A conversation about war

(around a campfire with a friend)

Have you ever had a friend with whom you could discuss anything? And I do mean. Anything.

Such friends are surely rarer than hen’s teeth, as my Granny Talley might say. I could count such friends on one hand. Easily.

One recent and pleasantly chilly autumn’s eve, I gathered around a campfire deep in the Sunnybrook woods with such a friend. Please keep in mind that my friend and I greatly respect each other. Without that foundation, the following conversation might well have ultimately become more heated than our campfire at some point.

Indeed, I have no doubt that (because we humans can be so strongly prone to listening to our own inner emotions rather than pure logic - yep, all of us, including me) many people could never carry on a conversation such as the following and not get downright angry with one another.

Oh, and by the way, I asked my dear friend’s permission beforehand to make an audio recording of our following campfire conversation regarding the topic of war, largely so I would be far less prone to misquote either of us as I wrote this column. My friend asked me to keep his name anonymous, however, within this publication - a request which I shall stringently honor. True friends do strive to keep their word.

True friendship. I need to write about that again soon. If we all somehow only “learned to listen to each other” well enough, I think the great majority of humanity might eventually learn to see one another as friends - or at least not as mortal enemies.

Well, here we go:

Friend: “Ben, how can you be so against war? You’re always posting on Facebook about honoring our soldiers.”

Me: “It’s because I believe we can honor the service and courage of our soldiers (pause) and still be opposed to war as a solution to problems.”

Friend: “True. But if we didn’t have war, then sooner or later the bad guys would take over the world. Because they are not opposed to war.”

Me: (After a slight pause) “Do you believe that Jesus told the truth?”

Friend: (After an audible sigh) “Now what are you getting at?”

Me: “Do you believe Jesus told the truth when he said, ‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you’?”