Notre Dame: Summer Scholars keynote

That was very nice. Thank you. I'm always amazed at what things stick out to people about my story.

What I've prepared for today is, inversely to the book — on the back you'll find, in big, bold letters, "This isn't a book about war, it's a book about God." Unfortunately, this is a speech about more war than God, but God's in there, I think.

Before I get started, I also want to invite you all to experience what I have to share not as a presentation, but as a speech. I write with the help of God, which means I am deliberate about praying before I sit down and type, because I often share things that are difficult and unexpected, even for me. So at the end, I'd invite you, instead of applauding, to take a moment of silence and reflection before we get started on the Q&A. It might make sense why I say that once I get into it.

And I know there's a theater track, or a public presentation track — y'all get real short shrift in my talk, and I apologize. I can qualify some of my remarks, but I feel like I wasn't as fair as I should have been to acting. I'll give you guys the first question if you like.

Can everybody in the back hear me all right? Okay.

I was eight months into being eighteen years old in 2000 and had just stepped off the bus at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, ready to start nine weeks of grueling training to prepare me for military service. I was the last buzz-headed enlistee to step off the vehicle, so I turned to shut the door. A drill sergeant yelled at me from the tarmac to get moving, so I instinctively turned and responded, "Drill sergeant, I just thought—" "You ain't paid to think, private," he screamed. The drill sergeant seemed to know what he was talking about, so I took him at his word. Or so I thought. There I went again — thinking. I'd have to work on that.

It was my first week of basic combat training, better known as boot camp to civilians — so named for the footwear to which you're required to quickly acclimate. Failing that, you'd have to learn very quickly how moleskin worked. No, not the moleskin you see people carrying at Starbucks, but rather the adhesive-backed felt pads for footwear that you buy at drugstores to treat or prevent blisters. I thought ahead, though, and had brought several packs of it in case. There I went again, thinking. I thought I'd had practice not thinking.

I hadn't thought much about enlisting seven months before, not long before my own high school graduation. Knowing, like you, that college was my next step in life, I had attended a weapons system exhibition at the casual invitation of my best friend, Ryan. He had signed up for the Army Reserves, and the exhibition was held at the place his monthly drill would occur. His older brother, a guy we both looked up to, had matriculated at Tulane University in New Orleans on a full ROTC scholarship and would later go on to fly helicopters. It was peacetime, so I didn't have to think too deeply about military service. Do two years, get out, use my Montgomery GI Bill benefits. It was simple. Or so I thought.

At the processing station in Los Angeles, I was asked if I wanted to attend airborne training and jump out of airplanes as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I shrugged my approval — the $150 extra a month was a no-brainer. I was young, dumb, and full of ambition.

Five and a half short years later, I had a combat deployment to Iraq under my belt, and the whole not-thinking thing wasn't doing me any favors. Reflection forced itself upon me, sometimes in the middle of the night. I'd wake in a cold sweat, heart racing, images of battle buddies' mangled limbs and severed body parts seared into my brain. All the money in the world couldn't keep me from thinking then. All the training the American taxpayers had funded on my behalf did little to prepare me for the stark and brutal reality of modern warfare.

Little did I know that after World War II, combat training had begun focusing on desensitizing soldiers' moral conscience. Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, the official military historian of the Second World War, had found that the rate of fire among frontline soldiers in World War II was less than one in every four infantrymen. That meant only one trooper in a four-man team actually shot at the enemy; the rest fired over their heads or had to be commanded in person to do so by their superior officer. General Marshall saw this as a problem and sold it to the military that way. Never did he stop to ask why our firing rate had to increase after a war we had overwhelmingly won. But I don't want to slip and start thinking again.

So starting in the '50s, the military moved away from simple marksmanship drills toward realistic combat scenarios in which trainees were taught, basically, to shoot first and ask questions later. The name this training took was reflexive fire, for it encouraged not reflecting upon the unique situation in which an infantryman — and increasingly, herself — might find themself, but relying on pure instinct. Targets that presented themselves on the firing range were all supposed to be put down. Psychologists have a name for this kind of goal-oriented training: operant conditioning. Personal reflexes are trained to shoot as quickly and accurately as possible without engaging one's moral conscience.

This reflexive fire is rewarded by things like expert marksmanship awards. Accuracy is not measured on the range, at least not precisely — if the one-foot-by-three-foot cardboard silhouette goes down, it counts. When a human-shaped silhouette appeared, you fired, regardless of their status. The more I killed — or, as I was trained to say, engaged — the more likely I was to earn my expert marksmanship badge, and therefore more likely to be promoted above my peers. After all, the targets were silhouettes. Who knew if they were civilians or enemies? Who had time to ask?

So it went with my fellow soldiers and me. Uniformed and uninformed, we proceeded like wind-up toys to war.

It sometimes happens similarly in the church as well, especially in reference to war. We read the catechism and swallow theology hook, line, and sinker. Elaborate and thoughtful theology is the job of people either trained or ordained — priests, seminary professors, right? The place of the laity isn't to think, we might ironically think. We learn that at some time long ago, someone smarter, and probably holier or higher-paid than we are, had already thought about war and violence as they relate to theology, and determined that a just war is one in which: one, the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; two, all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; three, there must be serious prospects of success; and four, the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders greater than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The moral consciences of Roman Catholics with regard to war are formed around these four principles. One of my subordinate soldiers knew them almost verbatim. Toward the end of my six years in the service, when I was a non-commissioned officer, I met a devout Catholic man who had considered the priesthood before enlisting. He became my radio-telephone operator. He would eventually lament to me that he did not feel prepared, theologically or mentally, to go to combat. Just war doctrine, for all its moral authority, did not — could not — prepare him, or me, for the hell that is modern war.

He knew, by proactively reflecting on the demands of our faith, by thinking critically. I knew, on the other hand, only by experience. Before I deployed, I don't recall having any idea what the just war tradition was about. My faith was not as deeply rooted as his — not nearly as identity-constituting. After all, I was not Catholic.

Moral formation for war must be something that seeps into our deepest sense of self. We must truly believe that we are capable of war in order to conduct it justly. But to know what we are capable of, we need trusted guides — just men and women who have journeyed ahead and can reflect, with authority, upon the ultimate demands of war on the human soul and psyche.

What we have in their stead are movies like The Hurt Locker, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Battleship, or Pearl Harbor — and I, for one, do not trust these guides. Movies like these treat their viewers like children, as though war is something to be admired. But going to war requires men and women, not boys and girls. If war is something like hell, the image of Jesus harrowing it could not be adapted into a children's book. Taking war and warriors seriously requires solemnity, true strength of character, and a firm resolve to come all the way home from the battlefield — not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. Coming all the way home is never easy, and rarely accomplished without staggering complications.

The best of the war-weary veterans I know always bring a bit of hell back with them. Their stories make us wince, in their striking obscenity and visceral honesty. They cannot sugarcoat their experiences without tarnishing the integrity of the friends who did not make it home. I trust those who have been there — like Medal of Honor recipients Alvin York and Audie Murphy, each of whom wrote first-hand accounts of their service.

York, in World War I, initially applied to be a conscientious objector, and went on to effect the surrender of over one hundred and thirty German soldiers in France. When he came home, he shunned public attention. On his deathbed, many years later, he asked his son if God would forgive him for the twenty-eight men he had to kill who would not go peacefully.

Murphy, who saved his unit from being overrun by jumping onto a burning tank to use its large-caliber machine gun, described his service in his autobiography, To Hell and Back, as a brand — like one he would have given his cattle as a boy on his ranch in Texas, or like the one God left with Cain. Murphy writes: "When I was a child, I was told men were branded by war. Has the brand been put on me? Have the years of blood and ruin stripped me of all decency?"

