The Fundamentalist Ain't The Worst

Well Dear Reader, I've decided something: I actually prefer the chaplain in my unit, that venomous Evangelical, to the other sort of the chaplain I've seen, the weak willed and lukewarm, Spiritual Care Plan who recite nothings.  Sure, my chaplain may be a devil who hates people for their sexuality and gender, but at least he means it.  At least he isn't worshiping his job.

These other chaplains, they got nothing, nothing except devotion to the Army. 

Though they wear crosses on their uniforms, they make no effort to worship Christ or the God of Christ.  Instead, they worship of the god of the Army.  Now, before you go getting excited, I have to tell you this: the god of the Army is no where near as interesting as Ares, Mars, or Tyr.  Instead, this god is nothing but a cheap knock off of the blandest understanding of a monotheistic god. 

Apparently, the Army god asks nothing of us other than to buck up and follow our leaders.  The Army god has no wisdom and no love of justice.  It does not point to any kind of goodness and it doesn't tell you to act right.  It doesn't love, doesn't hate, doesn't enforce, doesn't subvert, doesn't sow, doesn't reap, don't nothing.  Nothing.  Not the vaguest hint of holiness or anything beyond the common, ugly, and small. It is an empty word, a place holder for the saddest indoctrination of the...and I can hardly write this without grimacing...the "Core Army Values."

The Core Army Values are, of course, Loyalty (only to the Army), Duty (to the Army), Respect (of the Army), Selfless Service (of the Army), Honor (obtained through serving the Army), Integrity (do I need to say it), and Personal Courage (you get the picture).

Basically, the ultimate virtue in the Army is doing what you're told.  Most Christian chaplains have had no problem completely shedding their loyalty to that homeless Jewish fellow who got crucified.  They've lost all feeling for that fellow who, after he fed five thousand, ran away when the people tried to make him king 'cause they just didn't get it.

The chaplains instead worship the Army.  They call it god and hope that their soldiers are too stupid to know the difference.  But friends, we are not.  We get what the deal is.

Comments

[Pamela Morris]

CQ, I love your blog and it's on my tabbed reading list. Your observation about the two types of chaplains is reminiscent of the description from the Screwtape Letters:

"The two churches nearest to him, I have looked up in the office. Both have certain claims. At the first of these the Vicar is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa. He has undermined many a soul's Christianity...now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons. We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should over reach them through Scripture...

At the other church we have Fr. Spike. The humans are often puzzled to understand the range of his opinions—why he is one day almost a Communist and the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism—one day a scholastic, and the next prepared to deny human reason altogether—one day immersed in politics, and, the day after, declaring that all states of us world are equally "under judgment". We, of course, see the connecting link, which is Hatred...There is also a promising streak of dishonesty in him; we are teaching him to say "The teaching of the Church is" when he really means "I'm almost sure I read recently in Maritain or someone of that sort". But I must warn you that he has one fatal defect: he really believes. And this may yet mar all.

But there is one good point which both these churches have in common—they are both party churches. I think I warned you before that if your patient can't be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it."