A Memorial Day Reflection

Memorial Day is a federal holiday set aside to commemorate soldiers who have died while serving in the United States armed forces.  It is a worthy holiday so long as what we celebrate are the lives of those who selflessly gave their lives in order to serve the cause of the country.  Soldiers, to be clear, are not trained to be moral agents; the ideal soldier does as he or she is told by their superiors.  Whatever moral compunctions they may have regarding the wars they fight, they were to lay them aside because they trust that their superiors have thought them out.  It is this selflessness that we commemorate, but it is also this selflessness that we should reflect on because this selflessness is a virtue that we ought to take seriously.  Indeed, it is a virtue that is more rare than gold in America, the bastion of selfish individualism.

I become very queasy when I see, however, people celebrating Memorial Day because these soldiers died to secure the freedoms Americans enjoy.  I, for one, am never quite sure exactly what those freedoms are.  What exactly are the freedoms that we enjoy that somehow does not exist in any other country on earth?  Voting?  Many other countries vote, some with much less corruption that in the United States!  Furthermore, a democracy is optimal contingent upon the fact that everybody is qualified and votes in accordance to the well-being of the nation, not in accordance to personal tastes and preferences.  When politics becomes a football game, democracy has died.  The freedom to resist political tyranny and absolutism has been torn asunder under the guise of political "righteousness" and an American messianism.  To put it curtly, democracy dies not with anger, but with applause from the masses.  So much for "freedom."

Perhaps another freedom to consider is the freedom to choose one's vocation.  But what's the use of that?  Let's suppose that I desire to be a CEO of a Fortune 500.  Well, not everyone can be a CEO; in fact, only 500 around the world can.  So this freedom, unless you have access to the right privileges and resources, is really a farce.  A farce, unless it just so happens only 500 people around the world desire to be a CEO; perfect information, as the economists call it.  Supply meets demand in perfect synchronicity.  Unfortunately, as a Reformed Christian, I do believe in the doctrine of original sin and as not-that-orthodox-a-Reformed Christian, I do believe in near-total depravity.  Thus, we live in a world where millions want to be CEOs, but only a few can do it.  Millions want to be actors, but only a few "make it."  Millions want to be famous singers, but even fewer can muster more than a million YouTube views.  Indeed, if freedom is the freedom of one's employment choices, all it takes is a recession to wipe that freedom off the board.

Or perhaps we should consider another freedom: freedom of expression.  In America, I will not be censored in the public for saying anything that is on my mind.  To some extent it's true, at least I will not be officially censored.  But with freedom comes responsibility.  The intent of the constitutional law is that what is right has the freedom to be expressed in public.  Because the State has no wherewithal to adjudicate the right-ness of expression, it has delegated the responsibility to the people.  Nice idea, except when used improperly.  I don't want the Ku Klux Klan to have any say in anything.  I don't want religious fundamentalists of any religion to express anything.  Again, as an adherent of near-total depravity, I have little faith in humanity in general to administer their responsibilities of speech and expression.  Freedom of irresponsible expression is not freedom at all, but constitutes an absolutism of the absurd, and absolutism that drowns out the voices of responsible expression.  We should not be surprised - our politicians get elected on rhetoric, not content; and the members of the media who profit on this elocutionary opportunity tend to be those who talk more provocatively instead of those who converse intelligently.  The wise cannot speak because their speech is rendered unlistenable.  The ears of the irresponsible public turn to the auditory pornography that is empty rhetoric wrapped in the guise of pseudo-religion.

Freedom, to put it bluntly, is too abstract.  To truly understand "freedom" is to ask, what is it we enjoy in the United States that has never slacked for the past 200+ years, and that the rest of the world does not enjoy?  We cannot answer with more abstractions like "democracy" (certain European nations are not pleased with how "democracy" is serving them), "opportunity" (to do what, exactly?), or other platitudinal wisps of nice-sounding abstractions.  It is like a Jesus-less Christianity, built on the solid rock of promises of blessings, positivity, and prosperity; they are nice-ringing words that don't make much sense alone.  If we celebrate the soldiers for dying for "freedoms," we celebrate their sacrifice for nothing if we don't know exactly what those freedoms are!

My suspicion is that "Freedom" is not really freedom at all, but a palatable substitution for Americanism.  In short, I fear Memorial Day is a celebration of Americanism.  If it were indeed the case, then President Obama is being nice by claiming that many Americans don't fully understand the sacrifices made by the soldiers.  In reality, my fear is that Americans are not remembering the soldiers for their sacrifice, but remembering the soldiers because they were the necessary human sacrifices to the religion of Americanism.

