January 24th marks the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death. When I think of Churchill I think of a bulldog! I was not quite 10 when he died so my knowledge of him is all from reading or the remembering of others. Nonetheless he remains one of those larger-than-life figures in our history. His grandaughter was interviewed on tv the other night and she spoke of him with such fondness. She was just 21 when he died but she had spent lots of time with him in her adolescence and he was a loving grandfather.
Today at our “Women’s Morning Out” we studied two Biblical heroes. Deborah and Jael. Their story is told in the book of Judges. They were political and military heroes. They were involved in the invasion of Canaan and they were brutal in the overtaking of their enemies. Especially Jael. (If you want to read her story it is Judges chapter 4.)
In trying to understand how someone who engaged in such military and political murder could be idealized we had to remind ourselves of the places of violence in our own history where a hero emerged and Winston came to mind. He was a political and military hero who is remembered with gratitude and pride because he faced down evil and was persistent in overcoming the enemy.
That said, we spent time this morning puzzling as to why Deborah and Jael were Biblical heroes and why their actions were seen as blessed by God. The Biblical writer of Judges presented them as agents of God’s favour for the people of Israel. I suppose in some ways we do the same for Winston Churchill. From our side of history he saved many and he is a hero. It leaves me wrestling with the notion of violence, war, and heroes.
How do you reconcile violence that is perpetrated for good?
I don’t.
I don’t reconcile violence that is perpetrated for good.
“Even the sophisticated mind….is appalled by the panorama of historic war,from the occasional brawls and raids of normally peaceful ‘savages,’through the sanguinary annals of Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria, the untiring fratricide of the Greek city-states, the conquests of Alexander and Caesar, the triumphs of Imperial Rome, the wars of expanding Islam, the slaughters of Mongol hordes, Tamerlane’s pyramid of skulls, the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, the Thirty Years’ war, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Year’s War, the English, American, French and Russian Revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, the Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Spanish-American war, the Russo-Japanese WAr, the first World War, the Second World War…This, to our pessimistic moments, seems to be the main and bloody current of history, beside which all the achievements of civilization, all the illumination of literature and art, all the tenderness of women and the chivalry of men, are but graceful incidents on the bank, helpless to change the course of character of the stream.” (Will Durant)
I just don’t buy it. We’re better than that.