Why we fight

War has a way of making a person numb inside; emotionally apathetic. After a few years on the front-lines, even the really important issues in life don’t seem so important anymore. Even the reasons you signed up for the war in the first place! You can just go on shooting because, well, that’s all you have been doing for so

long. It’s all you know.

This “light-bulb moment” came after over-doing it a bit with time spent in a group of female company. (everything is good in moderation :-) I “retreated to the trenches” for a day in my holiday to watch the better part of the war series Band of Brothers to recover. It was one particular episode that really jarred me entitled, “Why we fight.”

The scene was set in a late stage of WWII and the guys had grown exhausted from the emotional toll of losing so many friends in the battle. They were fatigued from the constant stress of being in danger, from facing daily scenes of gore and death; the wasteful loss of human life. In short, the whole war was starting to look rather pointless.

These Americans began to ask themselves – “Why are we fighting this war in the first place?” [What a great question to ask yourself – especially if you are killing people every day!] After all, the German enemy seemed to be just regular guys fighting for another cause, not the demons everyone had made them out to be. When these moral lines became blurred, the bonds that had once bound the veterans together so tightly into the “Band of Brothers” were eroded. The friends became cynical, selfish and introverted.

I can totally identify with this feeling. Sometimes I have felt overwhelmed with the brutality, pain and contemptuous disregard for human life in this world. What an irreversible tide of evil there is. Like recently when I heard that we must be on the look-out for a new drug that has hit the market. Get this, its designed to fizzle and pop in the mouth and taste just like candy! Its tailor designed to get kids hooked on drugs for life and thereby secure a reliable customer for the dealer. Seriously?! [sigh] Fighting for justice is exhausting work.

But it’s when friends of mine give up on the fight and lose their way that this war really gets to me. Deceived, trapped, killed. That’s how it usually happens. My friends go down like flies, and that makes me tired, right to the soul.

The big surprise for the Americans in the story came later, when they discovered their first concentration camp in Germany. They obviously hadn’t been briefed on the atrocities that were going on inside these torture camps. Nothing could have prepared them for the kind of sick depravity that they were confronted with. This discovery was the jolt the veterans needed to reframe their grim experience of the war. It confirmed their very first convictions – that this was a war worth fighting.

What was just as surprising was that many of the Germans who lived up the road from the camp were not even aware of its existence. They never knew about the gross pain and death that their support for the German government and the war effort had caused. Their patriotic pride had blinded them to widespread atrocities happening right under their noses. Many millions of German men fought a war with honour and vigour, but most importantly, in ignorance. They were unaware that they had been fighting for the wrong side, and through their efforts had caused untold destruction.

I find the comparison with our own context starkly apparent. In the spiritual war that is being waged between light and darkness we find the same unhappy state. We soldiers of the Lord who are fighting for an excellent cause can easily forget what our cause is all about. When we’re up close with the deceptions and misconstrued truths that “good” people preach, we are tempted to forgive them their falsehood and justify their licentious lifestyles.

“Why we fight” is to free those who are trapped in the torturous web of Satan. We are their only hope. When we find them we must drag them by the heels, not into a vain hope but into a conquering kingdom. We must feed them back to health on the nourishing food of the truth. And those “good guys” who are in the tyrannical regime of Satan give their consent by their inaction and their apathy. Their blissful ignorance makes them aides and abetters of the disgusting war-crimes perpetrated daily against humanity.

By the power of his love, Jesus fought to “set the captives free”. He has called us to do the same. There are hidden torture chambers and death camps all around us. Our quest, our battle, our struggle is not a struggle in which the moral lines criss and cross. They have been clearly defined. And have you noticed how much easier it is to “give up” than to go on? In war, whichever side you fight on, whether the bullets hit or miss, ignorance and apathy are always the biggest killers.