Will all soldiers go to Hell?

I’ve always been a lover of history, especially the one that focused on great men like Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Samori Toure, Menelik 2, Mansa Musa... Or when it had to do with wars like the World Wars, The War of the Roses, The Asantes vs the Fantes, the American War of Independence... I’ve always loved how brave men and women would go to war to fight for their countries; to preserve their territorial sovereignty or to invade other nations. I’ve found American and British Politics and Diplomacy enticing and that’s why I love plots of movies that are based on diplomacy, national security and international relations. As a child, I always saw my father leave us for Bakassi; to fight in a war that would determine who was the rightful owner of the Cameroonian land. It wasn’t until the UN under former Secretary General, Koffi Atta Annan, during the signing of the Green Tree Accord, acknowledged Cameroon as rightful owner of Bakassi. My father would leave us and spend 3 to 4 months on the battlefield.

And while I’ve always had great admiration for soldiers and lawyers, I’ve always wondered if they’d make heaven. And yes. Today’s article is not for the atheist and agnostics. Simply put, a soldier is someone who serves in an army. We know that the armed forces are classified differently according to nations but a little stratification can put them under Navy, Marine, Air Force, Gendermarie and Police Force, with the last two being specifically for internal defense purposes and the first three for defense of the national territory... I won’t go into those details but the issue at hand is that the soldiers seem to be those who kill more or kill at all. So I’ve been wondering if these people make heaven.

For Christians, the 6th commandment states: "Thou shalt not kill" and this gets me pondering whenever I hear people went to war and fought and killed for their fatherlands. But these very concepts of peace and justice are relative. Thrasimachus of ancient Greece said "Justice is that which is in the interest of the stronger party" and if we’re to go by that, the invaders/conquerors are always the just ones. Given that Christianity is amongst the major religions in the world, I wonder which God these soldiers pray to or if they even believe in God. Because to be honest, I think every warring side is praying to some sort of deity to be their shield and aid in times of war. Even the Moslems have gone on religious wars, what they called Jihads, in the past, to purify those whom they called the unfaithful or infidels. Is God inclined to listen to the prayers of one warring side over the other after specifically telling Moses on the Sinai to tell us that: "Thou shalt not kill"? This gets me sceptical about a lot of things.

Maybe it’s because of these things that the state had to separate itself from the church. Because the state has taken into her hands to punish people even to the point of death. To send people out on a mission to kill or be killed. They are as much guilty as the people who pull the trigger. While I love my father and wish him well, I doubt if he or his comrades will enter the kingdom of heaven. Because it goes against the very command of God. But we know that God himself sent his people to fight wars in the Old Testament. We know of the Walls of Jericho and David and Goliath. We’ev heard of Jeanne d’Arc(Joan of Arc too. So what if God ordained these people to kill for the greater good? What if they are like in the old testament days, given duty to purify the earth? But this is crazy as it may sound because every warring side has soldiers who pray to God. And when on the battlefield, they surely don’t want to kill but as the rule goes, it is kill or be killed, so they kill and hope they’re serving their country well while thanking their God. For even Wilfred Owen says: "Dulce et decurum est pro patria mori"