When I Grow Up ...

Like most children growing up there were times I dreamed of being President of the United States.  I also remember consciously giving up on that dream at an early age.  I cannot tell you exactly when it was, but it was while I was still young.  I came to the conclusion that I could not in good conscience hold such an office because I would be required to be in charge of the military, and my first act in that role would probably be to tell everyone to go home, because I was, and still am, opposed to violence and war.  I recognized that this would be a conflict of interest because the President is responsible for the safety of our nation and I was sure that I could not order someone to go to war even if that was what was "best" for the country.  For this reason I don't envy President Obama and his current situation.  The United Methodist Church states in its Social Principles that war is incompatible with Christian teaching.  There is a strong pressure to elect good Christian leaders (Obama certainly faced a challenge on this) but then we expect them to do some of the most unchristian of things.  What if there is a better way to do this?

This morning I dressed my son in a onesie with a picture of Gandhi on the front and a tagline "Another skinhead for peace."  Bryce is now the second generation of Ozanne to wear peace-loving shirts long before he knows what they mean.  I grew up with shirts of MLK, Gandhi, and "you can't hug your kids with nuclear arms."  The struggle for peace did not start with my generation either.  My mother was fighting it too and it goes back long before then, as long as we have had wars I suspect there have been those crying out to find a better way to solve things.  I think our natural tendency is to respond with force but it is not the best one.  We cannot force people to love us, and until we love each other we are simply waiting for the other side to get a better weapon to strike us with, to find a chink in our armor, or a way to get an edge on us.  Mutually Assured Destruction kept us and the Russians at bay, but that fear people lived in was not a healthy lifestyle.  Maybe it is time we took steps so our next generation of children can dream of being a president AND being a peace-maker.