America marches off to war driven by the holy fire of patriotism. Colorful banners wave. Bands play. Preachers pray that America’s boys (and girls) will quickly vanquish the enemy. Church congregations across the fruited plain bow in a devout reverence. They plead for the safety of the troops, confident in the justness of their cause.

The enemy embodies evil. Those people throw babies from incubators! Those people gas their own neighbors! Those people worship the god of jihad! We must fight those people for our freedom!

Let us pray.

“Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

In his essay War Prayer, Mark Twain pulls the patriotic veil away and offers us a momentary glimpse of war’s evil, ugly face. In the midst of patriotic fervor stirred up during a church service, a stranger walks into the pulpit and gives voice to the unspoken prayer of the congregation.

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

In the brief essay, Twain humanizes the “enemy.” American jets don’t merely bomb some amorphous abstraction. It’s not a video game. Those shells shred flesh and blood human beings – mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children. The “enemy” is just like us – people – with dreams, fears, hopes and ambitions.

Children of God.

Sadly, the essay ends with the congregation declaring the stranger a lunatic.

Patriotic fervor burns hotter than the love of Christ.

Popular support for war depends on un-personing the enemy. If you see the figure in the crosshairs as a person, as somebody’s daddy, as a child of God, you will have a lot harder time cheering when the solider pulls the trigger. So politicians gin up hate. They convince the masses that the “enemy” isn’t quite as human as they are. They fool the populace into thinking the bad guys all share the same malevolent intent. It’s kill or be subjugated.

So we kill.

As followers of the Prince of Peace, we simply cannot support this un-personing, this dehumanization of the enemy. Why? Because every man, woman and child silhouetted by the camera of a Predator Drone is a unique child of God waiting for their Father’s redemption.

C.S. Lewis hinted at a “great unmasking” – that moment we will see our fellow human beings as the amazing creatures they are, fearfully and wonderfully formed by the hands of the living God.

In the Weight of Glory, Lewis wrote that we may be able to think too much about our own glory hereafter, but we can never think too often or too deeply about that of our neighbor.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship … It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.

American soldiers kill immortals at the direction of elected officials sitting in plush offices sucking on cigars.

Jesus commanded his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

He didn’t command us to drop napalm on their children or drone strike their weddings.

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that every American bullet that finds its mark snuffs out somebody’s opportunity to love their children? To hug their wife? To sing a song of praise? But more tragic is the fact that it could forever erase that person’s opportunity to walk into the arms of their loving heavenly Father.

You can’t make a disciple of a man you just shot. You can’t make a disciple out of a woman killed by a Hellfire Missile. You can’t make a disciple out of a child who starves to death in the midst of America’s wars.

Remember – every person that politicians and handsome TV personalities insist are you enemies could one day stand shoulder to shoulder with you singing praises to our heavenly father – if they live to see that day.

Photo by Bryan Dorrough via Flickr.