The Christian as Fighter; Part 1

I’m currently reading ‘Leadership and Training for the Fight’ by MSG Paul Howe (USA-Ret). For the unfamiliar, Howe, a former SpecOps soldier who served 20+ years, uses various missions in Somalia during Operation Gothic Serpent in 1993 (‘Blackhawk Down’) to illustrate leadership and training lessons learned. It’s one big AAR and full of great stuff. I can’t recommend it enough, whether you’re just starting your military career or already in a leadership position… that includes leadership in the military, law-enforcement, business or church. It’s one of those books I’d buy all my friends if I had the money.

In a couple of chapters, Howe touches on ‘religious issues’ and it’s apparent he’s had more than one negative experience with Christians in leadership positions, primarily it seems, problems over their inability to ‘commit to the slaughter’ (his words). The attitude he’s developed over time to deal with what he sees as the competing needs of Faith and Fighting he sums up thus:

Prayer is for before the fight or after the fight, but not for during the fight.

I will rephrase it this way:

Faith is for before the fight or after the fight, but you must suspend it in order to fight.

Is that true? Is there a dividing line between service to your country and service to God? Some will say ‘yes’, at least when it comes to the actual killing part. In their mind, it’s okay to be in the service, but there’s a taint that comes with actually hurting someone.

Negative. Listen; It’s the job of every man and woman in the service to kill the enemy. Even if you’re a payroll clerk and the only thing you ever strike in your military career is the keyboard on your computer, you’re still facilitating somebody else’s ability to kill the enemy. If you’re in the service, your job is to kill. Deal with that up front. No, I’m not saying you’re supposed to be a robot and blindly follow orders.

As for the pacifists who say military service is wrong for the Christian, I simply can’t abide those people. I wish they’d just go away. I challenge them to come up with scriptural support for their viewpoint. In the meantime, if that’s you, know that you sleep safe and sound and have the freedom to spout that nonsense only because of the sacrifice of better men and women than you. Yes, I know it’s ultimately because of God’s hedge that America remains (relatively) free, but they’re the tools He’s chosen to use.

I can certainly understand Howe’s frustration and am not at all offended at his conclusion. It’s true. I find the current pacifism that pervades the church and smothers her men distressing. The church is run largely by Nomen for women (1). As a result, many Christian men aren’t fighters, at least in the physical sense. They’re soft. They’ve lost their edge, lost the ability to make hard decisions, lost their ‘commitment to the slaughter’.

It wasn’t always so. In Six Battles Every Man Must Win, Bill Perkins lays the blame for this emasculation on the church and trends that started with the Industrial Revolution. This is when men first left their families to the care of the women of the household while they went off to work. In my opinion, the church just built on a foundation laid by Adam when he stood by passively and abrogated his responsibility for the security of the garden to Eve.

Whichever, we better fix it soon, because America is circling the drain and if we don’t soon start making some hard decisions she’s going down. This dream will die. Personally, I don’t think that’s God’s will for America, but God’s will isn’t currently always done on this earth.

Now, Woman, before you start planning to frag me, let me make this statement: There’s nothing wrong with the feminist point of view. It’s just that there’s too much of it in both society and the church. There’s supposed to be a balance between the feminine and masculine, but we’ve lost our balance. It’s not the fault of women, either. I place the blame for this mess on Men.

Back to fighting, actually back to the whole Christian experience, again we’ve lost our balance. Time after time I see leaders in the church going out of their way to stress that such and such a verse or concept in the scripture only refers to the spiritual and not the physical. Why? Why is that always so and why do they go out of their way to make the point? Have they lost sight of the fact that God made us with spiritual souls AND physical bodies? He put us here in a physical realm with physical bodies because He wants us to put our hands on problems, to put our back to it, to stand on our legs as well as in our faith. This focus on the spiritual at the expense of the physical is almost heretical.

Last Sunday, a woman I respect immensely as a teacher inserted into her lesson the point that Nehemiah was NOT referring to physical strength when he said, ‘the joy of the Lord is my strength’ (2). First, I think she’s wrong. I see God’s Word reflecting the proper balance between the two realms and He often has more than one meaning to what He says. Unless the context is clearly physical or spiritual, one or the other, I believe we should apply the teaching to both realms. More to my main point, why would she feel it necessary to expressly make that point? The teaching, which was actually on the book of Philippians, certainly didn’t require it. This is a woman who longs for men to be men (as she understands the meaning), but here she is contributing to the lie. This is the type of language that is guaranteed to turn off certain men, men of action… violent men. She would argue otherwise, but she and others like her, with their inability to accept the rough, physical, violent side of Jesus, are contributing to the exodus of men from the church.

Christian Man, do you still have your edge? Are you hard? Can you defend your family against the physical manifestations of evil that currently walk this earth? Will you be able to put two into the head of an unconscious terrorist in your church, or your child’s school, when the time comes? If the answer to that last is ‘yes’, will you be able to handle the emotional aftermath, and are you comfortable that your faith will support that type of commitment to the fight against evil? For me, both answers are ‘yes’.

Back to the original question posed by MSG Howe’s conclusion: The answer is ‘yes’, there does seem to be a line between being a Christian and being a warrior, but it’s a demarcation created by the world and based on a lie. So, I’ll restate the question this way: Is there any scriptural conflict between being a 'good' Christian and an effective warrior? I say, “No!” Instead, I’d argue that Christians are actually required to deal ruthlessly with evil and the more ruthlessly and finally we deal with it, the better off all are, even the evil-doer. The world will tell you different. In the world, compassion is the order of the day. Unfortunately for us all, it’s the world’s mistaken definition of compassion (read: tolerance).

Strength and courage,
Steve
DVC/i H s

(1) Noman: A man whose attitudes and mindset are feminine. The context is situational. Ex: 'George Bush the First acted like a noman toward the end of Gulf War I.' See?

(2) Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." Neh 8:10 (NIV)