1. notleia says:

    Welp, you mentioned the concept of toxic masculinity, so I won’t feel obligated to hash it out, unless someone wants to go at the particular angle of why violence would be a masculine “virtue,” if we deconstructed what was meant by “virtue.”

    But as counterpoint to Dawkins, a lot of the more current anthropological/sociological interest is in cooperation (maybe with some points of selfishness as compare-contrast). Because humans are pretty weak and horribly slow. All the apes could tear our faces off, and most four-footed animals can absolutely outrun us (tho we apparently have bonkers crazy stamina and can run down our prey to exhaustion).

    As a species we dumped the majority of our stat points into cooperation. It could be that we developed our bigger brains and greater intelligence in order to better manage our relationships within our tribes, and thus leverage more cooperative benefits. Even tool-making, if you want to get more complicated than maybe a hammer-stone, requires a lot of teaching — which is a cooperative activity.

    That’s a theory why humans are one of the few species who go through menopause — that helping to raise grandchildren increases the overall survival odds rather than birthing more children to compete for resources with your grandchildren. It’s actually pretty unusual for a single nuclear family to raise its children alone: the whole “takes a village” trope was the norm for centuries and millennia. And communal child-raising seems to correlate with better survival odds. Meerkats apparently synchronize their births and all the mothers nurse whichever pups need nursing. Communal kitten-raising is pretty normal for colonies of related female cats.

    But getting back to the whole war thing — and obviously I’m simplifying everything for convenience’s sake — it could be argued that no one in America has fought an actual war for country and family since maybe 1812, with an exception for the Pacific Theater in WWII. And I’m kinda on the fence in general about WWI and the rest of WWII — we were doing cooperative stuff with our allies, but it was hardly disinterested. This is where I wax on about the difference between individual versus systemic stuff. All the Indian wars were straight-up colonialism and exploitation, seeing as how we broke pretty much every treaty we made. Even with incompatible ideas and cultures about warfare between the whites and the natives, who knows how much war and death could have been minimized if white people had just stayed in their lanes.

    Tho that was one of the reasons the colonists fought for independence from Britain, because Britain was intending to honor their treaties (at the moment, at least) with the natives and not allow white expansion into/past the Appalachians, which pissed off the colonists who wanted more land and resources to exploit. (Granted, I’m using a very broad definition of “exploitation” that pretty much includes all industrialization, because give me a reason why it’s not.)

    Travis, I would argue most of your tours were more about maintaining America’s system of exploiting the oilfields of the Middle East (however indirect they are, through the Saudis and whatnot) and whatever weird, backhanded colonialism we have been/are still doing in Afghanistan. If it makes you feel better, America’s not the only one at fault (coughRussiacough, but they are doing much the same thing for much the same reasons). (grumblegrumble Afghanistan was doing just fine in the sixties grumble)

    Likewise, Gordon, no matter how good/okay he was as a person (there seems to be enough evidence to conclude he was at least asexual, which would have been iffy enough in Victorian culture, but I don’t see there being sufficient reason to exclude homosexuality yet), was also working for the systemic British exploitation of China and the Middle East-North Africa, though maybe not Crimea, but I would actually have to find out what the heck the Crimean war was about since the top paragraph of the Wiki page doesn’t help.

    TL;DR: I can find the idea of violence in defense of people okay, sure, but I don’t actually think most wars past 1700 or so — besides civil wars and some exceptions like some sections of WWI or WWII — were actually about defending any people or families or ways of life, but about empiric power-grabs and economic bullhonk. And there was plenty of empiric bullhonk before 1700, too.

    • Travis Perry says:

      As far as what the very latest views of human nature are via science, I am not completely current on this debate. I know Dawkins’s ideas remain popular. I know that the debate about the nature of warfare and when it began runs deep. I think the idea that humans were basically cooperative and developed warfare after the invention of agriculture is a feminist darling that in fact isn’t held by most anthropologists. The evidence for humans killing humans is very ancient. However, I’m a (low-level) historian and not an anthropologist–maybe the “humans are cooperative” mode of thought is currently ascendant. I’m not sure.

      I also know a single human with a spear can kill one of the most fearsome predators around–the Massai of East Africa have a coming-to-manhood ritual in which a teenage male must kill a male lion by himself with a spear. I met a Massai tribesman only once, one of the times I was in Tanzania. He as a nice guy–also a born-again Christian–who had no kidding killed a lion with a spear. So, with tools, a human trained in warfare is a much more fearsome creature than you estimate…not that this is a very important point.

