God Is A Grunt: And More Good News for GIs - A Book Review

It's good news that Jesus didn't come to give orders, but to empty himself, taking the form of a grunt, obedient to the point of death. - Logan M. Isaac, God Is A Grunt

I read God Is A Grunt: And More Good News for GIs last fall and I intended to write a book review on November 11, Veteran’s Day. The timing felt right, but I couldn’t do it! I was too fearful…that I would insult some readers, that I couldn’t find the right words to explain my inner tension with the military, that I would be misunderstood, that I would come off as an arrogant judge. My trepidation to broach the subject comes out of personal experience. My most difficult time in ministry was in 2003, when I preached and taught against the impending invasion of Iraq. Preaching against war can be interpreted as unpatriotic. Preaching against war can be interpreted as anti-Republican party (when a Republican happens to be the President of the United States). Preaching against war can be interpreted as critical of those currently serving in the military and against veterans of the military. I still bear the spiritual and psychological “scars” of 2003. I still remember the names of the families who left my congregation because of my objection, based on faith, against the impending war. It does not matter that history indicates (by most accounts) that the invasion of Iraq was a colossal mistake. While somewhat vindicated, the difficult memories of ministry in early 2003 endure.

So, I have been stewing on this book review for two months. Then my procrastination came to an end. We might agree that 2005 did not get off to a good start. In the early hours of the New Year, a madman drove a vehicle into the French Quarter in New Orleans and wreaked havoc and terror. Fourteen innocent revelers were killed and many others were injured. Hours later, a vehicle was utilized as a bomb in Las Vegas. While the two acts were apparently not related, there are many similarities. One of them is that both perpetrators were military veterans and both of them had served tours of duty in Afghanistan. This was the tipping point for me to address the sensitive and complex subjects of militarism, soldiers, patriotism, and war.

God is Grunt: And More Good News for GIs was written by Logan M. Isaac in 2022. Isaac offers a unique perspective on the subject because he is a veteran (six years in the United States Army as an artilleryman, including a deployment in Iraq in 2004) and a religious scholar (Master of Theological Studies from Duke University, teacher at Methodist University in North Carolina and at Duke, and Master of Letters in Systematic and Historical Theology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland).

I have had an “inner tension” with the military for my entire adult life. As I reflect back, I would likely have served during the Vietnam War if I had been drafted. Fortunately, I was a few years too young to be drafted. I didn’t protest the Vietnam War because my father, a Navy veteran, would likely have thrown me out of the house if I did! My father was a war hawk. His strong influence did not leave much room for me as an adolescent. Frankly, I was an “observer” of Vietnam (noting the daily casualty statistics on the evening news) and not very engaged in the war because I had bigger fish to fry, like earning good grades and playing sports!

My aversion to the military and war developed as my Christian faith deepened, especially post-seminary. I have become more pacifistic with age. I have serious concerns regarding the military-industrial complex and the implications of spending more resources on the military than on the social safety net. It is (in many circles) unpopular to criticize military spending. That is why I rely on the well-known commentary of President Eisenhower from his “Chance for Peace” speech in April, 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

I have an aversion to militarism. But, I know people - family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and church members - who have served in the military, and they are very good people. I am aware that my pacifism can easily decline into judgmentalism. The Bible calls us to “beat swords into plowshares.” Jesus instructed that those who live by the sword will also die by the sword. The Bible and Jesus also teach us to love our neighbor. Therein lies the tension and the rub. I would rather live in peace and understanding than in tension and ignorance.

That is a very long introduction to what led me to read God Is A Grunt! Now for the book review!

The book was written specifically as a manual for Christian discipleship for GIs because they live with the complexity of experience from armed service. Logan Isaac attempts to interpret Scripture and Christian traditions and history as a soldier would. That makes his perspective unique and informative for me because I have never read Scripture and tradition through that lens. Isaac’s scholarship, witness, and personal experiences helped me to “walk in the shoes” of a veteran.

The book is highly scholarly, offering many explanations of Scripture based on the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible. If offers an in-depth study of the role of soldiers in the Bible and throughout history. Isaac’s writing style is direct, sometimes humorous, and profanity-filled. He holds back no punches and takes no prisoners when making his case! Early in the book, Isaac writes that his objective is to refute bad theology based on antimilitary bias in the church. He had my attention!

In reflecting on the “tension,” one of my concerns is how our nation tends to glorify the military. When I am sitting in an airport and “those who served our nation” are invited to board the plane early, I wonder, “What about hospice nurses? What about social workers? What about school teachers?… Don’t they serve too?” I wonder about how the military has become so entwined with professional sports; flyovers, TV ads, half-time honors, etc. I wonder why Congress can pass military appropriations (now approaching $1 trillion per annum) in a bi-partisan manner with virtually no questions asked, yet can’t pass the Farm Bill to assure that hungry people get fed and that our nation’s food supply remains safe. I wonder if military service defines the veteran - hats, tee shirts, etc. - decades after their service has ended. By the way, when you see a veteran wearing the gear, be warned about offering TYFYS - Thank You For Your Service. According to Isaac:

90 percent of civilians polled reported saying TYFYS, despite nearly half of the military participants reporting discomfort at being thanked….When TYFYS becomes little more than obligatory public ritual, veterans are forced to wonder whether it is “thank you” or “service” that has become meaningless….At its best TYFYS affirms and laments that we live in a world where the few suffer so that the many can prosper.

