The Forgotten Heroes

Yesterday was Anzac Day. A wonderful day where we as a nation remember the soldiers (including sailors and airmen) fallen or who are no longer with us who fought to make our nation safe. Special services allow us to remember them. We hear the Last Post, see the flags at half-mast, recite the Ode of Remembrance. And with it being a hundred years since the folly that was the Gallipoli campaign, we hear a lot about what our men endured during the horrendous campaign. And rightly so. After all, it was a key time in our history as a nation. But, with such an emphasis on those who have passed, we run the danger of neglecting those who are still with us and the suffering they are enduring currently. 

There have been many conflicts and war zones that our servicemen and women have entered that we know little or nothing about. Examples of those include the Malay Peninsula, Mururoa, East Timor, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War, Afghanistan. What is life like for those men and women and their families? Are they suffering in silence? How has their service for country affected them and their lives? 

Recently we had two challenging news reports on these oft forgotten veterans. Newshub reported on young veterans and the mental illness they deal with as they return from conflict zones. Stuff reported on the increased number of former military personnel who are now living on the streets. Both were good reminders that we would do well to remember and appreciate our silent veterans - those still with us who are suffering. Not just that, but also offer help where and when appropriate. 

But there is one group that is silently suffering and dying who most of us give no regard to whatsoever. They are the Navy veterans who we as a nation sent to Mururoa in 1973. We sent them there as a visible force officially “protesting” the French testing of nuclear bombs on that remote Pacific atoll. Up until that time, despite small protests from concerned citizens, the world didn’t listen until HMNZS Otago and then her sister ship Canterbury with the support of HMAS Supply went to Mururoa. It went hand in hand with a international court case that the New Zealand government took against France regarding the nuclear tests. The 500 odd men on those frigates did their duty and despite Prime Minister of the time, Norman Kirk swearing to the men that the nation would never forget them, we turned around and did just that. We forgot them. 

Now, 43 years on, many of those sailors have passed, often suffering from rare forms of cancer and leukemia. Their families suffer in silence along with their men. The men are now entitled to their own medal but how many of us know their stories? Sadly all too few. These men, who were involved in the foundation of this country’s nuclear free stance have been forgotten and marginalised for too long. This needs to end. We need to remember them and offer them our heartfelt thanks. We need to support their families who have had to watch those veterans slowly lose their fight with cancer or leukemia and have now passed away leaving a vacuum in their family’s lives. 

Yes we need to remember those who fought and died for us in years gone by but we also need to remember those who served and who are now suffering. After all, Anzac Day is not just about Gallipoli, it is our day to remember all of our military personnel, past and present, who gave their lives that we may live in relative peace and safety. 


********************
DISCLAIMER: I am part of the Junior Executive for the Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group Inc, a group set up to raise awareness of what the veterans went through, support Mururoa veterans and to call the government to recognise the veterans as nuclear testing victims. My father served on HMNZS Otago when it was sent to Mururoa.

That's a Fine Looking High Horse

Why do Christians feel that they have the right to judge people, including their fellow believers? It is something that has perplexed me for years, but a few things I have observed lately has prompted this post.

A number of years back I read Philip Yancey's book "What's So Amazing About Grace?" Not one to mince words, Yancey opens his book by recounting a story of a prostitute who has hit rock bottom and had started renting out her two year old daughter for sex so she could pay for her own drug habit. It is a short story but those few lines often produces two reactions - one of sadness at the depth of desperation this woman must have felt; or one of judgement, looking down at the woman and dismissing her as a deadbeat who shouldn't have kids in the first place. It was this second reaction that was the crux of the story. Yancey tells how this woman was asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. Her response should hit all Christians like the knockout blow of a heavyweight boxing bout. '"Church!" she cried. "Why would I ever go to there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."' They'd just make me feel worse. Ouch! What an indictment. Yet, nearly twenty years since Yancey penned that book, things are no different. The people of God who should be the very instruments of grace in the world are often the tools of judgement.