      My own view of warfare–and I feel confident it’s the correct one–is that God created humans to be cooperative, but because of sin we frequently fail to be, or are cooperative only with our own perceived in-group and are willing to kill everyone in out-groups (though sometimes we kill people in in-groups as well). Sin has been with us from the beginning of the human race, so I would expect war to be very ancient. To say war is a product of sin is of course not saying going to war is always a sin–motives matter and once war exists, at least some warriors will fight to mute the horrifying effects of the way others use warfare. Like how Gordon faced off against quasi-Christian cultists murdering people in the Taiping Rebellion and against the “Mahdi” in Sudan.

      As far as the British Empire’s reasons to send Gordon, of course they had reasons that included territorial gain. Though in that period the British public was very much against slavery and the UK military had already shut down the European slave trade. Gordon was fighting the Islamic slave trade, which was centuries older than the European, fighting it with a certain measure of morally-righteous-British-public support, but finding that his superiors in the military and government actually didn’t care about doing the right thing so much. They cared about what was expedient and what built the empire. Their motives though did not change Gordon’s motives. He fought for what he believed in a way that he believed was just. That’s why I see him as a model of a righteous warrior. (Oh and in China the British found it expedient for him to be there to be sure–but the native Chinese loved him more than the British military ever did. A sign Gordon had hit a high level of morality in his actions.)

      Ironically, you express doubt about Gordon serving imperial purposes in the Crimean War and that was rather clearly about balance of power between the French, British, and Ottomans on one side and the Russians on the other. Yeah, the Russians were seizing territory the Ottomans once had, but the British and French had no rights to it. They simply didn’t want to have to fight the Russians in the Mediterranean later. Very much a matter of self-interest and protecting their spheres of influence. Gordon’s later battles in China and Africa were in fact much more altruistic and much less along the main lines of what the British government really cared about. So I very much disagree with your historical assessment here.

      As for my wars, the Gulf War rather parallels the Crimean War–Iraq was a local power that not only defeated Kuwait in battle, but could have defeated Saudi Arabia and all the oil-producing states in the Gulf. The United States saw this as an economic threat–and a threat to our sphere of influence. So in rather blatant self-interest, we invaded. My personal motives were straightforward–I was a medic in a hospital unit; my job was to save lives, all lives. I did in fact help provide medical treatment for civilians in the United Arab Emirates as well as US military members stationed there…

      In Iraq, I advised the Iraqi Military on training. It’s been established historically that the USA did not know Iraq didn’t have WMD (I can explain in detail why) but most of the American public are unaware of the facts. For me personally, I felt the fact Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own populace justified the war, for the sake of sparing Iraqi civilians. Though in fact the conduct of the war in Iraqi was bungled horribly and put far more Iraqi civilians at risk than Saddam did–however, that was not an inevitable consequence of that war–it was a product of how the war was mismanaged, with many mistakes made. I personally helped the Iraqi military take charge of their training, but we very much knew Iraq needed at least 5 years and more like 20 years before its military would be running well again (in 2008). I felt the Obama Administration was being irresponsible to withdraw from Iraq in 2011–and the subsequent rise of ISIS sadly justified my opinion.

      Afghanistan as you mention became a mess with the Soviet invasion and the USA acted in self-interest in getting the Soviets out of there–regional-power play Crimean War type stuff. However, once the weapons we sold Afghans started being used in a civil war in the post-Soviet era, I would have said the USA had some moral responsibility to try to at least broker peace in Afghanistan. But we ignored those foreigners as being beneath us–until people based there attacked us. Then we decided to in effect re-do all of Afghanistan. Again, I think there was a humanitarian reason to do so–the Taliban were horrible in Afghanistan, in particular to women. The USA tried to do good work there. I personally managed funds to build roads, clinics, schools, etc in Western Afghanistan (Farah and Ghor provinces). I had direct control over about 20 million dollars in humanitarian funds at one point. And also I was part of a planning team on how to hand over Region Command West to Afghan control. I in fact by the grace of God enjoy a very clean conscience about what I did in Afghanistan and why I did it. Except for the part where Afghans who worked with us are getting killed because the USA is engaging in a complete and unneeded full withdrawal from Afghanistan right now, de facto handing the country over to the Taliban…yeah that part bothers me…

      To change topics a bit, your views on just war strike me as odd. Maybe because you link it too much to self-defense and not enough to humanitarian relief. The Nazis made WWII one of the most clearly justified wars of all time by executing civilians en masse. The only regrets the USA should feel in retrospect about our involvement in WWII was we did not join the fight sooner. Otherwise, our involvement with the effect of stopping the death camps was completely morally justified.

