Many years ago, a husband and wife came to me for marital counseling. Before you consider doing that, I should tell you it’s not my strong suit. Should you need a marital counselor, we have one right down the hall. She’s there every Monday and Tuesday and I advise you to talk with her. She’s also not likely to mention you in a sermon illustration. The thing about counseling is that you patiently help others have their own insights and arrive at their own healthy solutions, in a nonjudgmental way, without getting in a hurry and telling them what to do. This is where I fail, because I tend to say things like, “You’ve got to be kidding.” and “Why in the world did you do that?” and “What were you thinking?” These questions are not conducive to healthy self-discovery.
So this couple in our town came to me for help. I’d known them a long time and knew they fought constantly. I realized after meeting with them, the reason they fought so much was because they weren’t very bright, and not being bright, lacked the emotional bandwidth to navigate the relationships in their lives. They were unable to compromise, unable to communicate, unable to cooperate, unable to find a happy middle ground, unable to imagine alternative responses. Their first impulse, when faced with a challenge, was to yell and threaten and attack.
Growing up Catholic, I had been taught divorce was a sin, so I didn’t recommend it. Though I don’t believe that now, I don’t think it would have made a difference. I think they each would have been an unsuitable spouse no matter who they married, given their lack of emotional intelligence. We hear that phrase a lot these days. It is “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.”
The last time I spoke, I spoke about the trauma of war, both visible and invisible. I said war causes some to lose their lives and others to lose their spirits, and how the casualties of war include not only the soldiers but those who love them, and the communities in which they live.
Today, I want us to consider how entire nations can lack emotional intelligence, lack the capacity to be aware of, control, and express their emotions, and manage their global relationships judiciously and empathetically. It is increasingly clear we live in such a nation. The United States has been in some type of military conflicts for 235 of its 250 years of existence; over 90% of our history. This includes declared wars, undeclared wars, foreign interventions, and frontier conflicts. Only15 years of U.S. history have been free of active conflict. The Global Peace Index ranks the United States 128th out of 163 nations. If the United States were a person, we’d be in jail.
I was never taught this in school. I was told we were a land of justice, peace, and opportunity, a city on a hill, a moral model for the rest of the world to follow. This led me to believe we were always on the right side of history, that our wars were noble and virtuous, imbued with morality, wars waged never for our own sake, never for our own prestige or economic power, but for the sake of others. The stories of our wars were the myths of our moral greatness. Compelling, even seductive.
I now realize our constant conflicts are evidence of our moral failures, failures of imagination and creativity, a failure of our emotional intelligence. Our wars were, and are, a consequence of our inability and unwillingness to compromise, communicate, and cooperate. Our first impulse is to strike, to battle, to yell, threaten, and attack, much like that married couple who sought my help. Hence, our enduring fascination with war. It is the only language we know. The Church, rather than challenging our warring impulse, has too often encouraged it, conferring the blessings of God upon the violence and aggression it should rightly condemn.
We should say with one voice that war is not only a moral and spiritual failure, but also a failure of imagination, intelligence, and creativity, initiated by the unprincipled and fanatical who bear nothing of its cost. Instead, the exorbitant cost of war is borne by the poor and powerless of our nation.
The children and grandchildren of warmakers are seldom found on the fields of war, and so warmakers feel no impetus to avoid war, feel no incentive to solve our problems peacefully and productively. But there is something far more nefarious at work, and that is the placing of warmaking powers in the hands of a single political leader who, by virtue of his chosen profession, often has an unhealthy relationship with power. He hungers for power, and having attained it, is determined to exercise it, often recklessly and at our expense, to satisfy his bloated ego. War becomes the stage on which his legacy is measured, so rather than avoiding war, he welcomes it.
Isn’t it interesting what we demand from our leaders? We want them to be good in business, photogenic, a champion of common Americans, patriotic, aggressive. We want them to tell it like it is. And then we want them to be White and male. Can’t forget that. We must have a man in charge, which is a whole other cultural sickness. What we seldom ask of that leader is even a slight degree of emotional intelligence, the ability to thoughtfully control and express one’s emotions, and to manage interpersonal and global relationships judiciously and empathetically. This explains why 235 out of our 250 years of existence, we have waged war. If Jerry Springer is the world, America is the belligerent abuser. Far too often, at critical moments in our history, we have elected belligerent abusers to lead us, who have led us always to war and never to peace.
War is our national drug of choice; the addiction we seem unable and unwilling to break. In its grip, we become the very thing we claim to deplore.