Soldiers CAN Make the Best Converts to Jesus’s Kingdom!
Soldiers CAN Make the Best Converts to Jesus’s Kingdom!
Luke 8:5-13 “And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, begging Him, and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, terribly tormented.’ Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and heal him.’ But the centurion replied, ‘Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, “Go!” and he goes, and to another, “Come!” and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this!” and he does it. Now when Jesus heard this, He was amazed and said to those who were following, ‘Truly I say to you, I HAVE NOT FOUND SUCH GREAT FAITH WITH ANYONE IN ISRAEL. And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be thrown out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go; it shall be done for you AS YOU HAVE BELIEVED.’ And the servant was healed at that very moment.”
Unlike the later and now majority of compromised representatives of “Christianity,” the apostolic and earliest Christians were very clear that being faithful to Jesus requires that we follow His revolutionarily different teachings and example in leading a life that was guided and ruled by the very same Spirit that He Himself had received at His baptism (Matthew 3:16). This Spirit-created lifestyle and instinct included refusing to use violence in order to deal with evil:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’But I say to you, Do NOT resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matthew 5:38-41).
“You have condemned and put to death the righteous person; he offers you NO RESISTENCE” (James 5:6).
Jesus and His apostles also modelled the DEGREE of that non-resistance as well as the principle of such non-resistance: Jesus’ verbal condemnation of clerical hypocrisy, and His driving the money changers and their beasts out of the temple; the brave refusals of Peter and Paul to refuse to obey the commands of their civil authorities to stop witnessing about the divine Lordship of Jesus – all of these show that such “non-resistance” referred to the resistance that involved physical violence or the encouragement of such violence. While led to be free to verbally challenge or condemn evil, they left any physical resistance against that evil to God and His holy angels ONLY!
And, regarding their own safety, they were confident that their covenanted Father was already providing them with “total coverage” regarding any protection from harm or death that HE deemed appropriate or timely. They quite simply quit being in charge of physically protecting themselves (apart from an occasional fleeing from pursuers – e.g., Acts 9:23-25)! Paul could use his Roman civil rights as a citizen of Tarsus to appeal to the Emperor’s law court in order to avoid injustice (Acts 25:9-12), but he did not dream of taking up the sword against that injustice! Such an imitated philosophy of mixing courage with non-violence was later adopted rather successfully even by the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi and the Baptist Martin Luther King to produce amazing results! Can you imagine if the supposed Christian supporters of the violent American Revolution and Civil Wars had had the same courage, Biblical integrity, and loyalty to Jesus?
While I have surrendered my obedience to those same non-violent commands of Jesus, I have heard “non-resistant” and “pacifistic” Christians who believe and follow those original commands of Jesus talk as if the word “soldier” was to be treated as virtually a “dirty word,” as if “soldiering” is something to be repented of in the same way that murder, theft and adultery are. But that is merely one more example of how we can add man-made ideas to “clarify” or even “improve” upon what Jesus and His apostles actually said and believed. That passage quoted above, about Jesus and the centurion, demonstrates it. Unlike what some of my Anabaptist acquaintances might have done, Jesus – like John the Baptist (Luke 3:14) – did not ask the centurion soldier to repent of his soldiering before or after ministering to him. And Paul did not consider soldiering to be a sinful profession to use when describing those who were ministering the gospel of Jesus, as seen in such passages below:
2 Timothy 2:3-4 “Suffer hardship with me AS A GOOD SOLDIER of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him.”
Philippians 2: 25 “Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and FELLOW SOLDIER, but your messenger and the one who ministered to my need… Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such men in esteem;”
While those who use the sword need to quit using that sword AFTER being conquered by the Spirit of Jesus, it is clear that there is nothing they need to feel guilty about for having used it BEFORE having their loyalty captured by Him.
As Jesus seemed to be implying when He referred to that Roman centurion soldier, it was partly BECAUSE he was a soldier that he had grown into that unique form of “faith” in Jesus. And I doubt that it was a mere accident that the centurion Cornelius later was the very first gentile to be drawn into the peaceful Kingdom of God!
For those who have not yet been drawn out of what Jesus called “this world,” the military profession has been able to evoke some of the very best and most noble instincts within human beings. It is true that it must also be acknowledged that sometimes soldiering has drawn out some of the very worst of human instincts as well: there are some human beings who actually enjoy violence and bloodshed; but that is not true of most soldiers. The Christian churches, which have become so deficient in boldness and courage over the centuries, would benefit by evoking such noble and self-sacrificing instincts within its members, no?
