Myths, Falsehoods, and Wars
I am writing this for the Easter season, because, for me right now, many of the readings are hitting very hard. The prayer that God should take away our hearts of stone and give us natural, human hearts--wow! Even the drowining of Pharaoh's army in the sea seems different this year. Because who is Pharaoh? And what is that reading really saying?
But I began with an essay on World War 2, which I'm posting below.
WW2 and the myth of redemptive violence
As humans, we’re storytellers, and we use stories to guide our actions and form our communities. If we want good and life-giving communities, we must tell good stories.
This is why we must, somehow, get over our obsession with World War 2.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean we should forget World War 2, which-along with its holocausts-is rightly considered the major event of the twentieth century. We do need to remember history. But we also need to question what aspects of history we focus on, and what lessons we are taught.
I’m American. Some of my older relatives and friends were WW2-era veterans, and I honor their courage, loyalty, and sacrifices. It’s also absolutely essential to remember crimes like the Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so much more. These things must be remembered. They must also be examined so that we can learn from them.
And it did seem, in the period before I was born and even into my childhood, that we were trying to draw the right lessons from the horrors of this war. The war led to the Nuerenberg trials and also to many laws meant to ensure such things never happened again-the Geneva conventions, for example, and the declaration of human rights and more. The principal lesson of WW2 seemed to be how utterly cruel and inhumane we human beings could be to each other, given the right provocations.
But, along with these lessons, we learned several others. First, we learned that the world could be divided into “good guys” and “bad guys”. We Americans and our allies were the good guys. The Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Japanese were the bad guys, and had to be fought strenuously and totally defeated.
Which-well, it seems true, doesn’t it? There’s just no doubt that the Nazis did evil, and the Japanese, too, did unspeakable things to the countries they occupied. Both Nazis and Imperial Japanese were following a false story they had learned: that they were the superior human beings and that others-such as Chinese, Jews, and Roma-were inferior creatures worthy of slavery at best and death at worst. These lies led to horrific, unspeakable evil. And that evil did have to be fought.
But here’s the problem. If we are the good guys and the Germans, Japanese, and Italians are the bad guys, doesn’t that make them inferior to us? There’s the trap, you see.
In fact-and this is the major lesson the Holocaust, in particular, should teach us-we are all human beings on this planet together. No group is superior or inferior to another; we are all brothers and sisters. As a Catholic Christian, this is one of my core religious beliefs, but it’s backed by science. The whole concept of race is bad science and false; all human beings have the same origins, if you go back a million years or so, and that’s a blink of an eye in the face of geologic time-or of eternity.
But we humans do like to get together in gangs of various sizes. We do like to see our gang, whatever it is, as good and superior and other gangs as bad and inferior. Looking at the Nazis of the 1940s, or supremacists of any type today, shows us exactly where that type of thinking gets us. And those supremacists do include Zionists, Christian and otherwise. I empathize with Jewish Zionists who are ruled by fear and anger after what their people suffered in the twentieth century. I think they’re wrong, like all who would divide human beings into superior and inferior groups. But I can see why they act as they do. To achieve real peace and real justice, however, we have to live in truth. And that means that we must move away from nationalism and groupthink of all kinds.
There’s more, though. There is the idea that violence-even the utterly horrific violence of war-can be good. It can be redemptive. It can save us, and save the world, if the “good guys” use sufficient violence against the “bad guys” and defeat them thoroughly enough. After all, that’s what we-the good guys-did in Word War II. We defeated Japan and Germany utterly, and forced them to surrender without conditions. Then, so our version of history goes, we rebuilt their countries into prosperous and peaceful democracies. But they had to be shattered before they could be rebuilt.
There are a couple of things to note here. First, Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat already in World War I. Our rebuilding of the country after World War 2 was, in part, based on what we learned from the failed peace after the first World War. Second, even if everything I’ve said above is true-even if Germany and Japan did have to be utterly defeated in order to be rebuilt-that doesn’t justify war in general.
For war is always a crime, the worst crime human beings can commit. It is always a failure. My Church developed a theory of a just war in the Middle Ages, but many are now arguing that no war can ever be just. No war can ever be justified-not if you are truly a follower of the Jesus movement. My dad was one of the World War 2 era veterans I mentioned earlier. During one of the Gulf wars, he said, with great sincerity and sadness, “There’s no justification for war in the New Testament. None.” He was right.
And that’s why, though we must always remember the facts of Word War 2, we must somehow let go of the myth. The myth teaches us that war is just, and that we have a right to do whatever is necessary to our enemies in order to win, because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. And only violence can defeat evil. This is the myth that has guided my country’s actions for the last seventy years. No matter what we do, we are still the good guys. So we-or our allies-can bomb civilians relentlessly. We can impose sieges. We can destroy entire cities, including priceless historical sites and even schools, pharmaceutical plants, religious buildings and hospitals. We can kill millions through our bombings and sieges-and we remain the good guys. We are judged not by what we do, which is often monstrous, but by who we are.
