{"id":36442,"date":"2024-04-01T17:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36442"},"modified":"2024-04-01T17:01:21","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T00:01:21","slug":"you-poked-my-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/you-poked-my-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"You Poked My Heart!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember back to when the “internet” first became a thing? We had AOL and the famed “You Got Mail” voice prompt.[1]<\/a> \u00a0MSN Messenger and Yahoo were kind of a big deal. Viral videos were just becoming something we talked about and shared via email on the internet; both things that in 1994 the hosts of The Today Show<\/em> didn’t understand.[2]<\/a> Frankly, nobody did.<\/p>\n

Then there was the Star Wars kid prancing around his garage with a makeshift lightsaber that became one of the first and the most watched viral video of all time.[3]<\/a> And who can forget the little boy named Harry in rocking chair with his younger brother named Charlie. The video shows the younger biting the finger of the older, and with a sweet British accent yelling “Charlie bit me!”[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s so good.<\/p>\n

How about this one? Two little twin girls corner a cute toddler boy and they all debate as to whether it is rainy or sprinkling. The girls say it’s raining. The boy disagrees with, “My mom says it’s sprinkling.” Things gets heated (not really) and one of the girls pushed her finger into the boy’s chest. His tear-filled response is priceless: \u00a0“You poked my heart.”<\/strong>[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

I love the internet. Seriously, go watch all the above videos and I think you’ll agree.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the internet is not all cat videos and Wordle. It’s a reflection of the dark web of a world we actually live in, replete with hate, threats, bullying, exploitation, wars and rumors of wars. Life is messy, and it’s not only lived out all over the world, but we can also watch it over and over on YouTube. Killing, actual and virtual, has gone viral, and all our hearts are being poked.<\/p>\n

What about those that HAVE to kill? What about real war? The central question in Marc LiVecche’s\u00a0The Good Kill\u00a0<\/em>is “when is it ever moral for soldiers to kill?” It’s one thing to log into our gaming system and play Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage, Killer Instinct, Blood Warrior, or Street<\/em> Fighter<\/em> with joystick controllers, but it\u2019s an entirely different thing to discharge live ammo upon an enemy combatant in a hostile environment. I personally know nothing of either, but I do know what pokes the hearts of humanity and of God.<\/p>\n

LiVecche, a research fellow and ethics teacher at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the US Naval Academy, developed his dissertation into the book The Good Kill<\/em> while a visiting scholar at Oxford University. Previously he had taught history and ethics at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, an experience he says rendered him unfit for pacifism. I have, for some time, aligned myself with the pacifist worldview, but over the last few years I’ve been feeling that shift somewhat. LiVecche’s assessment of Richard Niebuhr was helpful in articulating my recent shifts. He says, “Niebuhr neither disapproves of nor disproves pacifism; he only proves it ineffective. Niebuhr is, in principle, a pacifist, but in practice, he is a pacifist whose pacifism takes a backseat to the fact that we must sometimes kill in order to protect the innocent (LiVecche, 9). I feel this way too. However, the question remains: who gets to define “protecting the innocent?” There is a lot of ambiguity in that. Further questions could be, “Who really needs to be killed and what if you’re wrong about that?” and “What is an appropriate response in protecting the innocent?” and “Does this need to culminate in killing, or might there be another way?”<\/p>\n

These are questions that Commander Hunter (played by Denzel Washington) was bombarded with from Captain Ramsey (played by Gene Hackman) in the movie\u00a0Crimson Tide<\/em>. Mockingly, Captain Ramsey demanded that Commander Hunter “tell us exactly who the real enemy is.” His response is important: “In my humble opinion, in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself.”[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

The true enemy is war itself. As a “modified pacifist” I tend to agree. And yet we have what has been called the Just War <\/em>tradition which adjudicates when it is right to kill through war. Just War<\/em> sanctions war, but, LiVecche says “the problem is that someone has to fight it.”[7]<\/a> Those that have to fight it are soldiers, “warriors who are human beings before they are combatants” (LiVecche, xi). These human beings are dealing with deep emotional scars, referred to as “moral injury” that is causing many of them to live with massive guilt and shame, and die from self-inflicted wounds. Undoubtedly, there is an actual cost of war (in terms of lives), as well as moral and spiritual costs. LeVicche contends that a framework of understanding Just War<\/em> is Christian [Augustinian] realism, that gives allowance for killing, but not hate. The Just War <\/em>requirement is that warfighters believe the enemy is worthy of being loved (LiVecche, 11).<\/p>\n

They have to have a heart<\/strong> before they poke one.<\/p>\n

Now, in full disclosure, I have never served in the military. I have never gone into battle. I have never owned a weapon, nor used one, except for deer hunting once when I was younger. I admittedly, do not have a frame of reference for much of what LiVecche, along with other soldiers, have seen and experienced. I am grateful, but I don’t get it. I don\u2019t get why we continue to kill. I don\u2019t see the purpose for many of the wars we have found ourselves in. I don\u2019t appreciate the hating\/killing culture we have, in our video games, movies, Facebook posts and our domestic and international battles. In the words of Michael Jackson, “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”[8]<\/a> And I wish many, many, many, many more people would be too.<\/p>\n

Planet Earth has had enough<\/strong> poked hearts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cv1B9sPPOXo<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UlJku_CSyNg<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0EqSXDwTq6U<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FXvk2agkZwc<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hur6LcyuTuU<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5GPhhR1rV6U<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Cl_42za17v0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember back to when the “internet” first became a thing? We had AOL and the famed “You Got Mail” voice prompt.[1] \u00a0MSN Messenger and Yahoo were kind of a big deal. Viral videos were just becoming something we talked about and shared via email on the internet; both things that in 1994 the hosts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[3101,3099,3098,3100,3102,3103],"class_list":["post-36442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-charlie","tag-justwar","tag-livecche","tag-moralinjury","tag-starwarskid","tag-youpokedmyheart","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36442"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37093,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36442\/revisions\/37093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}