Simply Stellar

Spend some time around Soldiers and you’ll inevitably hear some of the funniest, most quotable quips ever. The combination of hardship and imminent danger are the perfect Petri dish for producing witticisms and wisecracks. Like the gallows, Army culture is a breeding ground for humor -- bringing a moment of levity to an otherwise lugubrious environment.
 
The term “gallows humor” comes from the amusing last words uttered by those preparing to pay the piper – more precisely, death by hanging. Gallows are a structure that normally has a rope tied to a crossbar directly above a trapdoor upon which the condemned will stand. With the noose securely around the ill-fated individual’s neck, the trapdoor suddenly swings open, causing the miscreant to abruptly exit this world and immediately enter into the after-life for all eternity.

The first example of gallows humor I’ll cite involves that traditional contraption. Mass murderer William Palmer, while being led by the hangman to stand on the trapdoor asked, "Are you sure it's safe?" The second involves a more modern device designed to bring about the same end. After murderer James French was seated in the electric chair he asked, "How's this for a headline? -- ’French Fries'." Although the condemned may have met their end, their humor lives on. 

While not exactly “condemned to death”, the Soldier is well aware of the inherent danger in his chosen profession; fully recognizing the medicinal value of humor. Consider this Captain’s comments concerning landmines: “The lieutenant raised his hand and asked, ‘If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?’ The captain replied, ‘Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area.’” The levity the Captain conveys would likely be lost upon the Lieutenant’s mom, but laughed at by those in uniform.
 
A couple of the more cerebral quips I’ve heard, both communicating tremendous truths, came from men who both wore stars. My boss for my last few years, a three-star general once told me, “Man’s only natural enemy is his higher headquarters.” Oh the truth in that. The second was my Command Sergeant Major (CSM) describing the deportment of our Division CSM; “He talks loud but he doesn’t say much.” Guess he never got the memo about “speaking softly and carrying a big-stick.”

All that said, there is another who conveys His commands in a far different way. He does not shout and doesn’t depend on humor to transmit a deeper truth. Nor does He wear stars to establish his authority. Rather, He made the stars -- demonstrating His eternal, immutable and insurmountable authority. His handiwork is spread across the sky like a world-wide amber-alert for the lost. The skies silently scream, “Look up, and listen up!” 

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

For some, the star filled sky is only ambient light. To the professorial-secularist who peers through telescopes and patronizes the planetarium, seeking to see what stars are made of, not their Maker; they completely miss the mark. For others, stars are merely a magical twinkle, simply inspiring them to wonder what they are. But for the person more concerned with one day meeting his Maker, more concerned with his fallen state than falling stars, their declaration of glory is great news.
 
The stars are a sign that gently whispers that we’re not forgotten and that our Deliverer wants us to look to Him for hope. Jesus said it this way, “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Unlike that aforementioned Division CSM, the One who made the stars doesn’t talk loud nor say nothing. No, His voice goes out unto all the earth revealing knowledge. Such that, once we’ve drawn our last breath, entering through that proverbial trapdoor that all mortal men will pass, then we will instantly realize that ignorance of the sky is no excuse. 

Let everything that has breath, Praise the Lord! 

Invitation and Infiltration

Any Soldier worth his salt knows doctrine.  Army doctrine dictates what we do and how we do it. Doctrine and discipline enables a force to behave like an Army -- unlike a mob. 

The Army’s doctrinal manual says there are six forms of maneuver: envelopment, turning movement, frontal attack, penetration, infiltration, and flank attack.  Americans are familiar with many of these.   The failure of Pickett’s famous but ill-fated frontal attack is a classic.  The “left hook” as envisioned by “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf and superbly executed by the XVIII Airborne Corps during Desert Storm is widely regarded as one of the most successful flank attacks  of modern maneuver warfare.

Maneuver warfare can be very effective, but it often comes with a steep price tag. Ever since I was a young lieutenant, I’ve harbored the thought that the best and most surefire way to utterly destroy a nation is relatively easy.  Simply give that nation you wish to cripple free cable and shows like Oprah, MTV, The View, Jersey Shore and Jerry Springer.  You will have them on their knees in twenty years.  Infect their school systems and you can achieve like results although it may take a little longer.   All of this without firing a shot.

Although the above is not an example of one of the six forms of maneuver, there is one form that is nearly as insidious if executed efficiently, i.e. “infiltration.”  As silly as this might sound, the inspiration for this column was actually an email I’d recently received from a friend in California.  Even though it involves the Navy, please indulge me for a moment and see if it doesn’t have the same effect on you:

     One night, a U.S. Navy destroyer stops four Mexicans rowing towards Texas. The Captain gets on the loud-hailer and shouts, "Ahoy, small craft. Where are you headed?"   

     One of the Mexicans puts down his oar, stands up, and shouts, "Gringo we are invading the United States of America to reclaim the territory taken by the USA during the 1800's."  

     The entire crew on the destroyer doubles over in laughter.  When the Captain finally catches his breath, he gets back on the loud-hailer and asks, "Just the four of you?"

     The same Mexican stands up again and shouts, "No, we're the last four. The other 12 million are already there."

I trust you get the idea.  The tactic is clear.  The “book definition” for what an infiltration is can be found in Army Field Manual (FM) 3-90-1, Offense and Defense, C2, HQDA, 13 APR 2015).  It says. “An infiltration is a form of maneuver in which an attacking force conducts undetected movement through or into an area occupied by enemy forces to occupy a position of advantage behind those enemy positions while exposing only small elements to enemy defensive fires.”  These “infiltrators” have executed this maneuver in a manner far better than the definition calls for; they’ve succeed in occupying terrain without being exposed to any “enemy” fires.  The only thing in question now is the actual number and ultimate effect of this highly successful maneuver. 