For one thing, I have found it relatively more common to find soldiers who are being strongly motivated by ideals than to find the same among the civilian population. Many choose that career which paid lower than any civilian counterpart precisely because of such ideas as serving their nation and its ideals of freedom, justice, and generosity toward others, instead of being motivated to serve their own personal ambitions. Terms like “honor,” “duty,” and “integrity” tend to be taken more seriously by soldiers whom I have known and read about than by most of us civilians. The military life and camaraderie that it engenders also helps make racism disappear: my son almost made it through the Marine boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina (stress-induced nosebleeds were his enemy): they were taught that “in the Marines there IS NO such thing as ‘blacks and whites’; there is only LIGHT green and DARK green” – only “light MARINES, and dark MARINES.” Military culture tends to be more imbued with “color-blindness” because everyone is required to prove themselves as a valid soldier by the same imposed and more rigorous standard than we civilians are. The church would benefit by evoking such idealistic and “color-blind” or “status-blind” instincts within its members, no?
To choose to become a soldier is to accept a life of significantly greater discipline than almost any other profession. No matter how long your career or how highly you are promoted, you are ALWAYS “UNDER orders.” Personal ambition certainly exists (and is encouraged), but SUBJECT to the “needs of the service.” For people who are personally motivated by ideals, living UNDER the discipline of others tends to work SELF-discipline into one’s character. That is true in the raising of children, but it continues to bear fruit with adults as well. The church would greatly benefit from requiring such discipline and inspiring such self-discipline, no? Contemporary Christian churches seem to be spawning merely a SOMEWHAT less individualistic and privileged personal attitude than our fellow secular American citizens do, creating “believers” who feel that they have a right to determine WHICH commands about which they will take pay attention, and HOW seriously or literally they will take those! Bonhoeffer’s phrase “cheap grace” has become a clever covering for a mere dislike of “DOING WHAT YOU ARE TOLD.” If you recall, the mess that we humans have made of ourselves and our physical environment is the result of that easily understood refusal to take God at His word (Genesis 2:17), and listening instead to a voice that provided a pleasant “tickle” to their ears, “Hath God INDEED said…?” (Genesis 3:4ff; 2 Timothy 4:3).
Choosing to be an honorable soldier is a supreme example of “putting your money where your mouth is.” As a soldier, you are making a solemn and legally binding vow, consecrating yourself to defend the ideals and details of the Constitution of the United States at the possible or even likely personal cost of suffering pain and even violent death! I’ll bet the proverbial “dollars to donuts” that there are many more soldiers who were then motivated to learn what is IN that Constitution than you or I civilians do! What other professions even come CLOSE to such a degree of consecration or of statistically likely suffering? The church would benefit by being able to inspire such loyalty within its members, no? The original and true church certainly did! But loyalty requires a passionate belief in ones cause, one’s organization, one’s nation, one’s congregation!
The soldier is immersed in a lifestyle that takes life much more seriously than most of us civilians are likely to. For most of us, our greatest combat with the “dark side of the force” amounts to periodic disputes with unpleasant neighbors, overbearing relatives, occasional law suits, or the possible election victories of those nasty _____ (fill in your own political enemies). But the military culture lives in a world of warfare against enemies who want to KILL you, and frequently do kill you as painfully as they can! The soldier’s world is a world of expecting and actually experiencing literal “life and death” warfare with real human “enemies,” and encountering degrees of “hate” that most of us civilians NEVER experience. Who is more likely to take demonic enemies more seriously: a “soldierly” Christian, or one of us “civilians”? The church would benefit by evoking such “life or death” seriousness of purpose within its members, no? HOW differently would such “soldierly” Christians be when reading the details of what Jesus taught, promised and commanded? What kind of Christians would be more likely to take the commanding AUTHORITY of Jesus more seriously, a converted soldier, or one of us life-long (i.e., careless and individualistic) sort of “Christians.”