Now hear Cain, who cries out in Genesis 4: "My punishment is too great. I've been driven away, and from God's face shall I be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in all the land." Do you hear them cry out in one voice? Men separated by millennia, but who share a common bond of having taken lives that God created.

Lest you think these are isolated or strictly historical accounts, a Vietnam veteran I've worked with, Camillo Bica, crafted the following poem based on his tour as a Marine captain:

I fear I am no longer alien to this horror. I am, I am, I am this horror. I have lost my humanity and have embraced the insanity of war. The monster and I are one. The blood of innocents forever stains my soul. The transformation is complete, and I can never return. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Moral conscience, as the Catechism explores in paragraphs 1776 through 1802, requires deliberate and, at times, intense formation in order to withstand the moral beating it will receive in combat. Your will is tested to its limits, and if all you have to rely on is operant conditioning and reflexive training — if you shoot first and ask questions later — the thinking will catch up to you, as it did me.

But temptation is a universal fact for Christians. Perhaps you too have been tested. Maybe you gave in because you temporarily forgot who and whose you were and are. You took that drink. You puffed that smoke. You told that little lie. You and I are alike in our mistakes, but we are also alike in our baptism. For in war, or under any temptation, if you do not have a strong sense of self already in place — if you do not know how Christians, or even people of good will, respond in times of crisis — you will be lost. Your identity will fragment.

In war, the intensity of the moral challenges you face will leave you scarred. Decisions that will remain with you for a lifetime must be made in split seconds. When your training insists, over and over again, that in convoys any delay will increase the chance that an enemy will exploit the situation to your disadvantage, you learn that you never stop — no matter what. Lives depend on it, and not just yours. Then, when a child chases a ball in front of your two-thousand-pound Humvee, you'll have less time to react than it took you to read that sentence, and a lifetime to reflect on it later. Trust me — when that time comes, your body and mind will rely on instinct, not intellect; on habit, not on heart. The habits you have formed, or that have formed you, will take over. If those habits have been kill, kill, kill — as they are for any and every young enlisted private who endures boot camp — you will fail your conscience. Military training will fail you, because war is hell, and it has no coordinates.

Another Marine captain, Tyler Boudreaux, a veteran of Iraq like me, reflects: "Hell ain't got no coordinates. You can't find it on the charts, because there are no charts. Hell is no place" — and here he's beginning to sound like Augustine, who claims that evil is actually a non-thing — "Hell is no place at all, so when you're there, you're nowhere. You're lost. The narrative, that's your chart, your own story. There are guys who come home from war and live fifty years without a narrative. Fifty years lost."

Cain echoes on the breath of his spiritual progeny, wondering and wandering, never sure what the future holds, or if it will hold at all. Their sails are rent, and they're taking on water, unsure if they will survive the dark night and the abyss. The naves of early churches were deliberately shaped like capsized ships, sailing this upside-down world together as a people of the right-side-up kingdom — never quite at home in the nations of the world, but never without our God. The cross is our mast, and we wander wonderfully as one people, one body of Christ.

Soldiers' moral pain is no different than the anguish we all feel when we fail to be the people we are made to be. If we are one, it means soldiers are not alone — that they were never alone. In Mass, when we re-member the body of Christ, we witness to this very unity. Many bodies come to the table and are made one body. We remember those among us who are broken and in need of the unifying love of God. Church is the place we continually go to be put back together, and it is our duty as Christians to concern ourselves with the moral and social plight of soldiers and veterans.

The Latin word conscientia, from which we derive the word conscience, means mutual awareness, or to be with knowledge. We learn to be who we are by modeling the behavior of those we trust. Our earliest moral authorities are our parents, and if we are baptized as infants and attend Mass regularly, our parish forms another strong moral authority upon which to learn what it means to be a person of good will and to follow Christ. The habits we gain in church are not just for the purpose of memorizing creeds, but to learn and internalize the Church's moral teachings.

Imagine for a moment that you grew up under less than ideal circumstances, or that you did not have strong parental figures in your life to teach you who and whose you were and are. It is disproportionately poor families and rural communities that contribute to local recruitment quotas in urban areas. Having to develop that understanding under difficult circumstances leaves many a good person with inadequate moral formation — with less than what they need to face war and return in one piece, morally or spiritually. They may not have the knowledge of their own goodness to fall back on when they choose the lives of their friends over the life of the child who stepped in front of their Humvee. They may believe the voices in the back of their minds that tell them they are horrible monsters and don't deserve to live.

War leaves everyone who enters it with an indelible stamp. Every person who enters hell is changed. None return completely unscathed. Even Jesus brought His scars back with Him.

It is no coincidence that Augustine never spoke of war in the formulaic terms we do now. Instead, he received letters from military personnel like Boniface and Marcellinus, who wrestled with what it meant that they were Christians with blood on their hands. With Cain, they cried out for a trusted theologian, a pastor: "Our burden is too great to bear." The saint from Hippo responded by reasoning with them, by thinking alongside them about how their actions might be justified. But he also knew never to call what they did good. The Doctor of the Church encouraged Christian soldiers to repent and seek reconciliation with and from the Church. For centuries following his teaching, even during the most reprehensible crusades, parishes required that warriors refrain from taking the Eucharist for varying periods of time, depending on their moral proximity to the death and destruction that war carries with it.

After all, even Cain's cry was heard, and God's mark upon him was not for punishment or shame, but for protection. His curse to wander lasts less than five verses before he settles in Nod and takes a companion to help guide him on the journey all the way home from the death that he caused.

The Church needs to reconsider the centuries-old debate about war that abstracts it from the lived experience of those who have been sent there. War forces those who enter it to confront the ultimate concerns of life and death and everything thereafter. If they have not already given critical thought to who they are and why they act the way they do — and don't — war will make them decide in the heat of the moment. All the superficial concerns of the world come crashing down when you hear the first zipper-sound of a bullet racing by your eardrum. I know, because it happened to me.

I was eleven months into my deployment, and we were assisting in a rescue effort at a crash site in northern Iraq, not far from the city to which Jonah fled his call from God. The temperature was a chilling fifty degrees, and a Humvee full of soldiers had flipped over into a ravine, throwing men and equipment into a small reservoir. Over the course of many hours in the dead of night, we worked to free a small number of fellow soldiers from the wreckage. One soldier's leg was twisted obscenely out of place, caught between the cold metal of the wreckage and the brittle concrete of the reservoir barrier. With the help of morphine, he was slipping past shock into disorientation, alternating between screaming agony and whispering sweet nothings to a wife thousands of miles away. Beside him, another young man lay unconscious and without a strong pulse, being ushered quickly toward death, soon to make orphans of his two young daughters. Our efforts did not help him, and he became one of the 4,804 American casualties of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He died, like so many others, in the land of our forefather Abraham of Ur — just east of Eden, where Abel's blood cried out from the land between the two rivers. His death was not like the ones I'd watched in movies or on television. It seemed purposeless and unnecessary.

Another Christian soldier and Iraq veteran, Kevin Benderman, remembers his tour in similar terms: "My father, who fought in World War II, tried to tell me war is not as glamorous as they make it out to be, but I was too stubborn and bullheaded to listen. When you're young, you want to get all that experience for yourself, and boy, I asked for it. I saw more than I ever wanted to see. You see how war affects civilians in the area — every house you look at has bomb craters or bullet holes in it. I found out we were in the area of Iraq that was supposed to be the Garden of Eden, the cradle of civilization where humankind began. I had to ask myself: why am I carrying around an M16 in the Garden of Eden?"

In the days and weeks following our failed rescue attempt, I questioned who I was, that I had been so affected by this young man's death but not by the countless others I'd witnessed in the ten months prior. Who had I become? I thought I was a Christian, or at least a good man — discriminate in my fire and compassionate in my demeanor — but I had wept only for those who looked and sounded like me, with whom I identified. The American military was my community, not the Church universal. I had not loved my enemy as myself. I had cursed and not blessed those who had caused me harm. I had placed my country before my faith, and I had failed to see it until it was too late.

