Zu's musings

Random 4 am inspiration

I woke up at 4 am last week, staggered out of bed, turned on the lights, and wrote down some ideas on the back of an old exam prompt. I found the paper today and I figured I'd post it on the ol' blog. I haven't been keeping my promise, but it's spring break, so academic stuff can wait.

I think that Jesus and the gospel writers were trying to make a connection between the Roman army and humanity. The common soldiers in the bible are the regular people. They whip and torture Christ, press a crown of thorns onto his head, taunt him as he carries his cross, drive nails through his flesh, mock him, cast lots for his garments, pierce his side, and spill his holy blood. Centurions represent authority, well, corporeal authority. Centurions are baptized by John, said to be the most faithful of all by Jesus, and are the first to realize that Jesus was the Christ immediately after his death.

I think that they were trying to set up some kind of a system for giving nations power over Christians. Jesus says "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's" and "My kingdom is not of this world." It seems like he is trying to set up a separation between church and state as it were. And in vesting Caesar and other Roman authority figures with a power, he gives them the right to command the corporeal resources of their Christian citizens. I think this is the same idea that Augustine touches upon when he says that soldiers are simply the sword in the hand of Caesar.

Anyways, I've got to get ready for bed. I have to go to church early tomorrow and then go to my aunt's house for like... an hour of Easter festivities and then it's back to OSU because apparently the administrators there hate Christians.

posted by Zu @ 11:35 PM 0 comments

Sunday update!

I was getting pretty deep into City of God when I realized that I was getting ahead of myself and stopped. I wasn't really addressing the beginning of the Christian warrior ethos, which is Jesus. While He certainly never said that war was a valid activity to pursue, Jesus never told any of the soldiers that he met to stop what they were doing. John the Baptist has a grand opportunity to make a statement about war when he encounterd centurions in Luke 3:14, but he chose not to.

At first glance, the message against war seems pretty clear. "Do violence to no man; neither calumniate any man" Do no violence seems to indicate that they should cease killing, but John goes on to say "and be content with your pay". How could they earn any pay if they were not actively soldiering? Much like the commandment "Thou shall not kill" isn't taken at face value; neither should John's prohibition against violence in Lk 3:14. Because John tells them to continue earning their pay as soldiers, doing no violence must be taken to mean no undue or malice-filled acts of violence, not to torture and rape, but still to fight for Rome as good soldiers and "be content with their pay." I think that my ideas about this are backed up by later translations of the bible that drop "Do violence to no man" and replace it with "Do not practice extortion"

Now I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Jesus was at this mass baptism, because he is baptized a few lines down from 3:14, but King Herod and John's imprisonment are mentioned, so maybe that serves as a plot break in the middle of a chapter. I'm not sure. I'll have to go bother my priest about that. But if he was there, he didn't disagree.

Later in Luke, Jesus is approached by messengers of a centurion whose servant has been stricken with palsy. The centurion asks Christ to heal his servant, saying "Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof. For which cause neither did I think myself worthy to come to thee; but say the word, and my servant shall be healed." The centurion goes on to say "For I also am a man subject to authority, having under me soldiers: and I say to one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doth it."

Jesus is presented with an excellent opportunity to denounce war, but instead He marvels at the centurion's faith and heals his servant. This all shows that, although He would never condone violence himself, Jesus understood the need for war in the physical world. After all, He is of the line of the great warrior-king David.

I better stop and get back to studying. I'm constantly irritated that trivial matters like classes and finals are getting in the way of my scholarly pursuits. I wonder if that bodes well for my future as a historian. All I know is when they described graduate studies in history as being alone in the library researching stuff, I was excited. Anywho, I've got to go prepare some outlines for my Chinese history final!

posted by Zu @ 12:05 AM 0 comments

Studying

I'm pretty busy studying, but I didn't want to break my promise to you, the reader, so I decided to provide a cursory update.

I found this today. Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic EVER and if I had a stuffed tiger, this is how I would deal with writing assignments.

posted by Zu @ 11:18 PM 0 comments

Weekend fun

Augustine has gotten into the whole free will debate, which is like 100x more interesting than listening to him talk about why Felicity should have been a goddess, even though all the gods and godesses were really demons. Reading this book has made me a lot more contemplative, and I've had realizations in really weird places. Case in point: I made the mistake of drinking some homemade wine that my friend Bill provided on saturday night. It was red-ish wine, and I think it was fortified, so it was essentially Port, which my research shows to be the most damaging when you drink too much. So as I layed curled up in a ball all day Sunday, I thought to myself "I'm never going to drink again." Which is a lie. Everyone says that when they get sick from drinking, or they get sick from eating, or from doing something stupid, but in most cases you see them back at the taco shack next week, or at the bar, or in the weightroom trying the squat thrusts.

So as I realized that I was telling myself a lie, I thought of how that pertained to the rest of life. I'm almost certain that it's a survival trait. If we didn't have it, we would never reproduce. Well, the guys would keep trying, but all the women would live in a convent on an island surrounded with shark-filled water. Giving birth is supposedly one of the most painful things that a human can do (I imagine St. Augustine wagging his finger at Adam and Eve at this point), and I'm sure that after passing a 6-10 pound baby, no sane woman thinks "Boy! I want to do this again right away!" But then the survival mechanism kicks in and the woman gradually forgets about the pain and eventually the memories of cute little babies outweigh the memories of pain and the woman wants to have another baby. This is the same mechanism that makes me say "Hey, let's hit up Taco Bell after we leave the bar!" despite the proven fact that Beer + Tacos = unpleasantness.

"Hey doofus" you might be saying, "What in the hell does this have to do with your military history blog?" Well I'm getting there, so just calm down.

