Probably the most hazardous fact of humankind’s project, his license, his or her lancing forth, is that no sooner do we put our move front and center then it is attacked and yawned over. That is, we think ourselves superhuman to be able to grit the teeth and drive the nails and—finally—to get things moving around here, only the fact of what is front and center, it becomes subject to the yawn and to the invite to denigrate and to dismiss.

Did we overestimate our chutzpah? Rather, success in life, like in a war, immediately makes the enemy—formerly identified and outlined—meld into the background and pretend there was no denial here after all. Therefore the Christian soldier’s life calls for superhuman antithesis to meld with superhuman insight: we need not worry that we’ve “gone mad” or lost sight of the football. We can play the game of musical chairs that vies to leave us the last ones standing in fatigues: “who are you to go all ballistic on things?”. Who are you to strike up the fight, march the band, get the alliances in line?

Christianity also knows the value of Personhood, our Christs, our semblance of some peaceable family life, our parental units still praying for us and refusing to concede to stuff too much to handle: we hold together. We hold together because Christ’s personal War was with the strange need to Die to life together, to marching along and preaching each day, to the end-of-the-day reflection and group hug or group sitting around the fire together. Time was, we were all of us at day’s end only because Tomorrow is calling us to labor and to a dying resolve. Tomorrow may be all we have.

That is, Christians throughout history have comforted themselves knowing that we need not plan in advance what we are to say, that the words will be given us in the hour. This reassures and, though not making us lazy, it changes the ethos in the gathering. Anything… once our badge is worn solemnly on the arm… anything can take full advantage of our own cognisance and attack right where we were resolute and where we were newly Aware. Therefore we covet not higher knowledge or more gamesmanship or better intel, rather we know there is a war to be fought therein as well. As soon as we know, we are attacked; our holdouts are infiltrated; our resolve is mocked and questioned. And part of Christ’s humility is the willingness to die for one point out of many, for one subtle reaction or action endeavored upon, minus forethought, minus perfection on all fronts; we will be fools for Christ, and we will be martyred for His nuanced points, that His way of the Cross is all things told the be-all and end-all of life for Him.

We will be persecuted for these points. When others critique, one first asks: do they share the same calling I possess? If not, then of course they poo-poo and deny the need itself, the need to minister, to heal, to do works of kindness, to stick out as Different. We have entered the Big Leagues now; we are blessed with conversation most plain, today we earned some level of trust, and though our words are faulted (by those whom we ourselves wrongly fault at times) our life “in situ”, “in communion”, “together”, is earning high marks for the invisible and scurrying War.

This is the solemn youth’s Decision to adopt and adhere to this strange thing called Faith. This is the radical Otherness, that rather than this cool thing or that real hipness, we dare hold out for Christ’s purposes; goody-two-shoes now and worse, we immediately suffer rejection and refutation, we immediately channel our acceptability unto a Personal Quest.