Reprint: "Never allow our youngsters to die in vain"

I'm on hiatus -- at least from substantive blogging -- until August 28.  Until then, I'm reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I watched the tail end of the presidential press conference yesterday, and was struck by these words (the full transcript is here):

One of the things that's very important, Judy, at least as far as I'm concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it's not going to happen under my watch.

That phrase "die in vain" is an old one, and one with an interesting history. A little playtime on the Internet revealed the following:

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met-the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that, where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace.

-- Richard Nixon, January 1973

Ten years earlier, in a very different context:

"And so my friends, they did not die in vain."

-- Martin Luther King Jr., speaking at the funeral of the young victims of a church bombing, 1963

And exactly one century earlier, the most famous use of the phrase to most Americans (one hopes):

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...

-- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

Lincoln probably got the phrase from the King James Version of Galatians 2:21:

"I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."

Someone will no doubt correct me if I am wrong, but I am assuming that that is the earliest use of the phrase in English. The phrase is never used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to anyone else's death, only Christ's. It seems to me that it's a heck of a jump that Lincoln made -- to go from Christ's death on the cross as not being "in vain" (a phrase the literate and faithful Lincoln knew likely by heart) to the deaths of soldiers. It's clear what Paul means -- Christ's death is liberating for the world. It is clear to my emotions what Lincoln meant, what King meant, what Nixon meant, and what Bush meant. It sounds good -- largely because it sounds so comfortingly familiar.

I'm not here to judge the merits of our War between the States, the Vietnam War, the deaths of the Civil Rights Movement, or Iraq. I am here to question the real meaning of the phrase. If "dying in vain" refers to Christ's efficacious death on the Cross, then to use the same words to describe the deaths of other folks borders on the sacriligious.

Trying to honor the dead by giving meaning to their deaths precedes Paul, of course. One thinks instantly of Pericles' funeral oration. But it's the repeated and theologically problematic overuse of the phrase "in vain" -- the one thing that jumped out at me from Bush's words last night -- that sticks with me today.

Originally posted April 14, 2004

I'm on hiatus -- at least from substantive blogging -- until August 28.  Until then, I'm reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I watched the tail end of the presidential press conference yesterday, and was struck by these words (the full transcript is here):

One of the things that's very important, Judy, at least as far as I'm concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it's not going to happen under my watch.

That phrase "die in vain" is an old one, and one with an interesting history. A little playtime on the Internet revealed the following:

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met-the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that, where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace.

-- Richard Nixon, January 1973

Ten years earlier, in a very different context:

"And so my friends, they did not die in vain."

-- Martin Luther King Jr., speaking at the funeral of the young victims of a church bombing, 1963

And exactly one century earlier, the most famous use of the phrase to most Americans (one hopes):

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...

-- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

Lincoln probably got the phrase from the King James Version of Galatians 2:21:

"I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."

Someone will no doubt correct me if I am wrong, but I am assuming that that is the earliest use of the phrase in English. The phrase is never used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to anyone else's death, only Christ's. It seems to me that it's a heck of a jump that Lincoln made -- to go from Christ's death on the cross as not being "in vain" (a phrase the literate and faithful Lincoln knew likely by heart) to the deaths of soldiers. It's clear what Paul means -- Christ's death is liberating for the world. It is clear to my emotions what Lincoln meant, what King meant, what Nixon meant, and what Bush meant. It sounds good -- largely because it sounds so comfortingly familiar.

I'm not here to judge the merits of our War between the States, the Vietnam War, the deaths of the Civil Rights Movement, or Iraq. I am here to question the real meaning of the phrase. If "dying in vain" refers to Christ's efficacious death on the Cross, then to use the same words to describe the deaths of other folks borders on the sacriligious.

Trying to honor the dead by giving meaning to their deaths precedes Paul, of course. One thinks instantly of Pericles' funeral oration. But it's the repeated and theologically problematic overuse of the phrase "in vain" -- the one thing that jumped out at me from Bush's words last night -- that sticks with me today.

Originally posted April 14, 2004

Comments

[Anon]

Good post, but calling the Civil War the "War between the States" is a classic way of legitimizing the Southern cause. Are you a secret Southern sympathizer?

[Antigone]

I don't really understand the phrase "dying in vain". It's like the Viking (and other's) concept of a "good death" it just puts me in mind of an excuse to kill each other. Death is inevitable: how does it matter how one goes: we're all going out.

I think it's more important to not live in vain.

[Hugo]

Anon, no. I'm just varying my language. (I had an ex-girlfriend who was from a strong, proud, South Carolina family -- she quite seriously talked about "the War of Northern Aggression." It was charming but a bit scary.)
I'm not an apologist for the Lost Cause...

Antigone, I'll agree it's important not to live in vain. What interests me as a Christian is how a particular statement about Christ's death on the cross becomes a standard trope in American speeches about those who die in war.

[Antigone]

Now, I couldn't say for certain, but I'm willing to bet that Lincoln was intentionally making the allusion (the following people could have been alluding to Lincoln instead of the Bible, however). I think Lincoln was trying to draw parallels to Christ's sacrifice and soldier's sacrifice.

As I'm not Christian, and I don't like war, I don't know how well I can comment and this, however

[Col Steve]

Lincoln may have remembered a letter sent to him in the early days of the Civil War from a father of a young officer for whom Lincoln had great affection.

"We trust he did not die in vain, but that his death will advance the cause in which he was engaged."

Ephraim D. Ellsworth to Abraham Lincoln, Wednesday, June 19, 1861 (Acknowledgment) (Library of Congress)

[Hugo]

Thanks for that, Col Steve. I just presumed the direct link between the KJV and the Gettysburg address, but the phrase may have a longer history.

[Kathy]

Interesting thoughts. I think Lincoln might have thought too highly of Christ's sacrifice to be intentionally lifting the phrase straight from Scripture. It seems more likely that he was trying to convey the idea that giving one's life for a cause should not be in vain--and there aren't a lot of other English words that make the point.

[Adrienne]

"As Christ died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" - From abolitionist hymn "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe.

If the phrase originates with Lincoln, the sentiment does not.

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