Enlisting in the Lord's Army

In Mel Gibson's Brave Heart, we encounter a man who wants to live the life of a peasant. He wants to have a farm somewhere in the country. He wants to raise crops and domestic animals. He wants to marry the woman he loves and have children to run about in the fields. He wants to relax and enjoy life. But all this is asking too much. The English are lording it over his native Scotland. They have imposed a dreadful law called prima nocte. This law gives the right to an English Lord to sleep with any newly-wed woman even before her lawful husband has sex with her. This awful law leads to the death of the man's wife, when she refuses to give in to the English Lord that ultimately tries to rape her in the name of an obnoxious law. This unfortunate incident leads the man, who ordinarily would have been content to lead a simple farm life, to take up arms and go to war against England and liberate his country from oppression.

 

It is the same with us. We all want to lead simple, unperturbed lives. We want to wake up in the morning, go about our daily activities in tranquility, and return to bed at night refreshed and placid. We don't want to feel agitated or upset. We want to love and be loved. We want to share simple joys with our friends and family. We want to be understood and appreciated. We want to enjoy life. But we all know that life is far from being placid. We all realize that life is sometimes messy and scary and sad. Sometimes, life is so painful that we fear to go on living. Life so overwhelms us that we are tempted to retreat and run, throw in the towel and bury our heads in the sand. Our dream of living a peaceful life is often shattered.

 

The fantasy of living an undisturbed life usually comes to us in moments of relative calm or good fortune. The songwriter declares: "I said to myself in my good fortune, 'Nothing will ever disturb me'" (Psalm 30:7a). Maybe we've just got a job and our prospects seem a little brighter. Maybe we've just received an inheritance and we feel a little snug. In moments of relative prosperity we begin to make all these plans, and dream all these dreams. We hope that "nothing will ever disturb us," but the psalmist says: "and then you hid your face and I was put to confusion" (Ibid.v7b). Every so often, life happens to upset our good fortune, to upset our plans. Like in the case of the Rich Fool. After he had made glorious plans for prosperity, God said to him, "You fool! Tonight your soul will be demanded of you, and all these riches - whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20). [The bible said the story of the rich fool was to teach us about the comeuppance reserved for those who are rich in the things of this world but not in the things of God.]

 

Life is hard. All of you probably recall what I once told my younger brother, Chima. I said to him: If you wake up one morning and life seems all fine and dandy, please go back to bed and sleep. If on the other hand you wake up and things seem difficult and sad and absurd and overwhelming, then get up and begin your day. Jesus Christ himself knew this and so said: "In this world, you will definitely have trouble" (John 16:33b). We all will have trouble. Life will never be that idyllic fantasy. Recall the movie, the Pursuit of Happyness (sic), the scene at Glide Memorial, where the inmates were singing, "Lord, don't move this mountain; give me faith to climb it." You see, those inmates knew that life was a mountain, the climbing of which was so difficult that faith was needed to succeed at such climb. And since they knew that life was inevitably difficult - could be no other way - they did not waste time praying  for God to move the mountain - change life - but only for God to give them the zeal to continue to live it anyway.

 

Life is hard. It tries us; it hassles us; it challenges us. The circumstances and people that compose it; the seasons and geographical parameters; the workings of political machines - all of these harangue and try us. The deeds of people, most of which are less than ideal, affect us: a person out of greed decides to sell a leg of lamb for five more dollars than it is worth. A woman's budget cannot afford it because of the increase in price, and so she buys veal instead. She has some relatives over, and one of them has a weird allergy whenever he eats veal. He thinks it's lamb, though, because that's what his sister says it is. She lies to save face, because she has promised her guests lamb. The relative eats the veal and falls ill. He dies, and his children become orphans. One grows up bitter and resorts to drugs. He gets in trouble with the police, and eventually ends up in jail. His younger brother is upset about his brother's fate and goes on rampage - the story goes on and on and on. "Lord don't move this mountain; give [us] faith to climb it!"

 

Life is hard. How many times have we just sighed - just like that! You're sitting on a chair or a stool or something - or maybe you're lying in bed - and you just contemplate life for a brief while, and you sigh. You take a deep breath and feel your chest rise with the intake of air; and then you let it drop slowly with the exhale. Stunning. This thing called life. Life is "that hard thing that must be lived anyway." It is hard, and challenging and absurd. And it can be no other way. But - and here's the kicker - we must live it anyway. But how? A good way is to enlist in the Lord's Army. Like the protagonist of Mel Gibson's Brave Heart, having observed how absurd and difficult life is, we should go ahead and give up our fantasy of living an idyllic existence, where "nothing will ever disturb us." Even Jesus was not spared the difficulty of life. He too, like the psalmist, felt that God "hid his face," and he too, also like the psalmist, was thrown into such confusion that he squealed on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you left me all by myself!" (Matt. 27:46b). He felt the pain of life so deeply that he imagined his father, who loved him so much, had left him to suffer alone. Life can do that. Sometimes it can become so hard that it overwhelms. This thing called life!

