Making Killing a Habit: "Kill, Kill, Kill Without Mercy"

Research after World War II provided the U. S. military with troubling information. Although the research methods and data have been questioned, a very high rate of soldiers in WWII and previous wars seem to have been unwilling to fire weapons in a lethal manner at the enemy. In other words, they would either not shoot at all, or would shoot to intentionally miss the other soldiers.

In order to overcome this "weakness," the process of basic training took on a number of features to overcome what seems to be a natural unwillingness to kill others. One strategy is the use of mantras such as "Kill, kill, kill without mercy," as part of basic training.



A series of articles in the Colorado Springs Gazette, written by Dave Phillips, describes the high level of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its violent consequences that have affected soldiers of the U. S. Army Infantry assigned to Fort Carson. These soldiers have been sent into some of the most violent and deadly warfare in Iraq. They have come back to commit murder in the U. S. at a rate 20 times their similar age cohort, which is already the most violent age group in the U. S. Their rate of committing murder in comparison to the full population of Colorado Springs is 114 times as great. These statistics are only for murder, but these soldiers are also committing other violent crimes, including domestic violence, and are caught up in substance abuse at dramatically high rates.

Much of my study and research includes trying to learn how to form Christians toward virtues of love, non-violence, peacemaking, patience, kindness, hunger for righteousness, justice, mercy, humility, etc. Here we see that such virtues are a hindrance to the military objectives of the state. The state-sponsored machine of violence teaches a different set of virtues: among them "Kill, kill, kill without mercy."

What Are We Waiting For? Part 1

I've been sitting on this sermon for a while, reworking it a couple of times. Here is the first part of it.

What Are We Waiting For?
Part 1

Romans 8:12-25

Just before we perform baptisms here at Mt. Level, Pastor Turner calls for and receives a public confession of faith from those who have come to be joined to Christ. In the joy of that moment of confession, he usually turns to the rest of the congregation and asks us whether we who are present remember our baptisms. That is not such a hard memory for Baptists to dredge up, and the question encourages us to look back upon our lives so far following Jesus.

Some of those present have a rush of joy as they start to remember how their lives have changed over the years from that day they entered the waters of baptism. A few have in mind the harmful ways of living that God’s grace has helped them leave behind. Others have in mind the ways they have learned to trust God and walk in faith. Someone may remember the joy of growing to know the ways of God and finding a direction or purpose for living. Someone else may relive the joy that comes from having become God’s instrument and living in a way that serves and builds up other people.

Looking back on what has happened to us, we practice what Jim McClendon called one of the remembering signs of the church. We remember what has died with Christ, what has been buried with Christ, how our lives have been raised to walk in the ways of Christ, how we share in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Remembering helps us to join with the newly baptized in this community act of the church, this shared event of baptism that unites us to Christ and to one another.

A while back there was a very good feature film called Tender Mercies, starring Robert Duvall. It is the story of a middle-aged country singer whose life hit bottom through egotism, selfishness, anger, and alcoholism. The troubled character’s life had declined and dissipated to the point that he was drifting from place to place, ruining whatever remaining friendships he had. In the story, he ends up at an isolated Texas roadside motel and gas station, and that’s where his redemption begins. Struggling to get sober, he finds his way into a Baptist church, receives the good news of God’s love, and starts to learn the joy of giving of himself for others. Eventually, he is baptized, along with another character in the story, a young boy. In their conversation after the baptismal service, the question is asked, “Do you feel any different?” The answer, which probably comes as no surprise to folks like us, is, “Not yet.” Feel any different? Not yet.

So on the one hand, at Mt. Level we can look back on the years since our baptisms with joy in seeing how God’s work in our lives has unfolded. Yet on the other hand, the movie’s question reminds us how at the beginning of the process, we could not immediately see what God was up to in our lives. Today’s text reminds us, right at the end of the passage, that we were saved in hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. When we can see something already, we don’t have to hope for it. We already have it. But that is not how so many things work. Some things we have now, and others require waiting with hope.