I realised this in a personal way over the course of the past eighteen months as my marriage broke up. People who said they were friends and would stick by me no matter what stopped communicating with me. Some even refused to have me in their homes because they had heard stories about me which they said concerned them. And people who I would call acquaintances felt they could confront me about my marriage break-up, one via text and the other via Facebook messenger. I only just found this last confrontation a year later and it shocked me. Shocked that a fellow believer felt they had the right to do this. Not to come alongside and support or pray or offer help or assistance in any way, but to judge. Without going into too much detail, they suggested I reconsider the next steps due to the heritage they believed I was leaving for my children. They also brought up my deceased father as part of their argument - "What would your father want you to do? If he were here what would his challenge to you be? Would he want to see you tear their (my children) lives apart?" Now I hardly know this person. They don't really know me either. What had happened in my marriage was private and not known to many people. This person was going on rumour and hearsay but still felt they were within their right to send me this message.

And that is the problem. When did some Christians feel it was their duty to judge? After all, Jesus told His followers not to judge (see Matthew 7:1, Luke 6:37, Luke 6:41 to name a few), as did Paul, one of the fathers of the early Christian faith (see Romans 2:1, Romans 14:10, 1 Corinthians 4:5). It's as if those of us who profess Christian faith have put ourselves up on a high horse and in the process, elevated ourselves into the place that should only be the domain of God.

Christians are to be the salt and light in the world, and as Eugene Petersen puts so beautifully, bring out the God flavours and God colours. Not to be judges of it. Judging creates an "us and them" mentality. It is divisive. It is hurtful and it is unnecessary. When the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery before of Jesus (and seeing as the law stated anyone caught in adultery, where was the guy?) did He condemn her? No. He instead looked at the Pharisees and said "he who is sinless can cast the first stone". Not one stone was thrown. The Pharisees were after judgement, justice and punishment. Jesus was all about restoration. As people who claim to follow Jesus, those of us who call ourselves Christians should be all about restoration too.

"But what about the laws of God?" I hear you ask. "What about what is right and just?" "Surely purity and faithfulness are important to God and we should defend that?" Good questions. But in an attempt to answer them let me take a leaf out of Christ's book and ask some questions of my own: "Is God all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere? Is God just? Can God, through the work of restoration in someone, bring them to a level of faithfulness and purity that He is happy with?" If God is all about restoring people to Himself, it isn't up to us to decide whether people should be judged or not. That is God's prerogative. Not ours. After all, everyone has fallen short of the glory of God. No-one is exempt. We all stuff up and make mistakes. Some of those mistakes can be bigger than others. We are all fallen. It is only through God that we can be restored to God.

It is also important not to judge for the sake of others. Nineteenth century Christian evangelist Dwight L. Moody once said, “Of one hundred men, one will read the Bible; the ninety-nine will read the Christian.” Too often our judgemental attitudes turn people off. The word hypocrisy often is spoken when describing Christians. How can people know God's love if you don't first show love for them? If we who are Christians are called to be salt and light, and being God's instruments of grace in the process, we should be embarrassed that the world around us doesn't see grace as being present in the church. I like the words of the singer Hozier: "... That's a fine looking high horse, What you got in the stable?, We've a lot of starving faithful ..." Perhaps I'm taking it a bit out of context, but for me it describes how the church is seen from the outside all too well. A fine looking high horse. Time to get off it and down with others, walking alongside them and helping them in their struggles. What's in the stable? we've got faithful who are hungry. It's almost like we have kept Jesus in the stable and people hungry for love and grace are being denied. That is what judging does - it hides away grace and denies it to a world in desperate need of it.

Judging has no place in our churches. It gets in the way of God and His grace flowing into people's lives. For too long we as Christians have turned people off church and off God with our judgemental attitudes (despite sometimes having well meaning intentions of preserving the idea of holiness for God). It's time we dropped our judging and picked up grace, not just for ourselves but for all around us. As Yancey says, “Jesus declared that we should have one distinguishing mark: not political correctness or moral superiority, but love.”