In the closing days of WWII, two events had profound impacts on the lives and faiths of two great European nations. In England, using the brand newly deciphered Enigma machine, British scientists learned that the next target for the German bombing runs was going to be Coventry, England. Winston Churchill agonized for hours over whether to stop the bombing from taking place and expose to the enemy the knowledge that they had cracked the codes of the Enigma machine - a code thought unbreakable by the enemy, or to allow the bombing to occur. Ultimately, Churchill decided to save the code and not the city in order to bring the war to a close much quicker. Coventry was flattened and their cathedral was burnt to the ground. Churchill wept at the news of the destruction that had been wrought. To this day, the burnt out shell of the cathedral remains in Coventry to remind all of the destruction of war.
In Germany, in the closing days of the war, the Allied bombers bombed the German city of Dresden so thoroughly that almost the entire city was destroyed by a combination of bombs and fire. The fire was so intense that anyone caught inside the city would literally burst into flames just from the heat. Dresden's Cathedral was, as well, completely destroyed by the flames. For the past 60 years its burnt out husk has remained at the heart of a rebuilt Dresden to remind its citizens of the destruction of war.
On Reformation Sunday, yesterday, the Dresden Cathedral was reopened and rechristened. Amongst the items given to the church at its rechristening was an iron cross from the city of Coventry - a symbol of peace between two former enemies.
War is Hell. There are no two ways to look at it. No matter the noble cause, no matter the personalities involved, no matter which side God is allegedly on, war is the exact opposite of Christ. War is everything that Christ does not want for us, or for our enemies. Love your neighbor as yourself does not include an exemption for war. In all things, we should work to end war and injustice, and bring about peace around the world.
As America mourns its two thousandth death in Iraq, as politicians bleat on about justifications or condemnations depending on their own political views, we Americans must remember that we live in a representative democracy. We are at war because we want to be at war. We are allowing this slaughter to continue. We are both Coventry, and Dresden. Either way, we are destroying ourselves.
2 comments:
Wow.
Yep, your mind and your heart are right about where mine is - deep within, searching, meditating, reflective.
It's hard enough to get behind this "war" when we have our own battles in our daily lives. Each day is a battle for your soul, and only the armor of God can protect you.
I've long rejected the whole concept of war as a tool of the enemy. Although I find it hard to accept that World War II was wrong, I wonder if maybe we gloss over a lot of the evils done in this world by passing some sort of good/bad litmus test on it and then never reconsidering our decision. Surely, liberating the holocaust survivors was a good thing. Surely, stopping the spread of Nazi tyranny was a good thing. But firebombing Dresden and Tokyo, and dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are bad things - no better than the Germans firebombing London, nor the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. We don't get to decide that our evil deeds are okay because we were on the winning side. Evil deeds are evil deeds. That is why War is Hell.
I could talk more about my own experiences, but they're probably still classified.
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