What does the Bible say about soldiers? An old blog entry for Memorial Day Week-end

I came across an item about soldiers and wars in my blog entry of June 1, 2008.  I didn't follow through on my question about how have soldiers influenced the spread of the Gospel.  But it's still worth looking at.

"This week our congregation has been reading the book of Acts, and I noticed a number of references to soldiers and centurions. I'm not much of a Bible scholar, but I did wonder about what studies have been done on their influence in spreading the Gospel during the first century of the church. Then yesterday, while looking for a different book (and knocking some items on the floor because I sometimes stack books behind books if they don't have attractive covers), I found an International Sunday School Lesson book from 1944 which I think I bought at a yard sale for a quarter about 10 years ago. If you can find them, these books are packed with study outlines, bibliographies, lesson plans, illustrations and color maps. No wimp-out, touchy-feely, "let's get acquainted" questions in this book!

In the introduction the editor writes:"Inasmuch as we are in the midst of the world's most gigantic military conflict, and the minds of people are so much upon war, some of our readers might be interested in taking up a series of studies in young people's meetings, or in prayer meetings, or in private classes in homes, apart from the International Sunday School Lessons, in Biblical themes that have more or less relation to the subject of war. We here suggest two such series, one a study of the centurions and soldiers of the New Testament [the other was OT battles]. They will be found in eighteen different groups, nine in the Gospels, and nine in the Book of Acts. A fascinating book could be written just about the soldiers of the New Testament.

1. The centurion whose servant Jesus healed of the palsy (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10)
2. The soldiers of the governor who mocked and smote Jesus--between his trial and crucifixion (Mat. 27:27-32; Mark 15:16-23; John 19:2)
3. The soldiers who mocked Jesus at the cross (Luke 23:36,37)
4. The soldiers who parted Christ's raiment at the foot of the cross (John 19:23,24)
5. The soldiers who broke the legs of the 2 criminals crucified on either side of Christ (John 19:32)
6. The soldier who thrust a spear into the side of Christ (John 19:34)
7. The centurion at the cross who confessed that Jesus was the Son of God (Matt.27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47)
8. The centurion who reported to Pilate that Jesus was dead (Mark 15:44,45)
9. The soldiers who were set to guard the tomb wherein the body of Jesus lay (Matt. 27:65, 66; 28:11-15)
10. Cornelius, centurion of the Italian band, to whom Peter preached (Acts 10)
11. The "devout soldier" who was sent by Cornelius to bring Peter (Acts 10:7,8)
12. The 4 quarternions of soldiers to whom Peter was delivered for safekeeping, and between two of whom Peter was sleeping (Acts 12:4-18)
13. The soldiers and centurions whom the chief captain used to deliver Paul from the mob in Jerusalem (Acts 21:32-35)
14. The centurion to whom Paul declared he was a Roman citizen (Acts 22:25,26)
15. The centurion to whom Paul asked permission to see his sister's son (Acts 23:17)
16. The soldiers who accompanied Paul to Caesarea (Acts 23:23-35)
17. Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band, to whom Paul was committed when he was sent to Rome (Acts 27:1,6,11,31,43; 28:16)
18. The soldiers who were on the ship on which Paul was carried to Rome (Acts 27:31, 32, 42)"

Only the introduction of the 1944 book mentions the war that was on everyone's mind, an introduction which included five annotated bibliographies containing about 80 titles, many multi-volume, for the teacher to consult! Many people never read an introduction, preface or footnote (librarians love the secondary and tertiary stuff), so I suspect this was a concession to some heated arguments in the back room when deciding what was to go into this book.

The editors appeared to have no doubts about who would be the victor, although I don't think my mother, aunts and grandmothers, with ear to the radio and eye on the headlines, waiting for the mailman (my own father plus numerous uncles and cousins were in the service) were quite so confident.

They wrote:  "When the war is over, evangelical Christianity will enter upon the greatest struggle it has known since the days of Constantine in the defense of its great cardinal truths. All of this great and important and sober work will not be done by ministers or theological professors, but much of it by the thousands and thousands of faithful Sunday school teachers throughout our land. Let us prayerfully, carefully, with all the mind and heart we have, prepare ourselves now for this great struggle in the expectation of glorious victory in the ultimate triumph of the truth of God."

