The fundamental pressures of war, especially from the rank structures of the military, are ever present at the front of my mind, in the most menial of tasks.  My soul is troubled even as I shave, for example, for I am thinking of how unnecessary it is that I shave.  I know that the practical purpose of shaving is so that protective masks are able to attain the most perfect and safe seal to my face that is possible.  But, since I'm outside of deployment and gas training, here in garrison, stateside, this cannot be the reason for it.  And so, I realize that the reason for the impractical requirement of shaving is obviously to solidify uniformity and military tradition.  And so, shaving itself is no trouble, but rather the reinforcement it is that, here, I must submit to the uniformity and military tradition of war and its blind, fatal aggression.  My morale is obviously depleted, as my every contribution here is an empowerment to war, which is damaging to my inner-peace.  Because I am a christian, I possess an incredible redemptive Spirit that allows me to enjoy all the time spent with my co-workers, in the sense that I am sharing the simple experience of life.  They tell me I am of high spirits, which is certainly true, because of Christ's work of Grace.  And it is because of those very high spirits that I am so deeply affected by the moral failings of war.  Those moral failings of war are reinforced, every moment, by the inescapable setting and reality of my employment here, in a military, and something inside me continuously dies, and even crucifies Christ all over again.  I am as Peter, who is overcome with joy to see his Lord risen, only I am continuously sending Him right back to the cross with everyday I remain in this empowerment of war.

And so, once out of the military and the war, I plan to assist the Quaker House and GI Rights Hotline, as they have assisted me in my process of applying for conscientious objection.  I plan to continue giving, generously, to the Quaker House, the Anti-War Committee, and similar organizations.  I plan to stay out of militaries and wars, and continue to seriously question any means of violence, fatal or not, so that I may make no effort which does not protect the embrace of the Gospel of God's Grace.  I intend to either move to a country like Costa Rica (which abolished its military) or else utilize this nation's democratic system to work towards reducing and abolishing our militaries and war efforts.

As stated earlier, in Question 3, I demonstrated my devotion to my beliefs when, while considering the truthfulness of christian nonviolence, rid myself of all violent media and violent media projects, began  attendance at an Historic Peace Church, and sought relevant literature, the reading of which would demonstrate, in a tangible way, my intellectual labor for the cause.  But more demonstrative of all these, I firmly believe, is the way my basic day has changed.  That I spend virtually all of my free time on the matter, that I discuss it openly and exhaustively with my lifelong friends for untold hours, calling them so often that their strain from my demanding obsession is evident in their gracious voices, I believe is perhaps the surest proof of my genuineness.  Or perhaps my sincerity is best demonstrated by the fact that I have given 40% of my paycheck to the Quaker House (which assists conscientious objectors) and the Anti-War Committee, since mid-March, since then I began to no longer be able to stand to accept money for a cause I don't believe in, save what I need to pay preexisting bills, to which I am legally bound (I have included receipts of my donations, as well as copies of my LESs to prove the amounts given are, in fact, 40% of my net pay).

I cannot tolerate the battle command structure that is fundamental to any military; I am incompatible with military service, because I cannot simply trust a "superior's" judgement as to whether or not I ought to engage any other individual with potentially lethal acts of aggression.  It is not any officer's conscience I must live with unto the rest of eternity, but my very own.  Our military does insist that soldiers always resist immoral orders, however, I am utterly convinced that all orders to kill, even in self-defense, are possibly immoral, and must be adequately reviewed before approval, regardless of the delay this may cause.  I am unwavering in my conviction that many enemy combatants of any war certainly cannot be righteously killed for their involvement, besides many of them being able to reach satisfactory pacification with employment of more patience, endurance, understanding, negotiation, and compromise.  I think any order to kill, which does not allow every solider every opportunity to second-guess that order, investigate the matter, and pursue alternative methods, to the point of the soliders' personal satisfaction, is most certainly immoral, and thus unacceptable.

War, by nature, draw elements of officially opposing nations/ forces into combat.  My soul cannot tolerate this, as it gives virtually no opportunity for warriors to confirm the worthwhileness of the battle.  If I were part of an element that fell under attack by an enemy element, I would be in a situation where proper moral investigation of the need for killing is practically impossible.  If I were to draw back from the combat, I would be persecuted with abandonment of my element.  If I attempted to halt the heated firefight, I would probably die before I was understood (probably leaving no one else to act out of Grace), but would certainly be opposing the enactments of my element, and confusing my comrades, perhaps fatally.  This demonstrate, for me, the intolerability of participating in wars.

I consider that, though I am a medic, I am required to wear ACUs, a uniform which necessarily symbolizes blind, fatal aggression (as it is a symbol of militancy).  The very wearing of such a uniform inspires a fatally defensive instinct in all those who do not share my national citizenship.  And militaries, of course, respond to a fatally defensive stance with a fatally aggressive stance, hence unnecessary killing.  And thus, my concern for each person's receiving of Grace, in word and deed, and so my concern for each person's eternal welfare, is intolerably compromised, on a massive scale, besides my conscience being defiled, as long as I serve any military or war, in any form.