I wanted to believe that I was a person of good will. I thought that I was a Christian. But war had proven me wrong. It had exposed my hypocrisy. It would take many years, innumerable tears, and immeasurable heartache, but I would eventually come to thank God for breaking my hardened heart that night, so long ago, in that bullet-riddled and holy land.

After coming home, I was left to reflect on my reflexive moral failure. By the grace of God, I found resources hidden in plain sight, finding that the Church has a curious history of soldier-saints and patriot-pacifists who did not think simplistically about war. Their lives refused to be reduced to formulas and abstractions, forcing the Church that canonized them to engage the issue of war and peace more critically and deeply than it often does.

By their witness, and the strength of the Holy Spirit in interpreting our scriptures, the Church has the ability to correct its course on issues of war. If we want to think about war, let just war doctrine be one of many resources to which we turn in times of crisis. Let us follow the examples of the saints who have come before us, who have rarely led us where we expect to go.

Francis, for one, whose prayer graces the offices of military chaplains, turned his back on war in 1204 AD, on his way to the Fourth Crusade. He had been a prisoner of war, and suffered symptoms similar to what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. He wandered the streets at night, battled nightmares and hallucinations, spoke to people who weren't there, and he attracted others with similar struggles. Eight of the first ten Franciscans were veterans of the same war with Perugia that Francis was. It is Francis, after all, who undercut the crusade to regain the Holy Land by bringing the Holy Land to local parishes. You know them as the Stations of the Cross.

Or consider Ignatius, who was wounded in battle, and whose vanity made him undergo great pain to avoid having a limp — which our Father, Jacob, was not so proud to hide. Before he went off to seminary to found the Jesuits, he abandoned his sword and the vestments of a knight at the foot of the Virgin Mary, at a monastery in Spain. To this day, his order is known especially for obedience — not to a flag or to a sovereign, but to the successor of perhaps the most fumbling apostle, Peter.

But a more poignant example for us here cannot be found in anyone but Marcellus — not the same one as before. Marcellus was a third-century Roman centurion of the Trajan Legion. He, too, had a crystallization of moral conscience. Seemingly out of the blue, during a national holiday, he openly declared that Rome worshiped deaf and dumb idols. His sedition could not be tolerated, and so he was killed on October 30th, which is his feast day. But the day he took his stand was not far before — July 21st, 298 AD.

Martial influences abound, not just in our traditions but also in liturgy and scripture. Before every weekly Mass, after the priest enters in persona Christi by uttering the words of institution, he does not consume the host until after he enters in persona militis by quoting the centurion of great faith from Luke and Matthew: "Lord, I am unworthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." In John's Gospel, tradition unites the soldier who pierces Jesus' side with the centurion who confesses, "Surely this man was the Son of God." He is given the name Longinus, from the Greek word for lance — the long spear he carried for war, and that ensured Christ had died, pouring forth blood and water, signifying that the sacred heart of Jesus had broken for sinners like these men. But Longinus is paradoxically counted as a saint, for he went on to become a monk, as converted soldiers often do to this day, and he was martyred for his faith.

These are the forefathers and the guides of Christian soldiers, and these are our most trusted guides through the valley of the shadow of death that is war. The true story behind Saving Private Ryan is based not on an Army captain and his squad of elite Rangers, but on one courageous chaplain who never touched a weapon in his entire career. Father Francis Sampson is our trusted guide — not Private Jackson, the uber-religious sniper Spielberg inserted into the story for dramatic effect. He, and other Christian soldiers — including Alvin York, Kevin Benderman, and Camillo Bica, who know the path because they've walked it — should be our guides in more fully grasping the reality of war.

It is by these examples, and others, that the Church can come to comprehend war more fully. Relying on things like movies to tell the tale of war can be very misleading. The Pharisees in Matthew 23 were called hypocrites — pretenders of the faith — and the Roman world would have heard that as an allusion to acting. Without strong moral formation before war, we risk being formed by our collective habits, absorbed from public narratives that succeed simply by being the loudest or the most entertaining presentations of the moral life.

Instead of simply internalizing Hollywood's narrative — though there are many others — Christians must form habits that can collect us into a unified and coherent moral person. Fragmented and incoherent moral persons have a name in scripture: they are called hypocrites, and a brood of vipers. God's work in the world is to collect us all into Him, to make us integral people who mean what we say and do, who practice the humility, patience, and virtue that we preach. To be such a people, we must think critically about how our scriptures and traditions shape us, and be on our guard against the world shaping us by default.

God invites us, in Isaiah 1: "Come, let us reason together." Augustine heard and saw the image of God in the Roman soldiers he ministered to, and for this reason he is known as the father of the just war tradition. It is only by reflection that we can come to know and reason with God — to gaze upon Him so that we may become more like His incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Though we may not be paid to, it is our duty to think — our unique responsibility as moral people in immoral societies — to make it a habit to think critically and faithfully.

Thank you all for listening. I think we're going to take questions. But yeah — come, let us reason together.

Audience Q&A

Audience Member 1: [00:00:00] That you accommodated by being extra enthusiastic and keeping cool on the inside. Um, this is gonna be a through, um, students and others from Catholic Cooper House, um, who are in attendance. Maybe if you college staff have questions, um, we will entertain them. So maybe it would be best if you call on people as they raise their hands- Okay

or I can certainly moderate that. What would be, what would be your preference?

Logan M Isaac: Um, uh, you can probably call on them. All

Audience Member 1: right. I'm okay with

Logan M Isaac: that.

Audience Member 1: All right. So who will be the first? Yes. And identify yourself by your name

Logan M Isaac: Uh, the question is how I cope mentally and morally? emotion- mentally and emotionally with killing, um, [00:01:00] someone who has a wife and a family and a, a life. Um, I'm very vague about this in the book. Um, I was a forward observer for the artillery, which meant that for the most part I was on the radio calling for artillery and mortar or cl- close air support.

Um, so I'm in the unique position, I never had to look down the scope of my rifle and pull the trigger. Other-- I, I looked down my rifle and I never had to, I never felt compelled that the person I looked at was, uh, uh, the military calls an actionable target. Someone who is wor- who presents threat enough to kill them.

Um, but I did do my job as a forward observer a number of times. Um, so I'm in the position of not really knowing. There's no number that I can look to. Um, and I don't know if that's good or bad, if that's better or worse than people who have a number and who have faces. Um, so I can only reflect, uh, at a, at a moral distance.

Um, for me, the, the [00:02:00] most provocative thing was when I watched this, this young man die. I didn't learn later, until later that he had two daughters and his wife had been estranged and so they, they were basically orphaned. Um, but, uh, I don't, I don't know if there is a way to reason about it. Um, Tyler Boudreaux, one of the guys I quoted, um, and I think it's a very important lesson, he said, uh, "Self-possession," that is the, the word he gives it, but essentially you have to own it.

Um, the Christian tradition calls war an, at best, a necessary evil, but it's an evil because it's something we need to repent of. It's something that e- even if it's necessary, it's something that violates God's will and plan for our lives, and we have to reckon with it. And it's not until we can do that and say, "Yes, I did it.

I am a sinner," that we can cope with it. Um, Vietnam vets largely, and this is anecdotal, but no, it's, it's also substantiated by research, but for the most part, they would come home and they were not welcomed home, so they bottled it up and they didn't say anything. And [00:03:00] twenty years later, things will-- It's like a soda bottle.

If you shake it up, you go to turn-- you know, open it and you see it fizzing, you close it back up, it's still gonna fizz up next time you open it. And so the analogy I've had in my head is, how do we invite service members to crack that bottle slowly and mo- and have people who they trust and who trust them moderate that opening of the bottle?

