We must at least allow the pain inflicted upon us by our enemies to be a megaphone to our own deafness to the world, waking us up to the needs of oth… - Joshua Casteel

Was Rome dispensing "God's divine Justice" when it forbade Peter and Paul from preaching in public? Were Peter and Paul "justly reprimanded for their sins" by being imprisoned and executed? Was Jesus being justly punished for his sin when the Sanhedrin sent him to be executed by Pilate? Was Germany dispensing divine wrath to Israel, Poland, etc., when they plotted to take over the world and exterminate all non-Aryans? … I am trying to say that the State does not have a license to do anything it wants … and when we are ordered by the State to violate God's law, we must not bow to Baal. Civil disobedience is just as mandatory as civil subservience. It all must past through the filter of conscience, not to mention Christ's mandate that we recognize that the Kingdom has already come. We are now its citizens. … we are under no obligation to abdicate conscience on behalf of the State.

Since the day I walked onto Academy grounds at West Point, I have been in an ongoing and quite conscious battle with my military service. Whether it was my first decision in college to turn away from military service altogether, or my post-September 11th decision to return to service, I have been attempting to mitigate conscience and duty for the past seven years. In the absence of a clear and articulate objection to service, I have defaulted to evolving forms of duty as my guiding principle. … Conscientious objection is now the only way dutifully to fulfill my obligations both to faith and to nation, and to my own internal commitments to personal courage.

Joining the army is not a sacrament, it's a pagan allegiance.