When we entered the waters of baptism, we reached a great milestone in our pilgrimage toward the Reign of God. The hopeful act of baptism marked our commitment to place our trust in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. It depends on what situation you were in at that time just what the hope was. Maybe you did not see your way out of the traps of sin that were unraveling your life. You had determined to unite yourself to Christ to gain the strength to lay aside the weights and besetting sins in your life. Since you had been unable to turn your life around on your own, accepting baptism demonstrated your hope for a different life that was as yet unseen.

Perhaps you were a child who was recognizing longings you could not completely understand. It was a longing for something more of life that had been kindled by hearing the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the church and singing the songs of faith. You had come to recognize the love of God revealed in Jesus. You knew that Jesus loved you, and you knew that the church people loved you. So you were ready to say that you would walk hand-in-hand with the ones who had pointed you toward this love and this way of living. You were living in hope of what you could become in the hands of God, but you did not see it yet. It was part of the mystery of the life that God was already unfolding in you.

Whatever our situation at the time of our baptism, it is a time in which we do not yet see the full results of what we hope God’s grace will do in us. We are saved in hope, and we hope for what we do not see. God is not finished blessing when we climb out of the waters of baptism. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of humanity all that Christ has for us. As Jeremiah told Israel, God has plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give us a future and a hope. As Paul wrote in chapter 5 of this same letter to the Romans, hope does not disappoint. As he wrote to the Philippian church, God who began a good work in you will bring it to its completion.

A couple of weeks ago our family was at the gathering of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. One evening in particular took us out of the ordinary events of the group. After an evening worship service, we walked down to a public area by the St. Lawrence River, in the town of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, a suburb of Montreal, Quebec. That night, a sixteen-year-old girl named Maggie was baptized.

It was a moment of great joy for her and for those of us who had watched her growing up in the faith. It was an opportunity for us to dwell in the hope of what God would continue to do in her life, in the lives of other young people present, in the lives of the old folks present, and in the work for justice and peace that many of them are doing in the name of Jesus. After she came up out of the water, one of the men started singing one of the good old songs, “Down by the Riverside,” a baptismal song. We come to the waters of baptism and lay down all the things from our lives, good and bad, so that we may offer ourselves to be remade and renewed by God. On that evening we joined in raising our voices to promise that we would lay down our burdens, we would lay down our swords and shields, and we would study war no more. A few of the town’s residents gathered to hear and see our witness, perhaps a bit puzzled by this crowd of people having church outside at the edge of the main business district.

Among the observers were two young men of about twenty years of age. When they saw us gathering, they made their way to get a view of the action. They heard us singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” and one asked in a loud voice, “Don’t these people know that God doesn’t exist?” They may have considered disrupting the observance, but instead became more than a little intrigued with what was happening. They conversed with several people over the next twenty minutes, sometimes intent on trying to get us to make some harsh or judgmental statement which would confirm their idea that Christians are hateful people who hold on to ideas that don’t make any sense. Apparently that part of their expectations went unfulfilled. Instead, they got a chance to see that there are Baptists who don’t fit their stereotypes of vengeful, unquestioning people with no compassion for anyone who does not agree with their ideas.

Both of the young men asked questions about how they could get their baptisms, performed on them as infants, reversed. They wanted to be unbaptized. They could see no reason to find hope in their baptism or in the church. One said he was an atheist and a nihilist, a person who does not believe there is a god nor that there is any purpose to the existence of the world or human beings. He said he thought we were more like biological machines.

As far as they could see it, there was no hope revealed through the church or baptism. Too much wrong in the world stood in the way. We did not hear detailed stories of their personal pains and hurts, but it is very likely that part of their disdain toward the church comes from direct experiences with Christians failing to live up to the name. But there is no point in my trying to psychoanalyze them. Whatever the cause, one can observe that they were not ready to hope in what is unseen. Too much of what they do see—the history of Christian failures to stand for peace and justice, the suffering of the hungry, Christians they have known who displayed hatred and bigotry, Christians unwilling to respect the questions these young men have about the possibility of faith—yes, too much that they see in the world leads them to despair rather than to hope.

