When I was about 16, and the U.S. Government announced it was exiting Vietnam forthwith, my brother and I went to the church next door and rang the wonderful bell for peace for several minutes. In those days, I was far less afraid of a fight than of dying as a tool in a bad cause.
Around that time, I consciously remember saying a prayer to God which went roughly like this:
“I humbly ask that you, God, make me a soldier in your army and a champion of truth, to the limit of my capacity and the end of my days.”
While my faith and understanding have undergone many changes since then, including my abandoning organized religion and even considering myself an atheist for many years, I never forgot that prayer.
Right now that means I’ll see you in hell before I will back you in a bad cause with even the change in my pocket, whether it’s your greed, totalitarianism or fake religion used to gin up genocide.
To be sure, I am no pacifist. I also can’t see any government anywhere which I would term righteous, or whose leaders understand that individuals have rights given to them by nature, which governments lack. Governments are delegated or seize powers which are not theirs by right, and which they mostly abuse and therefore deserve to lose.
Now I may not belong with the angels, but my heart is in the same place that it was in 1975. I’m with this guy, do or die:
Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host,
by the Divine Power of God,
cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.
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