Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we're talking about president Trump making changes, and we're asking the question, who trains the warriors' soul? This is prompted by an op ed piece I read in the Wall Street Journal this week by Doug Fillippone, an Iraq war veteran, who is defending a Trump administration ruling that military academies cannot teach critical race or critical gender theory.

Now this is an issue not just because they passed that regulation, but because recently, a West Point philosophy professor, Graham Parsons, resigned in protest. Basically saying, if I can't teach critical race or critical gender theories, then I can't really do the education these cadets need, and therefore, I quit. Filippo's point is that Parsons is wrong and that Trump is right. This has nothing to do with training soldiers. He argues instead that moral clarity and military readiness are more important than academic expression at least in military academies.

That West Point or the naval academy or the air force academy exist to train soldiers. They don't they don't exist to elicit academic curiosity or to foment intellectual pursuits. They are teaching, educating, training for a particular goal in mind, preparing, in the words of Filippone, again, a combat veteran for life or death decisions and also building towards unit solidarity. And his concern is that not only are these critical theories at risk of separating one soldier from another, but, also, they are taking soldiers' eyes off the ball. In fact, his op ed piece is titled, there are no race theorists in foxholes.

That's because, his point, they don't belong there. And I think he's right. In fact, I think from a biblical perspective, he's hitting on some major themes, whether he realizes it or not, that are worth repeating. And here's the first one. Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, a fascinating guy, introduced a long time ago a concept he called spheres of sovereignty.

And what he said is that God has ordained different institutions to have control over different things. The government is responsible for some things, business for other things, the family for other things. His his point was that, the world works best when everyone stays in their lane. And when they transcend that lane, things break down. This is what Jesus meant, by the way, in Matthew 22 when he said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's.

There there's a distinction here that matters. And the reason why I say that is because character formation, moral instruction, moral clarity is not the work of the federal government. When that happens, what happens is a few individuals are exercising their morality in and through the government on other people. Morality, they get from who knows where. The truth is that God has built the world so that moral instruction comes from the word of God through the family and through the church.

That society should be shaped by those moral formation institutions, not by military academies that had decided they need to impose their view on what's really going on under the surface philosophically upon cadets. That's an example. Professor Parsons and previous presidential administrations getting out of their lane. Moral instruction is not the job of the government. And when that happens, by the way, the things the government is supposed to be doing don't get done.

That's Philippon's point that that instruction and training soldiers requires moral clarity, not confusion. Soldiers need to be laser focused on the work that is in front of them. This is the same kind of focus Isaiah five is calling us to when it warns against calling evil good and good evil. Overcomplicating, overconfusing, nuanceing, clear patterns of justice only complicate the life of a soldier. Love of country, love of their unit, the willingness and toughness to accomplish missions.

This is what military academies need to be teaching. They also need to be fomenting unity. Listen. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 12. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

Look. This is bigger than just West Point. Our country has to begin to shift the conversation onto areas of agreement more than areas of disagreement. I I don't mean we can't argue. I don't mean we can't debate.

But two soldiers at West Point training themselves to defend their country to protect freedom have far more in common than they do indifference. So why are professors leaning into that? That's because there are educators out there who see education as worldview indoctrination. Well, not anymore at military academies, and I hope not anymore anywhere else. Warriors are warriors.

Moral instructors are moral instructors. When we confuse those two, our society suffers. Hey. Thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it.

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