What is really going on?
Not to go into too much detail, but I am involved in the military. I have prior service and served with soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan, some more than once. I have served with soldiers who lost their best friend fighting a war that no one is able to answer to the why of it. Yes, there are many answers, but nothing settled. Sadly, it seems partisanship gets in the way of that answer.
My service in the military never had me deploy overseas, but watching the videos and looking at the pictures of the withdraw from Afghanistan back in August was gut wrenching. All I could think about was the Afghan people fearing for their lives and the soldiers, airmen, and marines who were seeing those people first hand. I would also think about the soldiers I served with, only imaging what they were going through.
But in the midst of the darkness I saw the marines holding infants and soldiers giving out food and water. The picture above is a marine giving that little girl a bottle of water. I know, and I believe many others would agree, that what we were seeing from our military personnel is how we ought to act. We could argue all day over how the withdraw was being directed or handled from those in charge, but we would agree that what the boots on the ground were doing was the right thing to do.
That observation brought something to mind.
While many can agree that what the soldiers and marines were doing was right, these same people cannot agree on nearly anything else. Should masks be mandated by the government? What about the vaccine? “It’s in the name of public health, so therefore it’s right” is the common thought. But is it? Is making someone doing something, even if it is for the sake of others, right? Was this marine pictured above forced to give that girl water? I do not have that answer but I can make a well educated guess based from my experience: no. This marine likely saw the little girl and his heart went out to her, putting that feeling into action by giving her water. He was not forced to act in a right way, he just did it.
How do we live in this dichotomy? How do we agree that one thing is right, but then disagree on another thing that is presented as being right? I think this is a result of the “old ways” and “modern ways” of thought clashing. The “old ways” of thought is what I would describe as a worldview rooted in Judeo-Christian ideals while being separate from the respective faiths. They can result in a society having a similar vein of thought. I am not saying that this “old way” of thinking was great, it had many aspects of it that were wrong or allowed for wrong to be practiced. But generally, it held that there were right and wrongs that were defined outside of the culture or people; that these right and wrongs came from something higher than themselves.
This “modern thought” is different. It is something that began in the 1960s sexual revolution but has roots that go back hundreds of years. It finds the right and wrong in the culture as well as the individual. It has remnants of the “old ways” of thinking, where some rights and wrongs are still considered as such, but it differs on many other ideas or right and wrong. For example, both agree that rape is wrong and is a heinous act against another. They would agree that an act of rape should be punished with severe repercussions. However, the modern way takes this a little further; if a person consents to sex with another, then later changes their mind, then it is considered rape. This might sound odd or insane to some, but I remember being given a pamphlet when the military was talking about sex and consent. On this pamphlet, which we were told was given to us by some agency and not endorsed by the DOD, it explicitly said that if you changed your mind after sex, then you could report it as rape.
I know there is much more to this debate, but taking it on a surface reading the way I presented stands. What I am trying to point out is this: the western culture in America is in the middle of an alteration. We will see remnants of the “old ways” of thought while simultaneously experiencing the “new ways” of thinking. One moment will seem like we all can agree on something and the next we will be on the brink of war. When you are having these discussions, I hope you can remember this: If you hold a more Judeo-Christian way of thinking, then simple conversations with someone who does not hold that thinking will result in both of you talking past each other.
I understand this post has been all over the place and I’m not addressing a specific example. But that is on purpose. I am trying to get past specific examples to find the thing that lies underneath. That is my hope; that we can look past a specific incident and find the reason why it’s happening, or why a person is doing the thing they do. Simply telling someone they are wrong based off your way of thinking will only result in both of you getting no where.
