetting the One who truly provides liberty and freedom, and at worst, putting your faith in the military for security and well-being.
Being a pacifist and a Christian isn’t easy. A follower of Jesus… the One who said, “Love your enemies” (I’m pretty sure he meant don’t kill them) and “Turn the other cheek”… faces harsh treatment in much of the Church. At the same time, being a pacifist in a country whose safety is pretty much secure (despite fear-control going on in our current government) diminishes the voice of pacifism. Many just write you off and say the only reason you can be a pacifist is because of the military.
Tell that to the early church martyrs. Or the anabaptists who were given one final baptism by reformers and catholics alike… they were tied to heavy stones and dropped in large bodies of water. Somehow they still found a way to be pacifists, and the results have been an eventual triumph for their beliefs. The Roman Empire became a Christian Empire, and today evangelicals look much more like the anabaptists of the reformation than the lutherans or calvinists.
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