Memory & Sacrifice

Just before Memorial Day, my Guatemalan student asked why we had a holiday to remember dead people. It gave me a chance to explain that it was intended to remember specifically those who died defending our country and our freedom. I didn’t recall when the custom began, so I looked it up. It started during the American Civil, and in fact southern states didn’t follow the practice until World War I gave them common cause with the rest of the country.

Of course, we never simply “remember dead people.” Those whose loved ones have died will never forget them, and a special holiday is unnecessary for them. The rest of us aren’t just remembering them; we are remembering their sacrifice, and not just of those who die but also of those who leave behind loved ones, careers, and safety at a cost of injury, lost opportunity, and missed time with family. As soldiers continue to risk everything in Afghanistan and Iraq, the idea of not forgetting their sacrifice is surely better than the media using casualty figures to oppose the war. John Whitehead wrote a terrific commentary on this very attitude of risk and sacrifice.

There is no nobler act that to give one’s life for another. Such a sacrifice is rare because it is natural to hold on to life. Most such acts are impulses of the moment, where love, kindness, or compassion moves a person to risk their own life for another. To make a considered decision to risk or give one’s life is even more remarkable. Soldiers make that choice, knowing the risk but generally hoping to survive (unlike those who kill themselves in order to kill others). That is the way of young people, and youth is a necessary qualification for an effective fighter. Their youth, strength, and vitality give them a better chance at survival as well as enabling them to be more skillful in the arts of war. Make no mistake, though; they know they may not come home. Yet most not only choose to risk their very lives for their families, communities, and country; many re-enlist even after they have experienced the realities of combat.

In our selfish, narcissistic age, many find this sacrificial mentality hard to understand. I have been appalled at how little even parents today are willing to sacrifice for their own children. They want a child much like the child wants a pet. As long as its fun to play with or nice and cuddly, they will pay attention to it, but when it poops and pees and cries and needs affection or care, it’s time to call a nanny or day care. If people won’t sacrifice their time and convenience for the own precious children, then how would we expect them to understand the greatest sacrifice of all?

At one time, I would have denied I had ever had the chance or occasion to sacrifice, in any substantive way. My generation’s war was Vietnam, and I would have been a most reluctant soldier. I did not oppose the war, but I objected to the political interference that kept us from winning it, much as it has been with the Iraqi War. However we come to be fighting, once engaged, we need to give our military the freedom to prosecute the war through to victory. Too many bad things happen when we lose the will to win, and politicians have no business playing political games with war at a cost of American lives.

I will admit that the idea of warfare was frightening to me. I was probably not cut out to be a soldier; I’m not sure I could kill someone unless seriously threatened. I did become a pastor, and that probably says something about my temperament and character. I used to wonder if I had the courage to face martyrdom or deny my faith, until I realized that I didn’t need courage until I actually faced that choice.

Recently, though, I learned something about myself that may give you a similar insight into yourself. I believe that God will very likely give a passionate concern about something or someone to people who serve Him (or at least something greater than themselves). For me, it was peacemaking; although I hate being around angry, quarreling people, I have a deep desire to help them resolve their differences and be reconciled. However, except for those people who came for help, my passion was nonspecific until I met those seeking help. Still my commitment to the idea was costly.

Then about 7 years ago, I came across a request for refugee tutors. When I followed up on it, I became involved with Sudanese “Lost Boys.” My life has not been the same since. I immersed myself in helping them learn English and do their homework; I also learned everything I could about Sudan, the war, and all the terrible things that the southern Sudanese, often Christian people, had suffered. The Lost Boys were just the beginning. Since then, I have tutored kids from all over the world and faced the reality of oppression, conflict, and modern slavery, among many horrors that devastate people and scatter their families. I have also discovered that, however generous our intentions, refugee children face a new kind of suffering and loss here. My call to peacemaking led me into a previously unknown area of alienation.

For some inexplicable reason, many public schools don’t bother to teach these children. Laws require them to be enrolled, but laws also require the schools to teach them appropriately, starting with English at the level of their need. Around here, anyway, schools simply ignore the law. They take the per-pupil funding; but, even in schools with large populations of English Language Learners (which they would be if anybody bothered to teach them), they end up in regular junior high and high school classes, without English and often without the grade level skills necessary to perform well, even if they spoke English.

