No matter which side we take in a war, when the conflict is over most of us try to learn lessons from it. For some, the lessons may be about how to win, but for most of us the lessons come from deeper questions: What was it that brought us through those tough times? What enables us to keep going forward?

Benjamin Woodworth, a United States Navy pilot during the Vietnam conflict, has some lessons he can share. He saw two tours of duty in Southeast Asia. Since his retirement from the service, he has worked in an inner-city job-training program in Memphis, Tennessee, and is now security director of a bank. He also teaches Sunday School and works with military personnel as a Christian Science Minister for Armed Services Personnel. Here he talks with Michael D. Rissler, Associate Editor of the Sentinel.

It's interesting to read about soldiers who have reunions— United States service people who have gone back to Vietnam or World War II veterans who have had contact with Japanese military personnel. They seem to be drawn together by having shared something in the past.

Although war brings with it all the worst of human traits, the situation can bring out the best in people, too. In war the people that you face in combat are not personal enemies. For me, I had duties to carry out, but I didn't believe that one should have personal hatred for others. I saw that even in battles when prisoners were taken, one didn't have to succumb to hatred. And I saw this on both sides. Often, once a person was taken prisoner, help would be offered—water, food, or assistance when he was wounded.

There were, of course, instances when this wasn't the case. There were gross atrocities. But the majority of the time, people had compassion for other people on both sides of the fence.

For me the evil of war is evidence of the grossest elements of what the Bible calls the "carnal mind," but I saw that this wasn't the picture I had to accept of others. After all, even from the perspective of everyday life, the people on both sides in war have families, jobs that they want to return to, hopes for the future.

Ben, what would go through your mind on combat missions? I think for most people it's almost impossible to imagine what such missions would actually involve.

Well, there's a lot of things that go through your mind. There's certainly a degree of fear. When you see that some of your friends don't come back, these things can build up in your thought. As you take off on missions, each person has his own sense of religion and how it impacts on his feelings and his actions when he gets in an environment like that. I honestly feel that no one ever comes through an experience like that as an atheist. He has some idea, a strong inner feeling, whether it's expressed or not, about a higher sense of control and life.

It sounds as though the experience strips away the everyday feeling that one is alone and solely responsible for his life, independently of other people and of God.

That's right. It tends to eradicate a sense of pure luck. It's not just some fatalistic response or something like that. There definitely is a spiritual presence that leads you to make decisions and enables you to make decisions under pressure you've never known before.

You also develop a very different feeling for the people you're working with, a very deep and sincere respect. I found it shed a new light for me in really appreciating the young sailors working down in the engine spaces or on the catapults, and the ones that were doing the aircraft maintenance work.

Most people would understand that you'd pray for yourself in a combat situation, but do you pray for the people that you work with as well?

You do. As you work with people from all walks of life, you learn things about yourself and others that make a great deal of difference in your life. For instance, I grew up at a time when racial discrimination was very evident; it was a part of everyday life and it was obvious. I absorbed some of that in my own attitudes. I had stereotyped ideas about people, but as I went through this combat experience, those ideas were challenged. That's true of my whole naval career, you might say. As I worked with people, I began to realize how trivial these material beliefs actually were that divided people up and encouraged discrimination on the basis of a person's race or religion, or on the basis of any physical attribute.

Through Christian Science, I began to see man as spiritual and actually the image and likeness of God in the deepest and truest sense. I began to see more of what the real spiritual structure and nature of a person are.

Did this carry over to how you thought about the so-called enemy?

Yes, it did for me.

You were raised in a home where your parents were Christian Scientists, but you pulled away from Christian Science for a few years.

I did. It was when I was a teenager. There was a time when I was growing up when I thought that Christian Science specifically, but maybe church in general, was a detriment to enjoying life. But I learned that wasn't true at all.

What renewed your interest?

I'd been in the Navy for a few years, and even though I wasn't actively studying Christian Science, I realized in a number of tight situations I'd gotten myself into, that I felt myself drawn back to the spiritual truths I'd learned as a youngster. But it was more than simply a question of protection. I saw this was a way of life, a way of looking at others that reached deeply into my life. I felt that there was a better and higher way of handling things than I was currently practicing.

What kind of experiences made you come to this conclusion?

One experience has always stuck with me. One night we were flying off the ship and there were about eight planes in the air. Even under optimum conditions, landing on an aircraft carrier at night is difficult. This night, however, when the planes returned to the ship, we learned that there had been an accident on board. Weather conditions were not good and fuel was becoming critical. I really prayed. I worked to realize that all of us were governed and protected by God and that He was the real source of our provision in life. I thought about how, in the Old Testament, the children of Israel needed food and water and it came as they listened to God.