How do you possess something, self-possess something you've done wrong? Um, and I think it's, it's a delicate, delicate balance, um, between, um, self-condemnation and self-gratification. So the, the, the dichotomies that I noticed when I was getting out of the military was, as a soldier to pacifist, I was a baby killer.

And these are the extremes, but I was a baby killer on one side or I was a hero on the other. Um, and some of the things I did in combat, I can't believe I would be a hero for And the monster thing is it's easier. It's easier to slip into self-contempt and depression. Um, suicide is [00:04:00] the, um, is the single most marked character of veterans right now.

Um, twenty-- between twenty-two and twenty-three veterans will kill themselves every single day. Um, and that's not, that's, that's not nothing. Um, so I, I always feel a bit guilty about, uh, being Debbie Downer on July 4th. There are things that we should be celebrating, um, and particularly Veterans Day is one where I really kind of, uh, come at it a little bit more concretely.

There are things that we should celebrate, um, and there are things that soldiers do in war that are heroic, um, and we should not minimize that. But we also need, need to wrestle with what you mentioned, the, the fact that they've done things that violate what they believe to be wrong. Whether or not it's justified, uh, we need to help them come up with a language that, that they believe justifies it.

Augustine responded, um, it's very curious. Um, Augustine writes this big long letter to Boniface, General Boniface, who's the commander of the entire army in the West in Rome. He writes this letter, um, in four-sixteen, I think, and he writes this [00:05:00] long treatise about Donatus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I got the sense like, uh, so we get a, a second one to Boniface that's, that's much more directly where we get this stuff about, well, is it proportional?

Were there, were there civilians involved? And so I get the sense that Boniface wr- writes this letter to this esteemed theologian, and this esteemed theologian sends back a bunch of esteemed theology that Boniface had no real care to try and get into. He was asking, "Look, I've been to war. What do I do with that?

Like Donatus, I don't know. I don't care. I have a particular story that I'm asking something about." So A-Augustine ends up writing two more letters to him, trying to wrestle with being a hermit, because he had suggested going into the monastic life or remaining married, and Augustine tells him, "Well, you can't be a hermit because you're married.

You have conjugal duties to your wife." Um, but anyway, I think that, that it's a balance that we really need to figure out, and it's usually, at least in our generation, it's usually we, we lean toward gratitude, and we, we leave lament out of the equation, but I think that's an important question that we're still trying to figure out.[00:06:00]

Audience Member 1: Person with the next question, we'll, uh, walk a mic to you. Uh, anyone on this side have questions? Yes. Right here. No. No, back there, sorry.

Audience Member 2: Hi, my name is Suzanne Chen. I'm from Columbus, Ohio. Um, my question is, as a conscientious objector, um, how do you think wars and global conflicts should be handled in an ideal world? Um, do you think there's a way to do it non-violently, or is violence necessary?

Logan M Isaac: Um, I think- So I am at heart a pacifist, but it's because I'm a Christian.

But to use-- to rationalize, I, I think it's fine. I think that's totally legitimate, and I, I don't particularly think that Niebuhr was right in saying to John Yoder, who taught here, "Well, pacifists have no part in the, the international conversation." I, I'm just not-- I don't believe him 'cause I could say the same thing to Niebuhr.

Well, you weren't n- at war, so guess what? You don't get to, you don't get to deliberate about it. Um, I think things that like John Lederach are doing and, um, [00:07:00] uh, uh, Glenn Stassen is doing Just Peace. Lederach is doing, um, uh, reconciliation work, I think. But yeah, anyway, I think there's a way to do conflict well, um, and I think one of my biggest gripes about modern war is, is that it, it disallows things like moral conscience.

So as Christians, just, uh, who is not a pacifist? Who's willing to out themselves? Okay, good. Um, pacifists are protected under U.S. law, but you have to be an absolute pacifist. You have to say, "I object to war in all forms." I happen to, and I applied, and it got jumbled, and it's complex how everything kinda shook out.

Um, but the vast majority of the church are people that raise their hand and, and wanna believe that there are reasons that we might use violence. Maybe not lethal violence, but violence and force. Um, unfortunately, all those people that raised their hand who go into the military who are Christians who do need to obey God rather than man when it comes to it, Acts 5:29, they're illegal.[00:08:00]

As a military member, you do not have the right to use your conscience. You have to obey the orders given above you, or if you deem them unlawful, it's going to be very difficult finding the definition of an unlawful order in the regulations. It, it's been argued in court martials, but it's very, very difficult.

It's easier to say, "I object to all war in any form, and this is how my life has changed." Um, but for people in the middle, who I think are the vast majority, don't have as clear-cut ways to do that. And so, um, my RTO, um, if, uh, he was devoutly Catholic, and if, if he had felt that he was prepared for war, but he had listened to Pope John Paul and sa- in, in saying that Iraq doesn't, doesn't quite qualify, um, and he wanted to object, it would-- he would not have been able to.

He could not have said, "Look, war is not intrinsically, uh, undoable, but this one my church has said I-- is unjust, and so I wanna stay in. I would love to retain my rank and my [00:09:00] position, but I can't participate in this war. Maybe the next one." Uh, it's not legal. Um, and so the, the restraint that moral conscience and pacifism have integral to, um, their, their own kinda character, it's, it's more difficult to be good than it is to be bad, and people will probably object to that.

But it's easier to do something like hit that child Who didn't have any say-- who was involuntarily, um, involved in a war, uh, than those friends in the back who were voluntarily there and who knew they went putting their lives on the line. So, um, I use that example because there's no right answer. There's no, there's no, "Oh, yeah, you got it right.

Good. That's the right answer." There's no escape. Something that you do in that kind of situation is going to be bad. Um, and war just makes it very, very difficult, the way we conduct it, particularly because of just how we've produced this reflexive fire. Um, in Vietnam, uh, they thought that the, the firing rate was up to eighty [00:10:00] percent.

They now think in Iraq it's ninety-eight percent. So there's two out of every one hundred soldiers who are not firing directly at the enemy. Um, anthropologically, I don't know if we have any human sciences, uh, or anthropology in the room. Um, old, old, old records of, of ancient warfare, before it was actually like sword and dagger, it was mostly posturing.

Anim-- It was, it was reflective of animal instincts, which are not to actually end your life. In, in fights, animals rarely actually kill the other animal unless they're gonna eat them. Humans are the only animals that commit intra-species violence and don't eat the people that they kill. Um, we do it for vices like anger and vengeance.

Um, and we just need to be willing to say with Niebuhr that war actually needs to be lamented, that, that we need to go into it with a right conscience. Um, but what many of us in the military are seeing that we went haphazardly, and the people who were sending us there didn't know what it was like. Um, I-- to be honest, I'm a little concerned that, was it Eisenhower?

I don't know if he's the last one, but I know [00:11:00] he, he saw the military, and he said he hated it. He was only a soldier for Cannes because it's obscene. Um, unless we can go into war with that kind of legitimate and genuine mindset, I'm highly, highly suspicious.

Audience Member 1: Next question

Audience Member 3: Hello, my name's Emilio. Um, and I was just wondering, you had mentioned, like, at the very start about the boot camps and how they had desensitized people. Uh, you mentioned the reflexive firing. What other techniques did they use to desensitize people? Like, certain vocabulary or certain words?

Logan M Isaac: Um, it was a combination of words and acts.

So, and I cannot say with credibility whether or not it's conscious, whether or not it's like explicitly, "This is what we're doing." I suspect that it's in drill sergeants manuals. Like, you do need to break people down, and part of that is to get them to a lowest common denominator. And [00:12:00] so everybody buzzes their heads.

Everybody wears the same uniform. You forget what-- To an extent, you forget who you were before you came in. So after nine weeks, you pack civilian clothes. And after nine weeks, you get a, a pass to go and do whatever. And man, I cannot believe what I packed in my duffel bag to wear as a civilian. And you, you look at other people.

