Freedom doesn’t empower subjugation

I don't observe Christmas in December, for historical reasons that merit a different blog post. In fact, I don’t celebrate any of the traditional Christian holidays – even though I love the holiday season. However, as an American, I would be a hypocrite to advocate forced change of the name “Christmas tree” to “holiday tree,” or the greeting “Merry Christmas” to “happy holidays.”

It’s not merely semantics, but a matter of principle. Now, I’m no genius, and I have little skill in rhetoric, but the controversy over Christmas should never happen in America. A large part of what it means to be free in America involves religious freedom. This is the message of the pilgrims in American history. Religious censorship is what motivated them to emigrate from Europe .

So when I see organizations attempting to neutralize public events related to Christmas – or ban them altogether – I’m reminded more of constraint and intolerance than freedom. Unfortunately, I feel many Americans have mistaken our freedom of religion to mean freedom from religion.

As I understand it, freedom of religion safeguards the people from a government that would force its people to practice a certain religion only. To my knowledge, the U.S. government has never forced a religion on anyone. And having a public display of a Christmas tree or manger scene is hardly an act of repression.

I think military members understand the idea of freedom very well – because everything their job stands for ultimately comes down to protecting freedom. I saw a refreshing example of real religious tolerance last Christmas at Langley Air Force Base. The chapel had a Christmas tree and a Menorah displayed – together. They had a lighting ceremony that recognized both Christmas and Hanukkah. Now, until the government starts making attendance mandatory to such events, I welcome them with enthusiasm. Some of the best memories come from these events. A feeling of unity and camaraderie is a common result, or else people would not have them.

Nevertheless, some people have come to believe freedom includes freedom from being offended. But in a land where free speech is touted, personal offence is unavoidable. So, if you’re offended because someone wished you “Merry Christmas” this year, understand no one owes you recompense. I hope your offense is taken with dignity and mitigated by understanding that offence is a small price to pay to live free. After all, freedom doesn’t empower subjugation.

I'm home - Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas

Just a quick note to let everyone know I safely got back from Iraq. Please forgive my silence on this blog the past three months -- It's been tough getting back into the swing of things. I now plan on reengaging (even though my subject matter won't be nearly as interesting as Iraq's).

Shalom and God bless!

A gift – but not for you

I’d like to spin a tale about my friend Scott Johnson, the protocol sergeant here at Baghdad International Airport. This is a true story.

Now, while I’m out trying to get the scoop for news stories, Scott is stuck in the main headquarters building handling all the important people that come through. We get everything from general officers to congressional delegates through here because this is basically the only airport for Baghdad run by the U.S. military. Scott works protocol here as a special duty. He’s a nuclear missile maintainer by trade out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Like most maintenance guys, he’s got a foul mouth and sarcastic demeanor – a perfect first impression to every distinguished visitor that comes through here. But honestly, he is very good at the protocol role – very diplomatic. It is probably because of his diplomacy that he’s gathered quite a collection of military coins since he’s been here. (In the military, every high-ranking officer have personal coins with their insignia they give to people who perform well.) However, there is something Scott wanted more than coins.

We had a conversation back in July about how cool it would be to get a miniature T barrier as a gift. A life-size T barrier is a giant concrete slab that makes up a portion of a wall. They are about 12 feet high and six feet wide. They’re placed around most work environments to mitigate rocket blast when we’re attacked by mortars and rockets. The miniature T barriers are like a paperweight leadership gives out here for excellence. It was something we often saw leadership give out, but they didn’t quite make it down to us NCOs in the Glass House.

One day recently, however, the former commander of the medical squadron, Colonel Balserak, came by to see me with two of the small T barriers in his hand. He gave one to me as a parting gift for writing stories on his unit. The other he asked me to give to Chief Hatzinger, our superintendent. I had scored a barrier, and I couldn’t wait to produce my prize in front of Scott.

