THE ABILITY TO KILL CHRIST
Mayer, Milton
The Ability to Kill Christ by MILTON MAYER . . Successful guerilla commanders of the past have never had to cope with the stunning mechanical ability to kill which the Americans have brought to...
...The last pretense that war is a game to be followed on maps and charts and scoreboards, with alternate cheers and groans in the grandstand, is gone...
...must know how to pronounce that one word...
...There was one long ago, and it came about, says Plutarch, because "the inhabitants of Asia did not know how to pronounce one word, which is 'No.' " If I must do what is right, and not what somebody else tells me to do, and still less what somebody else is doing, I MILTON MAYER, author and lecturer, will soon return from Europe to his teaching post at the University of Massachusetts...
...But who is the greater enemy—those who deny Christ and his way or those who affirm him and deny his way...
...But the Asians and the rest, including the godless Communists, all have their politics...
...An earlier book, "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45," is being republished this spring by the University of Chicago Press...
...Maybe America, if it bears enough suffering, will prove to be a Christian country after all...
...Do we Americans know what we have done and are doing in Vietnam...
...He knows that the betrayers of Christ Crucified as King of the Jews did not even have the power to invoke damnation upon themselves...
...Christmas is come this season to my own, my native land, where my ministers of state crucify the American reality along with the American image and roll the stone into place and harry those who would roll it away...
...Is Christ this season a jolly man...
...I would not be an American and a Christian this Christmas for all the tea in Taiwan, for I would not be good enough to be both the one and the other...
...Christ cannot pray for these last, but only die for them on the Cross...
...I'll do as you say" is the word of a slave...
...no victories or defeats to celebrate or lugubriate...
...I am responsible for America...
...This is the Christmas gift and there is no other...
...How celebrate it except to cease to do evil and then learn to do good...
...And that is the politics of it...
...This is the birthday of Christ the King...
...They would certainly stop even if it meant that godless Communism were to conquer the world, for whoever trusts in God knows that it is better to be Godly and dead than either godless or red...
...Christmas is come this season to Vietnam, where my ministers of state crucify whole villages by mistake and villagers by intention and stop Communism by burning the poor alive...
...As surely as I love my country I must save its soul if I can...
...in his steeplehouse—is blasphemous...
...Even the Vatican Council has abandoned the Old Testament for the New this Christmas and declared that those Jews who betrayed him and cried out, "His blood be upon us and our children," had no power to invoke damnation upon their innocent children or their innocent fellow-Jews...
...The Russians and the Chinese, like the Americans, have the stunning mechanical ability to kill...
...If they did, they would certainly stop doing it...
...How celebrate it except only to stop killing and renounce my ability to kill...
...I remember an American sergeant who turned a German woman and her two babies out of her house at the end of the war and, when she wept, said, "Too bad, lady...
...How celebrate it this season...
...Whose is the greater damnation than those who "make long prayer for a pretense...
...for they knew not what they did...
...But how celebrate it this season...
...The religion of it / have...
...His biographical sketch in Who's Who contains this comment: "Religion, Jewish...
...Religious Society of Friends...
...I am its ruler...
...Christmas is come and gone, and what Paul said is still true, that the whole creation groans in travail until now...
...I shall not be forgiven if I add my ability to the godless ability to kill...
...And I, in my warm and worldly discomfort, must celebrate Christmas...
...They would certainly stop even if the rest of the world were not begging them to stop...
...We are told further that he who would be a Christian—and co-heir with Christ to the Kingdom—will take up the Cross and bear the suffering with Christ as an earnest of the Kingdom's coming...
...Without faith he cannot obey the law even if he would...
...Now Jesus Christ was born, we are told, to bear suffering...
...Knowing (1) what I am doing and (2) what is good for my country, I, I alone, its dread and responsible sovereign, must say "No" to my ministers of state who, all unknowingly, betray the double trust that I have reposed in them and that they have reposed in God...
...Doing right does not...
...My "No" is a mortal challenge to their perfection of the ultimate weapon—the recoilless man, who does not jump no matter how hard he is jolted by what he has done...
