2024-05-09 A Meditation on Born Again

“2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (Jas 1:2-4 ESV)

The soldier has been born again to a living hope, which hope is endeared mightily for instance to new friends, friends “in the faith”, a cosmos, rather a cosmopolity of gladsome exchange. Meantime the church, a new frontier, a new cosmos, is always in need of reform; we are not self-righteous to plead “I am there”; “I know the gospel”; “my sins are all forgiven”. For, it is in service to what Christ taught that we thus appeal, in order that we may put our own time and career on the line, that we may put shoulder to the tackle, heft to the push, diligence to the task. This is the task, “semper reformanda”, “always reforming”.

Then, action, reaction, come game time it is misbegotten to expect people to think “reasonably”, to “assess all angles”, to “make judicious decisions”: we instead learn that the Saved/Unsaved dichotomy hearkens back to our earliest childhood training; something unnamed, unspecified, unknown gives us the insight, the hand to play, the reaction to put to record. For this reason the soldier is intoxicated with Life: awareness of how the “life together” spells contributions from all quarters. That is, a spirit “Saved” may transfer from one person to another. A spirit “patient” may appeal to a neighbor. A spirit “forgiving” may inspire a new generation. A spirit “optimist” may adhere to a new community.

The action, reaction dynamism of the soldier means healthsome knowledge: since “conversion”, all manner of unreformed tripe has followed us about, the notion of a hierarchy “clerical” and “non”, the former not being in the “sins” of the latter. A hierarchy of purgatorial debt. A hierarchy of an all-powerful bishopric. Really, if it were not for the tantamount Joy in Believing, we would not last a day. For the gospel is severely punished and tried.

That is, the fact, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” is a wake-up call to the thinker, to the soldier who is either a little cozy or a little meek and cautious: Today, your saved status is a license to Operate! Today, your decision-making in the thick of things, is licensed to lead! Today, your instincts forged in calamity are appealed unto, to show the way!

And then the ugly reality that sin is absolutely ruinous to mankind. Sin, when we pull aside the curtains, is hemming up and hampering so many of our brethren and sistren in the Faith, so many of our fellow soldiers. No-go-zones. Subjects we are asked to maintain silence around, but that might have in them a germ of sincerity, an end to the simulacrum of peace, a fuss or verbal joust benefitting all parties. Stir things up a bit, right?

Because our gospel means the end of “we/us” as the center of attention. Our gospel means the end of the parables: this one is a newborn in the faith; let us lay loving hands on that one, precious or precocious in all infantile innocence. No! We mean it when we say, conversion happens once, and in the limelight or shadow of that conversion we bear fruit of another’s testimony, that is the life testimony of our Lord and Father and Son in Heaven, Christ the righteous.

All this, then, by way of a generous introduction: society, meet soldier; soldier, meet society. You will be thrown out of synagogues and churches. You will be hated by all, or what is just as bad, lied over and obsessed about. It will be a hidden secret for a time, the Gospel you proclaim. It will beget consternation and harrumphs. It will meet a general public or church community so abundantly “in error” as to have literally lost sight of the gospel. Which gospel in borne in the soldier’s life laid down anew. The soldier’s life in service to the community. In which we soldiers find all our joy, because to speak Peace and Love, hastily making amends and more hastily keeping the Peace, because we know war and it ain’t a game quite to win, so much as to obtain a sadder Victory. A joyful victory, but sad that it wasn’t all bravado and punch. It cost much. It saw us a little insightful as to the criminal-at-times bravado and punch of the law-breaker in community, who, seeing the flashing lights has no better thought then “ape them”: “commit the crime, to get back at this non-understanding entity”; “just cuss them out”. But we do not cuss, rather our speech is seasoned with salt; if that is a cuss, so be it. Our speech is patient and loving, bearing in mind always—even as we critique the community—the sacrifices of Christ, who made of weaker sinners His children and His divine bequest and His mission accomplished. It need not “make sense” to the philosopher, but it does to the theologian in each of us: be converted! See that you hearken to some radical tongue, some words mysteriously recognized though a bit foreign. Some words in duty and observance of He who went before.