My father, Jack Jr., was an outdoorsman, at least in his early years. He was born in 1918, five years after the death of his grandfather, Giovanni, an immigrant from Italy. His primary male influence was his father, Jack Sr., and he grew up hunting, fishing, and canoeing. One important incident that has survived in the historical record from that time is when Jack Jr. accidentally shot himself in the arm while trying to unjam a rifle, leaving him with a slight handicap in his left hand. He spent one summer during his college years plying what became known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, on the border of the U.S. across from Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. His job was to survey the border.

At age twenty-three, he married Margaret Mantle on December 6, 1941, and they woke up the next morning to a radio announcement by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declaring the day would go down in infamy—not Mom and Dad’s wedding day, but the day Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was bombed, December 7, 1941. Within a week, Jack visited the army recruiter and was inducted about a year later. Like many young men of his generation, patriotism ran in his blood. (His father, Jack Sr., served in World War I.)

Dad didn’t talk much of his service time, and his military records were lost due to a fire started by anti-war protesters in the Military Archives building in the late 1960s. He was a radio operator and part of the Normandy invasion (famously called D-Day) in the second wave. Dad engaged in hand-to-hand combat and took a rifle shot to his side, but managed to bayonet and kill the opposing soldier who shot him. Thus he was part of the massive movement that marked the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. He was awarded a Purple Heart medal for bravery in combat. We still have some photos from his time in Europe, with some handwritten notes describing the sights of Europe. And I still have a camera he “liberated” along the way, the kind that you pull open like a bellows.

Dad went back to college after the war, earned a master’s in political science, and then began a lifelong career as a civilian working for the army, rising to the equivalent of a one-star general. He finished as deputy chief of the logistical data center controlling the movement of resources in and out of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War years.

Some vets love talking about their escapades during the war, but not my dad. Not that he was ashamed of his contribution to the war—his time as a soldier was indelibly stamped into him for the rest of his life. He buried his father, Jack Sr., with military honors, and so we had Dad’s burial as he wanted it, with military honors in 1989, only one year after his father’s death.

I’ve often wondered what it must have been like for Dad to experience the horrors of the Normandy invasion, where thousands of soldiers died. And to personally get shot and then to kill another human being, the so-called “enemy,” in close combat. No, Dad did not want to talk about the war. He kept the Purple Heart but never displayed it openly. That was who he was; that was who he became.

Theologians and politicians wrestle with the concepts of a “just war,” and bravery is celebrated in this most adverse context. But the nature of our world is that as long as there have been human beings, there has been war and killing. The notion that humanity is getting better has little historical support. War is not less brutal now than it was in the ancient world; we are not moving toward a utopia. Destruction, repression, and hatred are woven into human society, contrary to modern humanism and liberal theology.

So what’s the point of it all? Is there any hope for human civilization? Unfortunately, we cannot solve the problem by simply removing a dictator here or there or somehow devising a new and better government. The old issues of greed, prejudice, racism, power-mongering, selfishness, and hatred will continue to crop up. But there is hope on an individual level; that is why Jesus Christ came. The Bible says that the problem is personal in nature, even though it is reflected in civilizations: “. . . all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). That “all” means “every individual.” Hope, therefore, comes on an individual level: “But as many as received [Jesus Christ], to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).

Did my father, Jack Jr., ever receive Christ as his Savior, or did he remain just a “religious” church-going person? As a World War II veteran who personally faced the horrors of war and saw death up close, he lived his final moments of life on the floor of his bedroom, suffering from a massive heart failure. I am reminded of one of the two men who were crucified along with Jesus speaking to the Savior in his final moments of life. I can’t help but believe that Dad may very well have said something similar: “Remember me when you [Jesus] come into your kingdom!”