Just War, Christianity, and The Call to Serve: The Ethics of Military Service (Darren Duke) Ep #211

Dru Johnson (00:00)
Should Christians join the military?

In this episode, I’m joined by Colonel Darren Duke, who is a retired former Marine Corps Special Operations Commander, along with lots of intelligence and embassy work and everything. He’s one of those guys that’s kind of been everywhere and done everything over 30 years in the Marines. ⁓ And we’re going to adjust this question. Should Christians join the military? Now, nothing we say is prescriptive. It’s all meant to be descriptive. Here’s things that we would ask people to consider.

as myself a veteran and him as well, a veteran of many wars since 9-11. ⁓ What would we say to people? How should they consider the call to join the military? And is it ever right to say nobody should ever join the military? And what situations that might be true? All right, this will be interesting. Trust me, stay tuned.

Darren Duke (00:49)
I spent 30 years in the Marine Corps as an ⁓ intelligence and special operations officer. ⁓ I spent the first half of my career prior to 9-11 ⁓ in the Far East and then in educational programs to prepare me for service in the Middle East. I was interested in Middle East security affairs and so right before 9-11 actually I had applied to ⁓ go into an educational program that allowed officers to learn languages and

studies in order to be of service to the Republic in that area. I did not foresee, obviously, 9-11 occurring, but it turned out to be a ⁓ real ⁓ crucial watershed moment for me in my career because 9-11 was shortly after that decision. And so I spent the remainder of my career.

15 or so years ⁓ in the Middle East and in the Horn of Africa and Central Africa conducting special operations and intelligence operations in support of the United States’ strategies in those regions.

Dru Johnson (01:51)
and what kind of unit were you in? And then you’ll have to explain what that unit does.

Darren Duke (01:54)
So I was sure.

once the war started, I was in ⁓ what was called an anti-terrorism unit. And what kind of unit is that? Well, that was a unit that had responsibility for performing security operations to prevent terrorist operations against ⁓ military units that we were assigned to protect. ⁓ And then ⁓ after a couple of years in that unit, because we were still figuring out in those early days of the war what role the Marine Corps would have in

what was known from the beginning as a counter-terrorism war. I mean, that was the war, it was the global war on terrorism. So what’s the role of a large conventional force? And every service was asking this question, right? The Navy, the Air Force. ⁓ What’s the role ⁓ of the conventional formation in addressing what is essentially a non-conventional threat? ⁓ But after a couple of years ⁓ in that unit, ⁓ I deployed to the Horn of Africa and spent a deployment in… ⁓

in Sudan and Djibouti and other places around the Horn of Africa, ⁓ working with our intelligence community to try to map out those threat networks against the homeland ⁓ and against ⁓ our policies ⁓ to promote stable government in the Horn of Africa. So that was that deployment. I came back from that deployment and then ⁓ it was time for me to leave what we call the fleet, the operational forces, and I was then assigned to…

the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, and I spent three years in Tel Aviv as the Marine Corps attache. My job there was to ⁓ observe what the Israeli Defense Forces and other military efforts in that region were doing ⁓ and to help inform U.S. policymakers about those actions so that policymakers in America could shape our policies to support counter-terrorism efforts. ⁓

to Israel two weeks before Gilad Shalit, if anybody remembers this, 2006, Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. There was a tank, Israeli tank, that was captured by Hamas. And Hamas had just taken over the Gaza Strip at this point. I was there for that collapse. And then a month later, we had the second Lebanon war when Israel and Hezbollah went at it for several weeks in the summer of 2006. Following that, I…

Dru Johnson (04:04)
Yeah.

Darren Duke (04:15)
worked on the roadmap to peace team for ⁓ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the remainder of my tour there. And then ⁓ during that time, it came to that stage of my career where I was supposed to go to command of a Marine unit. And that’s when I ⁓ joined the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. It was a new ⁓ unit. It was stood up as part of ⁓ originally Donald Rumsfeld’s effort to bring the Marine Corps into the Special Operations Formation. And so MARSOC was a

⁓ new organization, a new player on the special operations team, and I was one of the early members of that unit. I ⁓ commanded one of their operational battalions, what’s now the 3rd Marine Raider Battalion, and then ⁓ following that, I later served as ⁓ a ⁓ colonel commander, a brigade command in the Army parlance or regimental command in the Marine Corps parlance at MARSOC, the Marine Raider Support Group. And between those, ⁓

assignments. I did both staff tours in the intelligence community and then ⁓ commanded a special operation task force in Central Africa ⁓ for a counter guerrilla campaign against the Lord’s Resistance Army, which was a guerrilla force that was trying to destabilize Central Africa and predating upon the communities and ⁓ states of Central Africa.