“Check it out Scott!” I said with amusement as I showed him my T barrier. “Colonel Balserak gave it to me.” Scott just shook his head in irritation and walked away. It didn’t help that I was chuckling at him. Later that night, Scott was playing a game of cribbage with Hatzinger. I then remembered I had to give the chief his T barrier that Balserak dropped off. I remember feeling fortunate to see Scott’s reaction again. As I put it on the chief’s desk, I told him I got one too. The chief’s face lit up. “That’s great! Did you get one Scott?” “Nope,” he answered curtly. “Well, who else got one?” asked the chief. Scott answered “Well, both the colonels, the captain, Sergeant Bailey, Sergeant Wicke and you chief; essentially, everyone in the headquarters but protocol.” The chief looked disappointed. “He didn’t give one to you and Lieutenant Hatcher?” “No” said Scott, “but it’s okay because I’m over it now.”
The next day though, Scott got a message to go see Balserak in his office. Scott assumed the chief pressured the colonel into giving him a T barrier. After an awkward wait outside the colonel’s office, Balserak finally approached Scott. Scott stood and shook his hand. “What can I do for you?” said the colonel. “Captain McGath said you had something for me?” asked Scott. “Hmm … No.” answered Colonel Baslerak in thoughtful pause. The situation was becoming more awkward every second because, through this brief conversation, the colonel would not let go of Scott’s hand. He continued to shake it. Finally, after awkward silence, the colonel said “Oh yes! I know what this is about. Wait here.” He retreated into his office and returned with a T barrier.

“Give this to Lieutenant Hatcher for me, would you?” I wish I could have been there to see Scott’s face!

Needless to say, Scott wasn’t pleased over being called over to deliver the T barrier for someone else. And after a little misunderstanding, it turned out Balserak had gotten one for Scott too. He had given it to Colonel Czzowitz, our deputy commander, who was holding on to it until he saw Scott. We’re still not sure if he arranged that little meeting for Scott on purpose though. Czzowitz just laughs when we ask him and replies with a negative.

A Fearful Situation

Last night I had a chilling reminder of a fearful moment in a combat area. Oddly enough it all started when I woke up in the middle of the night needing to use the restroom. From my previous post, I highlighted one of the biggest discomforts in a deployed area: portable toilets.

At home we take for granted the ease of relieving ourselves in the middle of the night. A short stumble across the hall and you’re there at the restroom. Here, it’s about 50 yards of walking. But there are rules. You can’t be out of your tent unless you’re in uniform. So using the restroom at night involves getting up and getting dressed – socks, shoes and all. The long walk isn’t on pavement either – the ground is covered with loose, fist-sized gravel requiring careful steps at night. And of course, I don’t need to explain the disadvantages of portable toilets over flushing toilets.

Anyway, last night as I lay in bed, I was having a debate with myself if I wanted to try to hold it the remainder of the night, or just get up and go. “If I stay,” I thought, “I’ll be uncomfortable and get only shallow sleep. If I go, I have to deal with getting dressed, the long walk, the smell, and then risk being wide awake from the trauma once I return.” To pee or not to pee ...

It was at this point I recalled an occasion a few years back in Afghanistan. I was at small place called Shkin Fire Base with the Army. Shkin is really more like a fort – there are four stone walls surrounding us and only about 100 people there. The walls were approximately 25 feet high, except at the four corners where there were tall look-out towers. Our small number (of soldiers) was unsettling because Shkin is located right on the Pakistan border where hundreds of Taliban fighters are finding sanctuary, enjoying immunity in Pakistan.

It was there that we got an intel report of about a $100,000 reward promised by Taliban leadership to anyone who could capture a live American soldier. That kind of money in Afghanistan would set someone for life. We also were familiar with rumors of what usually happened to an American soldier who was caught by the terrorists: immediate castration.

Now, Shkin was the most austere place I’ve ever been. We didn’t even have portable toilets. Instead we had slit trenches outside the protection of the walls. In Deut. 23:12, God orders the Israelites to designate a place outside their camp for relieving themselves. After being at Shkin, I know why. A slit trench is the most foul and disgusting thing I’ve ever experienced – and there is no way I would want one anywhere near where I slept or ate. The only problem was it was outside the protection of the walled fort. For this reason, we tried to restrict our visits there to daylight hours and with a buddy.

So one night, I had the most awful dream. While sleeping in our split-level bunker, I dreamed I was laying there in need of using the restroom. But in the dream I was terrified of going outside the wall at night. After all the act of using the restroom leaves a person in a very vulnerable position – so I suffered. It’s not that I’m afraid of dying. I’m really not. There are just certain (special) parts of me I’d rather not witness being cleaved from my body.

