A few weeks ago I happened to see a photo posted by a friend on facebook. The photo was like so many that we see here in the south: smiling family posing together at favorite SEC team's game for whatever sport happens to be in season at the moment. Growing up I wouldn't have had any idea what to make of that and it would be as foreign to me as knowing what the capital of Sri Lanka was (incidentally, I happen to know what the capital of Sri Lanka is now; Tell's friend J Man grew up there and put me in my place one day when I was boasting of my uncanny ability to foreverandalways remember our US state capitals. He appeared impressed and must have assumed I also had a broader knowledge of world capitals as well and began quizzing me. He was wrong. I was mortified and promptly committed myself to undertake a wider knowledge of the world around me. I began this task by initiating a regular listening of the BBC World Service and studying maps. I threw in listening to classical music and reading The New York Times for good measure.). But I've become accustomed in my nearly sixteen years in the southeast to the love and devotion offered to the college sports gods. I still don't understand the intense affection for a sports team, but it doesn't shock me much anymore. Until I saw this particular photo.
In the photo, one of the smiling beauties was wearing a shirt that declared a love sentiment: "You Had Me at War." My guess is this vintage looking tee was a throwback to a particularly sappy movie that my 15 year old self probably gushed over when those words "you had me at hello," were spoken. Love at the first. Love that endures. In the case of the t-shirt, love at the mention of war. Wait- what? Ah yes, we're supposed to understand quickly the irony of the shirt's declaration of love at the mention of war, specifically the "battle" cry of this college sports team: War Eagle! (for the life of me I do not understand this to this day) heard around town at any moment, most often in the fall. So the wearer of the shirt is declaring her love for whomever might cry "war..."
But when I read the shirt, my body had a visceral reaction, the same reaction it has when I see caskets draped in flags or when I hear Taps being played. I start to sweat a little, my heart beats faster, and I feel a little bit sick to my stomach. You had me at war? No, no, no - war means they die. Not lose a game. Die. This isn't romantic. This isn't ironic. To me and, apparently my midbrain in fight, flight, or freeze reaction, this means someone thinks death is romantic at best, ironic, or at the worst, funny.
Why would a seemingly innocent t-shirt cause a reaction like this to well up so powerfully inside of me? It's possible the broken that I've been given in the way of losing my beloved Tell to war hasn't been completely mended; this side of heaven that may not happen. But still, I know God is working a hope in me through this suffering that does not put to shame (Rom 5). So why has this been an undergirding of pain for me over the last few weeks? Could it be that the t-shirt was a reminder to me that we maybe forget what war really means? War by definition denotes some kind of conflict, aggression, and force. A certain playground of sorts for the enemy of God; where conflict is bred and nurtured to hostility under the cover of darkness, the evil one comes quickly to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10).
How the darkness plunges us into war. War with ourselves. War with our families. War within our own nation and between nations. I see the words that on that t-shirt and instantaneously visions of humans fighting every war they could ever imagine come to my mind: a young mother fighting a war with the cancer ravaging her body; refugees running from a war they didn't ask for with their entire lives stuffed into a trash bag; children unprepared to fight a war with their minds from trauma their brains can't find space to process; myself fighting a war to feel normal again but without knowledge of what ever was normal before. This is silent, unseen war. The body count is unknown.
There is the highly visible current war that is in fact an incredibly protracted conflict of various ideologies that happens to be centered in and around the middle east. But this is just a blip on a scale of time so immense that the reality of armed conflict becomes in fact, unreal. The body count is immeasurable. This is a war that is public, visible to the masses and can feel empty of meaning. Numb to the cost, what meaning does war have in our lives? Does the one who can wear a t-shirt romanticizing the war that is waged by college sports teams feel this meaning? My cynical, self-absorbed spirit says no, she must have no idea the depth of pain that war etches on the soul. But there is instant conviction, by the grace of the Holy Spirit in my heart - yes, she does, if she knows the Christ who conquered the sin that lies beneath every act of war that ever was and ever will be.
Jesus carried our sins to the cross and was pierced for our rebellion; this rebellion against God that infects us all to wage war with one another and with ourselves. Our only peace and healing was won through his being crushed on our behalf (Isaiah 53). War is promised to us (Matthew 24) as a part of the labor pains, the trials to shake us awake - do we see this Christ and what he has accomplished on our behalf? Do we look deep within and shudder at the depravity, the sin that clings so closely? Do we look deeply around us and see the brokenness that is given as a means to show up with the good news of the gospel? Do we look at the war that wages in the minds or hearts of others around us and promise to not look away? God has not turned His face from our brokenness; He does not shut His eyes to our pain, instead He promises to send an army to rescue us (Is. 43), and we can trust that with Him, the war is won, our hope is secure, our future is bright.