It was a shock to realize that I was to “assist” these young people with homework that they could not possibly understand. In the after-school-hours available, I couldn't bridge the language barrier, provide the English language training needed, give them remedial math or other instruction, and complete daily assignments, projects, and test preparation. I reached a point where it seemed the only useful thing I could do was teach them English, since everything else depended on that.

Some schools take great pride in their bilingual support; the larger schools often hire “tutors” who speak the native languages of various students. If asked, most of these students understand they need to learn English and want very much to learn it. Colleges that accept foreign students require English language proficiency, but American secondary schools seem to have a different agenda or philosophy, one that is not in the best interest of these students. Furthermore, what is the value of the diploma a school gives a student who is functionally illiterate in English and could not honestly pass most of the academic classes that they “passed?” What is the point of that diploma? What good is it?

For over 5 years, I have invested my life, my time, and my livelihood (or lack thereof) to try to help some of these young people. I haven't changed the world. Sometimes I wonder how much good I have done, even for my students. In this environment, the task is virtually impossible. I would like to start a school for refugees and immigrant children, perhaps adults, too. Does my sacrifice, even if I cannot, have any value? I could say that sticking with these kids cost me my home, many material things that a better income would provide, and sometimes simple peace of mind (when I'm not sure how I will pay my bills). This isn't like equivalent to the sacrifice of our war dead, but will anyone remember my sacrifices?

Like money and power, honor or recognition is a common motivator. We often talk about a President's “legacy.” Still, I don't think soldiers die to be remembered, although no one wants to be forgotten. I doubt that parents sacrifice for their children to be remembered, but I suspect they haven't forgotten the sacrifices of their own parents. I hope my students remember me fondly, but that's not what motivates me to help them. In fact, I suspect sacrificing and memorializing come from the same motivation, love. Perhaps a better word would be passion, not unrelated to another motivator, compassion. Call it “heart” but recognize that, today, many don't have it.

We aren't necessarily born with “heart;” whether from sin or survival instinct, an infant is undeniably self-centered. I am sure that living with and seeing the unselfish giving of parents and others, along with specific lessons and stories to inspire the ideas of sharing and sacrifice, teaches children generosity. An element of all of this is gaining a perspective of something beyond oneself, something greater, and of people other than self, a sense of their feelings, needs, and wants. The combination of experiencing the sacrifice of others and seeing unmet needs inspires a heart to sacrifice (Perhaps nothing helps us appreciate sacrifice and giving like coming to understand the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who gave His life for all who cannot satisfy God in their own goodness).

“It's not all about you, kid,” isn't a familiar message anymore, to many Western children, and that is sad. Not enough training or modeling promotes memory and sacrifice in our culture. As it has abandoned God and morality, grace and love, we have fewer able to look beyond their own wants. An often-aired public service announcement suggests that the giving spirit is still alive, but it's in the older generation, the very generation that has mostly gave up the sources of self-sacrifice. Indeed, that generation has pushed hard toward the idea that the government is the answer to every problem and that we are merely supplicants waiting for the government's largess. No wonder no one says, “It's not about you.”

Before I finish, I need to ask one important question. In a culture or society, who are the guardians of our important shared memories? In ancient societies, almost before organized communities existed, the history, for that is what shared memories are, was passed on orally in stories, many by parents to their children, others by a community’s storyteller. Eventually, teachers and schools took over this critically important task; so we might imagine that is the job of our modern schools. Don’t bet on it! Modern educators, textbook authors, and government bureaucrats are working overtime to revise our history. I will write about this, another time, but you might check out Neal Boortz’ Somebody’s Gotta Say It. I just read a chapter that summarizes the problem, quite well.

Needless to say, we cannot memorialize the sacrifices of others if we systematically forget or suppress them. We won’t appreciate the cost of the freedoms we enjoy if we never hear about those who paid the price. If we don't appreciate the sacrifices of others enough to remember them, then we will never learn the value of sacrifice. If we can't see a difference between voluntary sacrifice and government-forced “sacrifice” (in quotes, because something a person is forced to do is not a sacrifice), then our society is doomed to become something very different from our past, something with far less, if any, true freedom.

And that is the ultimate value of sacrifice and memory, to enable us to preserve the very principles that made this nation, in many respects, the lighthouse of the world, and to keep us from becoming people with no heart.