Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
War. This is a “big and sprawling word that brings a lot of human suffering into the conversation.” That’s how journalist Sebastian Junger describes it in his book War (2010).
Junger spent months embedded with US forces in Afghanistan. He joined Battle Company in what is considered the most dangerous outpost in the country. An excellent writer (he wrote The Perfect Storm), he tries to understand what makes these soldiers do what they do.
He’s awed by the firepower these soldiers have at their disposal. He tells of the shoulder-fired Javelin rocket that can be steered through the window of a car three kilometres away. “Each Javelin costs $US80,000, and the idea that it’s fired by a guy who doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous. . . .”
He’s surprised to discover soldiers hooked on combat. It comes from the adrenalin rush of battle. They feel most alive when fighting the enemy, life on the line. “Combat is the smaller game [in war] that young men fall in love with.”
But it’s more than combat adrenalin. There’s what Junger calls the “profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life.”
He asks Cortez, a soldier, about risking his life for others in his platoon.
“‘I’d actually throw myself on the hand grenade for them,’ he said. I asked him why.
“‘Because I actually love my brothers,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s a brotherhood. Being able to save their life so they can live, I think is rewarding. Any of them would do it for me.’”
Love. That’s not a word you often find in war, but it certainly fits being willing to lose your life to save someone else.
And it’s also a God thing. Although God went the second mile when Jesus died for His enemies (see Romans 5:6-8).
Tags: Bruce Manners