The question of his vocation does not or should not arise suddenly
for the Christian or any morally sensitive and responsible individual
when Congress enacts a conscription law. The committed Christian has
presumably been engaged in an occupation and a way of living which he
believes to be in accord with the will of God. This need not be some
unusual or spectacular occupation. A Christian farmer, factory worker,
miner, teacher, raising a family and giving an example of unselfishness
to his neighbors; his wife maintaining an unobtrusively wholesome
Christian home; the children walking in the footsteps of such parents—all
these may be following a true Christian vocation.
Then war or peace time conscription comes along. If these people are
pacifists, they hold that direct participation in war or in combat
training is inconsistent with a Christian profession and calling. They
must, therefore, refuse such participation. At this point the government
tells those of them who come under the draft that they must nevertheless
render some civilian service within or under the conscription system.
In most cases this will be something different from what they have been
doing and will involve temporary removal from the home community.
It has for some time troubled me that a good many pacifists of draft age
seem ready to acquiesce in this situation and that, furthermore, many
who are not directly affected by the draft seem to feel that at such a
time they must immediately find something else to do than that which they
have been doing—something that is often referred to as “meaningful” or
“sacrificial.” Was what they were doing then so definitely not meaningful
or sacrificial? Unfortunately, this is very likely the case in many
instances. But it does not follow, as is seemingly often assumed, that
this justifies going into some entirely new work, a “project,” as we say,
and perhaps preferably some relief work which has some connection with
the war effort, something which society will regard as the “equivalent”
of support of the war effort. Certainly the fact that a young man of
draft age has not been following a meaningful or Christian vocation does
not automatically or by itself constitute a warrant for submitting to
conscription for so-called civilian service. It may well be that God
calls him at this juncture to put meaning into the life he has been
living and into the work he was supposed to be doing.
It is certainly incumbent on us to search our hearts as to whether this
rush to get into other jobs and to go to distant places may be motivated
by fear of men and of the authorities, by a desire to be thought well of,
by a dread of the social displeasure or actual legal punishment which
might fall upon us if we were to continue quietly at the work which we
had been doing, living in the home town when war fever, if not outright
hysteria, seizes the people. “If I were still pleasing men,” said St.
Paul, “I should not be the slave of Christ.”