      • notleia says:

        Well, if the Maasai need tools like spears to kill lions and tools are the result of generations of cooperation and innovation: there is not actually much of a disagreement left in there. 🙂

        But for all Gordon’s attempts at fairness, it didn’t amount to much in the end. Britain subjugated China, colonized Hong Kong, and funneled the majority of the money and resources back to British hands. Maybe he made it less horrible than it could have been? Yay? And apparently he was an imperialistic cat’s paw in Crimea, too.

        I’m much more nihilist about the Gulf War because whatever happy-feely reasons were had about coming to the defense of our ally Kuwait, the reason America is allies with Kuwait is to secure our access to that sweet, sweet dinosaur grease. How many tin-pot authoritarians in Latin America did the US prop up because they were willing to put US interests over everything else, even their own people’s interests? Apparently we’re propping up child-felchers in Afghanistan because the child-felchers are anti-Taliban allies: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

        Yanno, you might be the weird one for associating war (and the war industry) with humanitarian aid.

        Side note: I think that I didn’t make the ambiguity of my thoughts on WWII clear. It’s the closest thing the world has had to a just war in recent memory, but on the flip side, what did Germany do that any of the other imperialist country hadn’t done at some point or another? The Germans were just more efficient about it (insert German engineering joke here). Heck, the Nzis admired the Jim Crow laws America had in place. It’s just that the Nzis attacked what was perceived as in-group members like Austria, France, England, et al.

        That reminds me, I need to get you to watch The Saga of Tanya the Evil as well as Legend of Galactic heroes. If I ever have the money and a sufficient enough reason to go to that armpit called Texas, I need to track you down so I can make sure a watching party happens. I’ll bring my husband so you can commiserate over the weird crap I shove in front of your faces.

        • Travis Perry says:

          Spear-making requires minimal cooperation among a small group of individuals. It is not an indicator that humans are broadly cooperative by nature–history shows sometimes we are, but warfare has been around since forever. Otzi the Iceman was found with an arrow wound, obviously deliberately given by another human. (Though interestingly bows and arrows require a lot more cooperation than spears–but look how we humans have applied cooperation…)

          Of course the Gulf War was about Dino juice–but not about Iraqi petroleum, because we never, ever controlled that. It was about Kuwaiti oil–but as a side effect of self-interest, we did keep a number of Kuwaitis free from Iraqi oppression and prevented the Saudis and others from going down. In other words, ask a Kuwaiti what they think of the Gulf War…yes, this is a case in which I know exactly what I’m talking about, because I have met Kuwaitis.

          Also, associating war with humanitarian relief is likewise based on knowledge. The reason to go to war in Rwanda, though we never did, was to prevent Hutus from killing Tsusis. The reason to go to war in Kosovo and Bosnia was to keep Serbs from killing Muslim civilians. We rather slowly went to war there but eventually stopped the ethnic cleansing. There were multiple reasons to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan–and the good reasons were to help the oppressed minorities in those countries, including women, which we in fact at least halfway did. Girls attended schools built with funds I managed. And I hired local Afghan contractors to build those schools–contractors the Taliban will happily kill while they convert the schools to sheep pens. That’s a fact.

          And the reason to oppose Nazi Germany, though of course there were self-interested reasons, was the death camps and slaughter of civilians. AND it is straight BS to imagine every great power essentially does what the Nazis did. Er, no–yeah major powers do bad things, but get a grip on reality, chica. The world was rightly horrified by the Nazis and Jim Crow is not the equivalent to running 11 million people through concentration camps and either working them to death or gassing them. Go ask a Holocaust survivor.

          • notleia says:

            Bruh, I’m not actually denying the violent tendencies of humans. But because it seems to operate mostly on in-group/out-group principle, wouldn’t a solution be to expand the definition of the in-group?