I wish I could tell this as a story that would wrap everything up neatly in a storybook ending, with the young men seeing the light of faith and asking how to follow Jesus themselves. That’s not how it ended up. When most of the crowd had walked back to the campus, they called me aside to talk for another ten or fifteen minutes. I tried to respect their questions and resentments. They spoke to me with respect. I suggested some things they may not have thought about. They were willing to reconsider some of their assumptions about Christians. In the end, they were thankful for the conversation, and they acknowledged that all Christians don’t fit the stereotypes they had built up. They were surprised and seemed to be pleased to meet Christians who longed for the world to be better in some of the same ways that they longed for. The questions they asked and the challenges they made definitely revealed that they longed for a better world, whether or not they had much hope to see it.

Continued in next post . . .

"You probably don't realize how much help you have been to me," said Rev. Aldon Cotton on Wednesday, May 9, after a group of volunteers from Shaw University Divinity School completed a neighborhood survey. Four students from the Christian Ethics class, along with their professor, had traveled to New Orleans, LA, from Raleigh, NC, to provide assistance in whatever way they could to churches trying to get back on their feet after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Rev. Cotton is pastor of Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, which formerly had a building near the corner of Fourth Street and Galvez Street in the Central City section of New Orleans. He explained the significance of the location by saying, "If you understand the geography of New Orleans as being like a saucer, our neighborhood is the middle, the lowest part, of the saucer." That means that when the floodwaters rose, they were very deep at Jerusalem Baptist Church and its surroundings.

Very few people have returned to live in this part of town. Most of the houses have been demolished or gutted, and probably fewer than ten per cent are currently occupied. Here and there, people are working on their homes and hiring contractors, but most of the properties lay empty and overgrown during this late spring in subtropical New Orleans.

The students, Jason Caldwell, John Pierce, Pamela Sattiewhite, and Darlene Thorne, chose to do their final project for Christian Ethics by making a trip to New Orleans. The opportunity came when their professor, Mike Broadway, received a grant from the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America to pay for plane fare and a few expenses to allow five students to volunteer their services to churches in New Orleans.

They participated in a program called Churches Supporting Churches, which was started by the joint efforts of Dr. C. T. Vivian, noted pastor and civil rights leader now of Atlanta, a former dean of Shaw University Divinity School, Dr. David Jehnsen of the Institute for Human Rights and Responsibilities, and Rev. Dwight Webster of Christian Unity Baptist Church in New Orleans.

Shaw University Divinity School’s Dean James T. Roberson, Jr., remarked, “At Shaw we are working to increase this sort of opportunity for our students to learn in diverse places where the church must respond to the critical needs of our day, through partnerships like this one and others. Our mission to prepare clergy and laity to be leaders in the practice of ministry demands that we help them be aware of the critical issues for contemporary churches.”

The first Shaw student to travel to New Orleans under this program, Clarence McLain, went in November to work with Christian Unity Baptist Church. He assisted new church leaders in planning for reestablishing ministries, and he canvassed the neighborhood to gather information on residents and offer spiritual support. One objective of this project is to inspire these students to persuade their own churches to become partners with congregations in New Orleans.

Churches Supporting Churches has organized a group of pastors in New Orleans--Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and more--to take leadership in shaping the recovery of communities. The goal is to reestablish communities by restarting, reopening, repairing, and rebuilding thirty-six churches in all parts of New Orleans. The pastors have been building relationships, gaining skills and capacities, and working in their communities to offer hope, support, and a plan for community transformation. On Monday, May 7, the students were able to observe as a group of pastors met to make agreements and plans for the next steps in obtaining major funding to support neighborhood projects for community development.

One part of the process includes gathering data on the neighborhoods and their needs. The Shaw students walked around each block of a twenty-three block area near Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church. In a day and a half, they recorded the addresses and the condition of each lot. Roughly a third were vacant, having had their structures demolished. A few remaining structures seemed destined for demolition. About half or more were gutted or in need of being gutted, and the waiting game to see who will rebuild and who will sell out hangs over the scattered evacuees and the residents who have returned. Probably no more than ten per cent have been partially or thoroughly rehabilitated so that they can be occupied. It is a dismal sight, and no easy breeding ground for hope.

