I do not enjoy thinking about the Christian life as a war. When I was a child, I did: I imagined war as glorious and heroic and full of self-sacrifice, and—in some respects—it is that, or it can be that. But, now, I imagine war quite differently. I see it through the words of those who fought it—like the poet laureate of the Great War, Wilfred Owen—men who never came home to their families; I see it through the terrible images of photographers—like Yosuke Yamahata—who stood in the ashes of whole cities. The glory of war (if there is any glory innate to war) quickly consumes and vanishes; what remain are graves, broken lives, and crying children. What fellowship can such darkness have with the light of the Gospel? In war, human beings devalue, dehumanize, oppress, and massacre each other. There is nothing of value in any of these actions, just bare and empty pain. The battle which God calls Christians into is all but entirely different: It is a war, complete with enemies and dangers, but one of faith, not of violence, and one that is always only good.
Being a Christian bears certain similarity to being a soldier; this is undeniable. In his Second Epistle to Timothy (Ch. 2, v. 3-4), Paul writes, “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” Christians—like all human beings—face terrible, systemic, generational evil on a daily basis, but unlike others, they are conscious of this as a spiritual struggle. When we hear Paul saying to endure hardness by not becoming entangled in “the affairs of this life,” we must be careful how we understand it. One might be tempted, on a cursory reading, to take its meaning rather similar to the opening lines of Wilfred Owen’s poem “Insensibility:”
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The human response when one is faced with suffering and death is to become insensible, unfeeling, or to seek to become so. Perhaps in some situations, for limited periods of time, this is a necessary defense mechanism, but it must not become a way of life—at least, not for the Christian. In Owen’s poem, soldiers are letting “their veins run cold;” they are forgetting the humanity of their compatriots and their enemies and focusing solely on the business of staying alive. They are entangling themselves with the affair of living at the expense of compassion. Blessing Christians, Paul writes, “[… T]he Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men,” (in his First Epistle to the Thessalonians: Ch. 3, v. 13). When Paul says to endure hardness by not being entangled with the affairs of this life, we must be certain to mark that he is not telling us to be unfeeling or to avoid attachment to people; that would run contrary to everything else he taught. He’s saying that we must live (as soldiers do) constantly aware of the fragility of life, not carried away in its rhythm, nor assuming its continuance, rushing along and making plans and ignoring what is happening around us. We are not to give up feeling (for this would not please Christ, as we learn in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: Ch. 4, v. 19-20); we are to feel more deeply. We are to do the opposite of what Owen’s poem (facetiously) praises: We are to forget about the business of staying alive and focus on the humanity of our compatriots and enemies. We are to endure hardness not by becoming insensible but by preserving—for Christ’s sake—as much sensibility as is possible.
This sets up a fundamental difference between carnal warfare and spiritual warfare: The Christian fight is one of faith. We resist apathy because of what we believe. We believe that Christ has called upon us all to struggle against despair and injustice, we believe in the fundamental equality of humankind revealed in Jesus Christ (Acts of the Apostles: Ch. 17, v. 26; Epistle to the Galatians: Ch. 3, v. 28; Epistle to the Colossians: Ch. 3, v. 11), we believe that God is love and that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to atone for its sins (Gospel according to John: Ch. 3, v. 16-17; Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 5), we believe that one day war will cease (Book of Isaiah: Ch. 2, v. 4; Book of Hosea: Ch. 2, v. 18; Book of Micah: Ch. 4, v. 3), we believe that one day death will die (First Epistle to the Corinthians: Ch. 15, v. 26, 52). The struggle is for these beliefs: These beliefs are worth the struggle, and they are how we manage to endure it. Paul writes (in his Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 8, v. 24), “[… W]e are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” In a spiritual war, without physical weapons or armor, the things most important—most vital to preserving our lives—are invisible.
To hold to these things, we need not demean or belittle others: We must not. To do so would be to betray these truths, not to believe them. The only way to fight a fight of Christian faith is to fight a good fight. Our methods are kindness, gentleness, joyfulness, empathy, compassion, tact, and humility. Our tactics are to be feeding the hungry, upholding the weary, encouraging the overwrought, comforting the mourner, forgiving the debtor, welcoming the foreigner, loving our enemies, binding what is broken, finding what is lost: This is the worship of God; this is divine warfare—to heal and not to hurt. In his Epistle to the Ephesians (Ch. 6, v. 11-12), Paul writes, “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” In a war with the Devil, there is no such thing as fighting fire with fire; evil cannot be combatted with evil. Paul makes this very clear early in his Epistle to the Romans (Ch. 3, v. 8; Ch. 6, v. 1-2), eventually crystallizing it (in Ch. 12, v. 21) into one simple and beautiful command: “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Human warfare is an effort of self-preservation; divine warfare is one of self-sacrifice. And it is exemplified by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who, according to Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (Ch. 2, v. 7-8), “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Reflecting on the Passion of Christ in his poem “At a Calvary near the Ancre,” Wilfred Owen wrote, “But they who love the greater love / Lay down their life; they do not hate.” This is Christian warfare. God will never ask us to be cruel, to take, to hurt, to kill—for only what is good can overcome what is evil.
In a letter home from the battlefields of France dated February 4, 1917, Owen wrote, “Christ is literally in no man’s land. There men often hear his voice[:] Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life—for a friend.”1 And we can be confident this was true: Wherever there is self-sacrifice and compassion, Christ is there. (As the ancient hymn says, wherever there is love or charity, God is there.) But Christ’s no man’s land is everywhere and at every time. All creation wars and suffers quietly every day (Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 8, v. 22-23). This war is not for land or for pride or even for our lives but for our souls, for love, for justice, for righteousness, for anything and everything worth living or dying for. This is the good fight of faith, and it is our comfort and privilege to fight it.
(Photo by Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa on Unsplash)
- “Wilfred Owen and Christianity” by Andrew Gates ↩︎
Comparing Notes 