From Eureka, Ca (by Josh)

 After a morning of steady rains and splashing mud, we arrived in the city of Corvallis, OR. Though dripping wet, our spirits were shining as we pedaled through this university town where my former high school guitar teacher was waiting for Conor and I at a downtown sandwich shop. I wasn’t too sure how the conversation would go; it had been several years since I had seen Doug, my old teacher, and that was on another road trip (motorized) that I’d been on with my dad, who took off work so we could spend some time together just before I left for Basic Training. We didn’t discuss the military at length then, but I do recall Doug, a former army medic, saying that I would really enjoy shooting the weapons in training. But I was probably more concerned with the fact that Doug had also attended the church I grew up going to in Maryland before he moved out to Oregon. And the response from people at my old church about my spiritual journey has been frustrating.

part of my Christian Education

Several people from that church have told me that they are praying for me to find my way back on the right path. Another said by being a conscientious objector, I was being judgemental towards everyone else in the military and needed to understand that not everyone is perfect… ironic. There have been times where everything I said was discounted because I made the unforgivable sin of quoting Gandhi and Tolstoy, not real Christians. Some have simply stated that I’ve “gone liberal”, gone from “us” to “them” because apparently working for peace and nonviolence is on the wrong side of the religio-political litmus test. I was told regularly in church about the dangers of dating and non-Christian music, but never about the dangers of violence; the kids with even the strictest parents still played shoot-em-up video games and laughed and joked about killing people. In the school that was run by the church, we read books like The Faith of George W. Bush. There were also a few Vietnam Veterans who would occasionally bring in war memorabilia from their time in Vietnam and the school hallways would be filled with awe: “Mr. E is so cool, he told me the story of hanging off of a helicopter with one hand and shooting the Vietnamese with the other!”And with this less than pleasant context of how Doug and I knew each other in the first place, I was glad to see him, but wary that this lunch would dissolve into another conversation about needing to “respect the governing authorities” (when they’re members of the correct party). Not to say that I don’t appreciate when people of any point of view want to take the time to have a conversation with me, but I do struggle when people seem to repeat and condemn instead of converse and find common ground. To my pleasant surprise however, some of the first words out of his smiling mouth were “I think it’s really great what you guys are doing, I’ve always wondered why Christians aren’t at the very forefront of things like peacemaking and gun control and things like that… I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t be clamoring for war.”

lunch with Doug

Soon laughing like old friends, our lunch together went by far too quickly and Doug had to leave to prepare for the camping trip he was going on later in the day. So we met up with the local Veterans For Peace who were hosting us, took care of some work, before heading to a potluck/speech. I try my best not to be preachy in my speeches, but I do bring up how religion has affected my growth. I tell the story of guarding a prisoner with a friend of mine whom I had gone to church with before deployment and one night, while guarding this prisoner, my friend started describing some pretty vicious things he wanted to do to the Iraqi man we had brought in (who we couldn’t find any evidence on and was eventually released). I started out with “American values”, saying “isn’t this man innocent until proven guilty?”. My friend scoffed that thought off, “he’s Iraqi, of course he’s guilty of something”. I then appealed to these ideas we had heard in church (or were at least printed in the Bibles sitting in the church) ideas like loving our enemies, praying for those who persecute us, blessed are the peacemakers, not returning evil for evil, and turning the other cheek. “Jesus might have turned his cheek once or twice” my friend explained with certainty, “but he certainly wouldn’t have let anybody punk him around”.

 

That conversation was a huge wake-up call for me that as ridiculous as my friend’s statement sounded, that I was living out the same mindset–I don’t get punked around, I do the punking–but I had a much more sophisticated way of saying the same thing. Another aspect to Jesus’ life that I had been ignoring was his position on killing; he didn’t calculate which wars were “just”, he was extremely far in the other direction warning us not only about physical killing, but even looking at somebody with hatred or judgement. That helped me realize that I was living hatefully and judgemental and that I needed to change. Again, hopefully not preachy, but these instances and thoughts helped bring me to where I am now.One man in attendance raised his hand afterwards and explained how atheists could come to the same position I had. I certainly didn’t disagree with him; I’ve found that I’ve had much in common atheists and people of other religions, just our ways of explaining that common spirituality are different and we can too easily get hung up on terms, titles, and phrases. I talked more with this man, Charlie, afterwards, and a friend he had brought with him, Omar, a high school foreign exchange student from Yemen. Perhaps I had initially thought Charlie was being too harsh on my mention of religion, but he began talking about positive experiences he’s had, including a visit to the Mosque where Omar attends. Along the trip I’ve heard many people ask why there aren’t more young people in these peace groups; Charlie and Omar had clearly become friends, and that is the foundation of peace: friendship and relationships, even when they are difficult.

visiting Charlie and Omar

Among many other things, Charlie mentioned that his house happened to be right about where we were planning on camping the next day, so after a good night’s sleep and a ride along the Oregon roads decorated with multi-colored trees and small mountains, we arrived in Cottage Grove, OR to meet back up with Charlie. Following a quick visit to a local bike shop to fix a broken spoke of mine and to give Conor front brakes that he’d been without, Charlie arrived and we all walked into a small town tavern. We chatted a little while with a man we had bumped into at the bike shop who had invited us to an evening of rum and saunas and with what seemed like half the town who all knew Charlie and his warm personality.We talked further about religion and Charlie took a very forgiving position despite some disheartening past experiences. Over the sounds of the blue grass band playing at the other end of the dimly lit tavern, Charlie told the story of going to a rally held by several Christians organizations with the rally cry of “taking back the country for God”. Charlie said he respected people’s rights to assembly, but also felt it was a faulty message of “taking back the country for God”, because it was never the Promised Land that some make it out to be in the first place. It’s one thing to have a belief, it’s another to twist words and history to garner support in ways it really doesn’t exist. I admire the words of many founding fathers and I admire the life and witness of Jesus, but I would hardly call the two synonymous or even similar. Backed by history, Charlie went among those gathered and began handing out flyers with quotes from Franklin, Jefferson, and several of the other founders to show that part of America’s beauty is that not everybody thinks the same and we can still work together while celebrating those differences. That wasn’t the version of America some of the Christians wanted and Charlie soon found himself taking blows and being knocked to the ground, still being beaten.I learned from my time with Charlie that he and I shared different ways of looking at the world on a number of issues… but that’s okay. The biggest problem, in my estimation, is not a faulty belief, but a lack of even wanting to examine that belief. It could have been easy for Charlie to write off Christianity after he was attacked by followers of the “Prince of Peace”, but he finished the story not with divisiveness, but with understanding. As off track as the message may have been and especially the violence for those not accepting that message, Charlie pointed out that there were some Christians there who did see the contradiction in what was going on and pulled the attackers away. I have heard some Christians say that the world is black-and-white, but I admired Charlie for not returning the same narrow way of viewing things and for confronting ideas when he believed they were untrue and for telling the full story, mentioning the positive and the negative and breaking beyond mere labels and stereotypes.In a world where labels define existence for many, perhaps we can try harder to judge not, lest we be judged and in the process, open ourselves up to inspiring, insightful people from all different backgrounds and beliefs.Or in religious terms…

“Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” –The Son of Man (Matthew 12:32-33)