And that is toxic. That is a lie. It’s a lie we must let go of if we are to live as mature, free, and peaceful humans in a free and peaceful world. We must also somehow repent of the harm we’ve done in so many places, from the Congo to Haiti, from Honduras to Palestine.
May we live in truth and let go of lies.
But I began with an essay on World War 2, which I'm posting below.
WW2 and the myth of redemptive violence
As humans, we’re storytellers, and we use stories to guide our actions and form our communities. If we want good and life-giving communities, we must tell good stories.
This is why we must, somehow, get over our obsession with World War 2.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean we should forget World War 2, which-along with its holocausts-is rightly considered the major event of the twentieth century. We do need to remember history. But we also need to question what aspects of history we focus on, and what lessons we are taught.
I’m American. Some of my older relatives and friends were WW2-era veterans, and I honor their courage, loyalty, and sacrifices. It’s also absolutely essential to remember crimes like the Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so much more. These things must be remembered. They must also be examined so that we can learn from them.
And it did seem, in the period before I was born and even into my childhood, that we were trying to draw the right lessons from the horrors of this war. The war led to the Nuerenberg trials and also to many laws meant to ensure such things never happened again-the Geneva conventions, for example, and the declaration of human rights and more. The principal lesson of WW2 seemed to be how utterly cruel and inhumane we human beings could be to each other, given the right provocations.
But, along with these lessons, we learned several others. First, we learned that the world could be divided into “good guys” and “bad guys”. We Americans and our allies were the good guys. The Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Japanese were the bad guys, and had to be fought strenuously and totally defeated.
Which-well, it seems true, doesn’t it? There’s just no doubt that the Nazis did evil, and the Japanese, too, did unspeakable things to the countries they occupied. Both Nazis and Imperial Japanese were following a false story they had learned: that they were the superior human beings and that others-such as Chinese, Jews, and Roma-were inferior creatures worthy of slavery at best and death at worst. These lies led to horrific, unspeakable evil. And that evil did have to be fought.
But here’s the problem. If we are the good guys and the Germans, Japanese, and Italians are the bad guys, doesn’t that make them inferior to us? There’s the trap, you see.
In fact-and this is the major lesson the Holocaust, in particular, should teach us-we are all human beings on this planet together. No group is superior or inferior to another; we are all brothers and sisters. As a Catholic Christian, this is one of my core religious beliefs, but it’s backed by science. The whole concept of race is bad science and false; all human beings have the same origins, if you go back a million years or so, and that’s a blink of an eye in the face of geologic time-or of eternity.
But we humans do like to get together in gangs of various sizes. We do like to see our gang, whatever it is, as good and superior and other gangs as bad and inferior. Looking at the Nazis of the 1940s, or supremacists of any type today, shows us exactly where that type of thinking gets us. And those supremacists do include Zionists, Christian and otherwise. I empathize with Jewish Zionists who are ruled by fear and anger after what their people suffered in the twentieth century. I think they’re wrong, like all who would divide human beings into superior and inferior groups. But I can see why they act as they do. To achieve real peace and real justice, however, we have to live in truth. And that means that we must move away from nationalism and groupthink of all kinds.
There’s more, though. There is the idea that violence-even the utterly horrific violence of war-can be good. It can be redemptive. It can save us, and save the world, if the “good guys” use sufficient violence against the “bad guys” and defeat them thoroughly enough. After all, that’s what we-the good guys-did in Word War II. We defeated Japan and Germany utterly, and forced them to surrender without conditions. Then, so our version of history goes, we rebuilt their countries into prosperous and peaceful democracies. But they had to be shattered before they could be rebuilt.
There are a couple of things to note here. First, Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat already in World War I. Our rebuilding of the country after World War 2 was, in part, based on what we learned from the failed peace after the first World War. Second, even if everything I’ve said above is true-even if Germany and Japan did have to be utterly defeated in order to be rebuilt-that doesn’t justify war in general.
For war is always a crime, the worst crime human beings can commit. It is always a failure. My Church developed a theory of a just war in the Middle Ages, but many are now arguing that no war can ever be just. No war can ever be justified-not if you are truly a follower of the Jesus movement. My dad was one of the World War 2 era veterans I mentioned earlier. During one of the Gulf wars, he said, with great sincerity and sadness, “There’s no justification for war in the New Testament. None.” He was right.
And that’s why, though we must always remember the facts of Word War 2, we must somehow let go of the myth. The myth teaches us that war is just, and that we have a right to do whatever is necessary to our enemies in order to win, because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. And only violence can defeat evil. This is the myth that has guided my country’s actions for the last seventy years. No matter what we do, we are still the good guys. So we-or our allies-can bomb civilians relentlessly. We can impose sieges. We can destroy entire cities, including priceless historical sites and even schools, pharmaceutical plants, religious buildings and hospitals. We can kill millions through our bombings and sieges-and we remain the good guys. We are judged not by what we do, which is often monstrous, but by who we are.
And that is toxic. That is a lie. It’s a lie we must let go of if we are to live as mature, free, and peaceful humans in a free and peaceful world. We must also somehow repent of the harm we’ve done in so many places, from the Congo to Haiti, from Honduras to Palestine.
May we live in truth and let go of lies.