(The Nationalist, 25 January 2002)
The Hermitage museum, attached to the Winter Palace of the Russian Czars in Saint Petersburg, the former capital of Russia, is a remarkable place. It houses the art collections of the Czars, and it has been estimated that if a visitor spent one minute looking at each item, and kept doing that for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take fifteen years for him to see everything. A further remarkable point about the items on display is that there were bought and paid for, not stolen by conquering armies, as is the case in so many other collections.
One item is of special interest: it is a suit of armour belonging to Czar Boris Godunov, who ruled Russia from 1598 to 1605. It is made of 9,000 links of chain mail in steel, specially made to suit the emperor’s size and to protect him in battle. Each of the links is stamped with the words, “God is with us” in Old Slavonic, the language used in Russia in centuries past, and now used only in the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. When the emperor went into battle, he wanted to know that God was with him and his army, and would protect them from defeat.
In the First World War, German soldiers, as they invaded Belgium and France to the West and Russia to the East, went into battle wearing a uniform bound by a belt, the buckle of which was embossed with the words, Gott mit uns – meaning “God is with us”. They, too, wanted God on their side.
God is on our side. What does that mean? Does it mean anything? Is God there to be co-opted by one side or another? Can we claim God as our champion simply because we want it that way? When the warring factions of Europe, all of them Christian in name, went to war against each other in 1914-18, and again in 1939-45, could they truthfully call on the one true God for victory? It seems to me that to do so is to violate the second commandment, which says ‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain’.
A well-known Northern Ireland politician has the phrase “Christ for Ulster” on his letter-head – not “Ulster for Christ” but “Christ for Ulster”. That, it seems to me, is an attempt to tell Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whose side he should be on. It is an act of arrogance which calls for repentance.
As Abraham Lincoln said, before anyone can say ‘God is on our side’ they must first ask ‘Are we on God’s side?’, and then answer that question by reference to objective standards such as the Ten Commandments. Anything else is either blasphemy or superstition.