No Man’s Land

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I am naturally a cynic.  Sarcasm can often be my fall back position for humor.  As for the future state of this world, I only tend to see decline.  I see everyone as basically selfish and the cart of civilization being pulled along by the self interests of history since the beginnings of time.

I am a glass-half-empty, everyone is out to get me, lock up what you’ve got and keep a closer eye on your daughters because there is no hope for this world—type of guy.  And yet I believed in God.  And Jesus.  And I believed that Jesus sacrificed himself on a cross for me.  I believed God loved me and his creation was beautiful.  I believed in what the Bible taught me.

So take just one moment to set the image in your mind of the Bible-believer who firmly sees life around him as hopeless and the world as corrupt.  While God is good, the best I could hope to do was simply hold out until my death or when Jesus comes again.  I would do this by going to church, by keeping my guns, and by raising my daughters to do the same.

The fact is:  this world is war.  But I had no hope of successfully storming the beaches of Normandy or charging up San Juan hill like a Roughrider.  No, this is trench warfare.  Over the course of many months, inches are taken or inches are lost, but only inches, never more.  And in between my side and the opposition stood always that desolate desert of fear and lifelessness and despair known during World War I as “No Man’s Land.”

I have lived in the trenches and my view has been No Man’s Land.  I forgot, really, about the beauty that was behind me–that I claimed to be fighting to protect.  Instead, I have stared over a small swath of dirt that I believed I had been charged to conquer.  Day in and day out, I gazed upon this small square of dirt and it was my prize.

If you are not a student of WWI history, allow me to describe this No Man’s Land over which both sides in the trenches thirsted:  There was no green left in this formerly serene countryside as, almost immediately upon the commencement of war, the fighting of the armies had churned the life out of the earth and created scars that have remained for generations.  Constant shelling left huge craters which could be the shallowest of nooks or as deep as a man is tall.  And onto this dirt-covered, pock-marked thin stretch of land rain would inevitably fall.  This rain would then turn the dirt to mud and the holes into death traps.

Many brave soldiers were cut down mid-charge across No Man’s Land while others managed to drop and crawl to the illusive protection of a nearby mud hole–only to die of blood loss and exposure.  Still others fell into the holes with no hope of escape.  Those that returned to the trenches sat day and night listening to the dying pleas of their comrades left behind.

We know from history that trench warfare changes the psychology of those who return from it.  So, returning to my original point, I ask this:  What has this “dig in and gain blood inches” mentality done to us?

As for me, I am done with fighting in these trenches!  Through my own journey of pain and loss, I have been awakened to the futility and ridiculousness of this fight.  I am neither contributing more pain nor shedding more blood for a better view of No Man’s Land.

I have not capitulated; not surrendered.  But I must share the truth.

We are fighting for the wrong thing.   We are fighting the wrong way.   And we are fighting with the wrong people.

I will end the analogy of WWI’s No Man’s Land here.  I do not wish to overly-dramatize my point any more than is rhetorically necessary.

I have no more to offer now than this:  I used to believe in a God of both Vengeance and Love, Fury and Forgiveness, Blood-Lust and Comfort, and Wrath and Restitution.  But I can do so no longer.

Today I understand that the primary contrast in the nature of God is that Jesus presents both a revolution in the understanding of the divine while also being the only one true reflection of an unchanging and ever-present God.

So how can the God of Jesus Christ be both an idea that is brand new and always was?

I hope you will follow along with me on this journey of discussion, whether you agree or not with where it leads.  This world and faith and culture and politics–it has all become trench warfare and I am no longer interested in serving my life for an inch of dirt.  If that is your purpose, I have already capitulated in the fight.  No more trench warfare.  Those inches of mud can be yours.