Christianity on the battlefield
By Hugh Begbie
The beautiful lament that begins Psalm 137 - “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept” - has inspired songs, and touches readers with its sense of pathos.But the curses against Edom and Babylon in verses 7-9 are a different matter.
It is one of those psalms where one part is loved and quoted but another is seen as a cause for embarrassment, and habitually omitted. However, this psalm has a very important message for a world torn apart by war and violence.
In Australia we honour our war veterans, and Anzac Day bears many of the marks of a religious festival. Our Armed Forces currently have more than 2000 defence personnel in war-torn countries, and in every place there are chaplains with them. How can these ministers of the Gospel of grace live consistently in this most ungracious of circumstances?
Psalm 137 gives us some insight into the real horror of war. Through this poem we become a witness to the deep grief and anguish experienced by the people of God who were conquered by the Babylonian army, with many killed including infants.
“Happy shall he be who takes
your little ones and dashes them against the rock”
War is no picnic. It unleashes dark and chaotic forces that overwhelm and destroy the environment, people, nations and property. Once the dogs of battle are cut loose no one - not even the President of the United States - can predict where they will go or whom they will bite.
War is filled with noise, physical discomfort, destruction and the stench of filth and death.
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The Dogs of War
Bent double, like old beggars under sack,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime….
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As a under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues -
My friend you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro Patria mori
Quoted Stallworthy, J, Wilfred Owen, Oxford/New York, Oxford University Press, 1974
War breaks down moral boundaries and is often associated with pornography, sexual promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and rape.
When the Russians invaded Germany at the end of World War II, the vast majority of females in Prussia were raped. At least 100,000 rape babies were born.
Readers who are older would understand something of the horror of war. Those who are younger can only view war remotely, witnessed through the eye of camera and reporter as they wander the violent places of the earth. This form of testimony is weak and the impressions given are false.
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It is just too painful to remember, too difficult to explain, too morally remote from normal human life.
The soldier speaks a language, conceals a moral guilt, that only another soldier can understand.
Psalm 137 reminds us that war is always embraced by darkness, pain, grief and death. While it may from time to time be a necessary evil, it must never be seen as a good thing in itself.
It is sometimes said that there are no atheists in foxholes. While it is true that in times of danger some people return to church and some find faith for the first time, it is also true that some became atheists, some become hardened cynics, and some have their moral lives so destroyed they never recover. The much-loved quotation is in the end not entirely true.
Certainly as Christians we need to hear and feel the religious confusion of this psalm. How can those who have witnessed what seems to be the collapse of God’s covenantal care for his land now, in exile, sing the Lord’s song? Witness their agony as the Babylonians taunt them, challenging them to pick up their harps and sing the songs of Zion.
As we read these words we need to reflect on whether we have been guilty of standing in judgment on our wounded Diggers, or given simplistic, pious answers to their suffering? Perhaps our willingness to condemn the curses of this psalm reflects such naivety?
Whether this is a good prayer in the end or not, we must not diminish the honest cry and deep grief out of which it comes; or belittle God’s permission for us to lay the rawness of our anger before his throne in prayer.
I am grateful for psalms like this one. It reminds me that the Bible is real. It does not sweep our human condition under the carpet but acknowledges the full depth of our struggle, our fears and our pain.
As one who knows what it is like to hold a dying spouse in my arms, and the struggle and confusion of learning to live again, I am glad that I have a God who understands - who does not exclude my emotions or my doubts from the embrace of his unlimited grace.
Psalm 137 reminds us not to glorify war, but also encourages us to deal compassionately with those scarred by it. It allows us to accept without judgment
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other even when the other holds a sword”.8.
The Psalm contains a curse. While this curse does at least leave vengeance to God there is, in the end, a better way.
