The Ignorance of Bryan Fischer
Bashing Bryan Fischer’s comments on “feminizing” the Medal of Honor is such fun. It’s like eating salted peanuts, you just can’t stop. The guy’s historical ignorance is beyond belief. In every war, MOH’s have been awarded for saving lives. Three conscientious objectors, all medics, have won the MOH (two posthumously). Even in cases where the Medal was awarded for fierce combat, very often the recipient was covering retreating comrades or trying to prevent his unit from being overrun.
The Medal of Honor has never been awarded solely for killing large numbers of the enemy. The air crews who bombed Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t get it. Machine gun crews who mowed down human wave attacks during the Korean War didn’t get it, nor did pilots who strafed enemy troop columns. (There may have been some awards for some combatants in those actions, but not merely for causing large numbers of casualties.)
So Fischer is historically ignorant. We all knew that. Turns out he’s Biblically ignorant, too. That doesn’t surprise me - most fundamentalists are, except for the handful of proof-text verses they have memorized. In Deuteronomy 20:8, we read “Then the officers shall add, “Is anyone afraid or fainthearted? Let him go home so that his fellow soldiers will not become disheartened too.” And in Judges 7:2-3, we read:
That’s right, over two thirds of Gideon’s men went home. And what happened to them? Apparently, nothing. Give these guys their due: they were afraid, but they still reported for duty.The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’” So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.
Now of course, the Old Testament praises people who showed valor in battle and exhorts the Israelites not to be afraid. But it also explicitly allowed people to escape combat if they were afraid.