It seems to me . . .
By Bob Beanblossom
July 2015/May 2017
It seems to me that this deserves to be re-posted. As we approach Memorial Day 2017, the nation is struggling as never before with the redefinition of our very core values. Marriage, the sanctity of life–both for the elderly and the unborn, the innocent and the gang-banger–and our very system of government. Respect has been replaced by hatred and animosity. We used to “respect the office” even if we didn’t like the officeholder. Today our very values are determined by our anger as incessant polls tell us who and what we like.
This is not about politics or polls, what bathroom you want to use, or who you think is oppressing or repressing you. It is about those who sacrificed to make your public viewpoint possible even if you disagree with them and spit in their face: the men and women, and their families, who make it possible for Americans and immigrants to tread–actually or figuratively–on our flag and what it costs to remain flying on the standards of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
I have a special dedication again this year:
To the CHS Class of ’65, my classmates from Cedarville High School. Located in the heart of the Corn Belt, CHS is in Cedarville Township, Greene County, Ohio. It’s history dates to its Revolutionary War founders who were paid for their service in land. The local gravestones attest their contributions to our community.
Cedarville boasted that it had ‘more churches than gas stations.’ Many more. Still does.
We grew up in a town that watched over us. The party line was in full force, and far more efficient than today’s social media. Families that were strong and central. Broken homes were the exception rather than the rule. We were as at home in our friends homes as in our own–and respected and obeyed their parents as our own. School was the focal point of our lives: It was where we learned and where we played. We thought of ourselves as unique among our peers.
It was a time of optimism. Our dads and uncles won WWII, but we didn’t know much about Korea. We still ‘Liked IKE,’ and JFK’s assassination was sobering but didn’t dampen our spirits. Kennedy had backed down Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and Castro in what would be called the Cuban Missile Crisis, we were winning the space race, and we were embarking on the Great Adventure–jobs, college, families. Our future looked bright.
In 1965, the reality of Vietnam had not hit our young lives–yet.
Soon, some of us drifted into military service–as volunteers or draftees–ending up In-Country or in support activities. The nation in general tried to ignore Vietnam while some ‘radicals’ actively protested American involvement. The latter turned their ire upon the men and women in uniform. The most graphic war coverage that had ever been aired on television only heightened the division in our land. We came home to find our families, our communities, our nation fundamentally changed.
With that as background, this is about those we knew–and only knew of–who came the hard way. Although dedicated Americans had to work for years to have some of our brothers and sisters brought home, and POWs reunited with their homeland, the majority of the 58,200 who died serving an ungrateful nation came home to be united with their forebears in family plots or national cemeteries. Special military units were established to quickly and efficiently assure proper ID, rapid transportation, and graveside honors. No use delaying the inevitable. Neighbors offered their sympathy then quickly return to the routine of life. Widows in military housing were turned out quickly–there were no provisions for ‘non-military‘ tenants. The effects–the hurt, the anger–were undercurrents that permeated our culture.
Cedarville liked parades. Every memorial Day the town would gather at the town cemetery a mile or so north of town. A parade would end up there, a speaker or two would remind us of our heritage and those who served, and we would all go home.
Somehow, after ‘Nam, it wasn’t quite the same.
Here’s to those men and women, fallen in combat, and passing on since, who answered the call of our country–in all eras.
Parents and grandparents, teachers, pastors–please take time to teach our children how great America has been, where that greatness came from–and what it cost.
As we celebrate another national holiday honoring our country’s heritage I would like you to join me as we focus our thoughts just a little. We often take time during public events to remember those who died in the course of defending our freedom—our Fallen Heroes. This is as it should be. Americans who died in combat and those who died in terrorist attacks deserve individually and corporately our respect and remembrance. They were dads and moms, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and friends. They deserve an America that continues to be a bastion of freemen observing human rights and civil liberties, regulated by the Constitution, that is built and maintained on the foundation of God’s Law. Heroes they are. But perhaps not because of the reasons you think if you have not been ‘there,’
THEY GAVE THEIR LIVES
This is the great myth we hold regarding those who died in combat and, increasingly, in terrorist attacks. Without minimizing their loss in any way whatsoever, I would like us to recognize that very few of these Americans gave their lives. I will discuss those in the next section. The vast majority who died serving us in a military capacity or as civilian targets had their lives wrenched from them violently and impersonally. These without exception wanted to live to go home to their families and friends. They wanted to live another hour, another day, another year. Each had hopes and dreams. Each had something left undone. Their deaths were neither peaceful nor picturesque—theirs was not the stuff of movies and TV. If death did not come instantly, theirs was a time of ultimate loneliness and suffering—often terror—as they realized that they were beyond the help of their friends and of the world’s finest medical teams. If not a child of God, their aloneness was complete and devastating—more devastating than the wounds themselves. Even if saved by the grace of our Lord, there was a sense of the incomplete: words to be spoken, relationships to savor, things not accomplished. These many who died in our service did not give their lives—they had them taken away violently and out of time.