Let me close as an ambassador of a kingdom that is not of this world.  One whose borders are open to all – calling whomsoever may to come.  Calling not with a statue of liberty in the form of a lady bearing a torch, but in the form of a Savior on a tree bearing the sin of the world.  

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Church at Corinth explains the folly of putting our faith in the temporal.  Paul writes,

  

     “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands… Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come…Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. … Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Invitation, far superior to infiltration.   

The Second Opinion

Last week’s column talked about the picture the apostle Paul paints of us as jars of clay -- earthen containers capable of containing an eternal treasure – the Holy Spirit.  Ponder that thought for a moment, God in us.  Imagine the power and comfort of knowing that He is for you and will never forsake you.  

Jesus personally promoted this promise to his disciples.  The Gospel of John records Jesus’ teaching this way, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth… you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you...”   One night, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.  For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  

Here’s how Paul explained this fact to the fledgling community of Christians in Corinth, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”    Later in that same letter, Paul reinforced this premise by asking these comparatively new followers of Christ about the promise this way, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”  So there it is.  God’s plan is to be in us.

We all know that nature abhors a vacuum.  We’ll either be full of Him, ourselves, or something even worse.  Jesus explains the predicament we face this way, “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it.  Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.  Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”   Thus the need to be filled with the Spirit – it’s the next best thing to hanging out a “no vacancy” sign.

I vividly recall an event in the early days of the war in Afghanistan – I had walked into our medical facility in Kandahar to find a young Afghan man strapped to a gurney -- hands and legs all securely restrained.  He had no shirt and a mask over his face to keep him from spitting.  I asked our even younger medic what was wrong with the Afghani.  He said he didn’t know, but that the Division Psychiatrist had been called.  

Almost as soon he’d said that, the Doc walked in with a large syringe.  I told the Doc that the drugs in that syringe would indeed put him down, but they could not cure the problem.   I said, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with him. The guy has demons.”  Despite the Doc’s skepticism of my diagnosis, in my mind, there was no doubt.  As Providence would have it, a couple of minutes later our Afghan translator walks in to the room. I asked Ahmed, “What’s wrong with this guy?” Ahmed says, “How do you say in English? He has spirits.”   At that I said. “Doc, there’s your second opinion!’”  

Jesus had a similar encounter.  “They brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute.  Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see... the Pharisees said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons’.”  Jesus refuted this with His famous “house divided argument.”  But more pertinent was His prescription for unadulterated freedom, “if the Spirit of God drives out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

Jesus goes on to describe the protection offered by the Holy Spirit, “how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house.”   Don’t doubt the need to keep our temple full with His all-powerful Spirit. 

Why? “Because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.”

Cleansing and the Coffee Cup

As I was in church this past Sunday morning, I was contemplating just how much I was in need of cleansing.  Not externally, but internally.  The Bible describes us as vessels, earthen vessel and even jars of clay.  Now we have a pretty good dishwasher, but sometimes if the cup is really dirty it requires soaking or even pre-cleaning in order for the dishwasher to be successful.  

Paul the apostle described the typical types of vessels and their purposes to his disciple Timothy: ^“But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.  Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.”  Paul also told Timothy about the relationship between the vessel’s cleanliness and its utility to the Master.  

This brought to mind a story that my Dad had recounted to me about his interchange with a crusty old mess sergeant.  Well over a half century ago my Dad was a young Army lieutenant with the additional duty of mess officer.  His duty would normally entail looking over the ordering of rations, accounting for funds, sanitary conditions of the facilities, managing manpower, and lastly (and the very least) monitoring the quality and tastiness of the chow.  It would also require regular visits to the chow hall.

As the story goes, my Dad went into the chow hall early one morning, grabbed a coffee mug from the dish rack and was preparing to fill it with good old GI mud.  Right at this point my Dad said the standard-issue aforementioned crusty old mess sergeant seized said mug from the unsuspecting and green lieutenant and began screaming, “YOU SEE THIS LIEUTENANT, YOU SEE THIS?”  “See what?” my Dad asked.  The mess sergeant answered, “This mug is cracked lieutenant, it’s cracked!”  “But it still works” protested the young lieutenant.  “It doesn’t matter” barked the mess sergeant, “those cracks harbor disease that even the dishwasher can’t kill!”  And with that the mess sergeant smashed the mug by hurling it into the mess hall floor.

Needless to say, that story made quite an impression on that young lieutenant.  So much that it has been passed on to his son, and subsequently his grandson, both of whom have served in that same Army.  

So what’s the point?  It’s two fold.  First, there is a point where something is no longer able to function for its intended purpose. Not that it has outlived its usefulness or that it is merely beyond economic repair, but that it is beyond being fixed.  Such that not even all the king’s horses or even all the king’s  men can make that mug useful again.  

As I look at our modern political system I see two parties postured against the people. I am forced to ponder the distinct possibility that the system has simply reached the point that there is no dishwasher capable of removing the mess.   It seems to me and millions of others we’ve reached the point that Mess Sergeant Trump looks like he’s got the answer – smash it! 

Our Founders foresaw the possibility of it coming to this point.  In our Declaration of Independence they reserved the right for destruction when they wrote, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Are we there yet?  I hope not.  But I do think that Mark Twain was on to something when he said, “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”  Maybe even more so when he said, “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”   Either way, something’s got to give.

And the second point, there is good news for those vessels seeking to be sanctified.  An old hymn holds the answer, “What can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”