采访： Becky驻军，讽刺作家

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Logan Laituri ： 勇敢的懦夫

今天我们通过采访开始耶稣宣言的新的采访部分 Logan Laituri.

JM ： 你好Logan，稍微告诉我们关于谁您是。

很好，我不可能想象回答那个问题不简要对谁演讲我是。 我长大 橙县加州，对我似乎是世界的唯物主义资本。 是中下类，我感到非常贫困。 我的伙计做了提供我们的一个令人敬畏的工作，虽然和我分成青年小组惯例，在我为入店行窃被拘捕了在14之后。 我的父母分离了，并且我明显地感到是一个巨大方式得到一些关心。 四年在高中，我在我的袖子几乎逐字地佩带了我的宗教; 我投入了它，当我在教会时并且采取了它，当我家庭。 不要得到我错误，我爱我的教会(和仍然，我回来，在我家庭)时候，但我看了很多表面信念，并且我真正地认为是所有有到是基督徒。 我的信念是我不应该做的一系列的事(饮料，烟，有性等等)。 基督教是我非常断断续续地跟随的一种过分单纯，限制性生活方式。 我采取了那透视与我，当我为军队签字几个月，在我毕业了之前。

看起来后面在我的过去，我对事是非常感恩的学会的I，容易和真正地困难的教训。 I completed my Military Service Obligation (MSO) a few weeks ago, and I am hoping to start college next fall. In the meantime, I am working for peace in every way I can find. Currently, I am employed as a developer for a very small but ambitious nonprofit. Additionally, I am very active in an organization called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), because as a Christian, I feel it is imperative that I reject war in all forms, and I also happen to be an Iraq War veteran. I might be a unique member in that I came to these beliefs not as some political reaction to the war, but as a direct response to the call of Christ to be nonviolent; to love, not destroy, our enemies. I always hesitate to call myself a pacifist, however, because the root of the word implies that such a person is passive. Nonviolence, and similarly Christianity, is quite a vigorous endeavor, far from being docile or merely a reaction to the culture around us. One should take close notice that in the Beatitudes, the folks who most directly reflect God’s character (who are called ‘children of the Most High’) are called to make peace (not keep, or enjoy or just promote it); to deliberately and actively create peace where there is none. I hope that I am known as a peacemaker, as a blessed son of God.

Yours is an interesting story. There are (thankfully) many peacemakers in our world, but you’re the first peacemaker I’ve talked to who came to their nonviolent convictions while enlisted. What led you to the conviction that you cannot love your enemy while trying to kill them?

The first time I considered that I might have the wrong take on the Bible was many months after I had returned from my combat tour in Iraq. I had met a family that really lived out the word of God everyday. They knew the Bible was not just a Basic Instruction Manual Before Leaving Earth (B.I.B.L.E.), it was a romance novel describing the dynamic relationship between the Creator and His creation. When I sought advice about various issues, the father of the family almost had a script it seemed. Every question I brought before him was answered by a simple “It’s about love Logan.” A four letter word contained the solution to every problem I could imagine. It seems a bit too simple minded, but in a world that is as individualized and materialized as ours, you realize that it really is very complicated to apply that ideology. Christ even said that we would be persecuted and cursed because of it!

When I began to accept the truth in what he had taught me, I knew I had to objectively consider whether I could fulfill that great commission while employed in very indiscriminate forms of violence as a forward observer in the US Army. When I returned to him to ask his thoughts on justice and war, the story changed. He expressed his belief that we were serving divine justice in the Middle East through our violence against Muslims. I had had discussions with other Christians within the military and heard similar thoughts, but none of them jived with the repeated exhortations by our King to love our enemy. Regardless of where I went with nonviolence, my mentor reminded me, he would respect and support me, as it was a decision he had never been asked to make, and he could sympathize with the immense pressure I faced in concretely answering no to violence and yes to grace. As much as I could explain the roots of the Christian practice of vicarious suffering (wherein we adopt our neighbors’ sufferings as our own, never forcing that yoke upon their shoulders), it will forever be a bit of a mystery, a sacrament of the Church, that must not be displaced from it’s centrality in Christian discipleship.

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