Glory and battle

In 1969, Edwin Starr recorded a song that became a huge hit for Motown. Its theme was simple: War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’! The song rode a nationwide wave of anti-war protests, begun by college students, eventually joined by khaki-clad journalists and mothers carrying signs with quasi-profound slogans, like War is not healthy for children and other living things.

Individuals have always been against war, for sensible reasons: It’s disruptive, costly, bloody, and heartrending. But “anti-war” as political movement gained traction only about a hundred years ago, springing from the costliest, bloodiest conflict in history to that date. What we now call World War I changed not just the nature of war, but also popular attitudes about it—stripped all the glory from it, such as there was. Instead of gold epaulets and braid, officers and soldiers would henceforth dress in colors of mud. Instead of gallant charges on horseback they would blunder along after mechanized engines of destruction. The “Great War” surprised 19th-century people with 20th-century technology and destroyed about one-fifth of an entire generation.

Pacifism has been on the rise ever since, but so has conflict. Though war makes no sense, it grips human imagination. It’s a recurring theme in movies and literature, especially fantasy literature. Even Christian fantasy literature; the Narnia chronicles begin and end with battles. The Lord of the Rings is one long, epic conflict spread over three volumes. The Warden and the Wolf King by Andrew Peterson (WORLD’s Children’s Book of the Year) climaxes in a final showdown between Wingfeather allies and Fang hordes. Do Christian fantasy writers glorify war?

The short answer is yes—but only a certain kind of war, where good and evil are clearly staked out (and fought out), by flawed protagonists. The heroes’ goodness is located outside themselves: in the Maker, or Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, or some noble principle that governs justly. The enemy may be capable of redemption, but first must be subdued—failing to resist allows evil to have its way and produce more evil.

Christians should understand this better than anyone, for Christian faith is in permanent conflict with the world. The New Testament is full of military metaphors, and Old Testament narratives include plenty of the real thing. Even the secular world retains an idea of justified war—sometimes, bad people have to be stopped, by any means necessary. Good vs. evil is a theme most of us understand if we haven’t been “educated” out of it.

But there’s another dimension to battle that Andrew Peterson and other Christian writers don’t overlook. In an early chapter of The Warden and the Wolf King, as one of his characters mourns a lost comrade, she also recalls “countless acts of heroism, sacrifice, and honor, which were seen and which would be remembered long after the heroes died and became points of light in a dark sky, connected by memories like constellations, each of which painted a picture that all the darkness of the universe could never quench. Light danced along the strands.”

Our cynical age scoffs at such glory-talk: reckless romanticism, the kind of drivel that corporations and governments use to lure young men into sacrificing themselves for “absolutely nothin’.” But the theme runs too deep to be dismissed. While most wars are wasteful and pointless, some are not. And ugly and terrifying as it is, battle seems to have an almost primeval appeal, especially to men. It’s as if they are called to find out what’s in them: savagery or heroism, unspeakable cruelty or self-sacrifice, the best or the worst. War brought out the best in Louis Zamperini, real-life hero of Unbroken, and eventually led him to Christ. Others can tell a similar story.

We rightly pray that our sons (and daughters) will never have to go to war. But the way we see things is not necessarily the way God sees them. War persists for a reason, and those reasons have a lot to do with our fall—but also perhaps with our redemption.

Email jcheaney@wng.org