Lean Left

Sangin is crisscrossed with irrigation ditches. At one wide canal, Marine engineers had erected a metal bridge to allow the troops to penetrate towards the Helmand River and slice through Taliban strongholds. The Taliban figured that out, though, and an insurgent sniper had recently wounded two Marines at the bridge.

It was a spot that made the Marines nervous.

“Hey, sir, don’t get out of the vehicle until I lay down a sniper screen,” Gunnery Sgt. Mark Shawhan, an agnostic with a suspicion of organized religion, instructed Chaplain Moran before the patrol. “That’s where he’s been getting us, and when you cross the bridge—RUN.”

Lt. Moran wasn’t troubled. “I believe the Lord is going to protect us,” he said. But he wondered aloud whether to finish his Meal, Ready-to-Eat packaged lunch before heading to the armored vehicle.

Gunny Shawhan shook his head in disbelief.

— scene from a rather nice look at an atheist assigned to protect chaplains.

Once there was a deeply religious man who lived in a valley at the foot of an old dam. One day, after a week of heavy rain, the local power company, who owend the dam, had an engineer go on television and tell people to leave the town, the dam might not hold until the rain stopped next week. The man though to himself “The Lord will provide.” and decided to stay.

The next day, the dam began to crack, and water filled the streets of his town. A neighbor came buy with a boat and told the man that he would take him to safety. The man declined, politely, and said “The Lord will provide.”

By nightfall the waters had risen to cover the first floor. A local fisherman brought his boat up alongside the man’s window and offered to take him to safety. Thye man declined, politely, and said “The Lord will provide.”

By the next morning, the waters had risen to near the tops of the roofs. A Coast Guard helicopter spotted the man and tried to save him. But despite twenty minutes of pleading, the man declined, politely, and said “The Lord will provide.”

In an hour, the water had swept the man away.

When he got to heaven, the surprised man confronted God. “My Lord, why did you forsake me?”

And the Lord spoke, saying “What are you, thick? I sent a weather forecast, an engineer, a car, two boats and flipping helicopter!”

I cannot stressenough how deeply, deeply offensive the chaplain’s attitude is. It implies that the effort and the bravery of the young men around him is worthless or worse, not the result of their efforts but the special gift of God not to the men guarding him but to the chaplain. It implies that every little child blown to kingdom come by a stray predator drone, every soldier who catches a bullet, every civilian filled with the shrapnel of a roadside bomb died because God refused to protect them. It implies that their deaths were not the preventable consequences of the cruelty and stupidity of men but of the neglect of God. It excuses the believer form having to act to prevent more children form being killed, because God would protect them if he wanted them to live. It is, not to put to fine a point on it, evil.

I hope that his careless, un-Christian attitude doesn’t get anyone killed or hurt.