Three Questions for Memorial Day: (1) Can we remember without attributing reasons for war that aren’t in fact the real reasons? (2) Can we remember the innocent victims of war even as we remember those who died while fighting? (3) Can we remember without the “us versus them” factor? — Perhaps if all who died were commemorated…

From: RedLetterChristians

Three Questions for Memorial Day

Posted MAY 23 2014 by CRAIG M. WATTS

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As Memorial Day is celebrated, is memory really what is encouraged or is it just an exercise in imagining? In other words, can we tell the truth on Memorial Day? While some truth is given voice on this solemn occasion, there are other important truths that are distorted in the telling or pushed from memory altogether. This is the case, not just in community Memorial Day services, but in churches that allow a Memorial Day focus to be introduced into worship. While I find the inclusion of this nationalist holiday in worship a wholly inappropriate, theologically unjustifiable practice, I find it doubly disturbing that from what I have seen churches do little to introduce much needed truth to the occasion.

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Right remembering of the dead is a moral undertaking. It shows respect for the departed and displays sympathy for family members and friends left behind. But untruthful memorials serve other purposes, sometimes masking truth and glorifying that which should not be glorified. I think there are some questions we should ask as Memorial Day approaches.

(1) Can we remember without attributing reasons for war that aren’t in fact the real reasons? To celebrate Memorial Day by claiming soldiers died that we might be free is misleading. The real causes behind most wars have had little to do with protecting freedom of speech or assembly or worship. Major General Smedley Butler, USMC , declared, “Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die.… No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits.” Can we remember in a way that doesn’t falsify the causes of war, justify national self-righteousness, or turn Memorial Day into a recruiting tool to entice the young to enter the armed forces?

(2) Can we remember the innocent victims of war, even as we remember those who died while fighting? The majority of people who die in wars are not combatants. It is certainly not the case that sufficient care is taken by the military to avoid civilian deaths or that investigations of the deaths of the innocent are always undertaken. For those who believe otherwise, I highly recommend the viewing of the critically acclaimed, Academy Award nominated documentary Dirty Wars. Far too many people have suffered at the hands of the American military who have engaged in no armed hostilities. Yet they are maimed and killed, often on ill-founded suspicions. Remembering these men, women, and children can help us remember rightly on Memorial Day.

Also by Craig: The Nationalistic Corruption of Worship in America

(3) Can we remember without the “us versus them” factor that is inevitable when we honor “our” war dead? Memorial Day was formerly known as Decoration Day and it served as an occasion to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By including the war dead on both sides of the conflict, the day was used to affirm unity rather than reinforce division. The sacrifice of the soldiers was acknowledged but one side was not glorified over the other. Can we remember those who died in war without reinforcing nationalism? Perhaps if all who died on battlefields were commemorated on Memorial Day –and not just Americans- the occasion might foster something greater than national unity: a global unity rooted in an acknowledgment of the tragedy of war.

Those Americans who suffered and died in war ought to be remembered. The grave difficulties endured by of those who faced armed conflict and lost their lives should be recognized. The soldiers’ best intentions in allowing themselves to be put in harm’s way –regardless of the actual reasons for war- deserve to be honored. But in the process, war itself should not be honored, the reasons for war whitewashed, nor should the suffering and the deaths of others be ignored. Rather “putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbor” (Ephesians 4:25).

Entire Article Here

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