I think this is directly related to war. War is a crime against all humanity, yet we wage it almost constantly. I think the same pain/reward balance works with war as well. It's a little more complex, probably featuring all kinds of modifiers based on culture, intensity of previous wars, win-loss ratio, etc... , but I think the theory still holds. Let's consider a few examples.

America got out of WWII relatively loss-free, so they didn't have as many bad memories to keep them out of Korea, and then Vietnam, but after Vietnam the scale shifted WAAAAY back to the non-war side. Then in 1991 the equilibrium shifted and America went into Kuwait and got out relatively loss-free again. Recently there have been setbacks that have stirred up the memories of Vietnam, making it less likely for there to be any non-essential wars for a while. Still there are variables that could shift the balance quickly, such as another terrorist strike that would surely bring down the righteous anger of the world's strongest military with minimal public outcry.

Looking at post-war Germany, we see a total opposite. After WWI, various cultural forces managed to overbalance the horrible memories of the first world war, Hitler rose to power, and started a second war within 20 years. But since 1945, Germany really hasn't participated in any military action. I think this is a case of too much memory overpowering the scale completely. Casual drinking and sickness will probably result in a continuation of the cycle, but if you get drunk and lose your arm in a car accident, you probably won't ever drink again because you'll constantly see the price of your night of fun. I think this is what happened with Germany. The same goes for Japan. By keeping destroyed buildings and city blocks around to continually show people what happened, they keep the memories alive, so that it'd take something really big to swing the scale back to war.

Now I realize that this is a really general theory that probably doesn't cover all the variables, but I figured I'd write it all down while it was fresh in my mind.

Anyways, I still have a headache, so I'm going to eat dinner and watch tv. I'll get back on track with the development of a christian warrior ethos in a day or two.

posted by Zu @ 7:42 PM 0 comments

Oh snap I'm inspired!

I got inspired by reading about THE SPEAR OF LONGINUS and wrote a real rough introduction to my thesis. It's lacking in polish and it's not exactly flowing lyrical prose, but I figure it's a good enough start.

Moments after his death, Christ was pierced in his side by a Roman soldier’s spear. Blood and water flowed from the wound and a centurion present remarked “Surely this was the son of God.” This marked the end of Jesus’ living ministry; a ministry that promoted peace and love to one’s enemies. The bloody and battered man that was taken down from his cross had only hours before forgave his tormentors, telling his heavenly father to have mercy because they knew not what they did.

Almost 1100 years later, followers of Christ found themselves besieged in the city of Antioch. At their lowest moment, the men were approached by a peasant who told them of a holy vision that he had. This vision led the men to find what they thought to be the spear that pierced the divine buried under a church. Their faith was renewed and they were ready to face the challenge that confronted them.

However, these men did not reflect on the pacific message of their lord, they did not view the spear as the antithesis of the blessed role of peacemakers that they were called upon to fulfill. These men were far from being peacemakers, for they were knights; warriors of a chivalric code sent on a crusade that was encouraged by the Bishop of Rome. These crusaders took the recently discovered spearhead into battle against their Moslem enemies and waded through their ranks, spilling blood and sewing the seeds of death and destruction.

What had changed between the death of Christ and the advent of a Christian warrior ethos? When was it decided that it was acceptable to kill a man? Why were enemies the focus of violence and hate instead of loving prayer and forgiveness? Jesus certainly didn’t advocate warfare, so who decided that it was a valid undertaking? How did this warrior ethos develop in a Christian society? These are all very important questions that deserve to be examined and given well-reasoned answers. This is the intent of my thesis.

© Jon Zuhosky 2005

Zing! What does everyone think?

::looks out at the noble few that read the blog from time to time::

Oh yeah, I know it's just my first draft of an introduction, but you aren't allowed to steal it without crediting me because I found the ASCII key for the copyright symbol! ALT-0169! Huzzah! Watch as I create copyright symbols in a vulgar display of my own power!


© © © © © © © © © © !!!

As a side note, I'm going to try to make the layout of the blog prettier because I learned from a girl in my Bio lab that just because something is an academic work, that doesn't mean that it can't be pretty.

posted by Zu @ 11:38 AM 2 comments

So I'm a liar

Yeah, that whole updating every day or two thing? Well... it was kind of a lie. But I have a good reason today! I was at the Phi Alpha Theta movie thingamadoo. We watched Goodbye Lenin! which was a super awesome movie. At the beginning of the movie they showed the DDR police roughing up some people who were protesting the wall. At first I thought "poor German people" but then I was like "maybe they have some kind of cultural "thing" for dressing in grey and kicking people in the street." But that's really the only bad stuff they showed. Then the mom has a heart attack and goes into a coma, which I thought was a bit weird. Maybe a stroke would have been more believable. Anywho, the rest of the movie is her son trying to pretend that the DDR still exists and the wall never came down because any kind of excitement could cause another heart attack. It was equal parts funny and sad. The scene where they're hauling a broken statue of Lenin down the middle of Berlin with a helecopter was great. It looked like it was CGI though. I would have thought broken Lenin statues would be easy enough to buy from Russia. Finally, the nurse/girlfriend, Chulpan Khamatova, was enchanting.

Professor Beyerchen was supposed to show up and discuss the history of the movie with us but he never showed. What's up with that? On the plus side I had time to get some dinner at buckeye express before they closed.

Tomorrow I'll be less busy and spend some time reading more Augustine. I figure even if it isn't relevant to my paper, when I die and go to heaven I'll have something to talk with St. Augustine about. Most people are probably like "St. Augustine? Man it sure is hot down there. Eh? How about that heat? Eh? Is it hot enough for you?" and St. Augustine probably just sighs and walks away. So I imagine he'll be glad to discuss theology and history.

posted by Zu @ 12:20 AM 0 comments