Honor the Sheepdog

Today let us speak to the issues plaguing our country with respect to war, violence, and the people who have the integrity and drive to attempt to protect us.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we find ourselves beset with concerns about how things are going.  It prompts anxiety, fear, a sense of having no where to turn for safety.

There’s a young mother who once told this story.  “It was one of the worst days of my life.  The washing machine broke.  The telephone was repeatedly ringing from bill collectors.  I had a headache.  When I opened the mailbox I found more bills, all of this with a bank account that was empty.  At the breaking point, I lifted my one-year-old son into his high chair to feed him, but could only muster the strength to lay my head onto his tray, where I began to cry.  Without a sound, my son took the pacifier from his mouth and gently pushed it into mine…”

You see, we all need others to help us!  They just have to be the kind of people motivated by God to live as helpers.

I don’t know how many of you have spent time away from home – I’m sure most of us have.  But I mean time really away – not a two-hour drive, not a phone call away, but away – in a place where you can’t reach your loved ones, a place from which you can only hold onto your hopes and prayers that God will allow you to be restored to your family when the time comes.  I offer these thoughts not from the perspective of a soldier who has spent time in the trenches.  Rather, my own frame of reference comes from being sent for several weeks (only) to places that are halfway around the world.  And I can tell you that while in such a place, there is apprehension.  Prayers are offered to keep the world safe until one can, by God’s grace, be returned and reunited with family.  The things that go through the mind are terrible.  What if there were to be another terror attack?  What if situations were to deteriorate rapidly because of some lunatic holding a nuclear button in Iran or Pakistan or Russia?  What if?  And the ‘what if”s’ lead to worry, concern, and if truth be told, sometimes even a sense of fear – fear of the evil that’s in the world, the evil against which we have as a defense only our prayers. 

We must wonder if those same sensations are what become part of the daily life of someone in the military who has committed to a full year away, not only in a foreign land, but in a land where there are people who are indeed daily trying to kill you, to send you home in such a way that your only hope of seeing your loved ones again is in the Resurrection.  How much more amplified must their feelings be, their worries, their concerns, their fears?

And yet we, as Americans, have young men and women (some of us here have relatives or friends who fall into this category) who willingly volunteer to go, to endure these things.  They are God-appointed “helpers”.  Why?  Why would anyone elect to place himself or herself into such troubled surroundings for such a long time?  We, of course, pray for the peace of the world.  And our prayers do help to preserve that peace.  But ultimately, sometimes, even though we might pray and choose otherwise, we as a people must engage in battles, in warfare, in the taking of lives to defend our country.  Every time it happens, it brings about a polarization of our society – those opposed to killing and war at any cost, and those who support defending our interests for the sake of preserving our “way of life.”  Even this last statement, “preserving our way of life”, is offensive to some of our own people, who would argue that this way of life is not worth preserving at the expense of taking the lives of others whom they would describe as innocent.

So, where is truth?  What is right?  What should we, as Orthodox Christians, pray for?  Should we pray for victory of our troops?  Should we pray for an end to all war?  Before we try to answer these valid and important questions, let me share with you some excerpts from a book titled “Sheepdogs” written by Colonel Dave Grossman, who is a former Army Ranger/paratrooper, and a West Point graduate.  He is considered by many to be one of the world’s foremost experts on human aggression and the psychology of combat.  The book is filled with a wealth of insight into human perception, human reaction, and I believe our own necessary response to threatening situations.

The beginning premise is that most of us are sheep – kind, gentle, and we only hurt one another by accident.  He justifies this conclusion by referencing the murder rate at 6 per 100,000 per year, and the assault rate as 4 per 1000 per year, indicating that the vast majority of us are not inclined to hurt one another.  He solidifies his position with the statistic that 2 million Americans are victims of some kind of violent crime each year – a number which should trouble us – but there are over 300 million of us.  In short, within our society, violence is rare amongst the sheep.

By designating us as sheep, no negative connotation is intended.  Colonel Grossman says that the sheep need to be viewed like a pretty blue robin’s egg.  The inside is soft and fertile and some day it will grow into something wonderful.  But the egg cannot survive without that hard, blue shell.  The shell is the egg’s security in a dangerous world.  For us sheep, that shell is our police, fire, and military personnel.  Those who would destroy the egg and eat the contents are the wolves.  The shell is the sheepdog.