I came from Orange County, California. And, um, other people, you know, wearing overalls with no T-shirt or, like, um, some guys would, would, um, had, like, suit, like... I don't know. This, to me, I consider this a suit. I don't normally dress like this. So it's just interesting and the-- but the point is to create unity.

In a secular, uh, paradigm, one of the ways you do it is to create a lowest common denominator. Everybody's equal. Everybody's a private. And then from there on, you build up. You know, you get, uh, uh... I almost said merit badges. Uh, you get, um, parachute badge-badges or air assault badges or you get rank, all these different things that mark your difference, but you all start with this baseline of, of similarity.

Um, and boot [00:13:00] camp is meant to break you. Like, you do not know how physically limited you are until you go to boot camp. I thought I was nice and physically fit. I did, I think I did, like, five pull-ups on my first try. I thought I could do, like, oh, 15, 20. You learn your limits in boot camp, and everybody learns their limits, and everybody has a difficult time.

Um, and the things that are most, um, that are most constitutive about yourself, you just kind of for- Nine weeks is a long time. Um, I remember thinking, um... You go through it, and you forget what it's like to get to make your own decisions, and you-- There's kind of a drawdown period after. They don't let you go after the ceremony.

Your parents are there, but you're still in drill, and it's done for another couple of days after your parents are gone that you get your pass. And so it's like scaled-- You get your freedom scaled back. Um, I think bayonet training and marching in, in formation is one of those things that create unity. Um- The, the precision to which your uniform is given attention, I think [00:14:00] that's one of those things.

Everybody has one standard. You know, one-eighth of an inch from the top of your lapel is where your name tape goes, and, um, if enough of your button is not showing, you gotta pull it, and you know, stuff like that. So everybody has one standard. Um, and so that's why, like, uh, last year somebody asked me to create like a liturgy for veterans coming home from war, and I realized very quickly there's no way I could do that.

Baptists would hear it differently than Catholics. Episcopalians would hear it very differently from Church of God or, or Lutherans. Um, and so I've had difficulty. Like some people have asked, "Well, what is it that we can all kinda turn to?" And if we can't, I, I, I think what that is is, uh, our common scriptures.

Like Baptists are non-creedal, um, which is very difficult for me to imagine, but they are. Um, and so what is our lowest, for lack of a better word, lowest common denominator for Christians? Um, one thing that I've tried to make that is the Bible and scripture. Um, but that's an open question. We are not one in the way we want to be one, though we paradoxically are.

Um, and [00:15:00] that I think I see a lot of similarities with the military. There's stuff that the church can learn from the military, I think

Audience Member 4: Oh yeah. Okay. Uh, I'm Brendan. My name is Brendan. Um, first of all, God bless you because I really haven't, uh, met, uh, met another Pentecostal Christian in a long time, so that's cool. But, um, Plato says only the dead see- History kind of, I don't know, proves it, definitely supports the fact that there's always been war.

It's, um, you know, it's part of the human species. But we-we're a passive- Say America was pacifist, decided not to have, um, uh, you know, a vast military and, uh, we didn't use violence, how would we respond to things like, um... Like, and I don't mean this [00:16:00] as a challenge. I'm just saying, like, what, what things can we do to, uh, you know, uh, outside of just, uh, talking with them, you know, with people like, uh, you know, things like Iran, you know, where, where do we try to, you know, get them to shut down their nuclear programs or, um, you know, like for some of them, not, we're still supportive to terror.

You know, things like that, how... What, what should be our response to

Logan M Isaac: that? Um, thanks, Brian. That's a good question. Um, I'm not in fav- I, I think on paper, I'm not in favor of, of abolishing the military. I'm actually in favor of making national service of some kind mandatory for everybody. Um, what the draft did at the very least was force people to consider where they stood.

If you got a draft card, I mean, you had to do it. You ha- you either had to go to Canada or you'd enlist or apply to be a CO. Um, right now we don't have to think about it. Let someone else worry about it. Um, someone will fill those recruitment quotas. Two- $20 billion will buy those numbers [00:17:00] one way or another.

Um, and don't hear me saying I'm in favor of military draft. I'm in favor of national service, so Parks Rec- Parks and Rec or, uh, Rangers or AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, like, I think it's very troubling that men and women such as yourself can get all kinds of benefits that America provides, and they do provide, um, without doing something to put back in.

And Obama mentioned this in his first inaugural. Personal responsibility, what will you do, um, for your country? Kennedy said the same thing. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. That one-third of 1% choose the military, um, is suspicious to me. It makes me feel very uncomfortable, um, because there are a lot of people who speak highly of the military, a lot of people, but why aren't they joining the military?

Um, so I wouldn't advocate for abolishing the military. Um, but we haven't had a, a volunteer for- a standing army and a volunteer force, uh, earlier than s- 1974 when the, the draft [00:18:00] ended. Um, the, the founders in, um, in the s- uh, 1770s said that a standing army is the bane of liberty. After World War I, World War II, there were massive stand downs.

People came home, and they kept a comparably small force who, who made their career. In Vietnam, that began to change. A lot of officers wanted to make it a career, and, uh, the, the phenomenon of careerism, where officers would do six months in the rear, and then they would get s- or six months with some unit and then go back to some desk job.

Vietnam, enlisted Vietnam people had significant problems with that. A number of people, chaplains that I've spoken with have said that we failed in our moral authority in Vietnam, and it wasn't that we lost or won the war. It's- It's that the people who are in charge were not leading by example. They weren't practicing what they preached.

Um, and so I'd be much more in favor of a reduced force, or I mean, it's already very small, but the cost of maintaining what is supposed to be a volunteer force seems, seems, uh, unsustainable. I think [00:19:00] we should require some form of service. I think sh- we should reduce the number, the, the amount that we put into the military and the Department of Defense.

Um, and there are other nations that do it. Uh, I'm not, like I said, I'm not in favor of abolishing the military, but places like Costa Rica don't have a military. They just don't. Um, the size and strength and presence of our military is fueling anti-American sentiment, and we just have to be real about that.

Um, would Iran be able to say the things it is about America if it weren't that we were on either side of their borders? Like, they're, they're probably a little nervous. Or another way to think about it is 9/11 did not happen in a vacuum. Something led those 19 hijackers to do that. They didn't just wake up one morning and say, "Well, you know what?

I wanna buy a plane ticket." They didn't do that. There was something that we were doing or failing to do that had some effect on them. And I'm not, I'm not blaming us, but I'm trying to take seriously that we have, we have a witness before the world. Not the church, we do, but [00:20:00] in this moment I'm re- referencing America.

There are things that we do that we need to take stock of, and we need to take responsibility of. Um, if we want less wars, why, why do we put so much money into military? Why do we, why do we have to put that much money into getting people to do the thing we think is so heroic? Um, yeah, I don't know. I think that it could be done, and I don't know if we have or have not done it, but, um, it, it would take critical thinking

Audience Member 5: This is Caroline and

Logan M Isaac: Um, I'm really stubborn. The question was, how can I put God before everything else? I think I'm really stubborn. Um, [00:21:00] and so, um, when, like my c- um, I outline in the book, um, for most of the major people in my life, um, they gave me mostly just war stuff and, um, my pe- but other stuff, they just kinda went, they pulled out of the blue.

I don't know where it came from. Um, for asking to go back to war without a weapon, to be a non-combatant conscientious objector for my second deployment, I was aiding and, aiding and abetting the enemies of America, according to my commander. I was abandoning women and children I had sworn to protect to militant Muslims, according to my pastor.