            Plus you’d need to add the numbers of Native Americans killed to Jim Crow, but IDK if failure of efficiency actually makes it less morally culpable than the Nazis, yanno?

            I’m also questioning the American military as our best use and vehicle of humanitarian aid. And why does it have to be America? Surely you know more people than I do who would screech bloody murder at the idea of the UN coming in force to observe elections in Georgia, where they just passed some BS voter suppression laws? Is it only okay when America does it to “lesser” countries?

            We could have just allowed the people in Afghanistan who wanted to immigrate to the US (running into another in-group/out-group problem with our homegrown racists) — not a perfect solution, but arguably a better one that doesn’t involve nearly so many civilian casualties. Heck, it’s why the Twin Cities has a large Hmong population.

            I think that’s why I like the Japanese take on war (albeit through the medium of cartoons). They’ve been on both sides of the coin for warfare and occupation.

  2. Good post, and I have a lot of thoughts on the different aspects presented, but for now I’m going to hone in on a particular part. You said the idea of certain acts meriting punishment is falling out of favor in our modern society, and to a great extent I disagree. Maybe in some instances it’s falling out of favor, but most people definitely still think certain acts deserve punishment. They’re just shifting their view of what to punish and to what extent. Many people(or at least the loud ones) pushing for social change do see themselves as fighting for others or the greater good.

    A lot of loud modern activists partially fit your description of a Self Styled Righteous Warrior. Many of those people do feel like they’re in the right, fighting a just war and all that. But since they’re human, they either misinterpret what’s actually right or wrong, or else have a skewed idea of how to react to wrongdoing when it occurs. And in many cases, there seems to be a trend toward demanding HARSHER reactions to those they disagree with, rather than the opposite.

    • Travis Perry says:

      You make a very good point here. What I was referring to though was punishment by law–that is, sending someone to jail, fines, capital punishment. More and more people are against formal punishment by law.

      But at the same time, you are quite right, there are many people who believe in punishing people by public humiliation, shaming, and cutting off social contact. Though actually there are some people who also believe it is legit to physically attack someone under certain circumstances or destroy physical property.

      So I suppose I have judged wrongly in saying people are against punishment–they are not. They are simply against punishment via the legal system and instead favor what we could consider private justice. I suppose THAT is a product of people believing their own sense of right and wrong is more just than “the system,” which can be a very dangerous way for people to think.

      Your criticism about what I had to say was completely valid. Good point.

      • notleia says:

        But you also have a point that there are people who do things like advocate for prison abolition. (And YOU have a point, and YOU have a point)

        It’s not that they want to do nothing, it’s just that they think that overt punishment like prison does nothing to actually solve any underlying problems. (A lot of this depends on our definition of “punishment,” but prison is a convenient point of contention.) And even some people in favor of most forms of prison abolition still think it’s necessary to sequester dangerous people who would harm others. But they don’t advocate for prison for things like property crimes. (Spoilers, I think they also have a point.)

        Obligatory ootube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDcwIZzaf-k&ab_channel=PhilosophyTube

        • Travis Perry says:

          I could agree with a sensible program to get rid of a lot of prison sentences. However, certain acts merit the death penalty (intentional murder, sex slavery, and a few other crimes) and if we choose not to execute people who commit these particular acts for humanitarian reasons, we should be willing to lock up these people for life. Because there are some things people do that threaten society so much a person who does them in essence forfeits his life.

          • notleia says:

            That’s something worth debating, I think, whether forfeiting your freedom is equivalent to forfeiting your life. More to follow after I hash it over

            • notleia says:

              Okay, if we’re gonna do something as gauche as comparing suffering, we should at least be scientific enough about it to ask some good questions.

              Is a “clean” death better than suffering? Is suffering better than death if there is a possibility of change? What if there was no improvement?

              To loop back to previous comments, do you consider the Holocaust worse than any other genocidal crap people and countries have pulled? Why is that?

              As long as we’re being gauche, I think the Holocaust absolutely can be compared to Jim Crow/slavery or the treatment of Native Americans. The Holocaust was what, ~ten years of concentrated torture, cruelty, and terrorism? If we only count American responsibility for enslavement/Jim Crow or the American Indians as being since 1776, that’s still at least 200 years of torture, cruelty, and terrorism spread over more people and more generations.

              Is it better to die cleanly/honorably (whatever “honorably” means) or to live to possibly see an improvement in future times?

