Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God. [Matt 5:9]

This morning, I stepped out with a cup of coffee and strolled through the dew-soaked grass before the sun peeked over the east rim of the holler. It’s cool out there, I think some sort of front came through last night – we could hear rumbles of distant thunder at dusk, and we got a little bit of rain through the night, so maybe that moisture on the grass was more than just dew. We’ll take any rain we can get this time of the year.

You tend to get lost in your thoughts at my age, and especially with all of the things that are happening in the world. I guess most folks don’t spend as much time fretting over the world’s ills as some of us, and that may be a blessing – or it may be a curse, depending on how you look at it, at any rate I think God’s children should be concerned with the moral trajectory of the world.

This summer has been especially lush and green around these parts, at least so far. For that I’m thankful, not far from here in almost any direction, tornadoes have ravaged the country. Some of our not-so-far-away neighbors have endured some nasty floods, but those things are just what has happened nearby. Further around this old ball of dirt, folks are suffering catastrophic heat that is actually killing people. there have been floods and hailstorms, the likes of which I don’t think the world has ever seen, at least in living memory. We have been blessed here in this old holler.

Under vast clouds of smoke and dust in the Ukraine, the Sahel of Africa, and the Middle East, deadly wars and outright massacres, are being conducted, taking innumerable lives – lives cut short by whatever lunacy of the day prevails in those places. As I wade through the cool, wet carpet of summer grass, my heart gets heavy thinking about all of the children in places like Gaza – actually there are no “places like” Gaza – it’s horror of its own, but those little ones, the very epitome of innocence, are being slaughtered and starved in a mausoleum of horror that no person, let alone a toddler, should ever be forced to endure.

Many moons ago before I realized college wasn’t going to be of much value to me, there was a history course I took, and the thing I remember most about it was that the thoughtful professor assigned us to read a book called “Inside the Vicious Heart”. I don’t know if it’s even still in print, but the basic theme was that all people have it in them to inflict unimaginable cruelty on their fellow human beings, and given the right conditions, i. e., making it legal to kill (war works for this), having superiors who encourage brutality, dehumanizing others to the point that one doesn’t regard them as human anymore, all work to remove natural homo sapiens inhibitions and allow that incredibly evil and apathetic trait of humans to surface. Then we get Wounded Knee, Mi Lai, Gaza, Pol Pot, and uncountable other atrocities. People on people violence and slaughter.

There’s something about recognition of this human condition that Satan and his servants in this world do not like to see made public and that’s really odd, but just look at how they twist the atrocities taking place in Palestine to try and make it look like it’s something justified. For crying out loud, look at what they did to Julian Assange for exposing the brutality of the US military. The devil doesn’t like for the evil he imposes on humanity to be exposed. At least not at this point in our history. Wars are always regarded as being over resources or political arguments or land, but the hard and cold fact is wars are conducted because of human susceptibility to the influence of Satan. Wars happen because people can be convinced it’s ok to kill each other, and once they set to it, they do it with vigor.

Another facet of this, although a bit aside from the main topic is that cruelty and brutality are conducted of more than one style and measure, for instance, what is happening in the Ukraine is war, but what is happening in Gaza is merciless slaughter of innocent people. Before anyone gets their feathers ruffled, I know the Ukraine action is called a Special Military Operation instead of a war, but that’s just a bunch of legalese, it’s a war and we all know it’s a war, but my point is, in both cases, the guys with the guns have been convinced of the righteousness of their cause. The inhumanity they perceive in their crosshairs then proceeds to let that horrible human condition dictate they set their conscience aside and pull the trigger. And their fellow humans die.

As the birds woke up and started to put nature’s soundtrack into my musings, I consider the after-effects of the inhuman behavior Satan evokes on those young men and women who have temporarily become convinced it’s ok to kill. Especially the ones who murder the innocent little kids on purpose. Do they wake up in the middle of the night to the screams of terrified little toddlers whose blood they have spilled? Is that why, out of the presence of those almighty superiors, their consciences become so heavy that they kill themselves as the only way to stop the echoing screams of the ghosts of those children? There is a phenomenal rate of military and ex-military suicides going on, and from what we hear, the most of them fought in places like Gaza, Iraq, and even Vietnam, where the “enemy”, or at least the enemy they killed, was defenseless. When they allowed Satan to remove the constraints of conscience and intentionally killed little children, women, and old people it must have become unbearable on the human soul to continue life with such a burden on their hearts. It’s the ones who have participated in such behavior and do not kill themselves that society needs to worry about, for they have the capacity to become brutal murderers off the “battlefield”.

I wonder about how the pilots of the aircraft, or the drone operators placate their consciences when they see pictures of the death and destruction of innocents in places like Raqqa and Gaza City. Was the removal of their sword strokes sufficient to assuage their mortal culpability for atrocities like that picture I saw of the little girl in the debris of Raqqa with only her beautiful little head to be seen with a plaited ponytail her mother had undoubtedly spent part of the morning fixing up. An American pilot dropped that bomb. Did he see the picture? If so, was there any remorse at all in his heart, or was he able to absolve his culpability? Was he merely playing some morbid video game, and felt no more guilt than a kid with a game controller in his hand?

Will the men and women who were players on Satan’s team endure the cost of guilt for the rest of their lives for killing innocents? I knew guys who had fought in WWII, and some of them were seriously damaged in their souls. WWII soldiers fought in a war that might have been justifiable, and those old boys carried some heavy baggage till they died. Just think about soldiers, or pilots, or drone operators, who have mercilessly taken part in murdering thousands of innocent children – their participation was voluntary, nobody made them kill. When these people stand before God on judgement Day, if they haven’t repented for their participation in these atrocities, they will pay the ultimate price. Satan recruited them, trained them, convinced them it was okay to kill their fellow human beings, and when he was through with them, discarded them into the dark noisome dumpsters of their guilty hearts. That’s his way.

The horror won’t be over until we come to understand and accept that wars have to be over, and I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. From what I’ve seen and read in the Bible, I think our Lord is getting fed up with what mankind has done to His creation, and we don’t have a lot of time left here, the best thing we can do is to get right with Jesus and when He winds it all up, we’ll be able to live in peace at last.

Then about the time the crows started waking up and complaining, I decided to take my heavy musings inside and write this heavy post.

God Bless Y’all,

MK