War Never Changes
Photo by Vincuk Konan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-a-superhero-costume-in-a-destroyed-building-10547096/
The world of the videogame series Fallout is radiation-blasted and unforgiving. It’s a rough-and-tumble ride in which the player character is constantly in danger from post-nuclear apocalypse dangers like mutated creatures, bandits, and radiation poisoning.
In this shattered environment set hundreds of years after a futuristic war-ending nuclear holocaust, your character finds him or herself working with various factions trying to make their mark on the surrounding wasteland and its barely surviving denizens. You must defend your character against enemies and make allies to progress the story.
One of the taglines of this videogame series that has always stuck out so poignantly to me is a single phrase often spoken, with a world-weary tone, in the intro and epilogue of each game: “War…war never changes.”
Unfortunately, nuclear apocalypse or not, the phrase rings true today.
Ever will there be conflicts between opposing nations, ideologies, and people groups.
Ever will there be alliances that seek to destroy a common enemy.
Ever will right and wrong be ideas so hotly fought over that many people lose their lives.
Conflicting moral, cultural, and religious views put aside for the moment, the result of imperfect humans’ forcible exertions of will is generally the same throughout history: violence, death, destruction, grief, and overall chaos. A never-ending cycle, it often seems, with the only real difference being how sophisticated or technologically advanced the warmongering is.
And that’s not even including the socio-cultural civil wars many nations are experiencing, or the individual wars people are fighting within their own minds as they seek, often to the point of exhaustion, a fulfilling life.
As a Christian, I see things through a lens of hope, peacemaking, redemption, and God-defined love and grace. But much of the world doesn’t have my perspective. That’s a sobering fact for me to accept. Accept it I must, though, or I won’t be able to understand or lovingly serve people who’ve been through the wringer and have little reason to believe as I do.
However, no matter what news, facts, opinions, or beliefs people follow or claim, the one thing most will admit to is, “This is all a mess!”, as they gesture vaguely at the world.
War never changes, whether it’s a battle between nations or divorcing spouses. It’s a super-tornado that leaves unimaginable wreckage in its wake. Those who remain, no matter their belief systems or affiliation, are left to pick up the broken pieces and fashion a story about what happened—usually one in which they’re not the bad guys.
In this world, as in the Fallout videogames, this much continues to be true:
Leaders conspire.
Conspiracies and coverups swirl.
People with seared consciences do wicked work.
Monsters (human and non-human) attack, looking for their next “meal.”
People succumb to the unhealthy vices of their flesh.
It’s said that fictional stories can help us learn to cope with the real world around us. I tend to agree, to an extent, which is one reason I’ve enjoyed playing the Fallout games. Dramatic examples, even fictional ones, “shake us out of our apathy,” to borrow Bruce Wayne’s words from Batman Begins. However, it’s up to us to actually make decisions that can change the world around us.
War never changes.
But we can.
We can choose to care in the midst of a world of people who look the other way.
We can choose to be kind and show compassion, even (especially) when we personally gain nothing from it.
We can choose to be sympathetic and empathetic, even if it means sacrificing our own pride or perspective for a moment.
“Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all,” as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, once said.
Call me naïve if you want. But I’d rather hope and pray for peace and help redeem the world than lose myself in despair, bitterness, and cynicism.
War never changes, but I can play a role in making a way for peace. And so can you.