Isaac helped to open my eyes to the life of veterans and their experience of injustice from society. He voices significant concern for the suicide rate among those who have served in the military. One active soldier and seventeen veterans die of suicide every day! He writes, “What if military suicide is not so much about the internal mental health of soldiers and veterans as the human dignity they are denied by civilian society? What if the responsibility to change or improve isn’t on military families, what if soldiers and veterans aren’t the ones who are entitled?…There is a gaping hole in theology and culture that my battle buddies are falling through. Eighteen lives a day is eighteen too many. This book is about ripping open packs of gauze ad shoving them into the sucking chest wound that is military suicide….I think military suicide has a lot to do with the human dignity that soldiers and veterans are denied, with how they get put in boxes, or an top to them, to serve the interests of others while their own interests continue to be ignored.”

Isaac tells his story of being the victim of bias, harassment, and discrimination while enrolled as a divinity student at Duke Divinity School. This surprised me…and then, perhaps indicted me! He notes, “It was common for student veterans to hear from classmates, a decade younger than them, that military service was evil or to get side-eyed when they mentioned their service.” Personally indicted? Consider this quote, indicative of Isaac’s writing style, “Vietnam veterans were attacked as the Villain. Never mind that the vast majority were drafted against their will, fuck those baby-killers! A little collective guilt over time, some overcorrection, and now we pity them as Victim. Never mind that our wars never end. Cheap gas forever!”

The tension: Are those who serve in the military heroes or monsters. Isaac addresses the question head-on. “Few soldiers ever kill, and most military service is morally neutral…Many Americans think that the military is little more than a hammer looking for nails to pound…Soldiers are humans, not hammers, and we should be treated that way. So long as soldiers are viewed in binary terms, as either heroes or monsters, we will never be seen as fully human. When people are deprived of their humanity, that’s when things go bad and when bad becomes routine.”

I have often preached and written that life is grey and therefore, theological interpretation and application has to be grey. I appreciate Isaac opening my eyes to how this applies to the military. With this corrective in mind, I must nevertheless wonder why it seems that so many violent acts are committed by those who have served in the military (note the violence of January 1, identified at the beginning of this post). Why is suicide disproportionally high among veterans? Isaac offers a sobering explanation, “I had been trained on the mechanics of killing, how to do it, but nobody had ever prompted me to consider its morality and effects, why and when such violence might be justified. The Question of Killing should be about why and when, not only about how. Unfortunately, it was treated as one-dimensional, a simple formula for mission success: kill more of theirs they they kill of ours.”

Based on Isaac’s testimony and admitting my ignorance, I can’t help but ask the obvious question. If we program soldiers to kill, how do we deprogram them to rejoin society after their service? Is it even possible to erase the experiences of war once they have been imprinted on the mind and soul?… Why do some (the majority?) soldiers reenter society healthy and others (a disproportionate share of society) resort to suicide or violence? The moral question is, are we investing a sufficient amount of resources in healing the experiences of war as compared to the investment of resources and training to carry out war?…

God is Grunt? Are you curious about the title of the book? It was one of the things that drew me to this book. Isaac notes, “Grunts are also closest to the front lines in conventional warfare, and thus they are the ones who do most of the killing and the dying in battle….It’s good news that Jesus didn’t come to give orders, but to empty himself, taking the form of a grunt, obedient to the point of death. If this is the model of Christian leadership, then it is especially good news for military families, which have been at the center of Christian faith for thousands of years. If that’s news to anyone, I hope this book helps set the record straight.”

While I was seeking some wisdom in dealing with my “tension” about the military, I discovered that Logan Isaac, as both theologian/person of faith and military veteran, has his own tension to deal with. This is his conclusion, “What do I believe about Christians doing violence? What do I do with the regret I feel, or that (I think) my loved one feels? We are left with simplistic questions because churches and communities are not doing a sufficient job of educating their members. The questions in our minds are vague and amorphous because the intermediate questions (who does the killing, why, when, under what authority and what system of accountability?) aren’t even being examined….Because those are the stakes, aren’t they? Either our so-called enemies have a bullet in their heads or our ‘war-torn’ loved ones have a garden hose around their necks, right? Sometimes I wish it were that black-and-white, that there was a road map I could hand out to the battle buddies and their families and say, ‘This is how you navigate the road from military discharge to natural death.’ The truth is that there isn’t one answer that works for everyone. Not that morality is relative, but time and reality are.”

God Is A Grunt opened my eyes to the complexity of military service, another example for me to appreciate that life is grey. I continue to be a pacifist. I despise war and all of the collateral carnage of war (e.g., suicides and violence perpetrated by veterans). I remain convinced that a nation that invests more in its military-industrial complex than its social service net will witness suffering of the poor and marginalized, and is programmed for doom. The irony is that preaching and teaching against war is not unpatriotic. I believe it is the most patriotic thing we can do!

Fred Walkley was a senior “saint” in my former congregation. In his retirement years, he devoted his time to serving the poor. Whenever a call came into the church from somebody needing food, gas, diapers, medicine, rent assistance, or an auto repair, Fred would handle the call. Fred loved to deliver turkey dinners to the poor at Thanksgiving. He was the epitome of Christian service and compassion. But Fred was haunted by demons, the demons of service in World War II. About every six months, Fred would enter my study, shut the door, and make confession for the acts of violence he committed in the Army. I offered him consolation and absolution in the name of Jesus the Savior. My efforts were unsatisfactory. Fred continued to carry the weight of guilt around his neck, decades after the acts were committed. It broke my heart to see such a good man suffer with such deep spiritual anxiety. Fred was the living collateral carnage of war! (Some years later, at a worship service on Maundy Thursday, Fred finally received and accepted the grace and forgiveness of Christ in the act of footwashing. This was a few months before he died in an auto accident!)

We have all heard the saying attributed to St. Augustine, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” God Is A Grunt helped me to massage that old axiom. Perhaps my tension is resolved in an effort to, “Love the soldier, hate the war!” I suppose that would explain my relationship with Fred. I loved Fred. I hated what the war did to him!