One doesn't go though many Remembrance Days, especially when they're negatively disposed towards them, before they recognize the implicit value system of it. Nor does one get very far in society, especially as a pacifist, without learning the same. Even in far too many churches, which are supposed to be opperating on a radically opposite set of values, one can find this system of values upheld and promoted. As congregants fill the pews on the Sunday closest to November 11th, they hear from the pulpit the same refrain as they do from newsagents, government officials, peers and other assorted propagandists: capacity for violence is the ultimate measure of goodness.

Whichever way one cuts it, it seems that our capacity for violence has indeed become the measure by which we prove all "lesser" values. All things are equated to our capacity for violence: honour, loyalty, courage, freedom, even love. One proves their courage by their willingness to kill other people, as they do their honour. Freedom, of course, cannot be understood, it seems, in any way other than killing one's enemies. One's loyalty is determined by their willingness to kill for what they are loyal to, as is their love. One is expected to prove their love for spouse, children, friends and country by their willingness to kill other people for them.

It is almost as though we can't imagine any way to approach the world except through the lens of violence. As a pacifist, this value system is one that confronts me all the time. It is little but ignorance in the extreme to suggest that pacifists - who have routinely stood up to and endured grave personal injury and risk in order to live out and die for their belief - are in fact cowardly, but it is suggested nevertheless. So to is it incomprehensible to many people that one should have a loyalty that does not demand they kill for it, and that they should hold this loyalty higher than any loyalty that would demand murder. Also incomprehensible is a notion of freedom that looks within rather than without, which expresses itself in a willingness to die rather than a willingness to kill. And love... I have lost track of how often I have been accused of possessing some kind of defect or inferiority because I do not entwine love for "my people" with a desire to do violence against those who are not "my people".

Such a value system might be obvious and overt in a country like the United States, which is founded on the principle of violence's inherent goodness. But even in Canada this dynamic is pronounced. Despite our pretentions at being a peaceful and peace-loving nation, Canada has been as willing to resort to violence as anyone. Our reliance upon violence has merely been appologized for because of our subservience: when we use violence, it is for King and Country or in the name of "peacekeeping", which is to say "Americans go in to create disorder, and we follow in to maintain disorder". Our goal has never been to create an empire... Ours has only been to maintain an empire.

Violence in itself is not to blame though. Violence is a symptom of a larger problem, which precious few of my fellow Christians are willing to do something of substance about when they recognize it, myself included. Saint Augustine proposed a framework of understanding the human condition through the principle of alienation: that we suffer from alienation, and our alienation manifests itself in what traditionally has been called sin particular to what we are alienated from. In response to the pain of our alienation from other people, Augustine suggests that we embrace and even enjoy doing harm to them.

The valuation of violence is simply an attempt to codify this embrace of alienation, construing it as a moral good. When we state that we are willing to kill other people for our spouses and children, it is not because of our supreme love for our own family, but because of our lack of love for other families. Likewise for loyalty, which isn't so much loyalty to our group as it is alienation from other groups. When we express an idea of freedom that requires the murder of others to feel ourselves free, then we are not truly free in any sense that brings peace and comfort to the soul. Instead, we are truest slaves to fear, fleeing in deathly terror from death itself and being asked to believe in something worth dying for. And let us do away with that pretention right now: the job of a soldier is not to die for his country, but rather to make some other poor soul die for his country.

The Christian ideal stands in stark contradiction to this system of values. Where violence stands as a force (or indulgence) of exclusion, Christianity is supposed to stand for inclusion. In response to the question of violence, Church Father Irenaeus stated "Nor an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, for him who counts no man his enemy, but all his neighbors, and therefore can never stretch out his hand for vengeance."

What we learn is a positive valuation rather than a negative one, by way of inclusivity. Instead of proving our loyalty to one group by being pitted against another, we express our loyalty to the whole of humanity by extending our group to include all people. Our love is expressed not by how much we don't love others, but by the positive value of love itself. We don't need to say "I love you so much that I'll kill for you"... To simply say "I love you" is more than sufficient: it is Beautiful and Good and True. True love proves itself, and does not require violence to prove it.

Likewise for freedom and courage. The Christian is free to die for the way of Christ, standing couragously as our Lord Himself did against those forces which would insist upon our alienation. This is the truest freedom of all, and the freedom recognized by spiritual peoples throughout history. When we believe that we cannot have freedom while our enemies still live, we are slaves to the fear of them even long after they are dead. It is when we are willing to damn the consequences where consequences exist that we have genuine freedom.

The valuation of violence is a symptom of humanity's sickness... A violation of our purpose and our hope, the sad, cynical embrace of our pain in the face of uncertainty and fear. As we spend this day parading and honouring not only our agents of violence, but our belief in violence itself as the measure of all goodness, the message comes through loud and clear that for all of our technological advancement, we have not truly progressed as a people. We are as primitive and as far removed from God and goodness as we ever have been. When I see people who can actually love for love's sake, then perhaps some progress will have been made.