Dru Johnson (05:25)
Mm.

Yeah, so that’s a lot. Over 30 years, you do a lot of things in the military, right? Or you could just be a plumber on a base for 30 years. Yeah, it is very important. Everybody is an important cog in a very big machine. ⁓ And the Marine Raiders, I think probably a lot of people don’t know those because they’re the lesser known, kind of like the Air Force combat controllers or PJs. So what are the Marine Raiders? I know you hate doing equivalents, but is it

Darren Duke (05:39)
Yeah.

which is very important. Indoor plumbing is a real blessing to mankind.

Dru Johnson (06:02)
Is it kind of like the Rangers of the Marines?

Darren Duke (06:05)
Yeah, that’s a great question. you don’t hear a lot about us because we like to think of ourselves as quiet professionals and ⁓ we don’t feel the need to write many books or make movies. ⁓ So our mission set inside

Dru Johnson (06:14)
Let the

listener understand he is throwing shade at the Navy SEALs.

Darren Duke (06:22)
So, you know, our mission set is, there’s a common mission set amongst all the special operations forces of the United States. There is counter-terrorism, foreign internal defense. There’s a certain level of each one of those capabilities in each of those formations. And each of the formations does kind of have a specialty. The Green Berets do unconventional warfare and go in and work with partners to improve their own capabilities and to help them if need be in an unconventional warfare situation.

⁓ The SEALs obviously are a maritime force. do ⁓ deep water, deep, or what we call blue water ⁓ special operations. ⁓ And then the Rangers obviously do, ⁓ originally their primary mission was airfield seizure, and then they’ve moved into direct action, a lot of direct action missions in the Department of Defense. The Marine Corps, like to think, or the Marine Raiders is a swing force. We have a direct action capability, and then we have ability to operate as a maritime force.

particularly in conjunction with ⁓ the Marine Corps’ amphibious capabilities and the Navy’s surface capabilities. But we also have the ability to ⁓ work to do direct action and foreign internal defense and those types of things on land. Today, I would tell you that the real focus is on strategic competition with other powers around the world, such as China and Russia and other large threats. And so the Marine Corps, just like any other special operations component, of…

special operations component is involved in those operations. We’re small, we’re the smallest of all of the service special operations components, but we punch above our weight class, I’d like to think, on a daily basis.

Dru Johnson (08:01)
⁓ And also it should be noted that you are somebody ⁓ who used all the opportunities of the military, I think, over your service. So you got to learn a lot of things and get a lot of education. And a lot of that was language. so did you learn Arabic first? Or what languages did you have to learn as a part of your job? Or did you get to learn?

Darren Duke (08:24)
Well, in school as a young man, was always interested in foreign languages. And so the first foreign language I learned with any capacity was French. But when I saw that the Middle East was going to be a continually unstable region, I began to be interested in Arabic very early on. And so when I joined this educational program I referred to earlier, one of the phases of that program is to go to the Defense Language Institute. And so I went to Defense Language Institute and studied Arabic there. And then when I’d

was assigned or deployed into the region, used that language in an operational capacity frequently. And so it was a real delight to actually be trained in something, learn something, devote your time and talents to it, and then see it pay off by being able to apply those skills and that education.

Dru Johnson (09:07)
Yeah, that is the common complaint of soldiers and Marines is you train and then you never get to do, right? So, where the training never matches the action. Okay, so the big question on the table, the big matzah ball as it were, is looking back on your career, children in the military as well, your son is a company commander in 82nd Airborne?

Darren Duke (09:29)
My son is a battery commander in the 82nd. Yeah, he’s an artilleryman.

Dru Johnson (09:31)
he’s a battery commander. yeah.

So ⁓ how do you think now? Maybe you can think about how you thought a long time ago as a young Christian about what military service meant, and then how do you think now? And this conversation is obviously not going to be ⁓ prescriptive telling people what to think or do, but to give some people some considerations from the end.