Pamela Sattiewhite, a first-year Shaw University Divinity School student from San Antonio, Texas, commented on her experiences learning about the needs of New Orleans' people and churches, "It is heartbreaking to see that the devastation of Hurricane Katrina is still evident almost 2-years later. As the people of New Orleans work towards rebuilding their lives, homes, and community, I am reminded that there is no place like home. Despite the outer appearance and conditions of the 9th Ward and other parts of New Orleans, many of the people that I spoke to look forward to rebuilding their homes, and they are happy to share their memories of the ordeal. As I reflect on the spirit of the people of New Orleans, LA I am reminded that 'a setback is a setup for a come back!' "

Rev. Cotton said it would have taken him at least a month to finish the community survey because he would not be able to work on it more than one day a week, and then as only one person. Moving around the neighborhood is slowed as well because of the need to converse with people about how they are doing, and to find out how he can minister to them. By completing the survey, the students were able to hand him the raw data that will become a major piece of the evidence that Churches Supporting Churches is ready to make good use of requested funds for community development.

On Thursday, May 10, the Shaw group met three co-pastors of a United Methodist Cooperative Parish. Rev. James Haynes, Rev. Becky Conner, and Rev. Jeff Conner are serving three congregations on the eastern side of New Orleans. Covenant United Methodist Church in Chalmette has been open for services for some time, and all three congregations have been meeting together there. Cornerstone United Methodist Church in New Orleans East will soon reopen for weekly worship. Hartzell United Methodist Church in the Lower Ninth Ward is on its way toward rebuilding, and a volunteer construction crew from Arizona was hard at work there during that same week.

Rev. Becky Conner asked the Shaw group to help them transport some computers to the Cornerstone church site and move some furniture there so that they will be ready to move their offices and set up a computer lab. The computers were donated by a non-profit from Baton Rouge, and they had been stored in the pastors' apartments while the church building was being restored. They would soon be ready for use in reestablishing outreach ministries to elders and to children. They filled the back seats and trunks of four cars with computers, monitors, printers, and cables and delivered them to the computer lab room at the church.

The pastors said, "We had been dreading the process of taking these computers one at a time each day as we went to work at the church. You saved us so much time today." It was going to be tedious and inefficient. But a small amount of effort by the Shaw volunteers made a big difference for these pastors who have so many important tasks to do in a community with so many needs.

Throughout the week, the Shaw students were able to meet with pastors of other churches, talk with neighborhood residents, and view the continuing effects of the devastating storm twenty-one months after it came and went. Dr. Broadway said, "I can think of no more important place to be learning about ministry in this time than in New Orleans. I am so glad that my students and I have had this opportunity to see the work of God in this place."

Another group of sixteen Shaw University Divinity School students and three professors traveled to New Orleans on February 5-8, 2007, for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. The theme of the conference was “In the Wake of Katrina: Lest We Forget . . . Call to Renewal.” The students enrolled in an elective course called Problems in Pastoral Counseling taught by Dr. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan and Dr. Helen McLaughlin. Participants attended plenaries, seminars, and on-site field education experiences, engaging in ministry to survivors of Katrina at nursing homes and a freedom school; assisted a congregation, research center, and individual home owners with rebuilding, clean up, and preservations, and participated in peer-to-peer discussion with AIDS survivors and persons experiencing labor discrimination. One highlight was attending a moving sunrise memorial service at the Katrina Memorial at the foot of the Claiborne Street Bridge in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Dr. Cheryl Kirk-Duggan says that in this context, students faced the questions, “Where was God in the Katrina event? Where is the church and to whom is it speaking and ministering? Now that the demands of reconstruction and restorative justice in the United States Gulf Coast is upon us, what does that say abou the reconstruction and justice in the Gulf Coast when this nation is at war on the premise of preemptive protection from injustice and the threat of terrorism? This Black Church community, however, is resilient and is fighting to rise again.”