As we each reflect on the ANZAC Day centenary out of our own experience and history, there are two good articles that now appear on the ABC Religion and Ethics website. One by my good friend and mentor (and lifelong friend of former rector Clive Watkins) Bishop Stephen Pickard (it will also appear in the forthcoming issue of St Marks Review) and one by Professor Stanley Hauerwas from Duke University North Carolina.
“No greater love can be had than a person lay down their life for their friends” – the Jesus tradition subsumed into stoicism …
But does it, can it, go far enough for a full human life? That is a question that ought to haunt us who are overwhelmed by the brutalities of human life on so many fronts, and yet are then taken to the heights of joy and exuberant hope in the face of remarkable acts of compassion. Tears and laughter are defining features of homo sapiens; they are litmus tests for our full humanity, they embody the extremities of life and encompass everything in between.
Going Over the Top: Sacrifice, Stoicism and Christian Faith at Gallipoli
by Stephen Pickard
I think it is a mistake to focus – as we most often do – only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill. It may seem odd to call the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill “a sacrifice,” but this sacrifice often renders the lives of those who make it unintelligible. The sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill is but the dark side of the willingness in war to be killed. I am not suggesting that every person who has killed in war suffers from having killed. But I do believe that those who have killed without the killing troubling their lives should not have been in the business of killing in the first place.
The Sacrifices of War and the Sacrifice of Christ
by Stanley Hauerwas