Faith in the Military? |
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My roomate Jake made me aware of this article published on the website of his alma matter, Olivet Nazarene University. The title of the article is “Faith in the Military,” which is meant to mean “A Christian’s faith in the midst of the military,” but I found it to be an ironic double-entendre about having faith in the military itself.
Steve Foster ’89 often works 18-hour days. He sleeps in common barracks, hundreds of miles away from his wife and two young children. Soon, he will ship out to Iraq as a chaplain, a dramatic change from the life he left behind, living in the suburbs of St. Louis and pastoring a middle-class church. Like other Olivet alumni serving in the military, Foster sees his current position as one of ministry.“My service to country is a direct result of service to Christ,” he says in the quiet, strong tone of an enlisted man. “The Heavenly Father has broken my heart repeatedly for soldiers and their families. That brokenness is why I serve both God and country.”
Navigating Foster’s comments is an exercise requiring nuance. It is entirely possible to minister to those in the military and be called by God to do so. The military is indeed a place of many broken hearts and families and Jesus Christ must be in the midst of that suffering. We would do well to meet Him and those hurting soliders there. That being said, I am left wondering what Foster means by “service to country.” If by this he means that he is Christ’s ambassador humbling serving those who are in the military by bringing them the gospel, then that is the kind of service “our country” needs. If however he means (and I’m afraid this is the case) that by being a chaplain he is somehow serving the goals of “our country” then I must protest!
Serving the goals of the military is nothing short of pursing an anti-gospel, of giving aid to the enemy of the Kingdom of God. The military does not have a chaplain program so that soliders may grow in discipleship. It exists instead so they might learn to kill more efficently without the crushing weight of the guilt which comes from taking the life of one of God’s beloved children. Chaplains are meant by the military to be “supernatural morale boosters,” whose job it is to soothe the fractured psyche of children of God who have been (re)created as agents of destruction ready to obey the State.
The article continues…
Dr. Stan Tuttle, an Olivet professor of education, had a similar motivation when he gave up 11 weeks of his summer to train soldiers in Kuwait. Unlike Foster, Tuttle’s “official” job wasn’t to minister. But living side by side with the soldiers, his faith often came into play.What stood out to Tuttle was the selflessness of the men and women who faced imminent danger on a daily basis. “Instead of asking for prayers for themselves or their units, they’d ask for prayers for family members and neighbors. It was the attitude of service — the attitude of other — that was very present in these men and women who were soon to be in harm’s way.”
I find it interesting that there is no mention of these soliders being encouraged to pray for the people they are preparing to kill (although this does happen more often that we might think, it seems rarely to be at the encouragement of chaplains, but rather springs naturally from soliders who recognize the humanity of their enemies). I am not saying Christians cannot serve God in the midst of the military but it seems to me that the options are very very few.
A medic embodies the life and spirit of Christ in that regardless of what “side” someone is on the battlefield medic exisits within the battle simply to rescue, to heal to bring life where there is only death. This job strikes me as one of the most Christlike professions one could pursue.
The chaplain is also a role the Christian can take in the military, bringing counsel and gospel into the midst of violence and destruction and the systematic conversion of children of God into objects trained to kill. The chaplain can bring the gospel, and by this I mean the FULL gospel, not simply a private one that never conflitcs with the solider’s job.
Unfortuneately I think that the Christian serving during wartime as a Chaplain will find they are quickly dismissed if they preach a full gospel. The chaplain who edits the gospel so that children of God may find a smooth fit between discipleship and killing other children of God will probably be very “sucessful” and left alone by the military as they are fulfilling their duty to the State.
[UPDATE: Through our discussion the above paragraph has come into light as pretty much false. Chaplains are aparently very hard to get rid of and preaching peace and nonviolence would not be enough to get you fired.]
The rest of the article continues much as the first, being a Christian in the military mostly means that God helps you get through Ranger training as well as remembering to do the “right thing,” but from the tone of the article it seems that refusing to kill other children of God is not one of those decisions we Christians have to worry about, because we have faith in the military.
