War is ironically inhumane....

It's been a few weeks since I last wrote. I'm still dating Andi, and loving every minute of it!  For a while there I was pretty boggled with school work, but I think I got it under control now. The work hasn't decreased any, I just manage my time better now.  In my AP Literature and Composition class we have been reading and excerpt from The Things They Carried.  Mrs. Cox is my English teacher but Mr. Bradow who his head of the Hazen Harold has been coming in and teaching us three days a week. The way he goes about his life, and the way he talks and teaches, you can tell that he has been through life and he has a lot of knowledge and wisdom.  I think I'll remember his teachings more than any of my other teachers this year.  He has been teaching us how to annotate stories.  At first I thought this was stupid and had no point. You see he annotates EVERYTHING he reads.. he doesn't just read a book, he annotates is, for himself.  At first I thought this strange wondering if he had a life.  But then I took it from a different perspective and realized if we all annotated more, we would learn a lot more.  What I have learned in the brief time of annotating is that there is deeper meaning to books. I often read for the story, and that is what I remember, I don't usually take lessons from books, i read for entertainment.  When you annotate a book, you put 2 and 2 together, and you solve a puzzle, you get past the surface, and in turn learn something that you wouldn't have gotten had you just read it.  Today after annotating The Things They Carried I realized something about war.  War is in an ironic way inhumane.  I mean when you think about it, we ourselves create the war, we think that the only way to solve a disagreement is to fight about it, and see who is stronger.  We fight for a purpose, we fight to better our country, to protect it.  But while we are fighting for our country as a whole, we are tearing the individual soldiers down.  Yes they want to fight for their country.  However... think about what it does to them emotionally.  It doesn't matter how tough, and strong you are. Or how mean and violent you may be.  No matter the person you are... it hurts you to see other human beings suffer as they do in war.  No matter the person suffering, whether good or bad, they have feelings, thoughts, a past, a present, and sometimes a future.  They are human just like you are. They carry burdens just like you do.  And they are children of God just like you are.  Though we, humans, create war, no one can come out of war without a scar, without memories that will be with them forever, no one will forget the human suffering they saw, heard, and felt.  And yet we continue to fight, to have war, century after century. We know no other way to solve our disagreements.  And we continue to scar lives, for the sake of a better country, for the sake of a better future, we fight for the people.  War is ironically inhumane.  I have complete and utter respect for those who fight for our country, I have a better understanding of what they go through, and the things they carry with them, the burdens that may never go away, but they keep fighting, doing the job that no one else wants to do.  I think if we took our scriptures and annotated them like I annotated these few pages today, we could learn a lot more about Christ, and his plan for us.  We could get so much out of just digging deeper and going beyond the surface.  That's what I'm thinking about tonight...