Darren Duke (09:54)
Dru that last point is extremely important. We’re not talking about a formula for how to arrive at any decision, but rather principles of how to think about it. And ⁓ in my case, you know, I’m a child of ⁓ the Cold War and I’m the grandson of World War II veterans. And so I grew up at the feet of ⁓ several great uncles and a grandfather who all served during the Second World War. ⁓

And I went to family reunions every year with them and I was from a very patriotic family in the American South and who were all very proud of what they had done to stem the flow of fascism in Germany and to fight the Japanese in the Pacific, Imperial Japan who had attacked us. And that was a large part of my upbringing as well as a very ⁓ patriotic upbringing. I think in 77 from Southern Arkansas, my grandparents took me on a trip to Washington, D.C.

And you can imagine being a seven or eight year old kid, you know, with the family history you have and then going in the 70s where long travel was exotic then, ⁓ to come to DC and the weight of just having had the American Bicentennial and celebrating our 200th anniversary as a republic and ⁓ all of the weight of that history being on a young man and certainly going to places like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or ⁓ visiting different battlefields that we came across.

Dru Johnson (10:58)
Right.

Darren Duke (11:17)
was very instrumental. had already wanted to be a soldier from a very young age and this just cemented it, coming and feeling the sense of the beauty of the capital at that time to a young boy and all that America was. So I was set at a very early age to serving the Republic as a soldier and that was not going to change. I think what was going to change was for my family as they were guiding me, you want to be an officer then, you need to study hard, you need to go to an academy.

or into an ROTC program and become an officer. ⁓ That’s what you need to do. Because all of my, I think because all of my great uncles and my grandfather, they’d all been enlisted and they knew what the enlisted service was like and they wanted a better life for me, just to be frank. I didn’t know any difference. I just did what they told me because I trusted them. So ⁓ my faith in Christ and my identity as a Christian and my identity as an American were unquestionably parallel, if not on the same track at that point in history. We have the…

Dru Johnson (11:53)
Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah.

Darren Duke (12:13)
We had the evil empire, Ronald Reagan was president and they were bad and we were still good and we were gonna defeat them or die doing it because freedom was on the line. And so when that’s your framework, it’s a simplistic, it’s the good guys versus the bad guys and I’m gonna join the good guys and I’m gonna fight. You you grow up and things get a little more complicated. While I was at the Naval Academy trying to become an officer, the Cold War comes to an end.

I remember being in class when I was in a Soviet politics class and my professor comes in and it was December 1990. He walks in he goes, I was a political scientist yesterday, I’m a political historian today. The Soviet Union has just fallen. And I remember all of us kind of going, well, what are we going to fight now? And as you know, that’s the question that we all ask for the next ⁓ decade or so, decade and a half until actually, know, Osama bin Laden found us and decided that’s who we’re going to fight next.

Dru Johnson (12:46)
Yeah.

Wow.

What’s the point of all of this?

Darren Duke (13:12)
⁓ But you know, even then, the war on terrorism at 9-11, that was pretty clear early on, what we were about. And so even then, know, our country had been attacked. It had been attacked by a radical Islamist group that wanted to destroy our way of life, and we deeply believe that, and so we went off thinking we were doing the right thing. ⁓ I think my first inkling that something was wrong is when I got to Iraq in 2004.

Dru Johnson (13:22)
Mm-hmm.

Darren Duke (13:41)
and I had already deployed to Africa the year before. ⁓ And I remember headed to Iraq, I’m a major, so I’m mid-career, and I’m going to be the senior intelligence analyst for Al Anbar for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and certainly for the 1st Marine Division, who is the primary ground combat element. And I thought we had a plan. When we got there, just like my great-uncles had served, there was a plan for occupation, and we were going to stabilize that.

that defeated area and we were going to set it back up for a responsible government that would not be a threat to us. And when I got to Iraq, I found out that it couldn’t be further from the truth. We were in a slugfest with jihadis coming from everywhere. We didn’t believe they were coming from everywhere. We refused to believe as a country, the intelligence community refused to believe that it was an internationalized jihadi framework. We wanted to believe that it was ⁓ regime holdouts, which certainly there were a lot of them.

Dru Johnson (14:20)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Darren Duke (14:38)
But we were fighting every day people we didn’t understand and we had no plan. And we were losing Marines left and right. And we would capture bomb makers, I remember, and put them in Abu Ghraib prison, which became obviously a disaster for us morally later because of the abuses that happened in Abu Ghraib. But the terrorists were holding bomb making classes in Abu Ghraib that were making them more lethal while they were inside and after they got out than they had been before. And so we were facing this

Dru Johnson (14:42)
Hmm.