Certainly a word for the 21st century. And even they couldn't have imagined it would be our home-grown, gold plated idols (celebrities), our wealth (mind numbing consumerism), our gendered temples (desecration of God's plan for man and woman), our university faculties and our own elected leaders we'd need to fear. Or did they?" (End of June 1, 2008 blog entry.)

Jesus is Lord even if we are mad at him and don't want Christmas

Mother's Day 2010

In the early years of the United States, many Christians didn't celebrate Christmas at all--it was just another day--because it had been spoiled by drunken parties and materialism common among the British. Sort of like today. My mom never had a Christmas present as a child, although I think there were cards exchanged at school because I have some of them. My dad did remember getting a new pair of overalls as a kid and somehow they scraped together enough money to buy candy. Ironic that they were so poor and my mom's parents had money, yet dad's family found something to celebrate and mom's made it just another day, no celebration. They did loosen up after grandchildren, and learned to enjoy the holiday.  Just the other day I bought a box of art supplies that reminded me of something they gave me when I was maybe 8 years old. I'll probably never open it, because I don't draw anymore, but it was fun to see it.

The first Christmas I remember was 1944 in Alameda, CA when Dad was in the marines in WWII. Scary times. I know I had memories earlier than that because I can remember I thought that singing carols in the fog (that smell of the Bay has stayed with me) was very different than singing carols in the snow in Illinois--I just have no specific memory of 1943 or 1942. Also we didn't have a church which seemed odd to me. We went to the school gym for a Christmas program. I suppose the military towns had grown so fast there was no thought of churches. There was death and destruction everywhere, so people probably thought God had left town.

My faith was just something passed along to me by community, family and tradition until 1974, then I believed. Lots of questions I plan to ask Jesus because things haven't always worked out. I don't know how 20th century American Christians got the idea that faith was all happy clappy touchy feely. 100 million people lost their lives in the 20th century due to socialism/communism totalitarian governments--a huge number of them where Christians. And neither God nor the U.S. military saved them. And that doesn't count the war dead--another 40 million--and then it was Christians fighting each other!

On the other hand, I've had so many blessings over the years that others have missed, I'll probably ask about that, too. Although, I sort of suspect everything will become clear without even asking. As Paul says, "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood."

Things are really foggy for me now, but someday I'll know.

Today is the first day of Advent, a time we look back, to the first Christmas, the birth of Jesus, and forward to when he comes again in glory.  It's the first day of the new Christian year, a time the church gives us to start fresh.  It's true that Christ has already taken his seat at the right hand of God, but

"now he comes to be born in the narrowness of our lives to be incarnate in us, to give his love to the world through us, through our flesh and blood. . . The reason why we are where we are this Christmas, in this house, family, office, workroom, hospital, or camp, is because it is here in this place that Christ wants to be born, from here that he wants his life to begin again in the world"  (Caryll Houselander, "Lift up your hearts" 1978.) From Magnificat, December 2019

Monday Memories of Kindergarten and Alameda

I'm looking at my kindergarten photo from Webster Elementary school in Alameda, California. I used Google to see if it still exists, but it closed in 1958 having served the Webster Housing Project, opening in 1944. I assume that project was all military family housing. I remember it as a wonderful, racially mixed neighborhood with people from all over the country and many nationalities. Families came there uprooted with fathers off to strange lands.

Looking at the photo more closely I begin to see the differences (all white children in my class although there were blacks in the school) and memories come to mind of the families who were terribly poor. No lunch programs in those days, but we did get free milk which tasted wretched. Wonder what was in it, because I liked milk. The school was a one floor plan with canopies outside joining the buildings to shade the sidewalks.  There were African American and Filipino children in my school and I’d never seen either, being from rural Illinois. Recess was on concrete instead of grass. Right from the beginning I loved school, except nap time on little rugs we brought from home. How boring.

My earliest Christmas memory is 1944 in Alameda, California. Dad was in the Marines and Mother had driven across the country in our 1939 Ford with four small children and my Aunt Muriel to find housing, schools, new helpful neighbors, and what I thought was a very exciting life. My recollection is singing carols in the fog--recalling that it wasn't like Christmas in northern Illinois. The community got together at a school to sing carols. Money was so tight, but Mom did her best. Not sure what the gifts were, but one was a little white glass cat which I still have.