In the dream I laid there waiting for daylight hours, struggling to hold it in. My bladder was being very unforgiving. It felt like an over pressurized tire pushing up into my rib cage. Finally, my will broke before my bladder. I got up and started arming up for the event. I put on my ballistic vest and helmet. I grabbed my pistol and my M-16 and loaded them both up. Then, I walked out doubled over, making my way out of the bunker and toward the wall’s gate. I paused briefly to build up my nerve and then quietly shuffled to the slit trench. Its odor gave away its proximity. I arrived and began preparing for the jettison. But as soon as I was about to “let go” multiple terrorists ambushed me, stripping me of my guns and armor. One of them spit hateful words at me in Pashto, and the last thing I remembered was a knife coming out. I think the anxiety of that action startled me awake. I was still safe inside the wall, in my bunker (and thankfully dry). “Oh, thank you my Lord, Christ, the Messiah,” I whimpered in a trembling, emotion-filled voice. However, relief soon melted away into horror as I sat up and gathered my wits. I had to pee.

That ended up being a long night for me. And, as I lay awake last night debating on whether or not to go to the portable toilet, which was inside the safety of the camp here, I realized we didn’t have it quite so bad. So I got up and dressed myself and went.

It’s funny how our frame of mind can cause us to be so thankful to God. Before I recalled that moment a few years back, I hated my situation. But my past hardship made me grateful. Our trials seem to do that to us – to make us rejoice in lesser things. I mean, here I was thanking God for a nice, safe portable toilet. Only moments before, I was bemoaning it. Consider James 1:2-4.

Pleasant surprise

I just wanted to illustrate through an image that you can find the best of things in places you least expect them! Who would have thought I would find such tasty treats here?

Putting jest aside, in the deployed environment these portable toilets are a symbol of everything that is uncomfortable. I published this image as a joke in my newsletter to remind people that hot, portable toilets can also be the source of a laugh as well. At least I got a laugh out of it.

Our God created dance

I want to tell you about Derrell Hendricks, a young troop I now admire.

I was invited to be a part of a humanitarian mission here (in Baghdad, Iraq) where a group of about ten of our guys went to deliver a load of goods to some local Iraqi children. The items given out were clothing, paper/pencils, food, soccer balls and other useful stuff. Most of the goods are sent from family members of deployed soldiers.

Anyway, we arrived to the village and there was a crowd of about 20 eager kids, (not including adults). It was a typical humanitarian mission: Soldiers passing stuff out to swarming Iraqi children – they jumped and crawled all over us and put their hands on everything. Several of them repeatedly asked (in broken English) for my camera. It was standard behavior. These missions are always a sort of joyful chaos.

Usually, however, once the items are all passed out, it gets a little slow. We often have only one translator and many soldiers have a hard time playing with kids who don’t speak English. They try to communicate – but it’s usually a little awkward. However, Derrell showed us all a thing or two about foreign relations.

He grabbed a soccer ball and bounced it right off a young boy’s head. That kid grabbed the ball and tossed it back at Derrell as hard as he could. Derrell head butted the ball right back to the boy and it was on. They both jockeyed around for the soccer ball as if they were opponents on a team. Many other children swarmed him and he just tossed them around playfully like they were his own kids.

After about 45 minutes, they grew weary of the soccer ball and all started singing some kind of playground chant in Arabic. Derrell seemed like he couldn’t contain himself. He broke out in a series of dance moves that were both spontaneous and smooth. As he danced to the rhythm of their chant, he was so animated and charismatic that even the adults came to watch. Now, Derrell is black, and his refined and unique dance moves reflected his subculture. No southern white kid my old neighborhood could move like he did and make it look good. There’s just something about the black culture that is joyful and attractive when it comes to dancing. It’s like Derrell just forgot everything around him and moved to the rhythm of the Iraqi chant. This only encouraged the kids – they loved it.



Any child that wasn’t already around Derrell was now on their way to him. The kids were captivated by him. They all joined in the chant and were clapping and singing louder and louder. Derrell just moved with a smiling face and snapping fingers.

After it got dark, the flight sergeant had to break up the fun so we could return. We loaded the bus. Just when we were about to drive off, a boy, who looked like he was about six, ran up the stairs of the bus and loudly sang out the now-familiar chant. Derrell jumped out of his seat and started dancing again, right in the isle. The kid exploded in laughter (a wonderful universal language I think).

A few seconds passed and an Iraqi man came and yanked the boy off the bus.

“That was some good old fashioned fun right there,” said Derrell. No doubt, Derrell made it fun for everyone. His flight sergeant said Derrell was always like that, and that he always connected with people in a unique way. “He’s the pied piper of our squadron,” said the sergeant.

