Going to Church last Sunday we heard an interview with a soldier who had contacted pubic radio to record his experiences when he was in war and about an interview when he has returned. He entered the military as a 30 year old young adult who wanted to serve his country. He left military training as a man who, like many others in the military, wanted to kill someone. He describes his transformation from a patriotic to a killer. You can hear his interview on Good Guys Act 4, #515 on “This American Life”]]

His story of being taught to kill, seek and enjoy killing is hard to hear but, in light of what we know about modern military training, sadly it is easy to believe.

Killing is all around us, killing in the media as entertainment, killing in streets of our city, killing in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. There is all type of proposals to stop the killing, data driven policing, more weapons and more talk about stopping the violence.

Like many things in life we search for the solution when sometimes it is right in front of us. Science teaches us that killing another human being is not natural and affects the brain. Our Christian bible and other religious writings tell us : “Thou shall not kill” as one of the commandments and Jesus tells us to go further and ‘love our enemies’. We are told we should respect all humans, despite race, creed, and gender. We hold to the truth “that all men are equal” and enjoy the “rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” Yet we tend to justify killing if it by ‘drone’ on a suspected enemy or of 16 year old African American boy caught by three white men for stealing from a store.

Father McCarthy told me last summer that many bibles had changed the wording of the fifth commandment “Thou shall not kill” to “Thou shall not murder”. This change of wording changes the meaning of the commandment and I questioned if he was right. So I checked many translations of the Old Testament in the Bible and almost all, except Catholic translations, have changed the word ‘kill’ to ‘murder’.

Like many woes of our society the answer is within us and right before us: Humans should not kill other human beings. It seems like the answer Do not kill is too simple or we are too stupid to understand it.

Comments

Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.