ABSTRACT
What does God have left to offer that man has not seized for himself? It is a tricky question, and probably not best pondered while overseeing a heavily armed robot flying thousands of feet above Uzbekistan. Warriors as far back as World War I have described combat as interminable boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. In the trenches the boredom could easily spread out over months, and then hell consumes all for just a few moments. In the silence that follows, men have often discovered God, either in person or at a distance. While many deep insights into human nature and the systems of the world have their origins in these deep and deadly silences, they are discovered in hindsight. Combat did not lend itself to philosophical musings in the moment. It wasn’t until the new model of warfare was discovered in the 21st century that man came to appreciate the divinity of the action at a distance centuries of bloody innovation had created. Perhaps now, the seconds of sheer terror were precisely the moment in which the divine perpetrator should contemplate most fully its own power.