Colonel Grossman describes himself as one of the sheepdogs.  His definition says that he lives to protect the flock and to confront the wolf.  He cites a sign from a police station which reads, “We intimidate those who intimidate others.”

So, if you have no capacity for violence, you’re a sheep.  If you have a certain capacity for violence, but absolutely no concern for your fellow citizens, you’re a wolf.  If you have a capacity for violence and a love for your fellow citizens, you’re a sheepdog.  He says that “Warriors have been given the gift of aggression,” but that they would no more misuse this gift than a doctor would misuse his or her gift of healing.  Still, the warriors, the sheepdogs, accept a mantle to use their gift to help others.

As Colonel Grossman teaches people these concepts, some of them police and military personnel, his students are stunned to find within his words an explanation for why they feel what they feel.  We, too, as the sheep, should listen to what he explains next to help us understand our own reactions to conflict in the world.

Colonel Grossman says that sheep live in denial – it’s what makes us sheep.  We don’t want to believe that there is evil in the world, or if it’s there, we don’t want to believe that our simply being sheep will lead the evil to us!  We know that fires happen, and so we keep extinguishers in our homes, sprinklers in our offices, alarms in our schools, strategic exit points in all of them.  We protect the schools against fire, but we’re appalled at the idea of having an armed officer in the school.  And all of this remains true even though statistics show that children in schools are 10 times more likely to be killed, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured, by school violence than school fires.  The sheep’s response is denial.

And worse, we really don’t like the sheepdogs.  To us, they look a lot like wolves – having the capacity for violence.  Even though a sheepdog is trained to never harm the sheep, we still lack full trust.  The sheepdog is a reminder that wolves are about.  We’d prefer that the sheepdogs not tell us where to go, not dole out traffic tickets, not stand at the airport with an automatic weapon in hand, not be stationed at schools.  We’d much rather the sheepdog just cover his fangs, paint himself fluffy white, and go “Baaaaaa”.

At least, that’s our perspective until a wolf arrives.  Then, the entire flock tries to hide behind any available sheepdog.  Only then do we hear the word “Hero” applied to such people.  During the 9/11 attacks, on Flight 93 over Shanksville, PA many sheep became sheepdogs, and many sheepdogs became heroes!  There is nothing morally superior about sheepdogs.  They are who they are.  They bark at things that make noise, and are unafraid, and perhaps better said, "willing", to engage in a righteous confrontation. When confrontation happens, the sheepdog will survive in cases where most sheep would not.  But more importantly, the sheepdog attempts to deliver sheep from peril.

Now, if you buy the idea that we are in fact the sheep we’ve described, we need to ask ourselves how important the sheepdog is to us.  In the world today, many are attempting to muzzle the sheepdog, to remove us as a nation from worldwide conflict, to defund their righteous purpose within this society.  Perhaps this is a wise move.  Perhaps it is foolhardy.  I have my own opinions, and this homily is not attempting to sway yours. 

But what IS foolhardy is wishing ill upon the sheepdog, taking actions which put the sheepdog in needless jeopardy, and indeed, not supporting with letters and words of thanks, not praying for the sheepdog, not caring for him or her and doing that which helps the sheepdog remain vigilant.  The sheepdog doesn’t live for accolades.  But comforting and consoling the sheepdog between skirmishes with the wolves can only help strengthen him or her for the next wolf they need to engage.

If we must go to battle, God bless those who are moved to volunteer to serve us!  We still pray for peace, but if we are honest sheep, we know the world is still full of wolves.  So pray – and pray diligently – for those of our nation who serve as soldiers, sailors, pilots, police and firemen, doctors, nurses, school crossing guards – you know who such servants are.  Smile at them when you see them.  Speak kindly to them.  On a cold day bring them a cup of coffee.  Let them know that we sheep are appreciative of them, Offer your thanks for their service to our country and to us.  And please, never blame the sheepdog for the fact that wolves exist.  It’s not their fault.  The best we can do is pray that the sheepdog won’t need to risk engaging the wolf on our behalf.