The "courage" of Noncombatants

I’ve never been in the military, never seen war, never been in the middle of the chaos of combat. I’ve seen movies about it though. I watched all ten episodes of ‘Band of Brothers’. I’ve read about war, about the trauma of the combatant. As a kid, I had bottle rocket wars with friends, learned to shoot guns, played first-person shooter games, and gained some survival skills.

So, what would you say if I criticized a soldier for their decisions in the middle of combat? What would you think if I critiqued a soldier for what I perceive as their lack of courage?  Or if I carp on them for not ‘getting over’ the hidden wounds they still feel.

If I were to tell someone who carries the scars of war that they should just move on, get over it, let the past be the past…wouldn’t you think me a fool and a coward?

Fleming Rutledge calls this ‘the courage of the noncombatant’ as she talks about “those who have not themselves experienced the full force of the struggle” but imply “that the suffering of others be set aside, discounted, not taken seriously.”[1]

‘The courage of the noncombatant’

When I read that line I thought about

all the churches who tell those wounded, abused, and scarred by the church to forgive and forget, after all, holding a grudge is a sin…

the husbands who get sullen and nag their wives to move on past the affair, you need to focus on the good, let the past be the past…

the whites who lecture blacks on how they should move on, slavery doesn’t affect them anymore, so stop stirring up trouble…

the people who get irritated by the reactions of those adults who were abused as children, can’t you just put it behind you, get over it…

 The problem is, the past isn’t the past until it’s reckoned with.

Why would Jesus command us to leave our gifts at the altar in order to mend hurt we’ve caused another? We cannot simply move on, and to think we can is to live with lethal amounts of denial.

What we see happening in our country in regard to race relations is the result of generations of unempathetic, intentional blindness towards the generational trauma caused by centuries of mistreatment and oppression of black Americans (and so many other non-white Americans).

Similarly, in the American church, we find ourselves confronted with a horrific reality of sexual abuse and misogyny at nearly every level, in every denomination, in what seems to be in nearly every church. A reality which has been gaslighted by the powerful in order to preserve the comfortable order they’ve enjoyed for so long.

Like putting off a credit card payment, pain collects interest.

Honestly, there’s a simple remedy.

Listen empathically, trust deeply, and care compassionately.

The next time someone talks about their hurts or pain, and your first reaction is ‘No way, they’ve got to be exaggerating, it can’t be that bad.’ Pause, and find a way to trust them. If they’re lying or embellishing, what have you lost? Whereas, if they’re telling the truth and you refuse to see them in their pain, you risk taking the same path of the priest and the Levite in their response to the beaten and abused man on the side of the road.

Listen to the Teacher

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,

and love your neighbor as yourself…Do this and you will live.’ (Luke 10:27-28)

[1] Rutledge, Fleming. (2004). The Battle for Middle-Earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, Michigan.