Darren Duke (15:08)
growing resistance that we didn’t understand and frankly we refused to understand. And that’s when I realized we’re losing people to no effect. And where is this going to end? And of course we see now in hindsight, we had no plan and we didn’t know where it was going to end because the war we wanted was not the war we got. We never asked the question about

the enemy’s will to fight. Let me back up for a second. The definition of war is the violent clash between two irreconcilable wills. That’s a classic definition of warfare. And so you ask yourself about your enemy whether you can defeat their capabilities or defeat their intentions. And we never asked the question whether we could actually defeat our enemy’s will to fight. Could we ever really break their will to fight? You know, if you recall William Tecumseh Sherman during the American Civil War,

You know, he knew the South because he had lived in the South before the Civil War. And he said to the North, he said, we must show them the hard hand of war. And so it became the goal of the Union to break the Confederate will to fight. And they did that. And we have a Union today because that will was broken. We did not know what the will of the enemy was. We didn’t even know where it was. didn’t, disagreed on what the locus of that will was. And so therefore we had no plan to break it. And we certainly couldn’t remove all the ⁓ capabilities that they had. At that time there were

fields full of munitions laying around that the Iraqis had had and we couldn’t control them all. So we had unlimited capability and unknown will. That’s a recipe for defeat. ⁓

Dru Johnson (16:44)
Which is stupefying when

you think about coming out of Vietnam where that was the exact problem. mean Ho Chi Minh’s famous saying, we will wear them down like water over the stone. It’s wearing down the American’s will to fight, right? And this is, you think this would be burned into the American psyche.

Darren Duke (16:59)
No, the American psyche is actually a very short, we have a very short horizon because we’re a young country and people read our books and they believe what we say because we believe what we say generally. And so they read us and they understand us, but we refuse to believe them and who they say they are because we want to believe it. Sadly, I think we want to believe there’s a Jeffersonian democratic heart beating in the chest of every human. And I just don’t know that that’s the case necessarily. So we were denying reality and we wound up.

Dru Johnson (17:09)
Right, right.

Darren Duke (17:26)
meeting reality in a very hard way, both in Iraq, now that we see the Shia takeover of Iraq, I believe, and then in Afghanistan after our shameful retreat a few years ago and the whole thing collapses. So that’s what’s happening to me. And now I’m beginning to wonder, ⁓ was this, we may have gone to war for the right reasons. So Jus Ad Bellum to use the classical just war theory, just war.

tradition term, Jus Ad Bellum, going to war is your reason for going to war just? Yes, but Jus In Bello your law in war, your behavior in war, is that just? You have to ask the question, is prolonging a conflict, is that just at some point? And if you can’t win it, then what do you do? Well, you have to negotiate your way out. And we could argue whether or not what we negotiated for is what we actually wanted, had we.

Had we had this to do over again, I think we might have arrived at different policy conclusions. So that’s one level. On the other level, I’m watching all the casualties and I’m watching what is happening to Marines in the formation. And frankly, as I moved into special operations, to soldiers, sailors, airmen who are fighting. And what’s interesting is you note over time a change. like many cultures that don’t write down a whole lot, you see it in symbology. And in the military we have

these things called challenge coins and then we have plaques and paddles that we give away as tokens of ⁓ fellowship when someone leaves the unit. And what you watch through all the symbology that’s encoded in those challenge coins or in those plaques and paddles, you see the symbols change over the course of the war. In the early days of the war, it was the Punisher. It was the comic book character, the Punisher. We are going to go and we’re going to punish those guys for what they did to us on 9-11.

Dru Johnson (19:02)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Right, right.

Darren Duke (19:16)
And certainly we went and did our share of ⁓ punishing and attempts to punish them. But as we began to take casualties, well now you start to see the Spartan symbology show up, Spartan helmets and the Lactamonians shields with the lambda, Greek letter lambda for the Spartans show up on things. And the gifts became helmets and helmets on shirts. ⁓ because that movie, The 300 came out and it was

know, Spartan saying, well, you know, the Persians, when they fire a volley of arrows, it darkens out the sun. He goes, well, we’ll fight in the dark, or we’ll fight in the shade. And so this became a symbol of us taking casualties, but we’re a resilient force and we’re going to stick to it and we’re going to fight this out. But then the next phase of the war, when people began to question, okay, I’ve been on my third or fourth combat deployment. had one sailor, a corpsman in my unit, who’d been on six combat deployments.

