I have a nephew who seems to only play war and army to the exclusion of most other play activities.  He has grown up with some difficulties and is still facing them.  His father, my brother-in-law, is an Army veteran with a purple heart lets his son watch all kinds of movies and talks about his experiences of war all the time.  I respect and understand the concept of “a time to kill;” I really do.  I value the difficulty that our military had and continues to go through for freedom.  I’m thankful for what they have done for my family and me.  When the recent wars started I really wrestled with how I would talk to my children about the concept of war, fighting and killing people.  I was torn between being patriotic and the value for human life.  Being a Christian, I see humanity as being created in God’s image.  I also know that I grew up fighting.  Sometimes I’d fight two or three times a week until one fight in high school that I went to watch.  One was an old friend of mine that I no longer talked to and a new friend that were fighting.  I remember standing there as blood splattered everywhere.  I thought, “I do this to people” and wondered what it ultimately proved.  I stopped fighting from that day forward.  If somebody was trying to hurt my family I’d have to do whatever it took to make that person stop.  The thing I was thinking a lot about what how do I teach these things to my children and still feel comfortable telling my kids to not rely on fighting to get their points across?  Might doesn’t always make right but sometimes it’s required.  Is it possible to make sense of this without being hypocritical?  I pro life.  I look around today and see that people kill their unborn babies and often hide behind “woman’s choice” or “it’s a woman’s body” arguments.  Many people do this and then fight and fight for endangered animals.  I will keep teaching my children to see the worth of human life.  I teach my children the value of animals too but see animals as creatures made to help us-sometimes they help us in many ways yet I don’t think we are to kill them just to kill them or torture them “for fun.”  Sometimes we need to kill them to eat them.  Sometimes we need to kill them to protect the family from them, etc.  I’ve been teaching my children this and trying to teach them to be courageous to kill when it’s time to kill but not just to kill for killings sake.  If we need to protect those in our charge then I think it would be ok.  I think I’ll keep working on this but I think that if I tell them that we ought to live in a peaceful state as much as possible yet, at times, it is appropriate to do what is needed to be done then so be it.  I do not teach them to kill just to kill because that would be like just being a destroyer.  Instead, I teach them to be a protector and provider.  I still need to think on this I think…(I say that a lot I’m learning)  

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