War

You might recall my mentioning of Inge in one of my previous posts (we met at church).  Anyway, her and her husband host a discussion group at their house every other Monday night.  They discuss various topics of interest to the group; made up of young and old, believers (new and old) and non-believers, and various nationalities, it's a neat collection of people.  The first week they were discussing animals.  Animal abuse, grass-fed cows, what does the Bible say about animals, do they go to heaven?  The ultimate question ended up being, "how far does our responsibility of care extend?"  Although we didn't end up with a concrete answer to the question, it was an interesting topic.  At the end of the evening they consulted their list of topics and decided on "war" for the next discussion.  Yes, we should most likely have narrowed it down a bit beforehand, but we didn't.

Source

With no specific question we planned to try to answer, I had my own preconceptions on what we'd discuss.  In between my classwork I did some research into conscientious objectors, Biblical stances on war, Baptist theology on war, etc.  In high school I had done a research paper on Alvin York and could still remember bits and pieces of his story.  Although most people today would be more familiar with Desmond T. Doss thanks to the recent release "Hacksaw Ridge", the story of Alvin York is just as fascinating, at least to me.  You can watch his story on youtube if you'd like (I just finished it myself).  Because of some recent events at my home church I've also become quite interested in what it meant, historically, to be Baptist.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm in a British Commonwealth country, but when I was googling the baptist stance on war I got a lot of results from UK Baptists.  An article titled, "Responding to war and the refugee crisis" by the Baptist Union of Great Britain was excellent, and convicting as well.

The discussion that night didn't exactly meet my expectations, but it was interesting to hear from everyone.  I will admit that I'm curious how differently it would have turned out if I, the only American, had not been there.  Comments were definitely made about how we seem to always be getting involved in, or starting, wars.  Despite feeling as if I was holding back the discussion a bit with my presence, I enjoyed hearing from Matthew and Inge about what life was like in Zimbabwe before they left (due to the unrest and political climate) and how they had sometimes wished someone would have stepped in to help their country. My understanding from the Kiwis present is that NZ doesn't have any sort of conscription registration; if a war were to break out that required more people to fight than are already serving they would pass a law requiring those eligible to register.

To add more fuel to the fire in my brain, a few of the books I've read recently all seemed to have an aspect of war to them as well.  Shortly after I arrived in Hawera I read a novel that "shows us Angolan independence through the eyes of a woman who has barricaded herself into her apartment".  Although fiction, it gave me a look into a recent war of which I had no knowledge.  So much of what happens on the African continent seems ignored in much of the history of the day, but then there's a whole lot of history to be learned.

Last week I finished a memoir about a Canadian women who travels to Iran to learn how to cook Persian food.  It made me want to go to Iran, despite her depictions of her experiences as a female in that society; the few tastes I've had of Persian food, made by my Iranian friend Hossein, were delicious.  Yesterday I finished "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet", recommended to me a few months ago by a friend.  It's the story of a young Chinese boy and a young Japanese girl who become friends despite the prejudices of the Chinese and Japanese against each other, and in turn, the nation's prejudice against the Japanese (China was on the side of the Allies during WWII).  I'm no stranger to the topic of the Japanese interments, but it was still a tough book to read, at least for me.  A dark day in our nation's history when Executive Order 9201 was signed allowing our government to "relocate" its own citizens based on their ancestry.  But this book really hit a nerve with its depictions of the reactions of not only the "white" Americans to the events, but even the Chinese people who felt it was "better them than us".  It's a strange dichotomy created by war.  With all the unrest in the Middle East and the refugee crisis, the distrust of Muslims, it all just makes me sad.  Sad that I don't do more about it...especially when you read an article like this one, about Christian immigrants.