Remembering Amidst Conflict

What do you think as you hear or watch the news this week? The world is at war.  The suffering of people whose names you and I may never know, fills TV, computer, phone screens.  In central London, at least there is a choice to look away.

The pictures of completely devastated cities and villages in the small strip of land that is Gaza, with all the dust and blood, blurred out bodies and relatives screaming in grief. The (not so frequently shown) pictures of Sudan’s capital Khartoum or the El Gezeira region, where at least 65 villages have been raided by the RSF (the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as part of the Janjaweed coalition) and women and girls raped systematically as part of the attack. The terror of Ukrainian inhabitants of Kharkiv, who, according to eye witnesses, are being ‘hunted’ by drones, with the bodies of two more young boys, who were visiting their grandmother, being pulled from the rubble of one block of flats this week.

And the war not only of bombs and drones but the war of words, as bots are triggered by reports on the internet, prompting overwhelmingly biased interpretations of an incident that independent journalists have to find their way through to get the truth out.

The suffering of an individual in war is immeasurable and the same the world over. Pain and grief are not a zero sum game: it’s just not true that if one suffers more, it somehow reduces the suffering of the other side.

The ‘myth of redemptive violence’ is what fuels war, and it finds its seed in every human heart, as we give in, many times a day, to the competitive instinct to exercise power over another, in the hope that this violence will make us safe, help us feel better than we do.

The myth of redemptive violence is the belief that, as Walter Wink puts it in his book that has just been the subject of a book group at St James’s (‘The Powers that Be: a theology for a new millennium’)   “the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right.”

And so what are our prayers in this week of Remembrance Sunday, and Armistice Day?  At 11am on both Sunday 10^th and Monday 11^th November this coming week, we will fall silent here in the centre of our noisy city.  We will pray for all who suffer in war.  But the centre of our commemorations is silence, perhaps because in the end it is hard to know what to say when words are so inadequate.

But surely we must try to pray?  And perhaps questions are more honest than certainties.  The way that groups of people and nations are organised, resistance and defence using some sort of violence,  is baked into most cultures, not all but most.  Nations fund armies and navies and now airforces and yes, drones.  You and I as citizens pay collectively in taxes to keep these forces active and effective.  But further to this instinct to resist or defend, (found in the picture of the ‘armour of God’ in the New Testament letter to the Ephesians), is attack the best form of defence?  For many, yes; it’s less risky, makes protection and safety the top priority in taking pre-emptive action.

Noble strands of Christian reflection run in parallel here: Christian pacifism, signalled by the wearing of a white poppy for instance instead of red, by conscientious objection to conscription, serving as ambulance drivers or on a home front.  Or being willing to be imprisoned for this belief.  On the other hand, army chaplains deployed with soldiers fighting wars, Christian generals and politicians fighting the wars themselves, not necessarily believing, as Wink identifies, that ‘might is right’, but certainly believing, and being willing to die for that belief, that to serve is sometimes to fight.  And accepting that there is such a thing as a ‘just war’.

As a society, we constantly debate these things, and rightly so.  Debates about what constitutes a just war, resistance, redemption, or pacifism according to Scripture, will continue and Christians, and churches should of course be part of this public conversation.

Words can sometimes feel cheap simply to pray for peace, without asking ourselves really hard questions about our own experience, our own faith and how we want to live.  Would I vote for a political party that would abolish the armed services?  What do I believe about nuclear weapons?  If I were tasked with decision making – to shoot to kill, for example, an individual with a bomb on the London underground, what would I decide?  In defence of others or myself, would I throw the first punch to keep me or others safe?

The wars fought over the 20^th and 21^st centuries have changed in character. No longer is there  a clear distinction between combatant and non-combatant.  There is no ‘home front’ as there was in the 1940s in Europe in the sense that with the use of aerial weapons, drones and comprehensive tactics, everywhere, including a flat in Homs, a kibbutz in Be-eri, a church in Khan Younis, a house in Kyiv: everywhere is on the front line.  And so as citizens we become soldiers as well as voters and people of faith: we have decisions to make regarding what we say, how we speak, most especially how we speak to God.

This remembrance weekend, we will fall silent. Many will be doing so in remembrance and honour for those who have died to protect the stability and freedom that enables others to live.  We also say that we are profoundly sorry, lamenting the violence that is so easily awakened in every human heart.  And of course, we pray, fervently, without ceasing, for peace makers and peace keepers, knowing that this peace-making and peace-keeping begins with us.

The inspirational young writer Etty Hillesum, who was killed in Auschwitz aged 29 in 1943 wrote in her diary.

“All disaster stems from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbour. Because I and my neighbour and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war with all its excrescences by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live. And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called wickedness, that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.”

Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943; and Letters from Westerbork

Walter Wink, The Powers that Be: a theology for a new millennium.