...I cannot be that man because I am an American...
...I have the glad tidings of eternal life and of temporal life...
...Dispatch from Saigon in The New York Times, October 30, 1965...
...I cannot pass the buck to my ministers of state on the ground that they know best...
...The American intention seems, rather, to be the infliction of enough suffering to destroy the Communists, who, as we know, are the godless enemies of Christ...
...When my ministers of state—mere ministers, ministering to my needs—tell me to do as they say and not what I know is right and I ask them why and they say, "Because you may comfort the enemy," I must tell them that I must comfort myself by doing what I know is right, even at the cost of comforting the enemy...
...The American intention is mine, for I rule this country as the holder of its only permanent political office, the office of citizen...
...I must celebrate Christmas whether or not it is celebrated in Washington, Moscow, or Peking...
...I can jollify the Winter Solstice and be a good American...
...no cities, territories, or provinces taken or lost, no armies surrendered or triumphant...
...Is this the season to be jolly...
...For the Lord promised my people, along with punishment for their sins, that for all their sins his hand would be stretched out to them still...
...I must not dodge the draft or let myself be hauled off by the draft board, kicking and squealing like a stuck pig, to be an involuntary hero...
...It can only be that they do not know what they are doing...
...Politics ends at the waterfront...
...I have the religion that was proclaimed this midnight clear by the angels...
...T^here are no battles or battlefields...
...I have the good news that the way to be saved hereafter is to love—and that the way to be saved even here is to redeem my enemy from his enmity by loving him...
...They would certainly stop even if it meant their country's ignominy (and their own...
...But the Christian knows more than that...
...The headline on the dispatch quoted above is, Saigon : Victory to Those Who Bear Suffering...
...My only claim to sovereign American citizenship is that I know what I am doing...
...Nor is the tyranny of South or North Vietnam the first Asian tyranny...
...His most recent book is "What Can a Man Do...
...I shall not be forgiven if I do what I know is wrong...
...Whoever of us does not know will be forgiven...
...Whosesoever country says, "In God We Trust," and inflicts suffering on the innocent and retaliation on the guilty, is godless...
...But this does not seem to be the American intention...
...Christ had to enforce the Law of Moses because the Jews, who sought righteousness by the law, were not up to obeying the law...
...If I would not be a slave, if an American must be a sovereign, I must either say "Yes" and enlist to kill in Vietnam, or say "No" and enlist not to kill in Vietnam...
...No" is the word of a sovereign...
...But Christmas comes again, and yet again...
...Yes" is the word of a sovereign...
...It is my subject...
...This is not the first war in Asia (though it may be the last...
...My "No" to it in Vietnam, if it is not the only way to save it, is today's way and I must choose this Christmas day...
...But whoever knows will not be forgiven...
...I am glad that I am an infidel, under the law and not under Christ...
...Or because my refusal to pass it will comfort the enemy...
...Lord...
...That is the only way to save my country...
...I am an American, and so are most of you...
...But of the three of them only the Americans have the stunning mechanical ability to kill Christ, for the others do not know who he is...
...I am sure that our ministers of state, whose soldiers burn up the house and the woman and her children in it, are saying, in their hearts, "Too bad, lady," for I am sure that they are humane men...
...The Ability to Kill Christ by MILTON MAYER . . Successful guerilla commanders of the past have never had to cope with the stunning mechanical ability to kill which the Americans have brought to Vietnam...
...There is only the ability to kill...
...Christ's enforcement order is plain: Man must live by faith if he means to be lawful...
...I would not be able to be—as the American General Knowles said when he counted the Vietcong dead—"delighted...
...Too bad, gentlemen, but I cannot be that man...
...The Lord, seeing man's plight, sent a Son of the House of David, one Jesus, to enforce the law upon him, and man marveled because this Jesus spoke as one having authority, and not as the lawyers...
...This is America's special Christmas present this special Christmas: The ability to kill...
...There are not two ways of reading Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Whosoever tries to read them a second way —let him cry, "Lord...
Vol. 30 • January 1966 • No. 1
