It is no surprise that the number one film in America is “The 300.” The story is classic, the marketing campaign is brilliant (if annoying), the comic on which it is based is first-rate (bringing built in fan-boys), and a nation at war finally hears a full throated defense of fighting.
Hollywood has refused to make pro-war films and there was a pent up market for a film with less angst and more courage.
Regretfully, the story is useless as a defense of our present War (if anyone should try to use it as such) and paints a dangerous image of combat.
The picture of warfare is pagan and not Christian. However wonderfully told, the message is seductive in its simplistic glorification of violence and not appropriate to our time. It is as simple minded in its wallowing in gore as pacifism is in its pretending that heavenly behavior is possible now . . . and falls short of doing justice to the cause in which America is engaged.
The War of the 300 is a war of aristocracy against despotism. It is a battle hymn for the elite warrior and not for the citizen-soldier of a republic.
War is not a great good thing. Our foes are not cartoons, but men and the death and destruction of War is not reality, but a sad twisting of the natural order created by a good God.
While a Christian soldier may do God’s work in a fallen world, his job is not an eternal one. Like Saint Michael and all the hosts of Heaven, he longs for the day when swords will be beaten into plowshares.
If he can, he would go home alive and not needlessly sacrifice himself in the misbegotten notion that War itself is glorious. The film runs the risk of forgetting that the warrior serves civilization and is not civilization!
War is only glorious as a means to an end where War is no more.
This does not make us weak or willing to shirk virtue for cowardice, but does make us cautious and sorrowful warriors.
Of course, in it own way the glorification of peace at any price in this fallen world is as simple minded as the Spartans love of battle.
There are worse things than death for a Christian. One is to stand idly by while the innocent in our charge are threatened and made to live in a manner unworthy of creatures created in the image of God.
Almost all Christians at all times have scorned the easy virtue of pacifism which too often allows the dead letter of a principle to over ride real world compassion. Like the ignoble Pharisees of old, the pacifist puts his own personal purity over the hard work of doing justice in a fallen world.
But war is not a good thing for any Christian, we long for peace. Our paradise is no haven for warriors to feast and recount their bloody deeds. The Prince of Peace, our Savior, himself takes up His heavenly sword, but only after giving His own blood to try to make peace with His foes.
We hate war, but we are willing to fight if we must in a just cause. The pagan Spartans loved War and were happy to fight. The parasitic pacifist hates War and is too short sighted to wage justice.
I honor our brave men and women who are fighting for my freedom over seas. I pray for them by name every night . . . thinking of Nate when I see Lauren, worrying with Bethany for her brother, and hoping to see my hero Colin again soon.
Much as I honor those doing the great work of liberation, I cannot hate those who oppose them. Their foes are not Tolkien’s orcs or the cartoon Persians of the 300, but real men and women created in God’s image. We cannot hate them and we long for the day when we can embrace them as friends and brothers.
Fortunately, Americans have a better cultural symbol for this War of Liberation than the old pagan myth of the 300.
Like that great American Julia Ward Howe, I see His truth in the camps of the Coalition armies, but like Mr. Lincoln know that His children are on both sides of the great conflict.
I am not allowed to hate the wicked men they fight. I must love their enemies and pray that as they bring justice by the sword to the Middle East that the young men of Baghdad and of Afghanistan will give up their folly and turn to the right.
Frank Capra, the greatest American film maker of this time, told the World War II nation a different story. In his mythology, the United States was not eager for War, but not too proud to fight. His soldiers hated leaving home, were cynical at times of lofty rhetoric (like this essay!), but knew in their bones that they had a job to do. They were doing justice when they would rather be at home receiving and giving mercy.
The hard work of Christian combat was best expressed by the poet Julia Howe when she wrote about another conflict for liberty led by another unpopular President widely derided by the press as a simpleton. Howe understood that mercy was always available, but that men like the slave holders of the South who would not seek it faced the horrible wrath of justice.
Against the 300 who would die to preserve the slave state of Sparta (so much like that of the American Confederacy), the Christian republican places the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Never vote for a party that cannot sing this song and mean it.
The men of the Union Army, and the men like them in the present Coalition, are the heroes of a sad, just, and terrible war:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free;
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.