When I joined the United States Navy during the Vietnam War years, I faced two questions when thinking about pursuing a career in a military service. The first question was, How could I, a Christian Scientist, be in the military when the Bible says unequivocally, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), and “Thou shalt love … thy neighbour as thyself” (Luke 10:27)? 

The second question I faced was, How can a Christian Scientist in the military act to be a positive influence in the course of wars or other violent events in which he or she may become entangled?

The first question was quickly answered. I realized that no one I had encountered in the Navy had ever asked me to hate anyone or anything. Therefore, although I could never love brutal or hostile acts, I could always love and recognize the spiritual man of God’s creating. I also realized that my sense of why our nation maintains a military needed uplifting, and I had a role to play in that. 

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I came to understand that a military, any military, doesn’t need to be a force for attacking, occupying, enslaving, or killing. Rather, the higher sense of purpose for a military force is for defense and deterrence. In fact, the Bible is full of instances of legitimate, God-inspired defense, in both physical and spiritual terms. David fought the aggressor Goliath (see I Samuel 17); Nehemiah deterred the efforts of Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem to trick and discourage him from his work in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem (see Nehemiah 2—6); and Jesus rejected and dismissed the evil temptations of the devil (see Matthew 4). Mary Baker Eddy urges us to defend ourselves mentally every day in her Church Manual directive titled “Alertness to Duty” (see p. 42). 

With this elevated view of the higher purpose of our military to defend the rights, the homes, and the families of all humanity, I rapidly became more and more comfortable serving in the US Navy and even decided to make it a career. Throughout my 25-year career, I was asked to thwart and defend against many threats, but I was never asked to attack, to kill, or to launch weapons.

The answer to the second question of how a Christian Scientist can bring a healing effect to the wars or conflicts into which he might be ordered took longer. In 1983, growing unrest and violence in Lebanon caused the Navy to move the ship on which I was serving to the coast of Beirut. This ship had a unique set of weapons that could cause heavy damage and suffering to adversary installations ashore. Hence, once on station, it cast an enormous shadow over the city and its environs.

About a month after we’d arrived off Beirut, a suicide bomber attacked the US Marine Corps barracks near the Beirut Airport. Two hundred and forty-one American servicemen were killed. 

Many in our crew wanted badly to shoot back. I knew this approach might be satisfying and justifiable, and we all wanted to protect the Marines who were still ashore and taking more casualties every day from increased sniper and mortar fire. I must say here that my prayers were not sophisticated or lengthy, but just a simple reasoning that if God is “All-in-all,” as Mary Baker Eddy repeatedly wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, then there is no room for war in God’s kingdom. 

My sense of why our nation maintains a military needed uplifting, and I had a role to play in that.

As a result of these prayers, I realized that firing our weapons in this instance was not going to be a solution to the problem. It seemed to me from my Bible training that retaliation was just another word for hate, and Jesus said clearly to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). 

I also reasoned that when a military presence is on scene to deter attacks, the whole effect of this is undermined when you become embroiled in the very conflict you are trying to avoid. Then you are no longer a deterrent, you have become a participant and the situation can spiral out of control. This inspiration was very helpful.

I continued to pray for peace along the same lines, and the same message came to me over and over again: firing our weapons was not the right answer in this case. But because the Marines were coming under nightly mortar and small arms fire, we were ordered to move in and be prepared to shoot in their defense. As a member of the ship’s crew, I was prepared to do my job fully in support of this mission. 

Interestingly enough, though, every night that we came in close to shore in order to shoot, there was some reason that we couldn’t. As I recall, sometimes we couldn’t get “on station” soon enough; sometimes we couldn’t be sure of our target. I continued to pray nightly for a peaceful resolution. Night after night we moved in to shoot, and night after night we retired back out to sea without firing.

Then suddenly, in the middle of December, I was transferred from the ship to fill a position on another ship located in Long Beach, California. The night after I left, the ship shot eleven rounds at targets in Lebanon. Two months later, she fired 600 rounds. These firings did not deter the continuation of the conflict at all, and as the situation spiraled, American forces were withdrawn from the area altogether.

I have often thought about this situation. My prayers told me all along that peace, not conflict, was the standard. As Jesus said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). In essence, I was consistently aligning myself with this holy standard, and the result was that for the time I was on station off Beirut, our ship was not drawn into a firing role, but continued to serve as a symbol of deterrence.

I should add that similar prayerful approaches protected me and my men in several other difficult situations during my career in the Navy, including during a tense tour of duty as captain of a guided-missile frigate in the Northern Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Shield.

Among the lessons I have drawn from these experiences has been a better understanding of the ability of prayer to calm conflict, however large and imposing it may seem to be, and that one man’s prayers are effective in guiding thought and in insulating ourselves and others from the violence that seems to be present right in front of us.