😇 Epiphany 1 (and my essay on being a combative noncombatant)

Readings: 📜Jeremiah 31:7-14; 🎶Psalm 147:12-20; 📜Ephesians 1:3-14; 📜John 1:1-18. For full access, go to PewPewHQ.com/tfw/a-e01

On Being a Combative Noncombatant

Why Silence Isn't Neutral When Your Friends Are Getting Erased

I hear it enough that I should probably address it: "Logan, you're always starting fights."

Usually from well-meaning friends who wish I'd focus on the positive. Build the thing instead of critiquing what's broken. Let it go. Move on.

Here's the thing: I’ve never started a fight in my life. I just refuse to be a bystander to them.

The Combative Noncombatant

I applied to leave the artillery, one of a few combatant specialties in the military, before my unit deployed to what as supposed to be my second deployment to Iraq. Wanted to transfer to Civil Affairs—work with people instead of ‘working’ them from a distance. The request got denied, and I ended up discharged instead.

I'm a noncombatant by conviction, even if the Army refused to retrain me to another military occupational specialty (MOS). I don't believe violence solves the problems we're told it solves. I don't believe the sword brings peace, and I don't believe Christian faith baptizes imperializing wars.

But I'm also combative as hell. Because nonviolence isn't pacifism, and I’ve learned from experience that what’s packaged as “pacifism” employs it’s own kind of violence.

Satyagraha, Gandhi's concept, often translated as "nonviolence" but more accurately "truth-force," doesn't mean being nice. It means holding to truth even when that truth creates conflict, and refusing to back down just because powerful people find it inconvenient.

It means owning your privilege and using it to speak up rather than playing bystander while injustice strolls through your neighborhood.

Why Silence Isn't Neutral

Progressive Christians built entire platforms on "faith and peacemaking" while systematically excluding veteran theological voices. They want to talk about us, to minister to us, to help us process our trauma—but they don't want to hear from us when our theology challenges their frameworks.

When I say "Shane Claiborne built a brand on anti-war witness without centering actual veteran voices," I'm not being petty. I'm naming a structural problem. When I point out that Brian Zahnd's peace theology treats military service as something to transcend rather than a valid location for encountering Christ, I'm refusing to let that erasure go unchallenged.

Silence in the face of that exclusion isn't neutral—it's complicity.

What They Refuse

I've tried the nice route. Sent thoughtful emails. Offered to contribute essays. Extended invitations to dialogue.

You know what I got back? Silence. Or polite dismissal. "Thank you for your perspective, but we're already addressing these issues." Translation: We already have our token veterans. We don't need your complicated theology messing up our clean narrative.

They want veterans grateful for being included at all. They want us to perform either shame (for progressive audiences) or triumphalism (for conservative ones). What they don't want is veterans doing theology on our own terms, challenging the civilian frameworks that treat us as ritual objects rather than conversation partners.

So when people tell me to "let it go," what I hear is: "Stop making powerful people uncomfortable. Accept your exclusion gracefully."

I won't. Because the friends being erased deserve better.

What Satyagraha Actually Demands

Gandhi was relentless. He forced the British Empire into conversations they desperately wanted to avoid. He made powerful people reckon with truths they'd rather ignore. And he did it without throwing a punch—but also without shutting up when people told him he was being divisive.

That's what I'm doing here. Refusing to be silent when gatekeepers marginalize the voices that should be central.

When public theologians claim to care about peace and justice while systematically excluding the people most affected by war, that's not just bad theology—it's extraction. They mine our experience for content while keeping us out of the conversation that shapes how that experience gets interpreted.

And when I call that out? I'm not the problem. The gatekeeping is the problem. I'm just refusing to pretend it isn't happening.

What We're Building Instead

Grunt Works exists because we need something better than civilian Christianity's charity model. We're building spiritual community that doesn't require temples or hierarchies. Theology that trusts veterans as thinkers, not just subjects for other people's thinking.

This is the constructive alternative. The work I want to spend most of my energy on.

But I can't build it in silence while the extraction continues. When I publicly critique gatekeepers, I'm not just venting. I'm giving people permission to trust what they already sense: that something is deeply wrong with how civilian Christianity treats military experience.

The Invitation

So yes, I'm combative. And no, I won't stop.

Not because I love conflict. But because silence isn't neutral when your friends are getting erased.

You can disagree with my tactics. You can think I'm too harsh, too willing to burn bridges. That's fine—I'm open to better methods.

But you can't ask me to be silent. You can't ask me to watch gatekeepers extract veteran experience while excluding veteran theology and just... let it go.

Because letting it go means letting them win. And the people being harmed deserve at least one person unwilling to be a bystander.

If that makes me combative? Good. Some things are worth fighting for—even if you've sworn off violence.

This is part of a series explaining how Grunt Works is building the alternative that lets us stop fighting for scraps at tables that were never built for us. Read more at Why Grunt Works Exists, Field Scripture, and Peace Work.