On the first day of first grade, I couldn’t read, write, or count past my fingers, but I was already a crackerjack at playing “Cowboys and Indians.” Recess was my best subject from the very beginning.
It was a simple game. The kids in power (older, bigger, faster on the draw, or simple proprietors of the home turf) claimed the favorite role of the Cowboys (the designated good guys) and the rest of the neighborhood kids were conscripted to serve as Indian fodder.
I’m a little hazy on the 1960 rules, but they resembled something like this: the slow-footed but sometimes cagey Indian bucks ran around the yard whooping and darting like wild Comanche until the heavily-armed Cowboy Commandos shot them down in cold blood. The crafty but over matched Indian terrorists were obligated to drop in their tracks and lay still until the good Cowguys wiped out the entire tribe.
Killing and dying is hard play, so we would pause for some refreshing Kool-Aid (fifty years later we’re all diabetics!) and do it all over again. Though the outcome was never in doubt, we never grew bored with mass genocide. Wiping out the Redskins – those ruthless savages! – stayed fresh and exhilarating.
My generation learned its war games from the great heroes of the silver screen. Television taught us to hate and fear those who interfered with Manifest Destiny. Living as the chosen people, upholding freedom and the American Way, is a lot of hard work.
When I was nine, my dad took a job harvesting wheat for an Indian family on the Nez Perce Reservation. I met my first real Native American upfront and personal. My well-groomed stereotype crumbled in a single afternoon of alternative playtime. I discovered my new Indian friend was just like me, only nicer and faster on the draw.
At ten I couldn’t hate the Indians anymore so I transferred my malevolence toward the Russians – those commie-pinko stinking war-mongers.
The Cuban Missile Crisis turned my little world upside down. I knew the Soviets weren’t playing with cap guns. My fourth grade memories remain haunted by bomb shelter drills and Russian invasion evasion tactics.
“Why would anyone invade Idaho?” I asked Mrs. Hilliard one day. Even though she was the teacher, I stumped her. “Maybe they just hate us,” she said.
I hated the Russians all the way through Reagan. I felt kind of sad when The Wall came tumbling down. It was nice to have an Evil Empire around to loathe and bear malice toward.
Working at a seminary in the late 1980’s, God messed with me again. He sent to my doorstep an ex-KGB agent, a biologist, no less, who had spent the last ten years creating deadly chemical cocktails for the sole purpose of mass American genocide.
Now converted to Jesus, he possessed a new soul purpose. He wanted to learn the Bible and return to Volgagrad and bomb his countrymen with truth and grace. He viewed the Gospel as the nuclear option. He figured the love of God could override any hostility.
“I never hated Americans,” he told me, “it was just my job.”
I grew to love and respect Dr. Lashenov, a man of uncommon humility and kindness. Take away the accent, and he was a regular guy.
How things change. Today we are sending millions of Bibles into Russia where they are distributed to school-children at former propaganda camps so they can develop a Christian ethic. In occupied America, where the secularists have wrestled control from both the church and state, our children can’t read the Bible, pray, or believe in Intelligent Design. Who’ s the real enemy, anyway?
Sadly, you and I have been culturized to fear and conquer people different from our home tribe. Observing the killing fields around the world indicates it is not a local phenomenon. It’s an international problem creating an endless supply of victors and victims.
In our fallen state, we naturally position ourselves for antagonism with those different from our own home folks. We can divide and fight over most any difference – race, class, age, gender, economics, politics, religion, education, style, geography, team allegiance, or worship preferences.
Sometimes it appears we go out of our way to highlight differences and find justification to squabble. We’re unsettled without conflict.
Left to our natural impulses, we’ll never grow out of our childhood games. We will spend our entire lives trying to herd Native Americans onto reservations and devise new and lethal ways to nuke the dreaded Russians. As we read and write, right now a new generation of strategists are working feverishly to combat the new Red Menace. How are we going to battle the Asian Superpowers of tomorrow?
Obviously, we are a warring people, despite any modern claims to the contrary. We prefer making war to making love. We would rather wage war than wage peace.
Left to ourselves, we would fight to extinction. We won’t be satisfied until no one is standing.
So what can we do to negate our self-destructive tendencies? How can we stop the hate? How can we control and discipline our urge to dominate and conquer? How can we suppress our unquenchable lust for more power?
There is only way. We need supernatural assistance. The Bible offers the only formula for survival. Jesus is the only answer.
The Book of James, in its customary straightforward fashion, says it this way: “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and can not obtain; so you fight and quarrel…” (James 4:1-10).
Here’s the straight scoop. We do it Jesus’ way or we fight to the death. The Good News is that while the rest of the world contemplates the ultimatum, you can be delivered right now.
The bumper sticker is right: “No God; No Peace. Know God; Know Peace.”