“God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform,” we are piously taught.
Mysterious. Very.
But it is not mysterious why pro-war preachers, priests, and bishops are not slaughtered on the battleline and then eaten by buzzards when the cannon’s feast is finished. These men are too intelligent—too cunning—for the buzzards’ banquet.
Every distinguished professional butcher in modern times has been a “member in good standing” in his denomination and his blood-stenched fame is recited with pride.
That mysterious?
All soldiers are blessed as they march away to “Death’s feast.”
The preacher consecrates the cut-throat.
The bayonet is prepared—with prayer—to be thrust into the bowels of the toilers.
All wars are somehow pronounced “mysteriously the will of God”; and the cannoneers who hurl shot and shell into a city or village and cannonade helpless women and children—these are “the servants of the Lord”—mysteriously.
And thus to the appalling music of the cannon’s roar the Cross is dragged down into the bloody mire where men die cursing the preachers safe at home who helped trick them to the hell called war. And thus, too, the spirit of the great fraternal Christ is banished from the lives of the betrayers and the betrayed—and Christ is crucified anew.