Dru Johnson (20:13)
Cheers.

Darren Duke (20:13)
in

eight years. ⁓ And you lose so many friends, you’ve seen so much trauma, you’ve seen so much bloodshed and killing by this point, you begin to ask what’s it all about? ⁓ Is there an end to this thing? Is there an end to it for me where I don’t widow my wife and orphan my children? How many more friends am I going to lose? And then those friends that I did lose, how do I morally reconcile this in my world? And so the comic book character changed finally to Thor. ⁓

Dru Johnson (20:29)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Darren Duke (20:42)
You started to see ⁓ Odinist symbology, started to see crows and ⁓ Thor’s hammer. ⁓ What you were seeing there wasn’t an adoption necessarily of this neo-pagan ⁓ religion, but rather it was this concept of, and you see Valhalla ⁓ invoked. Whenever we would lose a Moraine, would say, know, till Valhalla, I’d go to these funerals and they would raise a glass to him afterwards and say, you know, till Valhalla.

Dru Johnson (20:45)
Right.

Right.

⁓ yeah, yeah.

Darren Duke (21:09)
And you’re wondering where all this is coming from. And then you realize, well, in the Odinist framework, Valhalla is a place where warriors, regardless of who their affiliation is with, when they get to Valhalla, because they were ⁓ a valorous warrior, a valiant warrior, just their fighting itself was meritorious. That’s how you gain Valhalla. And so there’s some place where this is all reconciled for the warrior. And maybe that Taliban guy that I fought,

He was pretty valiant too. mean, that guy fought in flip-flops his whole life with an AK-47, and here I have the most advanced weaponry on the earth, and yet we’re still duking it out 20 years later. ⁓ That framework began to emerge as men began to ask themselves, was this all worth it? And so you see the moral trauma of this warfare beginning to take its toll on American fighting force. Didn’t mean that they weren’t refusing to go. They were still signing up to go, and they would…

they would go because it was their duty. But the reasons why they went and the impacts on them when they went were beginning to show.

Dru Johnson (22:12)
Yeah. And so I think your outline, especially because I did a lot of rotations on South America doing the same thing. And so you get to see it over time. And you do have these kind of existential questions like, wait, are we changing anything? In that case, our enemy was drug cartels and trying to get cocaine off the streets. And the amount of cocaine we stopped from leaving Colombia was grotesque. the cocaine that just never even got out of the borders of Colombia because we were able to shoot it down or burn it or stop it some way. And yet.

the addiction on the street didn’t really change that much in America or Europe. And I think, you know, one of the things when young men and women ask me like, you were in the military, ⁓ what should I do if I want to join the military? And I think one of my first hesitations, I’m just interested to see what your version of this is or how you’d react, is ⁓ the military can be great. know lots of people that had a great experience and ⁓ mainly who didn’t serve in combat. But…

They used the opportunities, they got an education, it worked out great for them. But they could have gotten assigned to some role that ended up in a really bad situation. ⁓ And I think when I talk to young Christians, I think in their minds they think, well, yeah, but if that were me and I had this really bad situation, I would choose to do the right thing. Even if that meant nobly jumping on a grenade or dying or whatever. They have all these romantic ideas about combat, which I, you know.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s been burned in them since they were a child from movies and fiction and stories. But then, and I don’t know how to explain to him, to the average 18-year-old, like, no, I’m talking about you’re in a situation and there are four bad options and you’re not actually sure which one is worse than the other, but you’re gonna have to go down one of those roads. Like it’s a bad fork and you’re going down the road ignorantly.

And I say, just don’t know how to prepare people for that situation. I wish that, as you kind of said to me before, that’s when you want righteous and noble people and wise people to be in those situations. But it’s not going to stop the scarring that happens from being in those situations. So yeah, I guess what’s your reaction to that, my friend? How would you correct me?

Darren Duke (24:26)
I don’t think you need correction at all. would add one layer to it. mean, first of all, you know, the American military culture, particularly for the enlisted ranks, is frequently a very morally challenging ⁓ culture, particularly in the area of ethics. And Christian view of sexuality is frequently in opposition to the reigning cultural norms inside those ranks. And so you have to ask yourself, first of all, am I the type of person

who I know who I am as a Christian. know what Christ calls me to, the type of holiness he calls me to, and I’m willing to pursue that in the face of a culture that is debauched frequently. And by the this is anything new, so I’m not picking on this generation. I grew up under officers who served as the only two Christian officers in a Marine Corps flying squadron. ⁓

Dru Johnson (25:10)
Great. Yeah, I started in the 90s and it was definitely debauched before the internet came around.

