Redemption
George McGovern was a famous member of the “Greatest Generation.” During World War II he was a bomber pilot with thirty-five combat missions to his credit. He later became a congressman and senator from South Dakota and the Democratic candidate in the 1972 presidential election.
He expressed one regret about the war. As he pulled away from the target on one of his last missions over Austria he received word that a five-hundred-pound bomb was hung up in the bomb bay. The bomb was armed, making it impossible to land safely. Working feverishly, several crewmen tried to free the deadly projectile. Unfortunately, it came loose as the bomber flew over a small farm. McGovern looked down in horror as the bomb destroyed a cluster of houses on the farm.
For forty years he lived with a sense of guilt over this incident. In 1985 he was lecturing at the University of Innsbruck and, in response to a question from a television reporter, described his regret about the accidental bombing of those farmhouses. That night an elderly Austrian farmer called the television station with a message for the senator:
“Tell the American senator that it was my farm. We saw this low bomber coming, where all the others that had come over earlier were way up above. I got my wife and three daughters out of the house and we hid in the ditch, and no one was hurt. You can tell him that I despised Adolf Hitler, even though my government threw in with him.”285
When he heard these words, George McGovern was finally able to sigh in relief. He said, “After all those years, I got redemption.”286 Every thinking person involved in war comes away with some sense of guilt. I believe that God honors such pangs of conscience and offers each of us a path to our own redemption.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
—Romans 8:12