My Background (Phil 3:4b-6)
Most of my life I’ve been an Old Testament Christian*. I wanted to be an agent of God’s justice upon the wicked, assured of my righteousness like Saul of Tarsus. My interest in the military began at an early age. I spent all my senior high school years in Marine Corps JROTC, serving as cadet commander my senior year. Graduating from the U.S Naval Academy in 1978 as a 2nd lieutenant in the Marine Corps, I went on to the Basic School at Quantico, VA then flight school at Pensacola, FL. After receiving my wings I reported to Camp Pendleton, CA where I transitioned to Cobra attack helicopters and later completed a deployment to the western Pacific with a composite helicopter squadron aboard an amphibious assault ship. I chose to leave active duty as a captain at the end of my obligation and return to North Carolina. Within a year I had joined the Army National Guard as a warrant officer and began flying Hueys and Cobras before transitioning to Apache attack helicopters, which I flew for the next 12 years until my retirement in 1999. Prior to that, in 1991 I was activated with my battalion for Desert Storm and sent to Ft. Hood, TX for trainup before deploying to Iraq. The war ended before our departure but I was prepared to kill and die for my country.
In the leadup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, although I wasn’t as certain as the President seemed to be of Iraq’s imminence as a threat, I assumed he had much more intelligence at his disposal than the public so I gave tentative approval to the effort. The “shock and awe” campaign, followed by rapid victories on the ground that culminated in the fall of Baghdad aroused my patriotism. Later, however, when no WMD’s were found and no Iraqi support demonstrated for al Qaeda I felt utterly betrayed by the Administration. I thought, “You don’t send thousands of people to their deaths on the basis of speculation (or fabrication) but on certain imminent threat!” (To my dismay, this was not a concern to many other Christians who readily accepted other rationales.) This outrage began a long period of soul-searching and scripture-reading for me which led ultimately to my realization on March 19, 2006 that I was now a New Testament Christian**. At that moment a burden was lifted from me I didn’t know I’d been carrying, and I was filled with a joyous inner peace. That burden was the tension that had existed between my beliefs on the use of violence and the teachings of Christ. Having self-righteously yearned to impose justice upon murderers regardless whether they were destined for hell or heaven, I became aware that by Jesus’ definition I am as a murderer and worthy of death (Matthew 5:21-22). Man’s justice is flawed; God’s justice is perfect - no one escapes it except by His grace. Regarding my freedoms, I neither expect nor desire others to kill for them on my behalf. Let God decide my freedoms and safeguard them.
Until 2004 I was a lifelong Republican; now I am an independent who neither automatically endorses a particular party nor feels compelled to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Neither party endorses the sanctity of life from conception to the grave so, despite the claims of anti-abortionists, neither is truly pro-life. (We say that life is an inalienable right given by God, even as we take it away - alienate it - from convicts and our enemies). In the summer and fall of 2007 I researched the historic peace churches before choosing to join the Mennonite expression of the Anabaptist tradition.
Now my allegiance is to the kingdom of God and I serve at the pleasure of the King.
My goal: trust God, obey Christ, and let the chips fall where they may.
* A Christian who, when he cannot find justification in the New Testament for what he wants to believe, seeks it in the Old Testament - a militarist Christian. (But if your worldview is based on the Hebrew Bible, are you really a Christian?)
** A Christian who, when he perceives conflict between the Old Testament and The New, goes with the New - a pacifist Christian, which should be a redundant term.