Darren Duke (25:24)
and they were ostracized their whole deployment because they chose to do things that were out of step with the rest of the officers in that squadron during their deployment to the Pacific. And when I was complaining about a moral decision I had to make when I was a lieutenant, they were majors and they were like, it was a very small thing that I was confronted with compared to six months of ostracism by your peers. So, you know, are you that type of Christian who’s willing to take that on and then be faithful in that environment on a daily basis?

Dru Johnson (25:45)
Right.

Darren Duke (25:54)
So that’s the first thing. If you think teens are at risk in an internet-fueled, porn-soaked pop culture generally, then add to that a paycheck that gives a young person more money than they’ve ever had before, a new car, and unlimited access to alcohol, substances, and venues that promote all kinds of unfaithful behavior. And that’s what you’re going to face. So that’s the first layer. Then, you know, then have you considered the calling? Like you said, you may be called. You should assume, because it’s the military itself.

that if you join particular MOS’s like the infantry, artillery, ⁓ intelligence and other places that are going to put you in the combat zone and in the Marine Corps, every Marine’s a rifleman we say and plenty of logistics and supply Marines and aviation mechanics have been in gunfights, ⁓ you’re going to have to apply violence to a situation on behalf of a government. In this case you’re going to apply violence on behalf of the United States in support of its national interests.

Are you willing to do that and have you thought through that? And you need to be sure and resolute in your decision to do that because that may happen. Otherwise you’re gambling, right? I mean, you’re really gambling and I don’t know if gambling is necessarily a Christian virtue. And so ⁓ I

need to think about those things. ⁓

And then when you thought about that, I’ve talked a lot about the trauma that ensues from those types of events in combat. ⁓ Now, one of the reasons why think Americans have suffered ⁓ post-traumatic stress in the military the way they have is because ⁓ we have frequently, not always, but leaders have frequently failed to give a moral framework for the combat or the conflicts we’re in.

And those righteous causes have been available, but they’ve not always been addressed or they’ve not always been addressed sufficiently before the conflict, during the conflict, and afterwards in order to alleviate some of the moral trauma we see. And so I think for a young Christian going into, particularly in these fraught days when there plenty of opportunities for conflict, you need to think through that. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t join. We’re just, once again, we’re providing principles for how to think about it. So those are kind of the, you know, on thinking about going into the service.

That would be kind of the layers of problem that I would, the layers of questions I would put to a young person considering military service.

Dru Johnson (28:19)
No, I think that’s really helpful. I had a few points in my service where I had just an eye-opening experience. And one of them was when officers would kind of take off their rings when you go on deployment with every intention of doing everything. And they’re the leaders, right? And so the signal is very clear that this is now a fair game to do these kinds of things. Oh, yeah.

Darren Duke (28:44)
And you’re going to pay for opposing

that culture. There is a price to pay.

Dru Johnson (28:50)
⁓ And you know, like everything, especially in the officer corps, everything is political, right? So, I mean, military might be one of the more fair organizations ⁓ at some levels, but everything works in some kind of political spectrum. What your peers think of you matters for your career.

Darren Duke (29:08)
Well, it’s a self-selecting organization. The leaders select the next generation that comes up behind them. ⁓ so that selection process is very much based on, first of all, think professional capability. But there is a sense of how loyal are you to the service and to the institution itself. And I don’t think they necessarily combine their personal moral values to the institution.

But certainly that impacts how you’re perceived as a loyal member of the team.

Dru Johnson (29:42)
Yeah. I wonder also how you would react to somebody who just says like, no, no Christian should ever serve in the military. The early church hashed this out, and they came to a very definitive conclusion that this is wrong and wicked.

Darren Duke (29:56)
Well, mean, part of the church may have hashed this out and thought they’d came to the conclusion. mean, so what I didn’t talk about is my current endeavors. a ⁓ doctoral student in Near East Christian languages, and I spend a lot of time in the ⁓ third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and early seventh century ⁓ churches in the Near East where I study the political theology of the churches of the East. And I was just reading last week

Dru Johnson (30:00)
Right.