There are other admirable aspects of the military culture of the soldier, but the last one I will mention is the degree of willingness, even consecration, to sacrifice your life for your comrades. As a civilian, my conscience MIGHT compel me to recommend that my manager promote a fellow worker rather than me because he deserves the promotion more than I do. But we have all read those heroic stories of almost unimaginable bravery, in which a soldier has literally thrown himself on top of a hand grenade and sacrificed his life in order to save the lives of his comrades! Can you think of any better way to imitate what Jesus had said (regarding HIS love): “NO one has greater love than this, that someone should lay down his life for his friends”? (John 15:13). The church would benefit by evoking such self-sacrificing instincts within its members, no? But in order to evoke such an instinct in us, most of us really have to believe strongly enough in our cause and in our comrades’ integrity to do so. The kind of Christians that JESUS made and inspired were crazy enough to WANT to have “all things in common” so that none of their comrades were in need (Acts 2:44; 4:32). Soldiers tend to feel that way about one another. When we or any family sent our soldier sons “care packages” they instinctively and automatically became COMMUNAL care packages.
How successful do you believe that God considers contemporary Christian churches to be at evoking all of those soldierly instincts? How “Christian” do yo think He considers them to be?
What I have described above are the formative experiences and lifestyle which that centurion, and the centurion Cornelius likely knew. Unlike the way I was in my earlier days of church membership and ministry, my only “denominational” loyalty nowadays is given over to those ancient Christians that Jesus had made and sent out into that world of openly hostile Roman, Persian and other clearly and DIRECTLY satanically inspired empires (unlike the more subtly godless democratic nations of our day). Those truer Christians came closer to GOD’S version of that honorable soldier’s intensity of life than any version that you or I are likely to ever know! They lived in a world of REAL “enemies” that had to be combatted – both the human version and the world of demons that needed to be exposed and expelled. They knew far better than you or I what was meant by John, “ The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to DESTROY the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Their form of “Christianity” had not yet found the comfortable peace, friendship and even alliance with that secular world that their Master had clearly defined as having the evil one, Satan, as its “ruler” (John 12:21, 14:30, 16:11 ) and even – unwittingly, mostly – its “god” (2 Corinthians 4:4). They did not hope for such friendship or partnership with ANY version of “this world,” any more than you or I would want to be under the protection of the local Mafia “godfather,” in exchange for a future “favor” that he might ask of us in the future (as our supposedly “Christian cultures have indeed asked for such “favors”)! What Jesus had made very clear to them about HIS church’s relationship to the world, somehow has become rather fuzzy to us contemporary Christians: Jesus lived in a black and white version of “world” versus “kingdom of God,” whereas ours exists in some puzzling version of merely darker and lighter shades of gray. Wonder who has eased us into that more relaxed and non-soldierly instinct?
But that more “black and white” defined version of reality is what distinguishes the world of an honorable soldier from the “civilian” contemporary Christian and his churches. And that is why such people as those two centurions can make such wonderful converts to the real Jesus and His real church. “Soldierly” Christians recognize the life and death struggle against real and hateful enemies. But for the soldierly converted Christian, these actual enemies are no longer hostile humans to be killed or treated violently, but the enemies that cannot be physically destroyed. For the newly converted soldierly Christian, these new enemies are the demons and their satanic overlord that have the true influence over every nation in this world – for ALL nations, no matter how democratic or autocratic are under the deception of the one that tried to lure Jesus into his area of “expertise” and power.
Such exceptionally different instincts, motivations, and behaviors make it obvious that the Kingdom of God which our Creator is offering to us neither can nor will EVER make sense or be institutionalized within the constitution of ANY majority population of any nation or empire. He told us up front that the only way that frees us from being joined with Satan in a common tragic destiny requires going through a gate that is “narrow,” and that “difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are FEW who find it” (Matthew 5:14).
Any “Christian” church is required by God to incarnate and institutionalize that very same “narrow way” with at LEAST the efficiency that the Marines have incarnated and institutionalized their “narrow way” which leads to the creation of a U.S. Marine. Or – in case such a non-pacifistic endeavor causes offense – in the way that a Medical School creates their “way” that leads to the kind of physician that I have and trust and admire greatly!
All soldiers are like everyone else – we ALL must repent of being who we have been apart from God, and we must all surrender our trust and passionate obedience to Him who is our Creator and Judge. But the converted honorable soldier does have this advantage over us “civilian” Christians. He already has surrendered and consecrated himself to the disciplined life of being “under orders” and in a clear “chain of command.” He doesn’t need to repent of his soldiering. While most of us desperately need to learn a form of “obedience,” “surrender,” and “discipline” that is either non-existent or pathetically anemic, HE merely needs to change his loyalty and service to a new “commander in chief” and a new “Constitution!
AMEN?
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