With the cross of Jesus
going on before!
Christ, the royal Master,
leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
see his banner go!
Yesterday and today have been the first days of 2023 in Seattle during which we could believe that winter would end and spring was springing. The temperature was in the low 60s today, and the sun was beaming down on us weary mortals. And there I was, sleeves rolled back with a smile on my face, walking some seven miles, including a three mile loop around Green Lake. The park was full of walkers of all ages, everyone delighted with the sunshine.
My mind wanders as I walk, and it wandered today through disturbing channels. I recalled pictures of pre-war Ukraine, full of happy people very like ourselves, enjoying themselves in their own parks. And then I thought of Putin. What is wrong with that man?
I try to put myself into Putin's mind. I'm the president of a vast nation, larger geographically than any other nation in the world, rich in natural resources, with an educated population. It's a country with a disturbing past of authoritarian, even tyrannical rule, it is true, a past which has sapped the initiative of its people even today. But it's a country with every hope of rapid development economically and socially, with rapid improvement of the daily life of its citizens.
Look at China, a nation with an equally troubled history of authoritarian rule, but a nation that has made gigantic strides in economic improvement of its people.
But Putin doesn't seem interested in the welfare of his people, except insofar as it may lead to improved military strength. His similarity with Donald Trump in this respect is interesting. Neither seems interested in building a happy, healthy nation; they are interested only in the uses of power. In Trump's case, for the greater glory of himself. In Putin's case, for the greater glory of Mother Russia.
Putin shows every sign of continuing his war against Ukraine, despite the enormous economic harm the war has already caused his own people, not to mention the disaster he has imposed on his neighboring Ukrainians.
I could develop these thoughts much further in this blog, but that's not where my thoughts went while out walking. I began thinking how in all of us there is some degree of desire to seek the Greater Glory of an entity, any entity, of which we're a part, even where that Greater Glory adds absolutely nothing to our material welfare. We sit in front of our TVs for hours on end, watching the college basketball championships, or the World Series. Or the Olympic Games. I read in a novel recently that thousands of men fall into despair in Alabama whenever the Alabama football team loses its annual game with its arch-rival Auburn.
It's totally irrational, but seemingly wired into our brains, into our personality structures.
Then I thought of Christianity, with its founding command that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, and that "our neighbor" is not limited by nation or ethnic group. The story of the Good Samaritan illustrates that the duty of kindness exists even between citizens of intensely rival nations, the kind of hostility that existed between the people of Samaria and the people of Judea and Galilee in biblical times, a rivalry that may well have been historically greater than that today between Russia and Ukraine.
Surely, the force of Christianity forcefully opposes the glorification of military conquest at the expense of one's own people, not to mention the expense to the people who are attacked. And yet, history shows that Christian fervor has been used repeatedly by secular leaders to support military conquest.
Then, the words of a favorite hymn, taught to millions of Sunday School students, and sung in thousands of churches, came to mind: Onward Christian Soldiers. A stirring hymn, sung to a martial-sounding tune written for it by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) in the late nineteenth century. The lyrics can be read as urging spiritual fervor merely by analogy with military warfare, as has been argued. But as a child I felt a satisfying upsurge of self-righteousness as we sang in loud treble voices of "marching as to war." Whether the war was against Satan, or against the unbelieving heathens, or against our irritating neighbors, or against the enemies of America was all mixed up in my mind. As a jingle much less beautiful than Sullivan's hymn put it:
Not a lot of room for ambiguity there, is there? Nor in Onward Christian Soldiers, to my young mind and heart.. I was just happy that I was on the "right side." I understand that both the Episcopal and Methodist churches tried to remove Onward Christian Soldiers from their hymnals in the 1980s, because of its militaristic language. Popular outrage forced its restoration, until 1990 when it was finally dropped. The Presbyterian church omitted it from its hymnals in 2013. Some churches have continued using the music, with somewhat less militaristic lyrics.
Fighting for a cause is worthwhile. But even Christianity, however perfect in theory, faces frequent imperfections when fallible men with our oddly-wired brains apply it to the real world. The answer is not to avoid such application, but to be always aware and wary of unexpected and undesirable consequences that may result when the application is attempted.
The medieval Crusades to regain control of the Holy Land were seen as a righteous and worthy cause in their time. Looking back, we question not only the cost of achieving that goal by military means, but even the propriety of the goal itself.
Be cautious when going "forward into battle." Make sure your feet are marching into springtime, and not back into winter.
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