Right.

Which is fair to say,

⁓ sorry, just so people know, it’s fair to say when people say the church and the early church, they are often leaving out what they really mean is the Roman Western Church and are leaving out the Eastern Church, which had a full theological, lots of theological programs.

Darren Duke (30:38)
That’s right, and we ⁓ have brothers and sisters with a rich history across the Jordan River and into Persia and Central Asia that we ⁓ ignore or stay ignorant of to our harm. I’m in that domain, and so I read some of the correspondence between church leaders and military leaders in those days, and ⁓ there’s a real sense that many of those military leaders are Christians, particularly during the fourth, fifth century.

Dru Johnson (30:51)
Yeah.

Darren Duke (31:07)
and they are defending cities from invasion ⁓ by marauders who would destroy the city and haul everybody off into slavery. And so the defense of those harmless ⁓ and defenseless civilians is very important to the church leaders who are the spiritual leaders of those flocks. So they very much appreciate when they write these military commanders the services that they’re rendering. So I think that’s not the case that there’s a uniform ⁓ rejection of military service. Now,

Having said that, we know what the nature of the kingdom of God is. ⁓ When Christ comes and brings his kingdom in its fullness, are going to beat our spears into plowshares and our swords into pruning hooks. You can edit that. ⁓ The kingdom of heaven when it comes in its fullness will be different. There will be no war, there will be no soldiers, there will be no militaries. Militaries, warfare are a part of the fall.

Dru Johnson (31:50)
sports together.

Darren Duke (32:04)
⁓ But while we’re in a fallen world, there are defenseless people who deserve to be defended. And ⁓ so it’s the duty of some people to defend those who can’t defend themselves. so military service in itself is a legitimate calling, but it’s fraught because it is a fallen calling in that regard, like many other callings are.

Dru Johnson (32:27)
Yeah. And to that point, ⁓ I think in American culture, you know, I was talking to an Israeli friend the other day about his service. He was in that famous bank tank battle where the Syrian tanks came straight between their tank line. So he’s telling me some very interesting stories about that. But, you know, what was also interesting is like, yeah, in the American military, you join and then you leave your hometown and you go away.

Even within America, you go a thousand miles away, right? And so the idea is you serve away versus a lot of places where you serve locally and you can actually say, I’m defending my mom’s house, which is down the street here, right? ⁓ But ⁓ so in many ways, the version we have of what a lot of smaller countries have in their national defense or national police is like local police sheriffs or whatever. you know, everything we’re saying, could this equally be applied to a sheriff’s department?

Darren Duke (33:23)
Well, the challenge with U.S. military is we’re a global power, right? You’re not serving like the Israelis do. ⁓ I’ve served in Israel. had friends who would fly combat missions during the day and then go to their home at night. Now, that’s both a blessing and a curse. You know exactly what you’re defending, and you look it in the face, and you kiss it goodbye when you walk out the door in the morning. It’s bad because you bring home whatever happened during the day if you come home that day.

Dru Johnson (33:41)
Right.

Right.

Darren Duke (33:52)
you bring that home and so you have to deal with it. We frequently have months of several weeks to decompress after combat operations, which is a benefit before we come home, although sometimes that’s not sufficient to heal the trauma that has occurred. ⁓ But being a global power presents some unique challenges to Christians in the United States considering how they fight and what the principles are that are different from being a sheriff or a policeman or an Israeli soldier who’s fighting for his home just a few kilometers from

Dru Johnson (34:14)
Mm.

Darren Duke (34:22)
is the general inclination of that country that I serve, is it in parallel or enabling to the mission of the church? Because now it’s the intention of the state that you serve, right? And as American Christians, because Christians are called to live dignified and quiet lives, and the church is called to do her work ⁓ faithfully, and we…

pray for leaders who provide an environment for the church to continue to do her work, which is to declare the free forgiveness of sinners and to do and promote works of mercy ⁓ amongst our fellow man. So states that promote that environment are states that could be considered legitimate places for military service. And I think in general the trend of the United States has been that it’s been a promoter of that type of environment.

Not always, it’s made some bad decisions, but in general, our form of government provides that environment for the church. And that’s the way I and my son, who is a soldier currently serving, look at it.

