Sermon: Becoming a Warrior for Peace

What is it about boys and guns?

It is a good question and very hard to answer. And of course we could broaden the question to ask: “What is it about boys and swords and rockets and missiles and bombs and fists and teeth?” And we could broaden it further to ask: “What is it about people—boys and girls and men and women—and the warrior impulse, the feeling that the use of force can be and often is heroic and good?

Here’s the way I’ve often answered that question: I cannot fully explain why little boys are enthralled by guns and other warrior implements. But many boys just are enthralled by guns and many girls are as well. Indeed I would argue that most people possess a love of war somewhere inside.

I grew up in the hippy-dippy Jimmy Carter seventies and my mom tried to keep all manner of toy guns and swords and soldiers and so forth away from me and my brother. But it was no use—since we could turn virtually anything, including, of course, our fingers, into imaginary guns.

One friend of mine, similarly deprived by his peace-loving parents of toy guns, used to use his cat as an imaginary sawed-off shotgun. And he would pick up the back-legs of his tall, skinny, weimaraner-like dog and imagine the dog was a Gatling gun.

As I got older, I grew to love playing tackle football. My mother officially forbade me from playing—in particular, she never allowed me to join an organized tackle football team where I might wear padding and a helmet. But I played tackle football every chance I got anyway, with friends, wherever we might find a bit of grass, and without helmets and without pads.

One of the greatest thrills of my adolescence was the feeling I got from tackling a good friend during a good game of tackle football—timing it just right and feeling his body crumple under my body.

As the psychologist Carl Jung argued, there is a warrior in all of us…

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“Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power… take up the whole armor of God, so that you may withstand… (so that you may) stand firm… Stand and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness… take the shield of faith… quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit… keep alert and always persevere… make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.”

Be strong! Stand firm! Take up armor! Fasten the belt! Put on the breastplate! Take the shield! Quench the flaming arrows! Take the helmet and the sword! Keep alert and always persevere with boldness!

I love this passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, I must admit. I really do love it. It’s a personal favorite of mine. And it makes me think of a question I’ve encountered many times from many different people in many different contexts. A question our own Jane McDougle posed just this past week during our St. Bede’s Eco-Camp. Jane and I were watching some of the boys in our charge during camp—including my son, John—as they played together on the playground. And Jane asked:

“What is it about boys and guns?”

I think John had picked up a stick that, he said, had “a good trigger” and thus made a good imaginary gun. And I think I had just admonished John to remember our family’s rule that he could imagine that something was a gun, but the rule was: he was not allowed to point it at anyone.

And this exchange prompted Jane to ask me:

“What is it about boys and guns?”

It is a good question and very hard to answer. And of course we could broaden the question to ask: “What is it about boys and swords and rockets and missiles and bombs and fists and teeth?” And we could broaden it further to ask: “What is it about people—boys and girls and men and women—and the warrior impulse, the feeling that the use of force can be and often is heroic and good?

At the time, I think I answered Jane’s question much the way I’ve often answered it. I cannot fully explain why little boys are enthralled by guns and other warrior implements. But many boys are enthralled by guns and many girls are as well. Indeed I would argue that most people possess a love of war somewhere inside.

I grew up in the hippy-dippy Jimmy Carter seventies and my mom tried to keep all manner of toy guns and swords and soldiers and so forth away from me and my brother. But it was no use—since we could turn virtually anything, including, of course, our fingers, into imaginary guns.

One friend of mine, similarly deprived by his peace-loving parents of toy guns, used to use his cat as an imaginary sawed-off shotgun. And he would pick up the back-legs of his tall, skinny, weimeranner-like dog and imagine the dog was a Gatling gun.

As I got older, I grew to love playing tackle football. My mother officially forbade me from playing—in particular, she never allowed me to join an organized tackle football team where I might wear padding and a helmet. But I played tackle football every chance I got anyway, with friends, wherever we might find a bit of grass, and without helmets and without pads.

One of the greatest thrills of my adolescence was the feeling I got from tackling a good friend during a good game of tackle football—timing it just right and feeling his body crumple under my body. While playing these sorts of pick-up games, I once broke my nose; I once caught a knee to my head that caused me to momentarily black-out; and a friend of mine once sustained a series of blows to the head that caused what we later learned was a fairly bad concussion—the day after, he couldn’t remember much of the game he’d participated in.

As the psychologist Carl Jung argued, there is a warrior in all of us. Jung called it the warrior archetype, a lover of heroic fighting, and he would say it is inescapably in all of us.

Neuroscientists point to the effects of testosterone—a hormone crucial to all human development and of course especially present in boys and men—and how, among other things, it fuels aggression.

Evolutionary biologists point to theories about how we may have evolved alongside powerful and wily predators, such as lions and tigers and panthers, and therefore had to develop our own powerful capacity to fight, to meet great force and aggression with great force and great aggression in order to survive.

One way or another, there is a part of us that is simply wired for war. It may be peculiarly present in boys, but I think it’s in the rest of us as well. As Christians in search of peace, we may describe this element of our being as part and parcel of our fallen-ness and of the world’s fallen-ness.

However we explain where the warrior inside of us comes from, the question remains: What are we going to do with it? One option, of course, is to act like the warrior in us shouldn’t exist, that we can somehow avoid it or rid ourselves of it, that we can exorcise it.

But I don’t think that’s possible. Not really. And trying to rid ourselves of our drive for war can lead to all sorts of unintended negative consequences—not unlike the negative consequences of the Christian tradition’s attempts to rid humanity of its drive for sex.

Rather, I think, as Christians, we might seek to redeem our warrior impulses. After all, isn’t it an article of our faith that whatever God has given us can be put used in service of God? As believers in the incarnation of God in human form, hasn’t God sanctified as holy all aspects of our humanity—including our inner warrior?

This is why I love today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians so much. With its invocation of “strength” and “power” and “armor,” its references to “the belt of truth,” “the breastplate of righteousness,” “the shield of faith,” “the helmet of salvation,” and “the sword of the Spirit,” it appeals to and inspires my inner warrior. But it does not inspire me to make war, as such. Rather it inspires me to imitate Jesus by taking up spiritual arms against anything that causes injustice and fear and loneliness.

As Paul puts it: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of our present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil…”

Paul is being fairly explicit here. He is not advocating conventional warfare against our fellow human beings, since as he says, we do not have “enemies of blood and flesh.” Rather, he is urging us to gird the warrior within us all to do battle against “the rulers,” “the authorities,” “the cosmic powers of our present darkness.”

So what is he talking about?

When I first heard this passage it was during a Bible study class in New York City in which we were discussing the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. The young black woman seminarian leading the discussion pointed out that King did not call his strategy for winning civil rights “pacifism,” that he preferred the term, “non-violent resistance.” King, she argued, was less interested in making peace then in making a just war without violence.

This young black woman seminarian, her voice quavering with passionate intensity, then read us today’s passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And she followed that by reading some choice quotes from Dr. King.

I do not remember exactly which lines from King’s writing and speeches she highlighted, but she might have included this:

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

And she might have included this:

“It is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! …The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!”

And this:

“True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to an evil power…it is rather a courageous confrontation with evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.”

So, as Christians, I think we must remember that although we are called to promote peace, that does not mean we are anti-war, but rather, anti-violence. As Paul says, Jesus calls us to be anti-violence but also encourages us to suit up the warrior within for battle against the forces of injustice, fear and loneliness.

Or as Dr. King variously put it:

“True pacifism is… courageous confrontation with evil.”

“You may come to the moment when you will have to fight… you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory.”

“The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!”