Are We Really Honouring the ANZACs?

I have a lot of mixed feelings on ANZAC day. I believe honouring the soldiers who laid down their lives for our country is a noble thing. They fought for our country and they fought for their mates. Some of the best young men our society ever produced never came home. Many who did were broken. 

Yet they died for a different country, a country that no longer exists.  In fact, they died for a country that many of our current leaders would tell us we should be ashamed of. They died for a country that was unashamedly Christian, many had Bibles in their kits, they died for a country that was almost completely united in origin and history. And they died for a country that would be horrified by the country we are today. We have a Prime Minister that has said people who would like to return to the country we came from are people of concern. He has himself expressed his desire to change the culture our ANZACs believed in. A largely Christian society. 

Part of the reason we are in this situation is because in two world wars and more, our men died fighting for a globalist system, often without realizing it. They were told they were signing up for our country, and then they were used by leaders who have no loyalty to our heritage or traditions, but to international causes. One of the reasons so many of our veterans struggle is because they come to realize this. 

Australians are conditioned to believe that this is our role in the world. That we should fight for foreign causes, in foreign lands, for the policies of foreign nations. We are ruled by leaders who cynically use days of remembrance to condition us to think this way. The vast majority of Australian casualties of war, men in the prime of their lives, died fighting people who never had any intention or ability to invade our country. Then we are reminded every year that this is how Australia's military adventures are begun. This does something to the psyche of a nation. 

Have you ever wondered why our country is so dedicated to following foreign trends and countries, and almost never forges its own path? It is in large part because we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as a small part of the efforts of larger powers. Larger powers who did not think twice about sending our best young men into an unwinnable battle, while their commanders drank tea, and thought of our men as markers on a map. That happened at Gallipoli, that is how the kind of elites who rule our nations think of the men who serve. Think about that. 

They think about you like that. It’s why they have no care that Aussies are becoming more homeless because of their policies. All they see is markers in a map, stats on a graph. 

But those soldiers were more than markers on a map. They were the backbone of our society.

Some will confuse this for an attack on our soldiers it is not. It is a critique about how cynically our greatest traditions, and our most remembered historical events, are used to create a compliant population. Or at least one that does not question things like why are we sending our best everywhere, when they are needed here? Why does Australia always serve foreign interests? Why is the foreigner being given our nation, when it was defended by our best men?

I have been meditating on this for some time. But my devotion today compelled me to write about this. 

The Bible is not about what happened. It is about what always happens. It is about what happens when a nation abandons God or when a people trusts in God. 

Look at this passage, 

"5 O house of Jacob, come and let us walk

In the light of the Lord.

6 For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob,

Because they are filled with eastern ways;

They are soothsayers like the Philistines,

And they are pleased with the children of foreigners.

7 Their land is also full of silver and gold,

And there is no end to their treasures;

Their land is also full of horses,

And there is no end to their chariots.

8 Their land is also full of idols;

They worship the work of their own hands,

That which their own fingers have made.

9 People bow down,

And each man humbles himself;

Therefore do not forgive them." (Isa. 2:6-9)

It is not soldiers and weapons that ultimately keeps us safe. It is the favour of God. Jacob (Israel) had become proud in their abilities and capabilities, their weapons, and their own selves. Read this passage, does it not describe our culture? Does is not describe a society that has been trained to look at their own efforts, and not the God who grants peace or allows war?

If our traditions do not point us to honour the kind of country Australia actually was, then how are we honouring the ANZACs? How are we honouring their legacy if we just ritualize the day, but fail to recognize what our country has turned into: one the ANZACs would have seen as the antithesis of their beliefs. One that does not centre itself around the very God that many of them prayed to in the heat of battle.

So, for me, ANZAC day is a really mixed day. I have marched as a participant in ANZAC parades as a youth and I have participated as a soldier. The legacy of our soldiers deserves better than what we have done as a nation.