              There’s an evergreen topic for ya, because it can be applied to quite a range of things, from legal reform to voluntary euthanasia to veganism to infant abandonment.

              • Travis Perry says:

                Why is the Holocaust worse? The truth here is in modern times the word “genocide” gets overused. African slavery in the Americas was a horrible thing–but it was not a genocide. It was never anyone’s policy to kill all African slaves. Obviously, right? Because how are people going to work for you if you kill them all? Yeah, lots of people died, lots of abuse, yes, true, but it was not any kind of deliberate genocide.

                Likewise with American Indians. While there were incidences in which white people killed defenseless people (women and children) and where individual attempts were made to wipe out a particular tribe, it was never English colonial policy nor United States policy to kill all the Native Americans. Instead, English and American law saw tribes as sovereign nations with a legal right to exist and yes sought to limit the land the tribes occupied but never denied the tribes have a right to have land and never tried to kill them all as official US policy. Even the efforts to separate Indians from their culture were not entirely systematic. So, “genocide” is an exaggeration when applied to Indians. “Partial attempted genocide” is more true–though in fact diseases that no human being could control killed more Indians than any white person ever did. Even with a handful of cases in which white people deliberately exposed Indians to smallpox were not in the same category as genocide–because smallpox was already there. The disease had already spread, in advance of direct white settlement.

                This is in contrast to the Germans deciding to kill every Gypsy in Europe and every Jewish person. And then build gas chambers and set off to killing them, all of them they could find. Then putting Eastern Europeans to work in munitions plants but neglecting to feed them and crowding them into unsanitary conditions, so like 2 million ordinary Poles died–not in death camps, in labor camps.

                The worst bloodbath in US history was the Civil War and the worst camps in USA history held POWs from the North and South, especially Andersonville in the South. However, we would not call the bloodbath of the Civil War “genocide,” would we? Why not? Because it was never Union policy to kill all Southerners and it was never Southern policy to kill all “Yankees.”

                This like the difference between first degree murder and manslaughter. Intent matters–as does killing millions of people verses setting up a legal situation in which eventually led to Indian casinos dotting the land.

                Progressives often see history through the light of “I hate USA!” goggles but what I just said is clearly true and not hard at all to substantiate.

              • notleia says:

                Okay, sure, but I still disagree on some points.

                For example: “It was never anyone’s policy to kill all African slaves. Obviously, right? Because how are people going to work for you if you kill them all? Yeah, lots of people died, lots of abuse, yes, true, but it was not any kind of deliberate genocide.”

                Then vis-a-vis with this: “Then putting Eastern Europeans to work in munitions plants but neglecting to feed them and crowding them into unsanitary conditions, so like 2 million ordinary Poles died–not in death camps, in labor camps.”

                The second pretty much what happened with a lot of plantations, yanno, but you’re using it as if it’s worse than plantations. But I will give you props for showing an understanding of systemic vs individual discrimination.

                And I guess we disagree about the concept of cultural genocide. It seems like feeding into racist rhetoric to keep putting so much emphasis on genes, even if in the opposite direction. Because you absolutely can make culture with other people’s kids.

                Also I think we need to recognize that capitalism absolutely is short-sighted enough to destroy the source of its own wealth if not kept in check.

      • @Travis:

        Yeah, you’re right, a lot of people primarily focus on punishments based in various forms of social pressure. One caveat, though, is that the legal system tends to follow social attitudes in a lot of cases. If people feel that something is so desperately wrong that they’re willing to do nearly anything to enforce that moral standard, (even justifying/brushing off heavy attacks that damage the career, mental health, and sometimes physical safety of whoever disagrees with them), it doesn’t take much more for people to consider enforcing their moral standards through the legal system. At that point, those people are more likely to just see it as common sense — if something is extremely horrible, why WOULDN’T the law be expected to intervene?

        Some places are more apt to use legal enforcement than others, though. I’ve heard that the UK has less free speech protections in some cases. I Still Find That Offensive by Claire Fox talks about that a little bit, and even cites a few cases where people faced legal punishment for speech. I haven’t read past the preview on Amazon or looked into the particular cases she’s talking about, so I can’t vouch for them. But the types of situations are at least worth thinking about. Especially as we consider that this next generation of people (in many cases raised with little capacity to cope with those that disagree with them) are eventually going to be the ones making/enforcing laws:

        https://www.amazon.com/Still-Find-That-Offensive-Provocations/dp/1785904167/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=claire+fox&qid=1625681953&sr=8-2

  3. That is an inspiring post, Travis.

    We need to be able to see true heroes, to realize there have been some, despite their flaws, despite accusations against their persons and deconstruction of the very idea of a hero that, it seems to me, is weirdly common today, outside of fiction at least.

