This is a comment by Veteran on the post “What Do Pacifists Do on Memorial Day?“
I must have missed the commercial that said Memorial Day is the “remembrance of war” as you say. This is a day to remember those who sacrificed (lives, livelihoods, family, their own personal freedoms, years of their lives) to defend freedom.
In my seventeen years of military service, I’ve only met a few who really “wanted” to go to war. Despite all the pacifist wishes in the world, war is sometimes a necessary evil. It should be avoided at all costs, but without the men and women of this country who have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way, our world, could be a very different place.
Photo credit: Flickr / The U.S. Army
Certainly there have been a lot of wishful, Utopian, pacifist wishes. Certainly there is evil in the world. For the Christian, the question of how to respond to evil is intertwined with Jesus’ teaching.
My journey from Marine to Christian pacifist:
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Pacifism-Fruit-Narrow-ebook/dp/B005RIKH62/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_1