FALLEN HEROES
This is the relatively small group of those who died on the battlefield as a result of intentional actions. They are rightly called Heroes. These men and women truly gave their lives. They picked the hour and the minute, expecting their actions to prove fatal. Some few survived. Most, however, died “for their country” only in a distant sort of way. Each died defending and protecting their friends, their buddies. If you will read the citations issued for these heroes and talk with combat veterans (and terrorist attack survivors)—if they will share their most private and haunting thoughts with you—you will find invariably that these heroes chose their actions to protect that small group of individuals that was closer to them than can be explained. Brought together by moments of terror and hours of waiting, they were closer than brothers. These are the Heroes. They died no less violently, and with no less pain and anguish, but willfully and willingly for the few, for their friends. Again, this in no way diminishes their heroism.
Their behavior may seem to be paradoxical to many, especially to family and friends who bear their own grief to their graves. There is a precedent that we might look at, however. Many years ago on a hill called Golgotha, the very Son of God gave his life intentionally and completely, not for the masses, but for me. And for you. In a very real sense he died for each individual man and woman from Adam and Eve through the last person to ever be born before time itself dies. That death was no surprise. Planned from the beginning of eternity, it is God’s provision to provide a path of salvation to his fallen creature, Man. He has made this known to all men—Battlefield conversions are common, battlefield atheists are rare:
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men . . . (Titus 2:11)
Unlike the beneficiary of the battlefield hero, God’s salvation requires us to accept the gift of Christ’s death in order to secure our own life. Failure to accept that offering results in eternal death. It is a life or death decision. The offering is certain and universal:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:16-17)
THE SURVIVORS
We sometimes hear about Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD) among combat veterans. In the past it was called “Shell Shock” or simply ignored. It is real and it is pervasive. Without going into medical areas that I am in no way qualified to discuss, let me simply give you a layman’s perspective.
PTSD is the survivor’s curse. It is that pervasive, nagging knowledge that you survived when others did not—sometimes battlefield friends and acquaintances, often those we did not even know—sometimes Heroes who died saving your life. It is driven by memories and what-if’s.
Vietnam was the first “live” war that the American public experienced. Technology brought some of the reality of war to televisions in the homeland in a way that had never before been possible. Yet it was (and still is) a censored reality, tempered by some sense of propriety. The public gets to see exciting explosions, and an occasional sad faced child, but generally war coverage is distant and impersonal. It occasionally includes images of a fallen soldier coming home to grieving family, and friends, and community. It never included the rows and rows of neatly stacked aluminum boxes of the fallen waiting to bring the fallen home to be processed and further shipped to waiting loved ones. Shining brightly in the sun, these boxes greeted soldiers coming in-country to begin their war, and reminded those leaving the war zone that “there, but by the grace of God go I.”
Today the media largely ignores the wars our soldiers are fighting, and the casualties are seldom mentioned–unless something happens to fit a political agenda. Today we hear more about social engineering in the armed forces instead of the always outstanding service of the men and women in uniform.
God has made provisions for those who serve, and those who wait:
But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:10)
All human activities have consequences. For those who know war intimately, it is a never ending part of who they have become. Memories remain, and with them the question: Why did I survive when others did not. The memories may subside at times—be masked by the business of life–but they never really go away. The effects spill over to the “real” world.
THE HOME TEAM
It remains, then, for us to honor those who served us that is in some way fitting to their loss. This honor cannot be confined to special holidays. It requires the maintenance of a strong America continually growing on the foundation of the rule of law with a people who have a moral anchor in the Living Word. Without the ongoing attention of “We the People” to maintain that rule of law–law based upon a written and rightly interpreted Constitution–their sacrifice will be useless, and their country—our country—will be lost.
May God Bless America has been the prayer of every President–until now. May we not only seek to secure that blessing, but to re-establish a nation worthy of that blessing.
President John F. Kennedy said it well in his inaugural address in 1961 (excerpted):
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.
“Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation” — a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
“Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
As I re-read this, I find that I am unable to ask that God bless this country. I cannot ask God to bless the wickedness that permeates our government, our cities, our homes. My prayer, instead, is for revival, for cleansing, and for a return to the values of our founding fathers—that those whose blood has been shed for us will not have died in vain. Each of us is culpable, each of us holds the possibility of the rebirth of America’s greatness–measured in the spirit of her people, not in the gross national product. America’s greatness, under God, begins and ends with me, and with you.