War Movies (Part 2)
One of the reasons I enjoy war movies is that they provide me with many illustrations to flesh out the things my pastors preach, especially masculine things. They help me understand, put flesh on, and emotionally connect with truth.
Recently, these things have all collided in my head. My husband preached on God’s jealousy and His love for us. Jarrett preached on Christ’s willingness to enact holy violence for us, the sheep, His people. Brent, one of our teachers, taught about David as a shepherd and said something along the lines of, “A true warrior’s gentleness towards his people is matched by his ferocity towards his enemies.” (I poetized what he said a bit.) Earl Blackburn, at the CBA-GA we recently attended, pointed out much the same thing, that the shepherd has two things - a crook to guide the sheep and a staff to violently defend them against predators.
Holy or righteous violence isn’t popular in today’s feminine society. We’re not comfortable with masculine violence. The masculine element that doesn’t say I love you in words but in mighty deeds is considered barbaric. We have forgotten the importance of an armed man who is trained for war. We think he is only armed to gratify some base urge to inflict harm. We forget he is bearing arms out of love.
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” – JRR Tolkien.
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” – Heraclitus
Watching war movies lets me viscerally connect with the idea of righteous violence. There are things worth fighting for, worth dying for, and worth committing acts of violence for. There are enemies at the gate who deserve to die at the hands of good and violent men before they rape and pillage the homes.
It makes me sad when we tell stories where men willing to be violent for their people are painted as unredeemable, unfixable, beyond love and friendship, as if they have committed the unpardonable sin, as if they have made their souls as black as the ones who would rend those they defend.
This is why I love Rambo 4. This is a broken warrior brought full circle to see that his abilities can be used for good. This is why I love Stargate Atlantis. Each time Sheppard seems unhealable, unsavable, his self-loathing unquenchable, his friends gather around. The people he killed for are there. They’re just there, there for him. The number of stories of men willing to go AWOL just to get back to their buddies, of guys sent home with wounds who felt like they let their company down, abound. These are stories of men who kill to defend, defend their homes, their families, their people, their brothers.
I have to ask myself if they’re wrong to defend their own with such violence. Is violence inherently wrong in every situation? Is all violence abuse? We tend to equate violence as always being sadistic torture. We have decided all killing is murder.
“If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.” - Terry Pratchett
The Bible doesn’t say all violence is evil. Christ never commands a soldier to desert the Roman army for a life of peace. Paul often compares the spiritual life to being at war, to being a soldier, and describes our armor. Christ himself is painted as a blood-drenched warrior. Violence isn’t always evil, always murder, and always sadistic. There is such a thing as holy, or righteous violence. It is dangerous and terrifying, but it isn’t necessarily evil.
And you know what? Because I watch war movies, tv shows, and read military history (boots on the ground, not politics) I know this in my soul. I know what holy violence is because I have wept over men willing to enact it for the people they love, fictional and non-fictional. This type of violence can break a man. It can especially break him if he is constantly told he’s evil for what he’s done. (Looking at you Vietnam and our poor Vietnam vets.) If we view righteous violence as evil we will break our warriors. And if we break all our warriors, we will be defenseless.
If you demand that your pastors never defend you, especially from yourself, that they never keep the wolves at bay with sword, shield, staff, or gun, then you can’t blame them when you are ripped apart by tooth and claw. If you disarm the warriors, you must endure being conquered. If you emasculate men, we must prepare for slavery.
We need warriors.
Not because they’re glorious, but because we need protectors and defenders. We need men willing to band together to hold at bay the bullies, the lies, and the attackers. If we disarm our pastors and deacons, demand that they never speak out against our sins, that they never say no, that they don’t look out for our safety, we will be left open to horrendous things. If we insist that Christ always spoke in a passive voice and wasn’t a warrior in the wilderness, didn’t defeat death with his resurrection, hasn’t crushed the head of the Serpent, and isn’t at war, we will be left open to all the terror sin brings into our lives. If we don’t see that our pews aren’t pews, but trenches and that Christ is our captain, we will be subject to the horror of being conquered by a stronger force. If you don’t know what that looks like I have a couple of books or movies I can recommend but they require a strong stomach.
We need warriors.
This is why I watch war movies. I want to hold the truth in my head when the world tells me violence is never the answer and always evil. It’s not. Good men armed are a blessing and needed. War movies remind me of that. War movies help me understand that violence is awful, bloody, and breaking, but also necessary if I want to live safely in my home and nurture little things. I can’t grow flowers if I don’t have a defender. I can’t stay in the fight with my sin without Christ battling for me, and I can’t be safe in my church without my pastor standing up, armed with the Word of the Lord and ready to hack and kill all that would destroy us, even and especially my sin.
If that is all true, then as a woman, I must praise my warriors. I must engage in encouraging them, not berating them for their violence. I must seek to overcome my feminine fear of danger and allow them to be dangerous for my sake. I must embrace the truth that their strength is good. This is a line I think women have to help hold. Our men will be that much braver, stronger, and better if we have their backs. If we praise their valor and their courage instead of demanding they lay down their guns and play nice. It’s on us to be the thing they defend. No man wants to go to war with an empty home at his back. No pastor wants to preach when he’s constantly attacked by his sheep. No deacon wants to serve when they’re beaten down with complaints from their people. We, women, have the beautiful and wonderful job of being defended. That means it is up to us to see our defenders. We lay people have the hard but good work of letting our pastors and deacons protect us.
One of my favorite moments in all of Stargate was this interaction between a woman who wasn’t a soldier but a doctor and an enemy she whose life she was trying to save:
Keller: Colonel Sheppard is a soldier. I’m a doctor.
Todd: Ah, yes. His job is to take lives. Yours is to save them.
Keller: No. His job is also to save them. He just has a different set of tools.
I saw this the other day: I would rather suffer in good company than live comfortably surrounded by delicate men.
This is why I watch war movies.
