Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, December 9, 2008


For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

- John Milton, poet, born on this date, 1608


I have been reading Milton. He is, I have decided, an utter bore. No wonder I couldn’t relate to him when I was a young man in college! He is utterly what I am NOT when it comes to religion, Christianity, “morality”. He is a moralist, stuck in his own culture, unable to get beyond that puckered-up prudishness of his time. A shame, really. Such intellect and skill wasted, simply because one was born into “one’s Time”. But ….. that is the problem with evangelicalism and so-called pentecostalistists today, as well as with Christian denominations which have abandoned the Gospel in favour of preserving their temporal power (you know who they are!): they have chosen to worship culturally-prejudiced versions of the Bible in place of the Living God of Justice and Peace.

Milton is however, I believe, quite “bang on” about War. TGIK (I will use this acronym from now on for “The God I Know”) does not believe that War solves anything. Period. It breeds only inhumanity. Sin. War puts me in a real bind. I would be in a real “pickle” as to what to do in the face of a new “Hitler”. And of course I don’t want any human being to suffer, be maimed, etc. But people in America today chose this path, since we have a volunteer military. I watch the ads on TV; young people are despicably seduced into the military with false promises of an honourable life, of heroism, of economic assistance ….. all of which is, like most advertising, deceitful and misleading. And morally wrong.

Endless war can only breed hate and destruction and chaos and a delusional sense of what it means to be a moral person. I am appalled at the number of Americans (men especially) who have been corrupted by some perverted sense of Christianity which implies that being a soldier is a worthy thing. It is not. I see those bumper stickers on cars and I just cringe.

I call upon all Christian teachers and leaders to denounce War for what it is: a failure of Love, a failure of faithfulness to God. Already I see Obama being seduced from his campaign path. Power corrupts.

Endless War breeds only the infantilisation of Humanity. Pray for a end to the glorification of War and of Militarism and of Warriors.
Brian+