And to accord- according to a close spiritual mentor of mine, who I still am on good terms with, um, the milit- the United States military was God's hand of judgment in the Middle East Um, and I didn't have a whole lot of pacifist voices in my head, but I was reading the Bible a lot. Um, and it just, it didn't click, and so I think stubbornly on some level that gave me some kind of fuel to do that.

Um, and in the military, I, especially the, the accusations of cowardice, [00:22:00] um, they don't, they didn't make s-- I was a- I was not asking to not go to war. I was actually saying that as a Christian I can't, with good faith and conscience, be r- directly responsible for ending the life of another human being.

Indirectly responsible every day, um, but I can't put my finger around a trigger casing with a human being in the sights and pull the trigger. As a Christian, that violates my conscience and violates God's law in my life, and so I can't do it. Um, and there are times where, um... Well, when I came out, I d-- I found that this was something that God was calling me to.

Um, thinking through faith and service, God and country, what does it look like to really take those things seriously? Um, and I think it's become a vocation for me. So I, I talk with veterans who struggle with how to reconcile their identities. I've talked with family members. I've talked with churches. Um, and the most difficult times for me, um, I think Just Wars have been more reasonable about it.

Um, they're trying to take it seriously, and [00:23:00] they, you know, they often will know the criteria. Um, but often pacifists will be unthinking in, uh, in homogenizing the military, as though we can say the military and know what we're talking about, that everybody is an infantryman first. That was the line th- they would give us in basic training.

Well, that's not the case. Uh, there are cooks and X-ray techs who do not often use their weapons in Iraq or Afghanistan, who u- who are operating in combat support roles. Um, and the, the moral quandary of a cook is very different from a forward observer, and I am not the same as the person beside me. We are, we are in some way one.

We wear the same uniform. We took the same oath, but we're different people, and we have different situations that make us unique. Um, and so the, the most difficult times have, have, uh... I was at a conference before I started seminary, um, over at Elkhart, uh, Peace Among the Peoples, and there was an Orthodox priest who gave a talk who referenced soldiers twice as being, [00:24:00] um, uh, motivated by bloodlust, and, uh, I walked out on his talk.

Um, and I really-- Yeah, like when the church does this stuff, when the church homogenizes people, uh, African American, LGBT, um, Asians, Japanese in, in World War II, the internment camps, when we homogenize a whole people and expect that there's no real difference, and we've made up our mind about those people, soldiers, man, that breaks my heart.

Um- Uh, yeah, I think that's been the most difficult. When people that I identify with, pacifists, um, say stupid stuff, um, have their minds made up, and can't put any reason to it. I was in another-- I was at the, uh, Mennonite conference, the annual Mennonite conference in, um, Pittsburgh two years ago, and I went to a, a panel on spirituality, and the, the guy was talking about, well, what...

And, uh, men in spirituality, and he gave us these pictures. There was [00:25:00] a crusader, there was a carpenter, there was a, there's an artisan, there was a farmer, and he said, "Which of these vocations are spiritually blah, blah, something?" And immediately my group, my group of five said, "Well, we know this one." They took the crusader card and put it off on the side.

"We know that one's not spiritual." And I thought to myself, well, what about Ignatius and Francis, Marcellus, Maximilian Tibessa, Florian, George? What about those? I mean, they, they didn't ask to leave the military, and when they confirmed that they were Christians and would obey only when they could as Christians, they were beheaded.

So the, that kind of vocational profiling, I guess, um, is what really, um, makes... challenges my faith in the church[00:26:00]

Audience Member 6: My question is, is it not possible for God to be calling men to war now just as he did then?

Logan M Isaac: Yeah. Um, in the Old Testament, um, what we, what is in our head when we say war in the modern era is not what was going on then. So a great example I use is Jericho. Um, Joshua was called to fell the walls of Jericho and, and destroy every living creature in there, even the fruit trees, I think.

Um, but what would it look like in Fallujah? Um, I was suppo- uh, my unit was getting ready to go to Fallujah to help the Marines, and the Marines, for whatever reason, said, "No, we don't want any help." They lost 28 Marines in one day. They didn't want any help. That's another story. But what would it look like if those Marines, the Marine band [00:27:00] circled the city of Fallujah for seven days, and then on the seventh day blew their horns and all the buildings fell down?

That looks something more like a liturgical pageant, wouldn't it? That, that-- I wouldn't call that war. Like, that would be really weird. I, I, I hope that the Notre Dame marching band is not practicing outside. Um, but you're right, there are people who fight. Deborah is a prophetess who called Barak to do, to go to war, and Barak was afraid.

And so the Bible tells us, well, the vic- the honor will go to a woman, Jael. Um, and frankly, I don't know what to do with some of those. But it's about violence more so than war. Um, but as a Christian who confesses a canon in a particular way, whose central feature was the cross of Christ on Golgotha, um, I, I used to have problem with, like, capitalizing Spirit in the Old Testament in some of the Christian Bibles.[00:28:00]

But I'd ask myself, no, to us, it is an Old Testament. We read the Old Testament through the cross of Jesus. And so if that's the case, maybe, um, Yoder and, um, uh, Martha, um, oh man, I can't remember the other book. Um, the Wars of Yahweh or something. Yahweh as a Warrior. Um, maybe it's the case that God was, um, moving humanity toward the cross, and that to do that, violence was necessary.

I don't-- whatever. But then Christ comes, and he says, "You have heard it said, 'Destroy every living thing in the city. Leave nothing, not even fruit trees.'" But I tell you, what? Bless and do not curse. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Um, so I'm not, I don't actually think that Jesus makes the case for the kind of pacifism we see today, which, depending on which community you're looking at, is incredibly isolationary.[00:29:00]

Um, I am just as happy leveling, leveling my accusations at pacifists. Um, it can be at times, uh, totally uncritical, like the, the Manhattan conference that I went to. Um, and they listen, and they, they get put off sometimes. Um, but we need to be careful what we mean when we say it. What we mean when we think of war is not what the Old Testament was about.

Uh, the Israelites fled Egypt with jewelry, food, and clothing. They had no military, they were slaves, and almost immediately, God has them overcoming their more numerous enemies. So to call that war just, it, it, I don't know. It, it doesn't, it doesn't make a clean parallel. Um, but I think it's an important question.

It's one that we need to think through as a church. I think Christians can be called to the military. I think it's a difficult case to make for, say, an infantryman or s- or like, uh, w- some of the combat arms. I think the case can be [00:30:00] made, but I think it'd be difficult. I think it'd be less difficult to hold a middle ground in which you go to the military because you wanna serve your country, but you also want training.

As an artilleryman, I did not, I could not put anything on my resume. I found out the one place that they use howitzers in the civilian world, ski resorts. You fire the side of hills to induce avalanches so they don't threaten cons-- uh, people on the slopes, and there's very few numbers. As a paratrooper, I could've been a smoke jumper, but I had a bad back leaving the military, so they, they wouldn't have me either.

Um, so I, I think that it's important to take seriously that the Bible is not, the Bible is not pacifist. Um, but it also is not so easy to call, to, to use the language that we use in modernity to think through what happened thousands of years ago. I think we need to come to it on its terms. Um, and violence is there.

Violence is in the New Testament. Uh, Ananias and Sapphira, who refused to give money to the church, and then, like, fell down dead. Like, what the heck do you do with that? I [00:31:00] don't know, but I think it's an important conversation to have, and I think we really need to put a lot more thought and energy to it.

Audience Member 1: Student down front

Audience Member 7: I live in Dallas, Texas, and I go to, um, Dallas Jesuit. And I was interested when you, um, started talking about St. Ignatius and, uh, his transformation from this teen warrior into a religious pacifist. And I understand his transformation, but, um, what if you don't have this choice or opportunity like ignition did, i- Ignatius did to leave, um, like the, um, service and you're like, or, or the armed

forces? And how can you keep your religion strong, um, like you said, or to keep your religion strong if you're forced, like you said, by orders by a higher level, um, people in service to duties that might be questionable, I guess, like, uh, in your point of

Logan M Isaac: view? Um, what do you mean you didn't have a choice to leave the forces?

