A Sobering Letter From A Soldier In Iraq
Men of Grace, it is an honor to write to you from
Mahmudiyah, Iraq. I am serving with the 10th Mountain Division here in the
suburbs southern Iraq. Darren asked me to write to you about what God has
shown me this year.
If I wrote about everything God has shown me this year,
this might be a long message. Instead, I’ll write about what God has shown me
this week, which might still be a rather lengthy dissertation. Perhaps
referring to what God has “shown” me is a use of the wrong tense.
“Showing” might be a more accurate choice of words. But actually, I
feel like I am resisting the thing He is showing me right now.
Before I elaborate, I should provide a bit of
background for the thoughts I want to share. This week, I was reading in
Matthew where Jesus says that we should love our enemies and pray for those who
persecute us. In any other time of my life, that would’ve seemed like a good
idea, and an idea not altogether difficult to carry out into action.
But that was before I had any actual enemies. That
was before I lived in a place where people would gladly kill me. That was
before I soaked my uniform in another man’s blood or attended the funeral
of a fellow soldier who will never make it home.
That these are our enemies, I have no doubt. But the
people I have the hardest time loving are those who spend their time and energy
plotting to kill not me, but each other.
On Easter, some who I consider my enemies, detonated
a large bomb outside of the local hospital. Though there were no American
injuries, 15 Iraqis were killed, including some of their doctors as well as
patients. Many more people were injured. Of these, 17 came to our aid station
seeking care for significant injuries.
One of those patients was a 9-year-old girl with a
huge hole in her leg as well as an arterial bleed. She was screaming in a
combination of pain and absolute terror. We could do nothing to comfort her
because we could not speak her language. We could neither answer the questions
of her parents, nor provide any explanation as we whisked her off in a
helicopter for further care. All we could do was work to get her stabilized
while listening to her scream. I will never forget that sound.
Another of our patients that day might lose his leg.
His son was killed in the blast, though he did not know it yet.
There were others, but you get the idea. I don’t
relate these stories to impress you, but rather to help you understand these
enemies of mine.
Surely, Jesus didn’t mean that I should actually love
people like them.
When I think about those we politely call
“insurgents,” my reaction is akin to that of Conan the Barbarian
who found fulfillment in one thing: “to crush your enemies, to see them
driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”
But Jesus says to love them. I don’t know how.
It seems that it would be a big victory for me if I
could just stop hating these people who bombed a hospital and who, twice this
week, bombed an outdoor marketplace. I have prayed about this often over the
course of the last seven days.
Did Jesus really mean that we should love these men
who are, seemingly, the embodiment of pure evil? I want to think not.
But then I am reminded of my savior on a cross asking
“Father forgive them.” I know that I don’t have a high priest who
can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in
all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)
Jesus knew what it was like to have enemies and he
was, no doubt, tempted to hate them. But He was without sin.
Ultimately, I know that my nature will not allow me
to love these people apart from Christ. In my heart, I know that they don’t
deserve my love or Christ’s. However, I know that God loves me, and I
definitely don’t deserve it either.
I haven’t learned how to love these insurgents who
are trying to kill me, my comrades, and their own countrymen. Truthfully, I am
not sure that I will ever learn to do this. Deep down, I don’t know that
I even want to.
But there is one thing this experience has done for me:
I have a much deeper respect, admiration, and appreciation for what Christ did
for us on the cross. He loved me, and millions more like me who go against His
commandments every day. We are not worthy of His love, much less his
sacrifice.
So I am trying to learn to love Christ, and praying
that He will enable me to love someday like He does.
I will close this message like I close much of my
correspondence from Iraq. As a Soldier, it is not my job to critique our
policies in Iraq. I wish that decisions could be made by Soldiers, Sailors,
and Airmen instead of Democrats and Republicans.
However, this I do know: our soldiers are doing some
incredible things in this country across the world from you. There are many
amazing people here who put themselves in danger every single day to try to
bring freedom to this land. In return, we ask only for your prayers. Prayers
for our safety, prayers for our morale, prayers for those who do not yet know
Jesus, and prayers for people like me to learn to love those who seem so
unlovable… unlovable just like you and me.
Scott Carow, Soldier in Iraq, Soldier for Christ