c. 2003 Religion News Service

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

(UNDATED) Memorial Day, just past, is the ultimate example of a national holiday out of step with the postmodern temper. A day set aside for consecrated remembering of those who have paid the ultimate price for our nation is spent shopping and swimming and grilling. The contrast is jarring in the extreme.

Ours is not a martial nation, at least not in 2003. Certainly our troops continue to fight, to kill and die on the battlefield. But that fighting and killing and dying is done by professional soldiers who represent a relatively small slice of the American population. Our nation is vast and prosperous enough to be able to field a massive global military presence without having to require young men and women to be a part of it. We are running a world empire on volunteer labor.

Historically this is an extraordinary anomaly. World powers have always cultivated a national warrior ethos, and thus have been characterized by the commitment of the vast majority of the nation’s population to war and the spirit of war. But we are not Sparta or Prussia. We do not glorify war or routinely send entire generations off to battle. All that is required of us is to pay our war-funding taxes and keep voting for the politicians who authorize military missions.

If the day should come that the majority of families in America have to sacrifice the life of a son or daughter in order to maintain our global military power, it is doubtful that those lives will be offered without great resistance. Unless our national survival is directly threatened, our military power will be maintained solely by volunteer labor or it will not be maintained.

Which raises these questions: What beliefs are worth dying for? What causes are worth sacrificing a son or daughter _ or oneself _ for? Most are not eager to die for their nation. Is there any belief, any cause, that we would die for?

For several generations these kinds of questions have been nearly incomprehensible in Western culture. Our civilization is deeply jaded and lives in a disenchanted universe. We do not know what to believe about the questions that matter the most and are wary of holy causes of any type. After the collapse of belief in God, in truth, in moral absolutes, in nation, in ideological causes of all kinds, there are no beliefs worth dying for _ just perhaps some new DVDs worth shopping for.

And yet even in this kind of culture we remain attracted to stories of those who have not succumbed to consumerism or cynicism. We watch movies like “The Matrix” and “Star Wars,” “The Patriot” and “Lord of the Rings,” all of which take the viewer back (or ahead, or away) to worlds in which brave warriors fight for causes worth dying for. Meanwhile, back in real life, we continue to honor firefighters who died trying to rescue people on Sept. 11, or perhaps most amazingly, the men and women on Flight 93 who died rather than allow their plane to be flown into the White House or the Capitol by terrorists.

Jews and Christians are heirs to a rich tradition of convictions worth dying for. Much of the New Testament, for example, is a meditation on the sacrificial death of Jesus and the suffering and eventual martyrdom of key figures in the early church. It is critical to remember that the New Testament treats belief in Jesus as a cause worth dying for, but NOT KILLING FOR.

Christians are instructed to leave the holy war to God, an instruction tragically misplaced at some of the worst moments in Christian history. But that the faith is worth dying for, this belief is indeed inscribed on nearly every page of the New Testament.

It has been wisely said that he who has no beliefs worth dying for has no beliefs worth living for. There are certain things worse than death and one of them is a life without convictions. The human heart hungers for convictions worth living and dying for and most of us never cease to look for them. Such beliefs are a heady and dangerous brew, for they have been the source of much mayhem on this planet.

The answer, however, is not a soft or cynical nihilism, which is toxic in its own way. The answer is found instead in a rightly ordered religious faith, clear in its convictions, constrained in its treatment of those who differ _ a faith worth living for, and dying for.

DEA END GUSHEE