A Soldier's Thoughts

(My buddy Scott should arrive home from Iraq any day and so in honor of his return I wanted to post something he wrote back in the spring for our old church in Converse, TX. For more details on Scott and his homecoming, check out his wife Gina's blog here. Thanks to all of you who prayed for his safety while he was gone. Enjoy.)

"Men of Grace, it is an honor to write to you from Mahmudiyah, Iraq. I am serving with the 10th Mountain Division in the suburbs south of Baghdad. Darren asked me to write to you about what God has shown me this year.

If I wrote about everything God has shown me this year, this might be a long message. Instead, I'll write about what God has shown me this week, which might still be a bit lengthy. Perhaps referring to what God has "shown" me is a use of the wrong tense. "Showing" might be a more accurate choice of words. But actually, I feel like I am resisting the thing He is showing me right now.

Before I elaborate, I should provide a bit of background for the thoughts I want to share. This week, I was reading in Matthew where Jesus says that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. In any other time of my life, that would've seemed like a good idea, and an idea not altogether difficult to carry out into action.

But that was before I had any actual enemies. That was before I lived in a place where people would gladly kill me. That was before I soaked my uniform in another man's blood or attended the memorial of a fellow soldier who will never make it home.

That these are our enemies, I have no doubt. But the people I have the hardest time loving are those who spend their time and energy plotting to kill not me, but each other.

On Easter, some who I consider my enemies, detonated a large bomb outside of the local hospital. Though there were no American injuries,15 Iraqis were killed, including some of their doctors as well as patients. Many more people were injured. Of these, 17 came to our aid station seeking care for significant injuries. One of those patients was a 9-year-old girl with a huge hole in her leg as well as an arterial bleed. She was screaming in a combination of pain and absolute terror. I don't think I know words to describe just how terrible her scream was. We could do nothing to comfort her because we could not speak her language. We could neither answer the questions of her parents, nor provide any explanation as we whisked her off in a helicopter for further care. All we could do was work to get her stabilized while listening to her scream.

I will never forget her scream.

Another of our patients that day might lose his leg. His son was killed in the blast, though he did not know it yet.

Still another patient from another day was severely injured in a blast that killed her husband and 3 year old son.

There were others, but you get the idea. I don't relate these events to impress you with my war stories, but rather to help you understand these enemies of mine.

Surely, Jesus didn't mean that I should actually love people like them.

When I think about those we politely call "insurgents," my reaction is akin to that of Conan the Barbarian who found fulfillment in one thing: "to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

But Jesus says to love them. I don't know how.

It seems that it would be a big victory for me if I could just stop hating these people who bombed a hospital and who, twice this week, bombed an outdoor marketplace. I have prayed about this often over the course of the last seven days.

Did Jesus really mean that we should love these men who are, seemingly, the embodiment of pure evil? I want to think not.

But then I am reminded of my savior on a cross asking "Father forgive them." I also know that I "don't have a high priest who can't be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

Jesus knew what it was to have enemies and He was, no doubt, tempted to hate them. But He was without sin.

Ultimately, I know that my nature will not allow me to love these people apart from Christ. In my heart, I know that they don't deserve my love or Christ's. However, I know that God loves me, and I definitely don't deserve it either.

I haven't learned how to love these insurgents who are trying to kill me, my comrades, and their own countrymen. Truthfully, I am not sure that I will ever learn to do this.

Deep down, I don't know that I even want to.

But there is one thing this experience has done for me: I have a much deeper respect, admiration, and appreciation for what Christ did for us on the cross. He loved me, and millions more like me who go against His commandments every day. We are not worthy of His love, much less his sacrifice.

So I am trying to learn to love Christ, and praying that He will enable me to love someday like He does.

I will close this message like I close much of my correspondence from Iraq. As a Soldier, it is not my job to critique our policies in Iraq. I wish that decisions could be made by Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen instead of Democrats, Republicans, and opinion polls

However, this I do know: our Soldiers are doing some incredible things in this country across the world from you. There are many amazing people here who put themselves in danger every single day to try to bring freedom to this land and its people. In return, we ask only for your prayers. Prayers for our safety, prayers for our morale, prayers for those who do not yet know Jesus, and prayers for people like me to learn to love those who seem so unlovable… unlovable just like you and me."

-sdc