Choices

The Colonel worries another American Civil War is brewing. 

More seems to divide Americans today than unites us.  Our passions rule us -- driven by our selfishness and pride.  Constitutional protections of the rights of individuals be damned if they conflict with our feelings or convenience.

Pick your positional poison -- there's two diametrically opposed sides to the argument fueled less by critical analysis and rational thought and more by uncompromising self-interest and political power accumulation.

Each side easily points out the glaring inconsistencies and  inherent hypocrisies in the other's argument, all the while masking their own with mockery, misdirection, and more volume.

It's enough to make this old centurion cry "a pox on both your houses," and hide away on the social frontier to ride out the coming storm.   

Except... not choosing a side rarely works out.  One side or the other will eventually find you out and demand your loyalty or make you suffer their wrath.  History is replete with examples the Colonel could, but won't, parade across your screen.  If you haven't had the time to educate yourself on a bit of history to this point, it's doubtful the Colonel's efforts to do so will bear any fruit at this late date.

Suffice it to say -- you are going to have to pick a side. 

Pick carefully.  The winners will write the next chapters of our civilization's history; the losers will be written off and out.  

So, how to pick?  How to know which side is right?

Newsflash:  Neither side is right.

There is no such thing as the "right side of history."  There is only the "might" side of human history. 

Whichever side you choose will require, if you truly commit to that side's cause, that you compromise your principles, your faith, or your core values in one way or another.

Only God gets to adhere to absolutes.  Humans are inherently predisposed to shades of gray.  It's what makes us human.  We each carry our own identifying imperfections, else we would be robotic angels incapable of exercising the gift of self-determination and self-expression that makes each one of us distinguishable from the rest. 

So, you have a choice before you.  The same sort of choice that faced Americans in 1775.  You actually have three choices, just as they did.  And, remember, only the winners get to write history and proclaim which side was "right."

Like the American in 1775, you can stay loyal to an overbearing government, accepting more security in exchange for less liberty.

Or, like the American in 1775, you can choose to demand the freedom of limited self-government with far less guarantee of security from external threats. 

Or, you can choose what nearly a third of Americans did in 1775 -- attempt to ride the fence, hiding out on the frontier.

The Colonel's great (x 7) grandfather, Thomas Bry Gregory, attempted just that as the American revolution began.  He was content to sit out the fight started by those crazy Bostonions -- his home on the Southern frontier (Western North Carolina) was almost completely out of the reach of any government.  So much so that he probably didn't consider himself to be of any nationality whatsoever.  The strategy worked well for the first few years of the war, but wars have a habit of disregarding the best laid plans.

Perhaps the greatest British strategic mistake of the war was Cornwallis' campaign in the Southern colonies.  Failing to destroy Washington's army in the Northern colonies in the first few years of the war, British strategists began to see New England as a lost cause (at least in the short term) and turned their attention to shoring up the Loyalist cause in the far more valuable agricultural south.  The outbreak of revolution in New England had sparked a civil war in the south -- with British authority in the coastal enclaves replaced by revolutionary governments, bitter internecine score-settling raged across the southern interior.  Cornwallis was sent to pacify the southern colonies -- his actions (more accurately the actions of firebrand subordinates Tarleton and Ferguson) had the opposite effect.

Cornwallis captured Charleston, South Carolina in May of 1780 and pushed inland with a strategy of raising loyalist militias and restoring them to authority.   At Charlotte, Cornwallis dispatched Major Patrick Ferguson to raise loyalist militia in upstate South Carolina and thereby protect the western flank of the British main force in the South.  

Enter the Overmountain Men.

West of the Appalachians, American frontiersmen had settled lands almost completely separated from any governmental control -- British or revolutionary.  They proudly referred to themselves as the Overmountain Men.  In fact, they had established their own form of government -- a compact called the Watauga Association.   When the Revolution started, the Overmountain Men of the Watauga Association sided with the revolutionaries, formed militia companies, and began to raid loyalist settlements.  

After one particularly destructive raid, Major Ferguson and his loyalist battalion closely pursued but couldn't catch the Overmountain Men before they retreated safely back across the mountains.  Ferguson sent the following message to the Overmountain Men:  "Lay down your arms and swear allegiance to the Crown, or I will lay waste to your country with fire and sword."  

This didn't sit well with the Overmountain Men.

Not only did the Overmountain Men take up Ferguson's challenge, but they called on all of the patriots in the region to join with them in facing Ferguson.  

Enter Thomas Bry Gregory. 

The Colonel's great (x 7) grandfather had evidently had enough.  The civil war in the south had actually been much more damaging than the war in New England.  Whole towns and settlements had been been destroyed in the bitter back and forth between revolutionaries and loyalists.  Gregory threw in his lot with the revolutionaries.  His son, Harden Harley Gregory (the Colonel's great (x 6) grandfather), also joined the cause.

As word of the size of the force gathering to confront Ferguson reached his ears, he led his battalion back toward the safety of the region held by Cornwallis' main body.  They didn't make it.

The Colonel's great (x 6 and 7) grandfathers and 900 of their closest revolutionary comrades caught up to Ferguson and his 1100 loyalist militia at a piece of high ground called Kings Mountain.  Ferguson and his men had bivouacked on the crest and had no idea that they were surrounded until the shooting and hollering started.  Ferguson (the only non-American in the battle) was killed and his entire force killed or taken prisoner after a brutal hour of close-quarter battle.