    Why do we love to destroy “good” people, heroes and heroines alike? (I see feminist attacks against masculinity, and it bothers me. I especially dislike the treatment of Fathers, which I see a lot in movies where they are represented as either tyrants or spineless hen-pecked puppies. Not the pillars of strength they can be, though flawed. In my opinion, men and fathers are indispensable to the stability of the home, and there is a reason they are under attack. I have been blessed with a father who taught me so much about goodness and kindness and right even though at times he was tyrannical.) And flaws do not always destroy the good someone does in their life, by God’s grace.

    It is interesting to me that often what feminists attack in the real world is essential to good fiction (who could be honestly romanced by a spineless man? Or a tyrant? It is usually the strong, kind, gentle man with a spine who is willing to give it all for right who is attractive to most people. The same for men (I think) they admire women who express these characteristics in their own way), and it also seems to be that kind of masculinity that draws a woman to a man in romantic relationships – which is not only his physical strength, but is a part of it.

    People who try to do right, who pursue it in themselves and others, who seek goodness and believe it is found in God’s laws (not our private interpretation of them, as you clarified), who believe goodness is possible, even expected – we need people like this more than ever. To inspire us to love others with that self-sacrificial love you mentioned.

    What you talk about shows us we are not simply brutes, driven by our desires to destroy, nor angelic beings walking without wrong – we are in the middle, and as a human, may choose the road to one or the other. And only by God’s grace can we escape becoming a brute, or rather a worm, as the Bible puts it.

    And the warfare you speak of extends beyond just the physical aspects of warfare into the warfare of the heart. I think you could say physical warfare is usually an extension of spiritual warfare, since that is where our motives come in.

    I appreciated your post on your own war experiences also. It gave me a much bigger view of some of the things that went on between countries, and how the involvement of any single one of us, if we are in the fight, is not necessarily dictated right or wrong by the beliefs, reasons, and motives of those running the war, or our superiors.

    Thank God we are responsible for our actions and not those of others, beyond what we should try to change, that is.

    And your comment about people seeking to be a law unto themselves is correct and frightening for the future of our land. But then I remember God is here. He is using what satan means for evil for good. And that is a truth to put heart in us for the fight, whatever may come.

    Thank you for the encouraging topic, keep the good stuff coming!

    • Travis Perry says:

      Thanks so much for your comment. I’m glad you found this article inspirational.

      I find Gordon inspirational. No, he wasn’t a perfect human being (not that there is any such thing short of Jesus Christ), but he believed in fighting for people in distress and did so with no sense of personal gain. He willingly sacrificed self.

      Of course you are quite right that the key battle every human faces runs right down the middle of our hearts. We can surrender to our own wickednesses or fight them–and if we fight we can fight for the sake of our pride–or through the power of God and the Holy Spirit. I think the evidence is clear where Gordon drew his strength (though again, he was not a perfect person).

      Yes, some people do attack all forms of genuine heroism and I’m not entirely sure why, though I have my suspicions. In this article I reacted to a counter-reaction that embraces hero-worship of all things perceived to be masculine, which would make a hero out of George Armstrong Custer, who was not devoid of courage and other admirable traits but fell far short of what I would consider a hero. So I do favor recognizing heroes–but not every warrior has been a hero, even if he’s been good at combat.

      God bless you!

  4. Thanks for your reply, Travis.

    Gordon is inspiring, I agree. Partially because of where he drew his strength from, and also because of the fact that he is imperfect and yet heroic, giving us another marker of what is possible, and what God can accomplish through us. It’s wonderful!

    And I do see your point that not every good warrior is a hero – a fair number of them have been despicable killers. As you say, a lot of the difference between a hero and a warrior who is not is in the motives.

    Thanks for the great conversation!
    And have a blessed day.

  5. highesttruth says:

    If you want to read about example of a warrior, read about Witold Pilecki. He wasn’t a Christian but one can learn a lot from him.

What do you think?