Strange that with so little and living in constant fear of attack, we were all united then. Material riches certainly did not bring Americans any peace, even if we did win that war.

Veteran's Day is coming

We've already had our parade here in Columbus, but November 11 is the actual day we honor our veterans. I hope to find a few new photos.

But today I came across this story again, "World War II Rescue of Prison Ship Survivors" and it was as interesting as when I first linked to it in 2005--maybe more so as people psychologize a mass murderer at Ft. Hood, and weep for and provide free legal services for the detainees at Gitmo who are too vicious to be released either to their home countries or our prisons set up for run-of-the-mill criminals.

Aside from having been in the water for four days without any food and practically nothing to drink, these men had been slaves in the Malay Peninsula for three years, since Singapore fell, and they themselves were in no darn physical shape to withstand any hardships, so our immediate problem was to get them below and get them in a bunk and give them some food. We did that - prepared some soup and broth for them - I remember that night we gave them some bread, it was the first white bread they had had in three years. We gave them some broth, warm water, tea, and they were still very active all that night - we finished recovering them just about dark, and all that night they were very active, talked, told us stories of how their ships had been sunk in a convoy, and how thankful they were, and about their life in the Army beforehand. But next morning, when we went down to look at them, boy, they were really tired out, there wasn’t a one of them rolling around a bit, it had been quite a mental strain and they keeled over completely.

The story they told us was that they, some of them, hadn’t even been in the Army two weeks and they were shot right up to Singapore to reinforce the garrison up there. After they got there, about three days, Singapore fell and they were taken prisoners, put up into various parts of the Malay Peninsula, and their most recent job had been to build a railroad down the Peninsula. They, all during this time, had suffered quite a few hardships. They had no food that they were used to at all, they had rice only. They had practically no medical care, they had no clothes, they all went barefooted. Everyone of them on board had malaria, most of them had pellagra, beriberi, bad cases of scurvy, and then they had salt-water sores on them that they got when they were in the water before being recovered. Our pharmacist’s mate was really faced with a problem, he had to make immediate inspection of all of them to find anybody who had serious injuries that he could fix up and then he had to slowly work through the rest of the crowd and fix up the little scratches and bruises and cuts and things like that, which he did. We were running sort of short of medical supplies too, I know, we didn’t have enough gauze or bandage to take care of these 73 men. About 10 or 12 cases were critical. We had to put them in bunks in the after battery with a special nursemaid - they were actual bad patients, where to others, boy, you should have seen them stacked up back there. We put two in each bunk and four in each torpedo rack in the after torpedo room and we were very profusely apologizing for the lack of space we had to offer them and they were very profusely saying, “That’s all right, you should have seen the space we’ve been living in,” because they said that they use to just stack them in the these troop-transports, everywhere they would go; when they would ride in trucks anywhere, they would just stack them in like bundles, and then didn’t mind this little space at all.

For a returning soldier

Chip, a father of 4, is finally home. I've never met him, but his parents are members of our church (he was raised in the Lutheran homeland--Minnesota). We've been praying for his safety and his family since we met his parents, and read his Christmas letter. He's a man of great faith trusting God in extremely difficult circumstances.

This week our congregation has been reading the book of Acts, and I noticed a number of references to soldiers and centurions. I'm not much of a Bible scholar, but I did wonder about what studies have been done on their influence in spreading the Gospel during the first century of the church. Then yesterday, while looking for a different book (and knocking some items on the floor because I sometimes stack books behind books if they don't have attractive covers), I found an International Sunday School Lesson book from 1944 which I think I bought at a yard sale for a quarter about 10 years ago. If you can find them, these books are packed with study outlines, bibliographies, lesson plans, illustrations and color maps. No wimp-out, touchy-feely, "let's get acquainted" questions in this book!

