“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” – G.K. Chesterton
Growing up in the church, I was taught at a young age that the Christian life is a life wrapped in battle. Songs like “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “I’m In The Lord’s Army” used war imagery to help my young mind understand the eternal struggle of good vs. evil and help me decide whose camp I was going to be in. The idea was, God and the devil did not get along and you needed to pick a side before the everlasting throwdown commenced. Being a 6-year old obsessed with G.I. Joes and Rambo movies, this made sense to me. The decision was made even easier since I had the Bible to tell me how it all ended. When the dust finally settles, God wins. If that wasn’t enough, all I had to do was just look at the combatants names. God was just one letter away from good and the devil was just one letter away from evil. How much easier could the decision be? Sign me up for the good guys!
As my biblical boot camp continued, I learned how bad the devil was and how he used sin to wreck the world. He had quite the arsenal of destruction and wasn’t afraid to use it. If something was bad, it came from the devil. If something was going wrong in my life, it was his fault. Any sin I saw in myself or others was a direct attack from his side of the battlefield. Even at a young age, this can skew how you see the world and everyone in it. All the “bad stuff” in the world and everyone participating in “bad stuff” was associated with who I was fighting against. So all I had to do was find out what was “bad” and do the opposite. If THAT was bad, and I didn’t look, act, or talk like THAT, then by default, I was good. Faulty reasoning for sure.
As a follower of Christ, knowing what I am “against” is the easy part. That easiness can quickly lead to a stagnant life of judgmental legalism and finger-pointing. In fact, I think when the world looks at us “Christians” as a whole, they probably see a group of unloving soldiers brandishing our disapproving fingers as our weapon of choice. If this is the case, we have severely misrepresented our Captain and the mission He entrusted to us. But what if we, in our own individual circles of influence, decided to live in a way that would change that mindset? What if we were “for” more things than we were “against”? What if our fight, which is not against flesh and blood anyway (Ephesians 6:12), was more of a rescue mission than a be-right-at-all-cost crusade? What if our actions caused someone to accuse us of being "Christ-like" before we had the chance to tell them we were a "Christian." How encouraging to think that God has given us the ability to live in a way that what we SHOULD be known for could actually be what we ARE known for. G.I. Joe cartoons always ended with the reminder that "knowing" is half the battle. In this case, I have a hunch that "loving" is the other, more important half.
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