“God must have a special place for soldiers.”

Way to go Old Trooper. You are right on the money.

the photo is a heart breaker, old trooper said it well.

George,

Check the links to the audio in my original post. If they don’t work anymore, let me know.

AOW,

I spent part of this morning going through link after link of lefty blogs on my sidebar to read Memorial Day posts. Practically zip. Almost nada. Juan Cole’s post today was all the negative going on in Iraq fit to print; plus, thrown in at the bottom of his post is a video about Iraqis upset because a U.S. soldier did not receive the death penalty for raping and killing an Iraqi minor. That’s a post fit for Memorial Day?!?

For those who believe in God – what place does God have for those soldiers who fought on behalf of Germany or Japan in WWII or for Iraq in the Iraqi war? Are they only following orders so they don’t have any blame for the atrocities committed by their side?

First: The non- religious response. Welcome to the “enemy combatant” or illegal combatant vs POW/soldier argument, Gaffa. Maybe you didn’t “get it” before. German soldiers were fighting, under orders, from the “State”… i.e. Hitler. Granted some may have believed in the cause. Others may not have, but didn’t have the cajones to desert. No doubt to do so would have been far from pleasant.

On the other hand, jihad movements are not fighters under order from any state government. They are culpable and responsible for their own choices as stateless, gang thugs. Just as a Blood or Crip gang member has the choice to belong to a rogue gang bent on overthrowing an elected goverment. They are not a signatory to treaties, not recognized as anything but power hungry mongrels seeking a Caliphate. They are ideologues, as opposed to soldiers acting under orders. Monstrous difference. And perhaps you may have a more cogent grasp of the GC with this revelation.

As far as God goes, since you are (if I remember rightly) a professed atheist, you obviously know little of Christianity and acceptance of Christ as the path to Heaven. God does not require people are free of sin to enter. There is no man that is free of sin… period.

It is merely the acceptance of Christ as the Son of God as a requirement to the Kingdom of God. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a true believer in Christ as the Son of God. As a Christian, or convert, you will have sinned, and will continue to sin after you become a believer.

Even repentence is not a requirement (i.e. sorrow for your misdeeds… you must recognize them as misdeeds/sins, but reproach is not a requirement). Just a simple belief in His existance. Thus the saying that he died on the cross for mankind’s sins. Not just past sins, but all sins… past and future… recognized and rue’d as well as unrecognized and not rue’d.

This, in Christian theology, answers your agnostic, and unschooled question. German Christian soldiers, like any other Christian sinner, is welcome into the Kingdom of God if they are a believer of Christ as the Son of God. No other requirement.

Other religions and “requirements”? Haven’t a clue. But as a non-believer, consider yourself now educated that, in Christianity, it’s not actions, deeds and events that gets a person in or out of the Pearly Gates… merely an unshakeable belief in the Messiah, not known as Barack Obama, as the Son of God manifested in human form on Earth.