I’ve always thought the warfare language around faith was
kind of troubling. I mean, God, I hope I don’t demonstrate my faith in you by
going out and slaughtering a bunch of villagers. That sounds like I’m some Viking
praying to Odin, not so much a Christian. I mean, I can sort of understand the
Old Testament; the rules were different then—it was about setting Israel apart,
and, yes, there was a lot of killing going on there—in spite of God giving the
Israelites an explicit commandment, “Thou shall not kill”—but these examples of
killing tended to lift Israel over some occupying force, some people who were
not where they belonged, and so while it may still make me a bit uneasy I can
understand it. But, after Jesus, the warfare images feel like they maybe
shouldn’t be needed. After all, we are no longer Jews or Greeks, so what on
earth are we fighting about?
Yet, the images persist, begging us to consider why.
Paul, in Ephesians—in Ephesians of all places, where he has spent pretty much
the entirety of his letter talking about unity in and through faith—writes
about putting on the armor of God because of the threats to the people from the
ruling authorities. This sounds like it might be the pregame pep talk leading
to war. This has been used by Christians during the Crusades and the
Inquisition, where putting on the armor of God has meant converting the savages
by means of a sword. Something about that doesn’t feel right. If someone came
to ransack our town and told us to convert or die we would (I think rightly) assume
that their faith is pretty weak if it takes threats of violence to achieve
conversion.
So, it seems like we might be heading that direction. Paul
takes us to the precipice of where we have been before—war, death, destruction—it’s
the old ways again, time to pick up our swords or grab our guns and head to
battle, but that’s where things change. It’s precisely at this point where we
discover the change in what it means to be a God-follower after Jesus. Yes, we
put on the armor of God but the armor of God is not battle armor. Rather, Paul
says it is the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes to
proclaim the gospel of peace. Paul’s message is particularly effective because
he leads us down one avenue—war, battle, man-things—and takes us on a sharp left
turn toward something different, a saving grace that requires us not to fight
for our lives but to give our lives away. This is the stunning left turn of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But, if I’m being honest, this is kind of a tough turn to
make, especially for men. Many men are excited to throw on the armor. And here
I want to draw a quick distinction between joining the military, which at its
best is about serving for peace at home, and going on a personal war, which is
about achieving our own ends. Paul wasn’t writing against the choice to defend
your country—after all, the people to whom he was writing were under foreign
rule already, rather he was taking a certain attitude that tries to achieve its
ends through violence and turning it around.
Now,
we don’t go to battle as much these days. We certainly don’t do religious wars
so much anymore, which is I believe very much for the best. But instead we
throw on our Vikings horns or cheese heads or Sioux and/or Fighting Hawks
jerseys or smiling Golden Gophers shirts—because nothing so terrifies the enemy
as a brick of cheese or a grinning rodent—and then we go and cheer on our team.
Or we throw on the armor in other kinds of competition. We throw on the armor
of a business suit and make cunning deals and take home lots of money. We put
on the metaphorical armor of parents and we defend our families. One of the
reasons I find that men do not connect so much with the church these days is
because there is sometimes very little here that feeds that sense of going to
battle for something. The church may feel passive because we are preaching a
grace given to you, for you, and there’s nothing for you to do about it. There’s
nothing to seize; no dragon to conquer that isn’t beaten for you. Some of us
are like those knights in medieval stories who apparently go kingdom to kingdom
looking for a troll or dragon or monster of various size and strength to slay.
It’s their purpose.
Some people just need to battle. But this is where we
tend to misunderstand the role of faith, because there are things worth fighting for. Putting on the armor of God is not a
violent exercise but it is not a passive one either. Instead, it is living a
life worthy of the Gospel to which you have been called. There is a response to
grace and that is in how we live. It is what we do with those shoes we put on
that are supposed to be bringing peace. It is the work we do—fighting for our
families, our communities, our selves. We do this not primarily against
antagonistic regimes—I feel like many Christians are walking around
looking for a made-up enemy to fight and so they go to battle against the “the
culture” or “the world” or worse yet a particular subset of people they imagine
to be the enemy—no, most of the time we aren’t fighting anything but ourselves
and the power of sin over us.
The thing we should realize—that is so hard to realize in
the moment—is that most of the fights we fight against sin are not fights at
all. We don’t wage war on cancer—cancer is part of us. We don’t battle
depression—depression is woven into us. We don’t go to war with grief—grief is
the product of love, which is the very thing we are fighting for. Often what we
need is an active attitude that accepts a passive resistance. Accepting that I
cannot fix a thing is the hardest thing to do, but it is very close to what
putting on God’s armor is about—it’s remembering that I am not the one I am
fighting for.
But many of us are only happy trying to fix things. If
there’s nothing to fix we feel we are lacking a purpose. So, when some tragedy
strikes we try to fix it. When others are sick we try to fix it. When something
we cannot repair gets broken we obsess over trying to fix it even when it
cannot be done. A relationship is not a pipe. A human body is not a car. So, to
put on God’s armor is a reminder of our vulnerability, and it’s an acceptance
of the things I cannot change, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. That doesn’t
mean—just because we admit that we can’t do it all—that there aren’t things worth
doing. And that’s where I worry that we lose men in the church, because just
because you can’t fix everything—and you have to rely on a higher power to save
you and the people you love—doesn’t mean that you can’t be the hands and feet
of Jesus. In fact it means you have a real duty to do it. We all do.
So let’s put on the armor of God for the right reasons.
To do good for the world. To be little Christs. Then, let’s accept we can’t do
all the good we would like. So, we remember what we are fighting for—not our strength
but the strength of God through us.
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