I
just watched “The American Sniper” directed by Clint Eastwood delivered by Netflix yesterday. I’d avoided the film due
to all the political brouhaha surrounding it. It has been touted as a
conservative paean of the glory of war, an oxymoron if ever one was coined.
The
film, however, like many of Eastwood’s films, has a rather subversive element
to it, One must presume Mr. Eastwood is aware of it. He flaunts the idea that
war is an idyllic adventure. The protagonist of the film, a “good old boy” from
Texas exhibits a dramatic persona that rivals the best of the more mature Greek
tragedies wherein forces greater than the person evoke moral failure.
Having
listened to the incongruities that war provokes in the words of my own father;
I am certain this film speaks to the fact that in all warfare each party
operates with the conviction they occupy a moral or ethical higher ground. That
in itself speaks to the foolhardy moral failure that war is.
The
principal reality portrayed by “The American Sniper” is that war dehumanizes
its participants as well as the families and citizens of the participants. The
protagonist with intentional deliberation killed over 150 persons, some
children or mothers, and saw the wanton killing of his compatriots.
At
the end of this true-life drama, the protagonist in order to deal with his own
demons began working with the crippled and maimed (physically and emotionally) that
led to his own killing. War in every aspect is a moral failure.
I
recall the day when the woman broke the valuable jar of nard to anoint Jesus before
his death in Mark (14:7).
Some of the disciples objected about this waste of money when it could be used
to help the poor, but Jesus said, “For you always have
the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you
will not always have me.”
There is no excuse for poverty or war in the kingdom of God. The inevitability of war
seems much like the inevitability
of poverty. In each case, we can show kindness whenever we wish to abolish
it, but the root subversion is the pervasiveness of the singular human poverty,
sin, that obliges us to embrace. Such an irony it is that we are reckoned
innocent of something we are compelled to pursue.
Some days, I really appreciate the insight of Paul.
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