It is the chaplains’ difficult task to enter the dark places of the earth and to sing a song of grace. Their risk is that they will be overcome by the darkness of war, and clothe its lies in religious jargon. Pray, above all else, that they will be enabled to sing the song of grace - the song which sings as much to the enemy as it does to the friend;
8. ibid p 146
Eye Witness
“I looked over to the left and here was the London Scottish who were on our left, running forward across the three or four hundred yards of green grass towards Commecourt Wood. Then they vanished into the smoke. And then there was nothing left but noise. And after this we saw nothing and knew nothing. And we lived in a world of noise, simply noise.”1.
Surprisingly war has its attractions and it can be addictive. Chris Hedges, a war correspondent for many years, says:
“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years.”
But it is also frightening, confusing, boring and, as Hedges goes on to say, brings with it a culture of lies.
“War is peddled by mythmakers - historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state - all of whom endow it with qualities it does not possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty.
“It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humour, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death.
“Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaningless of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths. War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us.”
1. M Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Great War. Milsons Point, Sydney, Random House, 2002, p 158.
2. Hedges, C, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning, New York, Public Affairs, 2002, p 3.
3. ibid.
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Cameras edit out the more gruesome scenes and they cannot smell the stench of death, nor experience the slipperiness of blood, or know the fear that makes a person urinate, defecate or totally collapse.
“Robbins pulled up some undergrowth and as we fished our way through, there was a dead Jerry, his whole hip shot away and all his guts out and flies over it. Robbins just had to step back, and then his leg that was up a tree became dislodged and fell on his head. He vomited on the spot. Good Lord, it was terrible.”
War creates deep fear, as C Day Lewis described in 1943:
Now Fear has come again
To live with us
In poisoned intimacy, like pus
There is not only the fear of injury and death, but also the fear of killing. Killing does not come naturally to most human beings. They have to be trained to kill and the training is only partially successful. In the end, most feel pain and guilt for taking the life of another. A B Facey describes a kill by bayonet: “The awful look on a man’s face after he has been bayoneted will, I am sure, haunt me for the rest of my life; I will never forget that dreadful look.”
To disarm this fear of killing every war is fed by the lies of propaganda and reinforced by the soldiers’ need to caricature the enemy. Enemy become ‘nips’, ‘Huns’, ‘gooks’; their humanity is diminished so that killing them is easier.
But for many this attempt to keep the enemy distant fails, and their spirit and their conscience is seared for life. This is one reason why so many soldiers cannot talk about their war experiences.
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the pain and confusion of those harmed by war, and resist simplistic answers that deny their suffering.
War often brings with it poor behaviour and moral guilt that stains the memory and the conscience. We must support our Diggers, but let’s not force dishonesty upon them by turning darkness into light. They are sinners, not saints, and many live with painful regrets.
Finally, there is something that this psalm does not tell us. The Anzac tradition speaks of sacrifice, but this sacrifice is mainly that of mate for mate, Digger for Digger. The value honoured is the courage to face and kill the enemy even when the odds are poor. But as Christians that view of sacrifice goes only halfway. We are called on to love our enemy and do good to those who hate us.
God is not on the side of anyone’s army. In Christ he carries his cross on both sides of any war. And he reminds us that it is okay to be afraid. It is okay to be angry and to feel the emotions rise up like erupting volcanoes in the smoke of battle - but in your anger do not forget me, just as in the psalm the call is to never forget Jerusalem.
Their risk is that they will be overcome by the darkness
of war, and clothe its lies
in religious jargon
“The cross is the giving up of God’s self in order that he might not give up on us; the cross is the result of God’s desire to break the power of human enmity without violence, bringing us into his divine communion.”7.
The great challenge for those of us who bear the name of Christ is to transcend the call of the Anzac Tradition. To again quote Volf:
“For the self shaped by the cross of Christ and the life of the Triune God embraces not just the other who is a friend but also the other who is the enemy. Such a self will seek to open its arms towards the
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pray that in the midst of the noise of battle, in a foreign land, when it is difficult to sing the Lord’s song, the chaplain may be given the strength to do so. After all, are we not enemy too?
The Revd Dr Hugh Begbie is Principal of Cromwell College within the University of Queensland. He completed his National Service as an officer in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps in 1972-72 prior to theological training.