Politics is Where the Competing Moral Visions of a Society Meet and Struggle

The Soldier In Every Man

By Anthony Re

Purpose or meaning has a way of poking into almost every aspect of our lives conscious and unconscious.  Viktor Frankel an Austrian Psychologist and survivor of the Nazi death camps wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning in which he shows that many who survived the death camps, survived exactly because they found meaning — even in a place that was designed to strip them of all purpose and meaning in life. Purpose can be found everywhere.

From a young age I had a sense that God had a plan for my life.  You could say that my life mission has been to search for this mission.    

I guess it is easy as men to focus on our careers as the way that we might fulfill our mission and our purpose in life.  At least that is true of me.  My search for God’s plan has always been on the age old question: “What will I be when I grow up?”

I have struggled with my job and my career path even before I had one.  A policeman, a missionary, a therapist, a priest, a scientist, a doctor, a sociologist…the list grew with each stage in my life.  When I discovered a talent or strength I would look for the career that would allow me to use this talent.  Maybe THIS is how I can be successful?  If I can find a job that I am naturally good at, then I can enjoy my work every day, follow God’s plan (because I am using my God given strengths) and make a lot of money doing it because when you use God’s gifts you are given abundant rewards.  Then, I can retire at a young age and do charity or ministry for the rest of my life…  Nobel goals, eh?

But if I am honest, what I was really looking for was the easy life; the path of least resistance.  The sin of sloth was ruling my life. This led, eventually, to dis-satisfaction in many roles and in every company and position that I ever held.  I was looking to the world and the rewards and comforts of this world to satisfy a thirst that was not really a bodily thirst but an inner thirst. 

I won’t get into all of the details of each job and the misery, which I brought upon myself and those around me.  It led me to find escape in alcohol, sleep and eating.  God was there in all of these struggles.  My dissatisfaction with my jobs and career were, and still are, a call to a higher purpose.  Each time I struggle with a job, I try to see the greater lesson, the greater purpose.  The phrase “God’s ways are not our ways” – finally started to make more sense.

I want to share with you some of the things that God has revealed to me as I have walked my career path, which is really a spiritual exercise. 

Do you remember the movie Saving Private Ryan?

In case you don’t remember or didn’t see it – an Army Captain who has just stormed the beaches of Normandy is removed from company command to save a private — a private who was mis-dropped somewhere behind enemy lines.  The war department learned that private James Francis Ryan was the only surviving brother of the four brothers serving in the US Army.  The captain has to choose a select group to search the French countryside to find as he says “a needle in a stack of needles”. 

This film illustrates three lessons: Life is a battle; Keep your eyes on God; and you can’t do it alone.

Life is a battle and I am a soldier.  I am part of a force that faces unspeakable odds. The devil, our enemy is a supernatural being he wants to destroy us completely — for all eternity. As Father John Corapi says, “He wants you and your children dead in a dumpster.”[1] 

I know we will win, but I don’t know at what cost it will be to me personally.  It is not about comfort, as I once thought — for that comes later.  We each have a role to play and a mission to accomplish. We are tempted, as were the eight men in the patrol were tempted to kill the German POW.  But we must try to do the descent thing.  Sometimes there is rest, like the scene right before the final battle in which the men rest while listening to a German love song.  But, overall, we do our part in the campaign to save even a single soul.

Keep your eyes on God.  Like the captain in Saving Private Ryan, I am asked to go on a mission that I don’t understand.  I go because I am part of a bigger picture and I go because I was asked.  There is a scene that begins their mission to save Private Ryan in which the men are seeking the purpose or the meaning behind risking their lives to save one private.  “Why are they taking away your company to send you on a wild goose chase?” asks Capt Miller’s 2^nd in command.  Miller replies: “It’s not my company.  Last I looked it’s the Army’s company.” This isn’t my life or my mission.  As Rick Warren says in the first sentence of his book, The Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you.”  I needed that reminder, and I still do.  It’s not about me.  It’s a battle to get through this life, not comfortably but dutifully like a soldier following orders in a greater campaign that we are not directing.  This is a tough lesson for someone who wants to retire young and kick back.  Keeping it in mind helps me to face my duty as it is revealed to me — one day at a time.

We can’t do it alone.  Two men died on the way to find Ryan.  When they did find him, Ryan was trapped in a town with only a few others left to defend it.  Without a commanding officer they were given the task to hold one of two remaining bridges — bridges critical to the operations in the area. 

Despite the sad news about his brothers, Ryan’s response to his orders to go home was: “I can’t leave until reinforcements come.”  Miller responds, “What are they supposed to tell your mother when they send her another folded American flag?”  Ryan says, “Tell her that when you found me I was here with the only brothers I have left, and there is no way I was going to desert them.  I think she’ll understand that.  There is no way I’m leaving this bridge.”

We can’t get to our destination alone.  We can’t hold the bridge alone.  We can’t earn the right to go home without interacting, living, and fighting along side our brothers.  When I’ve had opportunities to meet with my brothers, they have helped me immeasurably in every area of my life:

One brother, while he was struggling with his job, much like the struggles I had been complaining about, said simply: “It will work out.  We’ll get through it”  He said “we” and he meant him and God.  That was it. “We’ll get through it.” If it was that simple for him, it should be that simple for me.  I stopped my whining and changed the way I looked at my situation. 

Another brother has helped me to see what courage looks like.  He is facing a very difficult transition in which all of the choices are less than ideal — all are hard.  He is facing this with courage and doing what he has to do, not what he wants to do.  He is seeking the long-term, right thing not the short-term comfortable thing.  When others do what I fear, it helps me to face my fears with faith.  Sometimes their faith and not mine is what carries me.

A brother with chronic back pain prayed and waited for a healing that never came.  He now embraces his suffering and offers it up.  I have him to look up to when I am in pain and I too now offer it up.

One friend and his family are showing me perhaps the most faith I have ever seen.  They lost their five-year-old grandson to a tragic car accident.  The mother of the boy was actually driving the car that killed him.  He and his family are facing this with faith and strength.  Not one thing in my life can be any harder than that!  I owe it to him to face my struggles with the same faith.

“Earn this.” Is what Miller says to Ryan just before the captain dies. These two words consume Ryan for the rest of his life.  He lives with that charge every day.  To “earn this” means that I have to keep my eyes on God’s purpose and not my own.  It means that I have to carry my burden and face the challenges set before me, because if I don’t one of my brothers will have to do it for me. 

In the final scene where Ryan is an old man visiting the graves at Normandy with his children and grandchildren; He says and I say to you, “I have tried to live my life the best I could.  I hope that I have earned what all of you have done for me.”

We are fighting a battle with our eyes on Christ.  With His Grace we will win and we’ll do it together.