I find that I am war weary. We seem to be becoming so used to warfare that we no longer understand how to live without it in our lives in some fashion. I must wonder sometimes if our perpetual sense of warfare is to blame for the increasing lack of civility in our country. Political rhetoric is becoming so polarized that no one can voice opinions for fear of being labeled a radical or a traitor. Vitriol is the currency on the radio, the web, the television stations. The more obvious the hate, the “clearer” the message.
It troubles me. Perpetual warfare makes us de-value life. A world where people can kill and be killed by drones, wars, terrorism – this is a world that no longer holds human life in high esteem. It is a world in which killing someone is no longer seen as morally objectionable.
Granted, this is an oversimplification of tremendous issues facing our world. But it seems that we have pushed ourselves into a place where violence is the voice to whom we will listen, and peace is a suggestion (if even) that we may or may not take. Perhaps that is why we must prove conscientious objection if violence is the norm, to be otherwise requires some kind of proof. No one asks us to prove our violent tendencies.
I am war weary. I am tired of hearing of soldiers returning with lives shattered both physically and emotionally. I am tired of hearing of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people being killed during any given week. These are our human family members.
But that hardly seems to matter. We have, it would appear, lost the idea of a “human family.” And so we find ourselves in a constant barrage of news, commentary, rhetoric, and opinions, opinions, opinions. And it wears me out. I would guess that it might wear you out as well. Because war-weariness emerges part and parcel with compassion fatigue.
If you are unfamiliar with that term, compassion fatigue is a growing indifference to appeals for aid or assistance on behalf of those who are suffering due to the high frequency of those appeals. In other words, there comes a point when one is so aware of and saturated with requests for help that one finds themselves becoming less and less compassionate.
War, war-weariness, and compassion fatigue can all end up de-humanizing the individuals involved. Compassion fatigue is also sometimes called “secondary traumatic stress” or STS – which is where people who have to deal with trauma victims or persons who have experienced some kind of trauma eventually find their patience and compassion decreasing.
Not only this, but people who suffer from compassion fatigue begin to exhibit symptoms that mirror deep depression: a feeling of hopelessness, a decrease in the ability to be happy, the feeling of constant stress, sleeplessness, and a growing negative attitude. People who have this fatigue begin to lose focus on their work and personal lives as well as feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness.
Compassion fatigue hits counselors, pastors, emergency workers, and those who find themselves hearing bad news and other people’s problems with regular, if not overwhelming, frequency. And what that can lead to is we stop wanting to talk about it, we hold it in, and soon that starts to build. After a while it simply becomes hard to care. This bombing, this massacre, that shooting, that killing, this disaster, that disaster, the lies, the news, the animosity…eventually it just becomes noise, and we stop caring.
As a society when we reach that point, the danger is not indifference, the danger is perpetual indifference. Because if we buy in to indifference, then we might well find that the compassion we once had becomes heartlessness. Heartlessness starts seeking out justification, and soon the very things that wore us out become the messages that tell us that we don’t need to care about anyone other than ourselves. And we shut down, shut out, and do not care.
Perhaps in this war-weary, compassion fatigued world, the church is to be a place of peace. That takes work and dedication. It also requires of the church that it understand itself not as a furthering of the things of the world, the politics of the world, or the aggressive empires, but as a representative of the Kingdom of God as shown to us in the person of Christ.
And perhaps my war-weariness comes from the fact that I can see a better way, I believe that there is a better way. It requires civility and from it comes civility. It requires peace and from it comes peace. It requires compassion and from it comes compassion. And it is a Kingdom that should never need a weapon to defend itself. It is the ideal, I know, but in my belief of its possibility, I see the brokenness of our contemporary systems of existence.
It is a broken time in which we live. What wearies me most is my belief that it need not be this way and yet we seem to keep choosing to walk the paths of destruction. How long will we have to walk such paths before we can hear the words of Jesus who said, “seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” and set our feet on the path of peace? I do not know, but the church must strive to seek the Kingdom of God and keep offering it to the world for the sake of Christ our Lord.
Pastor Charles