 

What to do? Enlist in the Lord's Army. Let's get conscripted. The battle against negative emotions rages. It's the largest occasion for peace time draft ever! And the draft is for all people, young and old, male and female - every single person. There's no medical evaluation; there's no boot camp - it's straight to the warfront. Go, go, go! The call is shrill. We must begin at once to enlist. In the fight against negative emotions, we are mustered and ready. We need first to arm ourselves, though: We have to go with Descartes' three-step method of warding off negative emotions. We need this ammunition. Next, we need our concept of sacrifices. Very important. Then we need prayer. Lots, and lots of it. And so, armed with Descartes' method, our concept of sacrifices, and lots of prayer, we march off into the battle against negative emotions. Remember in any case that it is emotions, not human beings, which we fight against. Descartes, eminent dualist, always insists on separating the spirit from the physical individual. We wrestle, recall, against "principalities and powers, and not against flesh and blood" (Eph. 6:12). Let us begin to march.

 

We choose to be happy. The psalmist said: "I trusted even when I said I am sorely afflicted, and when I said in my alarm that no one can be trusted" (Psalm 116:10). Even in the most difficult and seemingly emotionally overwhelming periods of our lives, we keep faith; we trust on; we choose to be happy. Yes indeed, happiness is in fact something we can choose. We can choose it even when the situation we live in is less than ideal. You see, when the Scots were fighting against their English overlords for freedom in Mel Gibson's Brave Heart, they said they felt freedom in the heart, even if the physical reality of their situation was oppression. We may not always choose the physical reality we live in, but we can choose our emotional response to it. By applying Descartes' method in the face of emotionally-challenging situations; by sacrificing with regard to such challenging circumstances, and by praying vigorously about them - especially since "the vigorous prayer of a passionate person avails much" (Jas. 5:16b) - we can remain happy even when everything about us is falling apart. [By the way, isn't the word, circumstances, just so cool! By way of etymology, it is circumstare, or "that which stands around." It refers to everything that "compasses us about (like bees, and blaze like thorn fires)." And what do we do about things that compass us about like bees and blaze like thorn fires? We hack them down!]

 

By enlisting in the Lord's Army. You know, sometimes, I imagine the range of emotions that the slaves from Africa struggled with as they rowed along the seas from the Motherland to the New World. I contemplate the emotions the prisoners in the death camps of Auschwitz and Cambodia wrestled with as they lay tied, crammed like sardines into small, enclosed spaces. What emotions did the victims of the Rwandan Genocide wrestle with as they witnessed the merciless carnage? Or what did the people who were burned at stake feel as the flames destroyed their bodies slowly - just imagine the pain, people! We have yet to feel a small fraction of what they did, and yet we complain. St Charles Lwanga and his twenty-five companions, the Martyrs of Uganda, were said to have been smiling as they were slowly barbequed over the fires. It was the same with Joan of Arc. All the slaves that made it alive from Africa to the New World, after months in the holds of rowing ships, with the filth and the sorrow and the sickness; all the survivors of concentration camps eventually freed by Allied Forces at the end of World War II - Elie Weisel, for example - how did they survive?

Psychologists tell us that there are at least four stages to the mastery of a difficult situation: denial, which is when you try to imagine it is not happening. As a young boy when my mother died, for example, I at first told myself it wasn't happening. I told myself she was going to come back. The second stage is anger. When my mom did not come back. I was upset. I recall I developed a temper and used to yell at people randomly. The third stage is depression. This is when we feel the loss acutely. Many people never recover from this stage. They go from here to despair, and everything is downhill from there. For the strong ones though, they go on from a period of depression to acceptance; they come to terms eventually with the circumstance. But all this is elementary. With sacrifice, there is only one step: simply sacrifice the circumstance. Period. And in that one fell swoop, you choose happiness instead of a whole range of negative emotions. Zuptalo! You choose to be happy in spite of whatever is going on. This is why Jesus could ask us to immediately turn the other cheek when we were slapped on one. Sacrifice is instant. This is why Jesus, even while bearing the excruciating pain of the cross, could say to the penitent thief, "This day you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Spirituality is quicker and cheaper and more effective than psychology, I tell you.

So folks, enlist. Join the Lord's Army. Let's go fight those negative emotions. Let's choose to be happy in spite of our circumstances. Let's be free in our hearts even when our physical situations oppress. Let us be brave. Armed with Descartes' method, our concept of sacrifices, and prayer, let us march against the enemy forces that threaten to steal our happiness. Let us put up a brave fight. Let us not falter. And all will be well with us. Amen.