Can Humanity Grow Up Into a World Beyond Foes?

I’ve been away from “the world” for a while—by which I mean, away from home and my life of computer-focused hermitude.

As I wait for round two of my cataract surgery (my right eye), I remain with my loving family in Appleton, Wisconsin. Yeah, I have my computer with me, but hardly have the wherewithal to stay intensely focused on global events, beyond “Oh my God, we’re bombing Iran now?” and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement gunmen are rounding up “illegals” all across the country.

As I sit on the couch, presumably recovering from my left-eye surgery, I want to scream and shove all this obnoxious news into a corner of my mind, where I can absorb it slowly, in a context of hope. Yeah, we will move beyond all this. The media may not report on it, but humanity is evolving. Right?

This is what I believe—or tell myself to believe—but the only way I can maintain this belief is by... somehow, oh Lord, participating in our evolution, helping to create a tomorrow that isn’t globally structured around war and winning and “the other.” In my current circumstances, as I sit plunked on the couch in my sister’s living room, my eyes closed and my mind wandering, I hardly feel like a participant in what matters. I’m not atop the news. I’m not atop my own life.

Instead, I sit on the couch in the middle of the day, semi-asleep, my thoughts simply drifting to strange places. For some reason, an old church hymn shows up. I grew up in the Lutheran church. As a boy, everything about it mostly bored me. But there was one thing that revved my enthusiasm—war hymns! I left it all behind long ago, but as I sat on the couch, achy and psychologically lost, I started humming an oldie...

Fight on, fight on for Jesus.
Ye soldiers of the cross...

Huh? Where did this come from?

Lift high his royal banner.
It must no suffer loss.

I couldn’t stop it. I was 9-years-old again.. or 10 or 11, suddenly perked up, rescued from the pastor’s boring sermon. John Wayne had just walked in, wearing his boots and vest and cowboy hat, with two holsters on his belt.

From victory unto victory,
His army He shall lead,
Till all the foe is vanquished
And Christ is Lord indeed.

No, this was not a sudden soul-snatch, a return of the religion to my life that I had walked away from. Just the opposite. I sat in awe, hearing the snarky lyrics—singing them, at least to myself–that, as far as I can tell, are aimed at everyone’s inner 9-year-old. Love thy neighbor, but kill thine enemies. No big deal when you have access to nothing more dangerous than a videogame or a TV remote. But if you’re a grownup and the message the lyrics convey still thrums within, that violence is the ultimate solution, quietly waiting to be put to use, then we have a problem. When “all the foe is vanquished”... or deported, or bombed to smithereens, what the foe will never be is understood.

And we won’t evolve without understanding–without collectively growing up. So I got off the couch and grabbed a pen.