“3 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. 18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Co 3:1–23 ESV)

Coaching oneself through the bomb blasts, the shrapnel raining down from Intercepted Ones, makes strange preachers of every soldier. More, we lack the time to make light of Christ’s own death on a Cross. We lack the ungracious time to call it all a game for the “kids”, as to whether He is Lord of all or somehow, His prophetic forerunners being wrong, it is now up to us as the bequeathed (but they protest, not elected) heir of “Time Is Now” reign.

Coaching oneself, and in due Reverence the soldier confronts Christ’s own guileless Sacrifice. Yes, it was at our hands. Yes, God the Father, not to be profaned, gave just a bit of Resurrection Oomph to a precious few, granted, most not in any case believing in that story.

Point being that the elaborate wartime Encounter makes actionable soldiers of each of us, having notion of a Mindset coached, pursued, courted, radicalized. Bleary-eyed, radicalized and of Heightened Status, strange confluence of a still human but Rare urgency alights upon the soldier’s duality of body and soul. He or she sees things never before imagined. He or she Experiences not some touchy-feely “let’s gather around the sinner and sing hymns until they know they are loved and repent” but rather jest and stark Confrontation with a perfectly sanguine, hip and cool dude at the helm, cool lass at the helm.

To the Enlightened Ones, Christ’s office is scarcely on the radar before it is harangued and persecuted. Already, the argument is levied: that He is gosh darn all-powerful, and therefore must be refuted. Rather, the “having it both ways” can’t decide: is Christ so big as to be an imposition on our persons, or is He laughable and of dubious calibre? They argue, too, a sinner come to Christ is suddenly “all powerful” when of all the Causes to celebrate (a hundred or more in any nation, on these terrestrial ball called Earth) not one even yet has this sinner’s name on it. Already the foe is denying and denigrating, already invading the borders with threat, bribe, and gosh-darn frustrated one-upsmanship, jumping all over the poor sinner with Accusation, and the rumors of a fascination or an obsession. Does this make it a game for the kids? Does it make it all quaint, something to vote on (hint: choose the lady, choose the minority, choose the long suffering pewsitter). Or are we also Called to the Mat, to wrestle and dutifully cope with our own sinful nature? When but one Comes to Christ, and calls all therefore to account.

Freedom to think, freedom to thrive, these freedoms we fight for in no uncertain terms. Somehow to “plug in” and steer a good ship “Consciousness” through what-if rhetorical flourish and A.I.-enabled litany, somehow to glide and elide upon the front doorstep of a would-be foe, a nominal Enemy, but still a living and breathing Lifeform, this is a strange Dream of the patient babes in arms being amassed in Quantity, Jesus the personage subdued under all that Life. He is living and able still to Breathe, but subdued by the fawning and gesticulating and murmuring Babes in swaddling clothes. He Died for us. He is the door to the sheepfold. His word is yes and amen.

Therefore to Encounter post-radicalized semblance of some Christ-like zealot’s harangue, is to of a sudden have Confidence and Certainty that a decision formerly puzzling, is now crystal clear. And, of course we love on the would-be enemy from a posture of our own wondrous Contrition and therein Cleanliness: clean of the sin, clean of the posturing, clean of the personal effects hoarded or coveted.

We can be Good Citizenry for our friends abroad. We can be copacetic and calm as the bombs drop, because still the Life we are loving through thick and through thin. We are still Aware of the life involved, and are therefore setting the tone of dialog with our own forgetfulness around past sins. Past bombs dropped. Past violations of Created Order. There is room enough on this planet for all of us. More, the Christ-like vocation is sharp and obtuse towards Sin, calm in the foot-washing or healing word ministered. 

The trenches preacher who comforts himself or herself with reminders that Christ Himself was a sacrificial lamb, this preacher courts our better angels to Recall and Amend our lives around plain blessedness and sincerity of endeavor, being forgetful around sin but also plaintive around righteousness. No, it isn’t some gosh-darn Game of jumping all over a would-be preacher because he or she is “claiming to be Christ, at least, Christ-Like”. Until world peace and hunger is satisfied, please Join rather than Malign the Cause! As it is, an entire cohort of would-be evangelists are kept in lockdown and unable to minister.