Virtue Signalling and Military Hubris

What do queues at Crimean gas stations, war damage to a Panamanian ship, and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant at the Battle of Ebenezer in about 1100 BC have in common?

Answer: the hubris of misplaced trust in military superiority.

On June 28 Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare – albeit tacit – public acknowledgement that his war against Ukraine is not going according to plan. He admitted that Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructures had led to fuel supply shortages.

Putin tried to present himself as the man in charge, blustering about setting up special task forces to ensure distribution of supplies. But the truth is his so-called ‘Special Military Operation’ to occupy Ukraine and turn it into a vassal state launched in February 2022 which was only supposed to take a few days has now lasted longer than Soviet involvement in World War II with still no obvious end in sight.

Over the same weekend, On June 27, Iranian forces attacked the Panama-registered tanker Kiku as it attempted to exit the Strait of Hormuz. They damaged the bridge of the ship, which was carrying some 2 million barrels of oil. Fortunately, all crew were reported safe and there was no indication of oil spills.

The attack came as retaliation for US military strikes on Iran on 26 June, which were in turn a response to Iranian attacks on another tanker the previous day. Despite President Donald Trump blustering that “Iran will no longer exist” if it refuses to stop these attacks, Iran has ignored him. The price of oil again rose as the International Maritime Organization suspended its plan to evacuate ships that had been trapped in the Arabian Gulf.

The Russian war on Ukraine and the US war on Iran have a lot in common. In both cases, supposed major powers falsely believed that military superiority would translate into swift victories against weaker enemies. Putin and Trump both confidently proclaimed a new age of friendship with their opponents once they had ushered in regime change. In each case, their enemies fought back and have emerged stronger.

Image: Putin's speech at the memorial ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian chapel near the Vršič Pass in memory of Russian soldiers who died there during the First World War, 30 July 2016. [Source]

In both wars, too, the attackers have invoked God’s backing. Although they each talk religion, neither Trump nor Putin have displayed much evidence of serious personal Christian piety. Yet the Russian Orthodox Church declared the ‘Special Military Operation’ a holy war, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly prayed at a Pentagon worship service that “every round [would] find its mark against the enemies of righteousness”.

Their supposed military omnipotence, intelligence omniscience, and invocation of divine partisanship trapped each of them into thinking they were in control of outcomes. Yet events have exposed what Patrick Cockburn calls this ‘global superpower myth’ as foolish hubris.

It is here that the desperate bluster of the world’s greatest warmongers reprises the defeat of ancient Israel at the Battle of Ebenezer. It is recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 4, a passage I was preaching on last weekend at Wallsend Baptist Church as events were unfolding in Russia and the Gulf.

That chapter occurs at a desperate moment in the life of God’s people. Ancient Israel is suffering under Philistine subjugation, and the two sides muster for battle at a place called ‘Ebenezer’, meaning ‘God has been with us so far’ – surely an auspicious site to engage the enemy.

Yet the Hebrew army is routed. Given that they were God’s covenant people, they ask, “Why did the Lord bring defeat on us today?” It’s the right question, and 1 Samuel gives abundant clues. Under corrupt leadership, the moral and spiritual fabric of the nation is rotten to the core. The aged and ineffective leader, high priest and judge Eli, had failed to reign in his two sons, Phinehas and Hophni, who are using their position as senior priests at the shrine of Shiloh to blatantly plunder worshippers and treat God’s ordinances ‘with contempt’. They were also brazenly and systematically sexually abusing women working at the shrine.

The answer to the question is obvious, as is the solution: take an honest look at their own failures and do the hard work of reforming national life in a way that pleases God. Yet the Israelites give the wrong answer: “Let us bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh, so that he may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.” In a spectacular example of empty virtue signalling, the ark is brought, with great fanfare, by the two charlatans Hophni and Phinehas themselves, who were no doubt thoroughly enjoying their moment in the national limelight.

It’s a cunning plan. The ark was the visible representation of God’s presence with his covenant people. Hitching it on to the front of the army seems a failsafe way to force God to give them the victory (after all, this had seemed to work in the siege of Jericho). But when the cheering army marched back into battle, they are routed. Phinehas and Hophni are amongst many of those who are killed, and the ark itself falls into Philistine hands.

The allure of the ark as religious relic granting military superpowers has become the stuff of legend. In Steven Spielberg’s 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones races against Nazi archaeologists to find the ark. The Germans seize it, but, like the Israelite army of 1 Samuel 4, their cynical attempt to harness its power backfires spectacularly.

We can’t make any direct comparison between the wars of eleventh century Israel and twenty-first century Russia and America. God’s people under the Old Testament theocracy were in a unique covenantal position. Christ’s coming gave birth to the church as an international, universal, peaceable kingdom. Biblical promises to Old Testament Israel cannot be appropriated by modern nation states.

But we can usefully learn the dangers of religious virtue signalling and military hubris. Religious leaders should resist the temptation of appearing ‘relevant’ and being at the centre of national life by suggesting that God can be strong-armed by our virtue signalling into doing what we want.

The Bible is full of descriptions of pompous leaders who are deluded into thinking that the power at their disposal gives them a god-like ability to use force to control events. Trump, Putin and their ilk would do well to study those stories carefully. Or failing that, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark would also be useful.