Be reminded that Derrell is God’s creation. The Lord made that young man the way he is. So, when I see things like that, I can’t help but imagine how God enjoyed watching these events as well. It reminds me how carefully and creatively he designed each of us. And we are in his image – I wonder what it’s like to watch Him dance, and to be a part of that scene.

Should Christians fight in wars?

I recently heard of a new Christian group who is very critical to believers who serve in war – specifically because of Jesus’ words in Luke 6:27-38 about loving and praying for enemies, turning the other cheek, and giving whatever is asked of you. They claim fighting America’s wars is fighting for a worldly Kingdom. It is these claims I want to refute in this post.

According to C.S. Lewis (1949), acclaimed Christian philosopher, when Christ spoke these words recorded in Luke, there was a specific application for them his audience would not have missed.

"Does anyone suppose our Lord’s hearers understood him to mean that if a homicidal maniac, attempting to murder a third party, tried to knock me out of the way, I must stand aside and let him get his victim? I at any rate think it impossible they could have so understood him. I think it equally impossible that they supposed him to mean that the best way of bringing up a child was to let it hit its parents whenever it was in a temper, or, when it had grabbed the jam, to give it the honey also. I think the meaning of the words was perfectly clear – “Insofar as you are simply an angry man who has been hurt, mortify your anger and do not hit back” (p. 86).

He goes on further to say that if a person were in an official position, like a parent, or a court judge, or a soldier, “your duties may be very different because [there] may be then other motives than egotistic retaliation for hitting back” (p. 86).

Lewis also has a lot to say about serving in war. Like Lewis believed about WWII, I believe our cause to be honorable in Iraq and even further, I believe it’s our nation’s duty to at least attempt to help a less fortunate nation – even when it’s tough. It’s unfortunate though, this modern war in Iraq will likely not have the same outcome as WWII, because people in America (and Iraq) aren’t united for the common good, as Americans were in WWII. (Indeed, Americans had to be united because the laymen understood the war threatened the homeland if Hitler succeeded in Europe.)

I think if the greater good would come from the decision to go to war, then war (although tragic) is justified. It is rational to say that peace under Hitler (or Islam) would in no way be better than a war preventing his (its) rule.

I think Lewis’s strongest point about war is made on page 75ff though. To summarize, he said good countries should do good things for other countries. However, no single country has resources to do good things for all countries in need. In the process of helping A, it neglects B. So it therefore makes sense that the good country should choose to help the country who is a benefactor and neglect the one who has no special claim on it. And sometimes “it involves helping A by actually doing some degree of violence to B” because B is threatening A.

Consider the following excerpt from Lewis (1949):

The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are. I think the suppression of a higher religion by a lower, or even a higher secular culture by a lower, a much greater evil. Nor am I greatly moved by the fact that many of the individuals we strike down in war are innocent. That seems, in a way, to make war not worse but better. All men die, and most men miserably. That two soldiers on opposites sides, each believing his own country to be in the right, each at the moment when his selfishness in most in abeyance and his will to sacrifice in the ascendant, should kill [each] other in plain battle seems to me by no means one of the most terrible things in this very terrible world (p. 77-78).

I would take it even further and say that when women and children die resulting from collateral damage in war, (although unjust), it is not the worse evil that could have happened to them. Their own countrymen could be doing far more damage to them in life, than the attacking country has done in killing them unintentionally. (This I know to be the case from experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many times the lives of the innocent suffer long lives under their oppressors.)

Finally, I believe that even in a corrupt society, there can be righteous individuals in that society’s military who do good things wherever they’re sent. (Wasn’t this the case with Cornelius, officer in the Roman Empire in Acts 10.) Additionally, When soldiers serving under a corrupt establishment asked Jesus how they should live, (Luke 3:14) he did not instruct them to defect. He told them not to treat people poorly and be satisfied with their pay.

There may be a lot of corrupt decision makers involved in the process of this war, but in no way do I see those decisions inhibiting the righteous work of individual soldiers. Furthermore I believe the ultimate attempt is for America to help Iraq, not harm it.

There is a caution every believing soldier should be aware of though. It would not be good for a soldier to serve his country as he would serve God. We shouldn’t allow the war “to absorb our whole attention, because it is a finite object and therefore intrinsically unfitted to support the whole attention of the human soul” (Lewis, 1949, p. 52). And also, “A man may have to die for his country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or party, or class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most empathetically belong to God: himself” (p. 53).

Reference

Lewis, C.S. (1949) The weight of glory. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.