“3 We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. 4 Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. The Judgment at Christ’s Coming 5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. 11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thess 1:3-12 ESV)

Built for the hour, the soldier’s metaphysic, his or her center of being, rises and falls in cadence, lockstep. The initial foray, the Hello and reunification, the sense of Mercy, Forgiveness, Belonging writ large; it then worries the soldier that the music will one day stop; that the party will ebb and the mirth will out flow. Such is our social calendar. Such is our wartime readiness: we adhere to the Cause, we Rise to the Occasion, daring even to be found Excited and Mission Ready.

Then we worry that some Tomorrow of bleary eyes and wonder at where we’ve ended up: no war is “fun”, spiritual or otherwise. The spiritual War that Christ inaugurated began two thousand years ago with the bold-faced Claim: One rose from the dead. Now, modern medicine and philosophy of the body teaches us either this is impossible, or some fluke occurrence regarding some reanimation of the heart, or after all we have the “swoon theory”: that Christ merely went faint, His blood simply undetectable. But the key takeaway is simply what they say with a straight face even in churches on baby legs, on a foal’s awkward first steps: such a church still Believes in the trials of Faith, the Pain of Discipleship, the persecution of God’s faithful. And Believes… that by man’s accounting, all the lifeblood of the community should be nixed and vetoed, as Impossible to Maintain. Yet to that Resurrection spirit…

The soldier who starts War does so almost as a mercy, the hair-raising illusion of Peace being discomfiting, even. We were never quite at so much Peace as thought. Our better angels were laboring under a hot rod, in front of a hot stove, because of a hot demand. We had no catharsis around seeing the limbs begin to be flexed, the muscles to pop up and the t-shirt to harness body’s Power. And this, this is no license to belligerence, no license to join ourselves to War, rather like that Long Absent encounter, the friendly glance and smile of the handshake, the embrace of those whom we love, even family somewhat distant, friends near and far, it is no Denial of the Fact: cynicism, all parties merely utilitarian, using each other and looking down their noses at each other. No Denial, we launched this Good Ship Mercy into the great Tomorrow, into the great Abyss, into Hope for a speedy realization of True Calm, True Peace, True Engagement.

Aging comes with the appearance of new compromises: we cut corners we used to in all sincerity labor right through. Or so it seems. It seems Cynical, sometimes, how youthful innocence begins to fade. Yet also we man up, and learn to tread water of a Responsible, God-Fearing, Communal entity, we being entities Alert and Responsive to that Fact that the mirth is flipside of a coin unto the War. And to those lessons: trust no one, expect betrayal, question allegiances: to these we concede not for a moment that we can’t simultaneously Go on Instinct, Trust the Friend at least thus far, live and die for the Cause.