Audience Member 7: Um, well, if, if, if you didn't have [00:32:00] like the, like if you, if, if you don't get hit by a cannonball-

Logan M Isaac: Okay ...

Audience Member 7: like leave. Yeah.

Logan M Isaac: Um, here it's 1500s, the late Crusades. Um, knights were usually of noble family, and not all the noble families fought. I don't know what kind of choice they would have had to be knights or not be knights.

I know it was something that people wanted to be. Um, Ignatius talked about being vain and being a womanizer. Um, and so if that's part of that trajectory to knighthood, we need to take it seriously. Um, uh, Maximilian of Tebessa in, uh, 295, who was beheaded for refusing to get conscripted, the people, uh, the people who were tell-- were at this court trying to get him to enter the military said, "It's a fine life for a young man.

Why would you not wanna be in the military?" And he said, um, "I'm already sealed by Christ. I cannot wear this i- these, um, these pieces of iron." He refused, you know, dog tags or something. Um, and so yeah, choices is [00:33:00] huge, huge gray area. Um, and that's why it's something I really wanna give a lot more thought to, like moral agency.

What does it mean to, uh, be given an oppor- an opportunity to make a choice? Because, um, we all have history that informs those choices. So if somebody grew up in a pacifist environment like a Mennonite church, why would they choose the military? They do. I had a number of young men come up to me and say, "You know, my church is like really upset I went to a recruiter's office."

I said, "You know, no, listen to the recruiter and then go back and ask your church about this stuff." So our choices are informed by different things. Um, and they're made... I, I mean, it's a fluid process. Like that, that... the example I gave with a child, it wasn't my example, thank God. Um, Jeffrey Lucey, um, who was this-- who's killed himself in June of 2005, had to make that choice.

The, the, the person profiled or, or behind the true story that In the Valley of Elah was based on had to make that choice. [00:34:00] Um, and so yeah, it's really difficult. I, uh, some of the groups I've been with, um, I was a me- I am a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, as well as a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars and all these.

Um, and I, I'm not in favor of using language like counter-recruitment- or anti-recruitment. I think that's crazy. Um, I think at best we need like recruitment counseling. Um, listen to the recruiter and then listen to a pacifist. Listen to somebody who's been there. Um, but I think that the interesting thing with the soldier saints like Francis, and I only cite them because they're more well-known.

We could talk about Pachomius, who led-- who gave, um, gave birth to, um, uh, cenobitic monasticism. He was the first non-ermitic monk. He refused to live alone. He insists on living with community, and he was forced into the army, trained to convert abandoned villages into fortresses. And so he takes that training and begins converting abandoned villages into monasteries, and he was never ordained.

Athanasius ran after him and tried to lay hands on him and make him a priest and he ran [00:35:00] off. None of the three thousand monks were ever ordained, and there were, um, two-- there were two thousand women who were monks on equal footing with the, the male monks. So the Pachomians, um, Pachomius wrote a rule that Benedict used substantially in his own rule Um, but Ignatius and particularly Francis, I think was, i- is a really interesting case to look at.

They didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. They didn't say the military's all bad. Um, he, uh, Ignatius used obedience in his rule. Um, uh, there's another one, Camilus de Lellis, um, who went to war, um, in the Crusades under the Venetian army. Um, and I, I was f- for, I'm writing another book, Forgotten Country, and that order, uh, Faith and Service: Ordinary Radicals, and which I'm hoping to release at Notre Dame on November 1st for All Saints Day.

So if you're there, that'd be great. Um, but Camilus, um, w- went to war, and he then, then he was committed to a mental institution, and he saw all the, the problems with the infirmaries, and so he committed his life to, to aiding the [00:36:00] sick. And he then insisted go into war to, um, help the wounded in battle on both sides.

And to mark himself so that people could see him, and so that people know he's a Christian, he marked a big red cross on his, uh, tunic. And there was a big fire. Everything was burned except this one tunic. And the Red Cross, the organization Red Cross, thinks that it was the first organization to go into war in, uh, the mid-1800s or something.

I thought, "No, that's funny," 'cause Camilus was around in the fourteen- fourteen to fifteen hundreds, and he was the Red Cross before you were. Um, Ignatius and Francis both were touched by war, and they did not throw it out. It's no coincidence that he, that Francis attracted eight veterans like himself to be the first of the, of the ten Franciscans.

Um, and so there's a, a fine balance. Um, and like I, I've got my made, mine made up about war, and I love talking about abstractions, but I think much more enriching is this conversation about the lives that have been touched by war. What can we learn from them? Francis Sampson, this guy who provided the impetus for Saving Private [00:37:00] Ryan.

Um, the Hurt Locker, the guy that... One of the guys that they profiled sued her team for defamation. Um, Battleship is literally based on a board game. So who are we listening to, um, in these, uh, i- in, in these conversations? Who are we listening to and why, and how are they forming us? Um, I can maybe quote-- I can cite the, the oath of enlistment much more readily than I can the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, and that kind of scares me.

Um, but yeah, I think it's, um, it's definitely something we need to put much more attention to. What does it mean that Ignatius was not just a Spaniard? He was a Spanish knight. Francis was a Venetian, uh, soldier. Um, Pothinius was a Roman soldier. Florian, the f- the, the patron of firefighters, was drowned for being, uh, a Christian in the fourth century.

So these stories abound. It's just a matter of interpreting them with that experience deliberately in mind. Um, but I think it could really be helpful.

Audience Member 1: We just have one more question. Oh, there are lots more questions. [00:38:00] We'll have two more questions. Um, this gentleman hasn't, uh, has had his hand up for a while and we'll give him this.

Audience Member 8: Hi, uh, And, uh- Chris Nadeau from, uh, Philadelphia. Uh, first off, thank you for your service. And second, my question was, how did, uh, your fellow soldiers react to your decision to become a conscientious, conscientious objector? And how do veterans today, when you meet them, react to that decision?

Logan M Isaac: Um, how do people react to me being a conscientious objector?

Um, when I, when I was in the service and I, um, you read about it in the book, and part of-- in the back of my head, I was trying to get all the details straight because I hear people refer to me as having gotten out as a conscientious objector. I'm-- my thing never actually got pushed past the interviews. Um, and so part of it was, like, getting the details straight so people would stop telling me I was a conscientious objector.

Um, but, uh, just as a matter of fact, when I told my superiors that I would apply, at first it was very, um, congenial. It wasn't really an- uh, [00:39:00] animated or anything. Um, they said, "You know, um, we're j- we're gonna keep this under wraps 'cause, um, for your personal privacy, you know, the idea of mental health evaluation and, you know, with the, the privacy protection under HIPAA and everything, we-- we'll just keep this under wraps.

You won't have to go to trainings. You don't have to fire a rifle." And I was like, "Okay." Um, and the effect that that had was that people that I knew... And the other thing was that we had changed units. The unit that I deployed with was then transformed into a, a medium mech brigade, and I didn't wanna add another, I think, five years to my contract.

Um, so they moved me to the other brigade that was remaining light infantry, and so the people that I applied with were not the people that I deployed with, and I think that affected their ability to trust me. Um, and so quickly it, um, so at least my peers, I think, just stopped seeing me at, at training, and I was under the impression I was not supposed to talk about it.

Um, and it wasn't-- They had coerced me into it. I was just like, "Okay, yeah, I guess so. Sure, yeah, I won't talk about it." Um, and I, I wish I had, um, because I-- some of [00:40:00] my friends that I deployed with did go with me to that other unit. Um, but very quickly it became, um, uh, difficult with my command at least. Um, and how I effectively got out was, um, I got my two interviews I was required to do, and then they were supposed to assign an officer to sit in on a hearing.

