06/08/2015

Good morning.
The digital era is changing warfare dramatically. 300 years ago wars were fought largely hand to hand. Even 100 years ago, soldiers would look at their enemies through the sights of a gun. Today’s targets probably appear increasingly as images on display screens. We’re told that the United Kingdom has many hundreds of unmanned aircraft that can be flown remotely from an Air Force base in Lincolnshire. The pilots who guide the missiles need never see the people who they are targeting, who may be many thousands of miles away.
On this day 70 years ago, an atomic bomb was used for the first time in warfare. It destroyed five square miles of the city of Hiroshima, and killed between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand men women and children. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands more and forcing the Japanese to admit defeat.
In his Declaration of Surrender a few days later, Emperor Hirohito told his people: “Should we continue to fight, it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”
I’ve never been a soldier but I do sometimes wonder how the sheer physical and cultural distance between combatants affects their perception of each other’s humanity. Do our concepts of a “just war” need to be updated in the light of an enemy we can never meet face to face? 
Loving God, on Hiroshima Day we pray for all those whose lives are touched by war. For those who live with the memories of what they have done, or what has been done to them; For children who grow up hating other children they have never met;We pray once again for peace between enemies, peace between neighbours, and peace between friends. Amen.