“3 This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. 11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:1-13 ESV)

Differing personalities have differing houses have differing existential Realities: but we never dismiss outright the fact, that others have their own gestalt or Reality. And at times, we discover ourselves worn out or laid up in Another reality. Because we were too dismissive of it. Because we Forgot: there is charm and appeal to Both sides in a war. There is mystical and benignly wrought Goodness by some measures, in both sides. At least, there is appeal.

But the Christian soldier does take issue with unilaterally calling another, contentious, side “Good”. If all were “Good” then there would be eye-to-eye agreement and Desire to avoid conflict, at pretty much all costs. Still, the Existential Reality, laid out, Experienced: it is strangely different and becalmed a bit from the loftier climes of our own Reality. Depressed, or simply not dreaming big, but also punished by the illusion of a safety that our own Gestalt cannot always, sadly, claim. We are lives on the line. We are gonna go out having fun, if it must thus be.

The soldier therefore takes notes, mental notes, and Recollects the wearier days, the sad failure until after the fact to think up the right words for the encounter. And we do well not to suscept ourselves to damage, to risky behaviors, to foolish chancy takes on matters. But also we are resilient, and come Full Circle back to mother Jesus, back to the dreams and the prognosis that, if we’re gonna go full-in, we also do not count our own lives too precious to lay on the line. We lay down our careerism, the depressive “alternate” viewpoint wherein lack of career accolades, should we endeavor to Prove Ourselves yet again and get the accolades? Or is that a false Promise? Does career… does it actually fulfill our deepest longings?

Therefore the soldier is strangely poetic, even as the bombs fall and even as the self is hurried and ushered into shelters and barracks. He or she is Experiencing what poets and writers have always upheld as the cipher, the elixir, the ointment. He or she is madly ferocious at what the enemy is getting up to, but also copacetic and feng shui about his or her own Prerogative and Right. We are not arguing “Right”, we are arguing “Christ”, a Kingdom, a Believer at the helm, a sadness overcome and the non-negotiables on Both Sides understood, prayed over, meditated over. Sometimes we concede too easily, frightened by the impenetrability or the myriad hours of advance prep work an Enemy had that we were blissfully ignorant of; the Enemy’s claim to judge and politician alike that, since this is “war” (their words) then certain corners must be cut.

No, the hardest role is that of the Christ, that of the Prophet of peace, that of the Soldier, because he or she must bend over backwards and Await; must answer questions minus the luscious freedom to roam in thought first here and then there, the freedom an unmade enemy doesn’t worry over. They can speak of such-and-so, without repercussions, but us: we keep silent in the presence of the Unknown, the Unknown therapist or police department, the unknown one greeting us on the bus as if we had ever met before (sleight of hand? Hack job?). The vision is for the Descendants, the better to know a Christ who overwhelmingly went careful, took the patient track, and channeled His outlandish warring into Good Deeds unrecognized. Ask the pastor, what were Jesus’ own good works? And the pastor will demure and mumble something about casting out demons or caring for the disciples. Not “preaching”, because that is self-aggrandizing, right? Or is preaching sometimes a good work?

The team is assembling. How and why we merge and intone, into another’s depressive Reality, is unsought: we are first of all soldiers and sacrificial lambs of a Utility not our own. Christ uses us, and puts us through the ringer, all the more so now that we have the Scriptures and the Prophets to encourage and bolster us. We are tanks. We are sensitive, poetic even, but tanks: the lilting ideas and words, gestures sublime and Reality understood, are all Yes and Amen, par for the course, of the soldier now become All Things. And no written record, the journals burned, the Experience too rushed to record or historicize. Unbelievable, too, if it were told. That man was born in utter sin, yet is Called to Come Up Here. God will work with the sinners, to present them Free of Sin, but all this in His timing.