In 1943, when the editors were preparing this volume, the United States was in the middle of a terrible war, thousands of our soldiers were dying daily, millions of Europeans were already dead. I was living in a tiny Illinois town of about 2800, and its "War Record of Mount Morris" has about 500 biographies of the men and women who served. Every family in 1943 was affected. These days we like to laud the WWII veterans who are dying of old age (and I think there's only one WWI vet still living), and keep quiet about what our men and women are accomplishing in Iraq. I personally believe the unpopular war president George Bush will be vindicated--it may take 50 years--and will be seen as the great liberator of this century. We ignored the signs of fascism in the 1930s--both our liberals and conservatives were reluctant to dabble in someone else's problems. Then we compounded the error by cuddling with the Communists after victory in Europe, sending many more millions to camps and death. We thought Europe and Asia could go up in flames or go to prison camps and we'd just sit it out. Our 20th century legacy of our leaders' myopia and deceit is being continued in today's political campaign.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the 1944 book. In the introduction the editor writes:

"Inasmuch as we are in the midst of the world's most gigantic military conflict, and the minds of people are so much upon war, some of our readers might be interested in taking up a series of studies in young people's meetings, or in prayer meetings, or in private classes in homes, apart from the International Sunday School Lessons, in Biblical themes that have more or less relation to the subject of war. We here suggest two such series, one a study of the centurions and soldiers of the New Testament [the other was OT battles]. They will be found in eighteen different groups, nine in the Gospels, and nine in the Book of Acts. A fascinating book could be written just about the soldiers of the New Testament.
1. The centurion whose servant Jesus healed of the palsy (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10)
2. The soldiers of the governor who mocked and smote Jesus--between his trial and crucifixion (Mat. 27:27-32; Mark 15:16-23; John 19:2)
3. The soldiers who mocked Jesus at the cross (Luke 23:36,37)
4. The soldiers who parted Christ's raiment at the foot of the cross (John 19:23,24)
5. The soldiers who broke the legs of the 2 criminals crucified on either side of Christ (John 19:32)
6. The soldier who thrust a spear into the side of Christ (John 19:34)
7. The centurion at the cross who confessed that Jesus was the Son of God (Matt.27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47)
8. The centurion who reported to Pilate that Jesus was dead (Mark 15:44,45)
9. The soldiers who were set to guard the tomb wherein the body of Jesus lay (Matt. 27:65, 66; 28:11-15)
10. Cornelius, centurion of the Italian band, to whom Peter preached (Acts 10)
11. The "devout soldier" who was sent by Cornelius to bring Peter (Acts 10:7,8)
12. The 4 quarternions of soldiers to whom Peter was delivered for safekeeping, and between two of whom Peter was sleeping (Acts 12:4-18)
13. The soldiers and centurions whom the chief captain used to deliver Paul from the mob in Jerusalem (Acts 21:32-35)
14. The centurion to whom Paul declared he was a Roman citizen (Acts 22:25,26)
15. The centurion to whom Paul asked permission to see his sister's son (Acts 23:17)
16. The soldiers who accompanied Paul to Caesarea (Acts 23:23-35)
17. Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band, to whom Paul was committed when he was sent to Rome (Acts 27:1,6,11,31,43; 28:16)
18. The soldiers who were on the ship on which Paul was carried to Rome (Acts 27:31, 32, 42)"

Only the introduction mentions the war that was on everyone's mind, an introduction which included five annotated bibliographies containing about 80 titles, many multi-volume, for the teacher to consult! Many people never read an introduction, preface or footnote (librarians love the secondary and tertiary stuff), so I suspect this was a concession to some heated arguments in the back room when deciding what was to go into this book.

The editors appeared to have no doubts about who would be the victor, although I don't think my mother, aunts and grandmothers, with ear to the radio and eye on the headlines, waiting for the mailman (my own father plus numerous uncles and cousins were in the service) were quite so confident.

"When the war is over, evangelical Christianity will enter upon the greatest struggle it has known since the days of Constantine in the defense of its great cardinal truths. All of this great and important and sober work will not be done by ministers or theological professors, but much of it by the thousands and thousands of faithful Sunday school teachers throughout our land. Let us prayerfully, carefully, with all the mind and heart we have, prepare ourselves now for this great struggle in the expectation of glorious victory in the ultimate triumph of the truth of God."

Certainly a word for the 21st century. And even they couldn't have imagined it would be our home-grown, gold plated idols (celebrities), our wealth (mind numbing consumerism), our gendered temples (desecration of God's plan for man and woman), our university faculties and our own elected leaders we'd need to fear. Or did they?