Stephen
Terry, Director
The
War Behind All Wars
Commentary
for the April 6, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"The valiant lie plundered, they sleep
their last sleep; not one of the warriors can lift his hands. At your rebuke,
God of Jacob, both horse and chariot lie still." Psalm 76:5-6
Over fifty years ago, I was a
high school student during the Vietnam War. I was opposed to warfare and the senseless
deaths that resulted. It seemed those responsible for inciting conflicts never had
to pay the price. Instead, the youth of the nations at war were swept into
early graves, their futures truncated by the pride and arrogance of megalomaniacs
who insisted that everyone march lockstep to their drumbeat. Over 58,000 young
American men perished without purpose in that conflagration. Ostensibly, it was
to oppose the advance of communism through military intervention and spread
American democratic values to an oppressed people. Neither goal was achieved. The
goal of communist North Vietnam was to continue to inflict American casualties
until the pain of those deaths exceeded the willingness of America to continue
the fight. It took over a decade, but eventually that point was reached, and
America fled with their tails between their legs and left their South
Vietnamese allies to fend for themselves. It quickly became apparent that the
South Vietnamese were no more committed to defend democracy in Indochina than
the United States was. The communist forces of the North along with insurgents
in the South soon overran the defenses that stood between Hanoi and Saigon.
Despite their ideological differences, the United States and Vietnam are on friendly
terms today. Many American Vietnam War veterans have traveled to the country to
find the people friendly and welcoming despite all that has gone before.
During my senior year in high
school, many of my friends were being drafted to go fight in that war. Some
enlisted. My number came up in the draft and I had a choice to either be
drafted or enlist. Since some had challenged my antiwar position on the basis
that I had never been to war so I didn't know what I
was talking about, I went ahead and enlisted hoping to steer my destiny more
than I could if drafted while gaining the needed experience. Most of those
drafted were sent from basic training to infantry school to become riflemen. I
went instead to medical training to become a combat medic. As such, I saw the
horror of young men dying alone on a foreign battlefield. I will never forget an
athletic Texan who had both arms and legs blown off, leaving only a torso and
his head. As I stood by him in his pooled blood, he used his last bit of
strength to tell me with tears he would not see his wife again. Several had
wives and children back home and their last thoughts were of their families. It
was heart rending. Participation in war only solidified my opposition to the
unnecessary butchering of a generation, especially given how the war turned
out.
Despite all the lives lost,
Vietnam was only another point on a long timeline of conflicts. Even today millions
are being displaced and hundreds of thousands of lives are being lost in
conflicts raging in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, and dozens of other
hot spots around the globe. Many of these are ancient conflicts that have
festered as far back as the Bronze Age and perhaps even beyond that. We like to
paint these conflicts as politically driven. Depending on which side of the
conflict, it is to make the world safe for democracy, or to advance communism.
But warfare existed long before there was ever a communist or a democracy. Like
seasonal influenza epidemics that ebb and flow over the course of a year but
never leave us entirely free, warfare has also ebbed and flowed, never leaving,
but always remaining a voice of potential alarm in the back of our minds,
despite whatever peace may exist in the moment. Why do over eight billion
people on the face of the earth have to live like this? How did it all begin?
Is there no way to let go of the tiger's tail we are desperately trying to hold
on to?
The Bible reveals that this long
history of death and destruction goes back well before the Bronze Age. It began
in the most unlikely of places. It began in heaven. Heaven, that place of
beauty, light, truth, and love was founded upon the idea of free will. Only
someone who is free to love or not can choose to love. Some think obedience is
the key to paradise, but obedience does not require love. Robots can be
obedient without being loving. God is love.[i] He
desires that love to be requited. For that to happen, he needed creatures with
free will who could choose to love him as he loves
them. He created mankind in his image, giving humanity that same free will and
ability to choose to love.[ii] He
gave that free will to the angels in heaven, also. Eventually, one angel,
Lucifer, chose not to love God. He then began to subvert the loyalty of other
angels. It was not difficult. He used a tool that he invented, a tool no one
had encountered before - the lie.[iii]
With no experience with lies, the angels would have accepted what he told them
as truth. He painted God's character as unloving, unkind, authoritarian, and
demanding. He promised that if he were to rule, things would be different, and
the true glory of heaven would be recovered. Eventually a third of the angels
came over to Lucifer's side and open rebellion broke out.[iv]
War cannot exist without lies. This is why we know that warfare originated
here, for this is where the lie originated. They lost the war and Lucifer, aka
Satan, the devil, was cast down to the earth along with his angels. However, if
he could not prevail in heaven, he still had access to a planet with creatures
God had also created with free will. Like the angels, they also knew nothing of
lies, and through deceit he overthrew their dominion of earth[v] and
claimed the planet for himself.[vi]
With humanity cast out of their
Edenic capital, it did not take long for the fruits of choosing a departure
from the path of freely given love to become apparent. In the very next generation,
one son murdered another because he was challenged in asserting his will over
that of others. In following generations, some even began to brag about their
ability to bend others to their will through force, and evil fed by greed and
the power of the lie spread everywhere until almost no one willingly sought a
loving relationship with God. The Bible tells us the slate was wiped almost
clean in the Noahic Flood. All of humanity except Noah and his wife and their
three sons and their wives perished. All remaining life was preserved, shut in
a boat, riding out the deluge until the land reappeared. One might hope that
would be the end of the violence and all could return to Edenic harmony afterwards.
But there was another survivor on that ark that negated that hope. A lie cannot
be drowned. It continued to fester, producing the same rotten fruit. Noah's son
Ham displayed the same disrespect for his father that Lucifer had shown toward
God and Cain had shown toward Abel.[vii]
Noah's response to Ham's disrespect reveals that he also saw that the lie had
survived in the heart of his own son who betrayed him.
The power of the lie has only grown
over time. Along with it has grown greed, corruption, and even murder in the
furtherance of the lie. Jesus warned that the power of the lie would grow so
great that it would threaten to extinguish love from human hearts, but he also
promised deliverance for those who would keep on loving despite the lie.[viii]
When the entire world is invested in the lie, it can be hard to see the lie for
what it is. In an ersatz world, the lie seems to work better than the truth. It
seems the right thing to do to agree with everyone else that the lie is truth. When
that happens, truth becomes malleable and no longer able to stand in its own
defense. Even in Jesus' day, Pilate had cynically asked him, "What is truth?" Some have lamented that Jesus did not answer Pilate's
question, but he did, for truth stood before Pilate that day, and the Roman
could no longer see it through the cloud of lies enveloping him.
Today, as from the beginning, a
free choice remains. We can choose truth or the lie. We can choose to go along
with the rest of the world, following those who have created empires based on
the power of the lie, hoping to clutch our little piece of that pie for
ourselves. All we need to do is keep our eyes fixed on that carrot dangling
before our nose and by our example, keep the treadmill spinning that powers the
whole illusion. We will have plenty of company because part of the lie is that
there is always more we could have if we only keep chasing it. Alternatively,
we could choose to be who we really are, loving, compassionate people, created
with the intent to willingly carry the image of God's character. We can choose
to step off the treadmill of always wanting more and finally having enough,
loving, and sharing, or we can ride it to the end of our lives. Either way, one
day it will stop. Will we like the person we have become when it does?