There was one partially loaded tanker airplane already in the air to refuel us, and another was sent up. What I saw happen was that everyone was able to take on fuel without any greed. All of us were working closely together. People were calm; they took what they needed and no more. Every plane was able to make it down safely.

I'm sure that some might say, "Well, that was really good planning, good flying, and some good fortune and good leadership." I don't dispute that. I think people were reflecting their best qualities. But I do feel that the prayerful work in acknowledging the presence of Christ, Truth, to meet every need was a pertinent factor in that situation.

There were other experiences as well. Some had to do with physical healings that I experienced.

What were they like?

One happened before I really got back into Christian Science "full time," you might say. But when I reflect back I realize that I relied on God and what I'd learned in Christian Science more than I ever thought I did. This night I was a flight instructor in a jet training squadron. I was in the back seat, and the student was in the front. We were rolling into the groove for a landing when the student up front said, "I've got smoke up here!" Then I got smoke and fire in my cockpit, too.

This was the first airplane in the Navy that had a low-altitude ejection system. They had never been used in an actual emergency before. The seats in these first versions were not timed to prevent hitting each other. I told the student to get out right then and he did, and I followed him. But my seat fired right through one of the main gores of his parachute as our parachutes automatically deployed. The drogue chutes were in a knot, and we came down tied together. Though we made it down all right, I was banged up a bit from going through the plane's canopy and from hitting the ground so hard. My left foot hit the canopy on the way out and my back was injured; the medics thought it might be broken.

At one o'clock in the morning, some three or four hours after the accident, I called my aunt, who is an active Christian Scientist. We were very close. I told her what happened and she prayed with me. The next day I was able to get up and walk, and later X-rays indicated my back was all right. Within two days I was back flying.

You're a Sunday School teacher now with high-school-age students. Do they ask you questions about your military experience?

Michael, they ask about everything! We have some very candid conversations. They face many challenges because of peer pressure, questions about alcohol and drugs, personal morality, and war. And in the Sunday School one of the things I try to do is to show how Christian Science is not just a one-hour-a-week religion. It's a practical way of life. It impacts everything we do; it doesn't make any difference what that may be.

Recently one of the youngsters was talking about how he felt a real sense of hatred for an enemy. We had to work quite a bit on this. For evil to be built up in such a way that it begins to control the way we think and feel is to accept evil as a power in one's own life. Christian Science is not a question of praying simply to get what one wants from a selfish standpoint, but rather it's the work of bringing good, prayerful thought to a situation. From my experience, I have learned that this prayer brings protection and healing to such a situation.

After you have gone through combat and returned home, you are with people who haven't gone through that experience. As much as others have loved and prayed for your welfare and safety, still it's not the same as having gone through the experience. Were there adjustments that you had to pray through or things that you had to deal with upon return?

Coming home from the experiences that I'd had, I saw that I did gain a better understanding of God's omnipresence and omnipotence. This understanding gave me a way of dealing with what the material senses present as the final word, so to speak, about destruction, discord, disease, and sin.

So much of what leads to war and combat is misunderstanding and fear. And the same is true whether we're having to deal with war or with problems facing inner-city youth or homelessness or AIDS or failures in education. The root of evil is fear and spiritual ignorance.

It's a feeling of being separated from God, from good, isn't it?

That's right. No matter where we find ourselves—even this morning I was thinking about this as I was driving to work— the real job we have is to reflect God to the best of our present ability. This perspective opens up vistas not otherwise seen.

At the end of a war there are not just adjustments for the person coming home; there are adjustments for the immediate family and for the community. There's healing that is needed in our society. We need to rejoice not only that combat is over but that we are better able to see the Godlike strengths that everybody is striving to demonstrate.

What much of this boils down to is a much deeper love— a spiritually based love that goes beyond the human emotion. Often in crisis situations in combat we had to learn to couple compassion, even deep human feelings of sadness over losses, with a turning to God that enabled us to do what needed to be done to protect and save life. Christian Science has given me a deeper understanding of life that isn't segmented—here today and gone tomorrow. This understanding allows us to be receptive to the Christ, and we do what we ordinarily wouldn't have been able to do.

What you're saying, it seems to me, is that whatever one's religious faith or denomination, spiritual lessons teach us to make a break with the material conviction that life is simply temporary. You come to a point where you see that life is from God, and that's where it will remain, and it can't be destroyed.

Yes. In combat or in any strenuous experience, this is what comes forward. I came to understand better and value the sanctity of life. This deepest sense of God and man we can bring home with us.