What is Americanism?  It is not to be confused with our allegiance to our country.  One can be a dedicated citizen of the United States without being adherents of Americanism.  In fact, I claim, to be adherents of Americanism bastardizes the United States.  For Americanism is the glorification of power, and such glorification of power is entirely counter-Christian.  For Christians to be Americanists, they must erase the significance of Christianity slowly and palatably so that, in an event of anxiety, Americanism can replace Christianity while subsuming the latter's name.

Americanism is pernicious for Christians because Christians identify with a Jesus who died on a cross.  Let us be clear that the cross is a paradoxical locus of shame and glory.  Now, I must tread carefully, for what I do not wish to do is to glorify pain, as if Jesus marched willingly to the cross.  His anguished prayer in Gethsemane was filled with hesitation; we can hear him asking God, "Really?  Is this indeed the path I was supposed to take?"  Jesus was not deluded or moved by some sense of triumphalism; death on the cross is the nadir of shame.  Not even St. Paul experienced the depth of shame that was crucifixion - he was beheaded in what was considered a civil execution.  To argue that Jesus understood that without the cross there would be no glory would be to assert that Jesus was fundamentally utilitarian.  The cost of the cross was exceeded by the expected utility of the following glory.  In such a situation, soteriology becomes a function of neoclassical economic calculus.  Paul Samuelson has divined Jesus!

No - we must wrestle with the uncomfortable fact that the cross was pure shame!  Thus, the profound absurdity of Christianity is that Christian rationality, Christian morality, is all premised on what the world regarded (and still regards) as a profound failure!  It is too easy to gloss over this and move to Easter, because Easter represented success and victory (here we go with the feel-good military imagery, yet again!).  But our hope lies in our faith that Jesus the Christ has stared Death in the face and found it lacking.  Jesus in his weakness and shame, has found that Death was even weaker!  More paradox!  Far from "Death hath lost thy sting," Jesus has uncovered how "Death hath no sting, really!"  Jesus confronted the Lie of Death with the Truth.  Jesus did not swing the theological machete or fire a theological AK-47, but Death cannot stand in the Face of Truth, just as darkness cannot but automatically dissipate in the presence of light.  Light did not conquer darkness, but darkness disappeared as a matter of course.  This account is less Hollywood-esque, and is less prone to military imagery, but I think it sheds light on what really is key to the power of God, which is that Christian power is located in what the world will perceive as weakness.  That is why Truth unsettles, and why Truth will haunt.  Humanity prefers the darkness, even if it meant using the shroud of nationalism to cover the light.

Americanism can only thrive when the Resurrected Jesus had not died on the cross.  It doesn't require full-blown docetism (all the better); simple downplaying of the cross will do.  Without the shame of the cross, Americanism removes the substance of Christianity, so that in its place can be filled the vacuousness of worldly abstractions, such as "freedom" or "democracy."  In such a situation, American Christianity becomes a folk religion - Americanism.  The Church, far from being a persistent critic and uncomfortable ally of the world when it manages to do good (if that were possible... thus, "uncomfortable ally"), becomes enjoined with the aspirations and the desires of the American people.  The Scriptures lose their authority, unless interpreted within the lens of the Constitution.  Americanism, far from being "pro-life" (I detest this term), becomes pro-death.  Babies become annoyances to the middle-class existence, easily resolved by easy abortion.  Workers become impediments to fatter profits, and so the search is on for less expensive labor, however dehumanizing it may be.  Soldiers become necessary sacrifices in the pursuit of American interests abroad, even if those interests were violations of international human rights.  The Americanist Church, cowed and defanged from its Gospel and from the Christ who died on the cross, can only go along, choosing the route of least resistance.  Thus, churches easily condemn abortion, but find war and low-wage dehumanized labor much difficult to condemn.  Yet, this contradiction is a sign that the Church in America may be on its way to being Americanist.

On this Memorial Day, I pour a libation to our brave soldiers of various ethnicities who fought selflessly for the United States of America.  Many of them left behind families devoid of fathers, mothers, perhaps even both.  But with that libation must come tears for the sin that is Americanism, and the resolve to resist it.  For Americanism makes these soldiers human sacrifices to the Molech of Nationalism - gruesome but necessary.  They will not be remembered by name, but by utility.  This is not the purpose of Memorial Day, but a worship of idolatry.  I want to remember the soldiers by name, uncovered by the shroud of Americanism that obscures them.  I want to remember the lives they have lived, the people they were, for they were creatures made in the image of God.  Maybe if we re-member these people, the mystique of Americanism, confronted by the Light of Jesus Christ, will fall away like Death.  Maybe, just maybe, swords will be beaten into plowshares, and Memorial Day can become a day we remember when Peace came into the world.