I originally enlisted in the US Army Reserve, December 9, 2002, because of my christian desire to put others before myself, and so, further the cause of the Gospel of Christ.  I was entranced by a romantic view of "our greatest generation," who stopped Nazi Germany's attempts at world domination and genocide, in World War II.  However, I have been spiritually depressed as long as I have been in the military (the moment I signed my contract it was as if I felt God sighing in dismay).  Something essential to my inner peace was missing, once I was in the military, but I could not identify it, and assumed I was simply carrying the necessary moral grief of all those who are willing to use violence to control violence.  In basic training (and in all of my military experience since then) I was deeply troubled to realize that my moral standards were far higher than those expected of the military.  This, of course, presented the moral unease of knowing that my commanding "superiors" may well not have in mind that for which I have dedicated my entire life and soul (the Gospel of Christ).  Unknowingly, I found myself attached to a non-deployable unit, and thus unable to contribute myself to the sacrificial cause of deployment, save by volunteering to be on the individual deployment volunteer lists, which I did, as soon as I was made aware of them.

As my Active Reserve contract came near to its close, I decided I was not satisfied to get out of the army just yet, because I still had not yet been able to deploy, and so do my sacrificial part to make this generation the next "greatest generation."  When I re-enlisted, I believed militaries and wars (or, at least ours) ultimately served the purpose of protecting souls for Christ's Gospel.  I have since come to the absolute belief that they do not and cannot.

But, as I entered my second enlistment contract, I did not yet understand my increasingly taxing moral scruples with the military and wars I was trying to serve.  My depression further deepened, but also began to sharpen, as I studied our nation's military history, especially our dealings with Native America.  I was particularly affected by Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States.  I began to understand all wars to be essentially of the same nature.  I began to understand the unnecessary tragedies that our own military contributed to World War II.  I began to see that, faced with Nazi Germany, my christian insistence on the maximum preservation of God's Grace would not lead me to join a military, but rather to join many of the various individual efforts of Nazi resisters in Europe, some of which, however, were unnecessarily aggressive (but, as a civilian, free of the moral subordination which is military service, or officiation of war, I could've avoided them).  I began to deny myself no opportunity to learn more about the unnecessary killings that militaries and wars have involved themselves in (I would soon realize that militaries and wars must involve themselves in such unnecessary killings, because militaries and wars are by nature blindly, fatally aggressive.)

In early February of this year, 2009, I was strongly impressed that, perhaps, a christian should not be willing to commit violence at all, for the sake of spreading of the Gospel.  Living up to my faith with genuine sincerity, I entered the most intellectually exhaustive season of my life (which has yet to end), as I began to spend virtually all of my free time contemplating the Gospel of Christ, examining any logical or practical failings that might be revealed in christian pacifism, and discussing and debating with my most trusted and passionate friends (who would not only test all of my conclusions against reason, but also against the sincerity of my life, which they know intimately).  I have been so absorbed in establishing the sureness of my beliefs, in reason and action, that, weekend after weekend, as my co-workers have inquired as to what my weekend plans were, I have mostly only been able to reply, "I've got to read and work on my application."  After a month of intense investigation and personal searching, I told my supervisor that I was interested in applying for discharge from the army as a conscientious objector.  Shortly afterwards, my supervisor and I discussed the nature of my beliefs, and that of the application for conscientious objection, with our Battalion Chaplain.  We decided that it was best that I devote more time to establishing proof of my sincerity, before I officially apply.

In the two and one half months since then, I have focused on acting out my beliefs in tangible ways, including giving away all of my violent video games, video game systems, and violent movies.  Further I halted work on a video game, that incorporated violence, which I had been designing for years, a project on which I had easily spent hundreds of hours.  I continued attending a Quaker (the Quakers are an Historic Peace Church) meeting I had begun attending in February.  I have now read over 1,400 pages of literature on nonviolence and Quaker spirituality (not including additional spiritual reading not directly related to nonviolence).

After this intense investigation of thought and practice, however, I concluded that the christian must sometimes use violence to protect the embrace of the Gospel of Christ, which would always be a situation that demanded unhindered investigation and discernment on part of the executioner (such that a military or a war cannot permit).  These explorations of nonviolence did significantly contribute to the formation and crystallization of my belief that, for the sake of the Gospel of Christ, I cannot participate in any military, or any war, in any form.  This sharpening and finalization of belief reached its utter point and rigidity on May 2nd, of this year, 2009.

• Members of the military who develop a "firm, fixed, and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms,"1 based on moral, ethical, or religious beliefs, are entitled to discharge from the military or transfer to non-combatant status. A conscientious objector must meet three criteria:
• you must object to participation in war in any form;
• you must base your objection on "religious training and belief" (which can include moral or ethical training and belief) that "crystallized" after you entered the military; and
• you must demonstrate that your position is "sincere and deeply held."

My soul belongs to Jesus Christ, and the proclamation of His Gospel, in word and deed.  That Gospel, for which I invest my entire life, is one of God's unconditional Grace, for the souls of all people.  To kill someone is to quite possibly rob him or her of the Gospel, as the deed of violence will cut short future opportunities to experience and embrace It, should it not yet be, besides possibly compromising the victim's immediate and final (and thus critical) perception of Its availability.  Thus, fatal acts are often dominations of God's own mercy and the eternal soul of another.  Appropriately, then, I take the act of killing intensely serious; the decision to kill, even for the most objectively merciful reasons, may seal a fellow human-being into misery for the rest of Eternity, besides setting oneself before the wrath of that human's Creator.  In any situation where this is in any way avoidable, I cannot tolerate it.

Having established the seriousness with which I approach the act of killing, I can no longer participate in the military, or war, in any form, because they require killing on demand.  This is problematic to the point of being irresolvable, because a military command, or a pressure of war, to kill is, by no means, necessarily possessing the extreme moral justification that I absolutely require.  Thus, it is ethically irresponsible for me to further allow myself to stay under the command of any military, or within the participation of any war, in any form.