Dru Johnson (35:32)
Yeah, I think that’s an important distinction. because I was thinking along like a sheriff’s or police department, you’re still being called upon to use lethal force or at least possibly act aggressively and violently towards somebody for the sake of peace. It’s a little more palpable, I think, in a police force because you’re, you know, it’s an if there’s someone being aggressive and violent in a neighborhood, you can see that your work works. In a military deployment, you almost never see the fruits of any laborers until maybe decades later or something like that.

So under that reading that you just gave about the intention of the government, it is a gamble because the government’s intentions can change from administration to administration and over time, know, governments waver in foolishness and how they act globally. But be fair to say, if you were talking to Chinese or North Korean Christians, like should you be, I don’t know, I don’t think you have a choice there.

Myanmar, somewhere where you have a choice, but the government clearly is against the church should you participate. I can imagine somebody making the case that, well, it’s good to be on the inside, right, to know what’s going on. ⁓ But that sounds wholly different than what we’ve been talking about with signing up to Willfully Serve.

Darren Duke (36:48)
Yeah, I don’t take a utilitarian view of that. I think it has been rare that people who’ve made the argument that I have to stick around because my presence will prevent further evil, I think that’s rare that that’s paid off in spades. It may have had some calming effect, but I think in general, corrupt system or an evil system

continue to be evil. I do agree in general with the principle that personnel is policy, but I also think you have ⁓ to have a mass of people in order to change a particular direction. mean, in the American military in the 80s and 90s, there was a tremendous movement by evangelical officers to improve the conditions, the moral condition inside the U.S. military and to inform decisions.

in combat and I think we benefited from that wave. I think that wave is largely passed but I grew up under officers who I looked at and I stayed in because I’m like, if he can do this and that was a really righteous decision, he protected the righteous and he ⁓ punished the evildoers and he made good decisions for the mission that ⁓ protected the non-combatant and applied ⁓ violence to the situation correctly.

Dru Johnson (37:52)
Right.

Yeah.

Darren Duke (38:16)
I think that was an inspiring scene for me and one of the reasons why I continue to serve. Had I not had people in front of me telling me that and demonstrating that to me, I probably wouldn’t have stayed around. So to your point about serving and not knowing what the impact is, I lay that at the feet of leaders. And that would be one of the things for Christians who do become officers and senior enlisted leaders. It’s their duty to explain to the force what…

their mission is accomplishing and then also to advocate for correct application of that unit’s capabilities to actually achieve that. So it’s loyalty up the chain and loyalty down the chain is what we call it. And frankly, too often what we see is ⁓ nobody understands and nobody’s communicating. And that is a miscarriage of duty, I think, in that regard.

Dru Johnson (39:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s one of the privileges of being enlisted in a combat zone is you never know why anybody is telling you what to do. Or when you do know it’s being explained to you by an officer in full frustration. ⁓ That doesn’t really help the situation when they’re saying, I hate this, but we’re going to have to do this. So, ⁓ well, thank you. think you’ve helped illuminate lots of the complications. I think I heard in a lot of what you said.

⁓ the phrase consider your calling my brothers and sisters. ⁓ And then I think like everything else, there’s a lot of wisdom that it requires and I think people who are joining, that wisdom can’t come from your mind. That actually comes from a collection of people around you who can help you think about

Darren Duke (39:58)
Yeah, so for military Christians, there are some keys to survival. they’re going to be obvious, but it’s being in communion with fellow Christians, worship regularly with faithful Christians, and attend to the Word and the sacraments, and then ⁓ personal prayer and reading the Word of God so that you can be ⁓ prepared for…

Dru Johnson (40:10)
Hmm.

Darren Duke (40:24)
facing these situations by the wisdom that comes from God that he’s provided for us in his word. those sound very basic, but they are the key to survival, particularly when you’re in a culture that’s truncated. There are no very old people and there are no very young people, although there lots of kids in some military communities. But you don’t have the normal church of these ⁓ aged people full of wisdom. You have to frequently seek them out.

That is the key to survival. Once you’ve made the decision, you’re in, you’ve signed the contract, you’re in. Now you have to do your duty to best of your ability. ⁓ if one’s faith is going to survive, one has to do what the Lord told us, and that’s to be in fellowship with his people and listen to his word and eat at his table.

Dru Johnson (41:07)
Yeah, I think that advice goes well for college students as well. Get around older and younger people. All right, well, Colonel Darren Duke, thank you very much for your wisdom and your guidance on this topic.

Darren Duke (41:11)
Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.