And we were now a month before we were supposed to deploy, and I hadn't-- and it had been a month since I gave them the paperwork. And I don't know what to do. Like, I don't assign the officer. Like, they have to do it. So I got in touch with a lawyer to say, "Look, I don't know what they're doing. I'm really worried that they're just going to not do what they're supposed to do under regulations and just have me deploy."

In which case I'd be like, "Okay, I got my bag- bags packed and got all my shots, but I'm not going to the arms room to draw a weapon." Um, or they can do it in country in which the s- the penalties are much steeper. And I was willing to go to prison, but I'm a pacifist. I'm not stupid. So I called this lawyer in-- on a Friday.

It was actually the Friday after I was baptized on July 4th. I saw him on [00:41:00] July 11th, 2006. So yeah. Um, and by Monday morning, the-- it had trickled down, and they gave me this swift boot out the door. Um, and it was later that week that the commander said I was aiding and abet- abetting. And, um, and veterans today, um- It, it really depends.

I haven't heard, I haven't heard a whole lot of, like, flashback. Uh, nobody's really upset that I was a CO. I think a lot of people that I'm in touch with are Vietnam vets, and that was a much more morally questionable war than Iraq and Afghanistan, so they're much more amenable to conscience objection. A lot of people went to Canada and came back after Jimmy Carter gave them amnesty in '76...

No, '79 or something. Um, and so it's, it's less of a big deal. Um, and pacifist groups, people like that I'm a conscience objector, and that's fine. But, um, I haven't heard as much of the, like, visceral kind of pushback as I did while I was in the military, no.[00:42:00]

Audience Member 1: Last question will be here, and I know a bunch of you have questions. Someone has super sly raised their hand. I want you, the ones that have questions, to, uh, come to the table and engage there as we're also having a book et cetera. Um, but our time is sort of winding down. So we'll have one last question.

Please identify yourself, and then I'd invite the others of you that have questions to engage here after the last question. Go ahead,

Audience Member 9: yes. Uh, I'm Ashley Wilson from North Carolina, and I was wondering what motivated you to write about your experiences. Oh. And if the book and your other writings are mainly about your experiences or, like, research or a combination of both?

Logan M Isaac: Um, yeah, that's a really good question. Um, I knew I had to get out what was in me, um, because it was forming kind of something in my head. I never considered myself a writer until about two months ago when somebody used the title to describe... I'd never, I just... I don't know. Um, but, um, if you pick up a book, and I haven't said this before [00:43:00] yesterday actually to the theology track.

Um, if you open the book to page 63, um, you'll find, uh, that what looks like a typo. And, um, it follows immediately after a friend of mine, I was home, I think it was after I'd finished my tour. I don't think it was my mid-tour R&R. I'd come home, and I was hanging out with friends in Kailua in, on Oahu. And one of my f- close friends, um, nonchalantly asked me, "So, did you kill anybody?"

And, um, I c- I could not figure out how to describe what went through my head immediately following that. And so I talked to the publisher, and I said, "I kinda wanna leave, like, a blank page." Um, and what we ended up doing is, is kinda messing with the font and alignment so that you... I imagine if, if y'all read the way I read, I kind of get into it.

Like, I, I, I can see things as I read, and I, uh, and I kinda melt into it. And I imagine that, I could be totally wrong, but I imagine that may happen with other people. And so I wanted [00:44:00] to interrupt that sequence, like, tear people out of their own heads. Um, because when he asked me, I, I thought to myself, uh, I don't know what I thought to myself.

And because I'm committed to having these conversations with veterans and family members in churches, I needed to come up with, I need to show people why that question has the significance it does. Um, but it takes years to answer. Um, And my-- the-- I wrote the book because I couldn't hold on my heart any longer what God had put in my pen or on my lips.

Um, Abraham Heschel is a Jewish theologian of my dad's generation who taught in New York, and he said, um, he describes conscience, a, a person of conscience who, who can't help but resist, his conscience burns. Words are not [00:45:00] words. They are arrows and slings and bows and spears. Um, I could not not say something.

And I actually initially proposed in 2007 when I think something like this really needed to get written. It was in the height of the Iraq War. Um, and I, I'm not sure if I was ready to write it then or not, but I think that's when it should have, um, something should have been said a little bit more complicatedly.

Um, and I was-- I read a lot of other veterans' memoirs, and they're largely political. Uh, it's about where to place blame or responsibility and making sure, you know, that we all know that Afghanistan or Iraq or both are unjust, and, you know, how dare the government make me do this stuff? And there's some credence to that.

Um, but for me, war was not the most determinative moment in my life. And so I, I give a little bit of my deployment, but I do it very quickly, and I try to make it very marginal, um, to the climax of the book, which for me was my baptism. Um, [00:46:00] seven years ago today, I was baptized in a swimming pool in Waikiki, um, and that was the most determinative moment in my life.

Uh, the moment that I was born of the Spirit is more-- it should be more significant than boot camp, more significant than my 16th birthday or my 18th birthday or 21st birthday. Um, and it's a struggle to remember that sometimes. Um, and so I wrote the book, um- uh, for other veterans. Um, I heard, uh, a lot of veterans narrate, um, their experience of war and having killed people.

Um, and I get the sense that they tell me because they don't know how to tell their family or their church. Um, and a friend of mine, uh, that I met early in seminary said, um, said, "Yeah, man, you're like a bridge between, you know, veterans and civilians." Um, in that I, I think that I have enough military and combat service to retain credibility within the military and enough evangelical language to [00:47:00] retain credibility in the church, um, but maybe not so much combat experience that it's broken me more to where I can't have these kind of conversations.

The problem with a bridge is that everybody walks all over you. So, um, I, I went out of my way to try and really be fair to all the people involved and including God. Um, I think that one thing that I-- that struck me is that the Spirit, if the Spirit... What did I say? If the Spirit inspires, it also critiques or it also, um, um, reminds you when you've done wrong.

And I think that that's where the language about calling war a necessary evil is really important to me that, um, when I came home, um, I came through the Dallas Airport in uniform because we hadn't gotten our sea bags yet, and that's where you keep your civilian suit you packed a year before. And you're, um, you're supposed to change into civilians, but before I could, I was rushed to my plane, and on the way, some random stranger gave me a hug, and there's big banners with, uh, [00:48:00] red, white, and blue and stripes and stars and everything saying, "Thank you for your service."

Um, and I think gratitude is important, but in that moment, within 48 hours prior, I'd been in an intense firefight in Mosul, which is Nineveh, the biblical city where Jonah, um, fled God. Um, and so to-- it, uh, this thank you like assigned a positive moral value to something that for me, the most recent and powerful memory, at least with that firefight in Mosul, um, that's no longer true.

But, um- Yeah, I wrote it for people that are struggling to find the, the balance, the, the, the center between the, the ends of the pendulum of gratitude and guilt. I think both actually are-- should be a part of the conversation. When I talk to priests, I tell them, um, yeah, you should call what they did sin. I think they need to hear it, and they need to self-possess, like I talked about.

But you sh- there's-- the thing about war is that there's both beauty and tragedy therein. So how do you [00:49:00] sort between the two? Well, that's what you do. You sort between the two, and you, um, call them for what they are, and that's what I tried to do, um, in writing it. Uh, because I, I don't think I would have been able to write had it not been, um, for the people telling me to write like Shane.

Um, but also, I think there's that soft, still whisper in the back of my head saying, "To be silent is a betrayal. Um, it's not a choice." Um, and so, uh, I think that the book hopefully is a gift to the church and to other veterans trying to figure out where they fit into all this. And I try to be honest about the heroism as well as the, the harrowing natures of, of war, um, so that it, it's maybe a more colorful picture.

Speaking

Audience Member 1: of