Sky Pilot

I heard a song this morning just as I woke up, and it made me think. The song was from 1968 and was called “Sky Pilot”. I laid there and listened as it talked about religion, war and killing. The song questioned killing in war and the church’s sanction of that action, and asked how can killing in war be reconciled with “thou shalt not kill”? The song caused me to reflect on the absurd notion that killing as a part of war could possibly be sanctioned by God. As if I’d want anything to do with a god that would take sides in a political conflict!

This song also made me think of the principle of Manifest Destiny, under which the American west was settled and the Native Americans were slaughtered. The conceit and hubris of those who came up with that idea continues to gall me – Why would a just and loving God, as Christian religions have taught us to believe in, endorse the slaughter of one population so the other population can take their land?

I saw a great bumper sticker some time ago and have been on the lookout for one to purchase ever since. It read "Jesus called. He wants his religion back."

There is no such thing as a “holy war”; wars are declared by governments and fought by citizens for political or economic reasons, for territory or resources. Governments may issue propaganda claiming higher principles, but if you look underneath, the root causes of war come back to resources and territory. Material gain, nothing more. What sort of God would actually endorse violence for material gain? You might as well claim to rob a bank “in the name of God”, that makes about as much sense. Governments that claim to wage war “in the name of God” are trying to pull a fast one on their citizens. Take Bush’s pet war in Iraq as an example: allegedly we had to go to war to protect ourselves from terrorism and from Muslim extremists who want to wage a jihad upon us. We are effectively fighting an undeclared holy war, Muslims v. Christians. But what are we really fighting for? Oil. Resources. Territory. Bragging rights on Bush’s part – he wanted to be a wartime president, so he started a war. There’s nothing noble about the war in Iraq, it’s a war of imperialist aggression started by the United States in the name of creating record profits for oil companies. That’s why our soldiers are fighting and dying right now: for the glory of Exxon et al.

And let’s not forget McCain in all of this. He’s trying to position himself as the heir apparent to all of the failed Bush policies, the candidate who will continue this ridiculous war for oil, the military candidate who would rather rattle his saber than negotiate a peaceful solution.

Food for thought on a Saturday morning.

“Everything is interdependent. Therefore destruction of your neighbor, destruction of your so-called enemy, is actually destruction of yourself.” - The Dalai Lama

“One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace,
AuntieM