The battle of Kings Mountain was a (if not the) turning point in the American Revolution.  The revolutionary militia success convinced Washington to send General Nathanael Greene and a wing of the Continental Army south to bolster the revolutionary cause and harry Cornwallis.  Cornwallis chased Greene and his subordinates across the Carolinas until, exhausted, he and his force fell back on Yorktown for reinforcement and replenishment.

The rest is history... if you care to study it.  

The Colonel expects, when the time for choosing comes, that he will side with the revolutionaries -- those choosing less security in exchange for more freedom -- like his great granddads.

The Colonel is a Rebel, afterall.   

   

Ultimate Responsibility

Captain Ed "Rebel" Gregory attempting to reach escape velocity
during flight deck PT, somewhere in the Atlantic -- March 1988 .

Thirty years ago this month, the Colonel (then a captain) was at sea, aboard an aging vertical assault ship -- LPH 2, USS Iwo Jima -- and in command of a reinforced rifle company assigned the mission of conducting heliborne assaults and raids for a "special operations capable" (SOC) Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU).

It was the best job he ever had.   

The Marines and sailors of Company C (Reinforced), 1st Battalion, 8th Marines (designated Battalion Landing Team 1/8) were 210 of the best young men the Colonel has ever known.  He has written of them before, and will likely write about them again many times before he stops breathing.  The youngest among them will turn 50 in a couple of years.  Most of them finished up their 4-year enlistment by the end of that decade, went home, and lived peaceful lives.  Several of them reenlisted and made the Corps a career.  A few fought in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.     

In the history of armed conflict, 1988 was an unremarkable year.  At least as far as the Colonel's accounting goes.  The Iran-Iraq War was ending.  Tensions with Iran were bubbling in the Persian Gulf.  Tensions with Noriega were bubbling in Panama.  But, all in all, it was a quiet year.

Going into 1988, however, the Colonel was convinced that the year would be anything but quiet.  And, at every opportunity he had to speak with his assembled charges, the Colonel always concluded with a variation on the same refrain: "Men, get ready.  There's not a doubt in my military mind that we're gonna see some trigger time before this deployment is over."  

That belief -- that combat was inevitable -- was what drove every preparation for that deployment, from administration to assault tactics.  The Colonel could wax Pattonesque at this point and pen drivel about destiny, but it wasn't a sense of destiny that drove him.

It was an overwhelming sense of responsibility. 

That sense of responsibility is at the core of every military leader's psyche.  Some have it in more or less degrees than others.  The Colonel claims no superiority here.  He was lucky to have mentors who, despite the Colonel's many shortcomings, devoted themselves to developing his nascent leadership skills into something approaching mission-capable adequacy.  But, the point remains that without a guiding sense of responsibility, no leader, military or otherwise, can hope to achieve his or her organization's mission.  

A military leader's ultimate responsibility is to prepare those under his or her charge for the worst possible outcome -- deadly violent, no-holds-barred, combat.  To do less shirks a sacred duty.

As the scope of responsibility broadens with ascension up the ladder of military command, the ultimate responsibility remains ever the same.  To allow any other consideration to detract from that responsibility is, by definition, negligence.  

In 1988, the Colonel, as is often the case, was wrong.  The best rifle company in the Marine Corps saw no combat that year.

But, they were ready...            

Drawing Near

In a sermon on hindrances to prayer, Charles Spurgeon -- the great English preacher of the 19th Century -- declared,

"To many persons this discourse will have but little reference because they do not pray. I fear, also, there are some others whose prayers are so worthless that if they were hindered it would be of no very material consequence… Merely to bow the knee in formality, to go through a form of devotion in a careless or half-hearted manner is rather to mock God than to worship Him. It would be a terrible theme for contemplation to consider how much of vain repetition and heartless praying the Lord is wearied with from day to day."

Spurgeon's words, spoken at a different time to a church in a different land, are nonetheless, timeless; and, the Colonel fears, all too descriptive of the prayer life of the modern church in America. 

The Colonel wonders, do you suffer from the same spiritual malaise that afflicts him?  Is your prayer life -- the most critical component of a Christian's walk of faith -- earthbound; with feeble, rote prayers seeming to never reach beyond the ceiling?  

To be sure, the omnipresent and omnipotent God who is the Colonel's personal savior hears every word on every man's lips and discerns every thought on every man's mind.  

God hears our prayers.

If there is any break in the communication between the Colonel and his most holy and perfect God, it is entirely the fault of the Colonel.

The Colonel is no Greek scholar, but the Greek dictionary at the back of his study Bible says the English phrase "to pray" is translated from the original Greek word proseuchomai, which is very closely related to the word proserchomai. 

Proserchomai means "to come to; approach; draw near to; to agree to."

The Colonel rather likes to think that the close relation of those two Greek words is no linguistic accident.  

Indeed, is not the act of praying, really an attempt to approach or draw near to God? 

When Jesus modeled for His disciples the components of prayer --what we call "The Lord's Prayer" -- He was teaching them as well the reverent, dependent, and penitent condition required of any supplicant attempting to draw near to God. 

It cuts the Colonel to the core of his flinty heart that he all too often attempts to draw near to God with an irreverent, proudly independent, and unrepentant heart.  

Any wonder then that the Colonel feels his prayers go, by and large, unanswered?  

How dare the Colonel, black-hearted sinner that he is, flippantly attempt to enter into God's presence?!?

"But, wait," you ask. "Doesn't Jesus' sacrifice on the cross cover the Colonel's sin?  Didn't Jesus pay the Colonel's wages of sin."

Indeed, Jesus is the Colonel's substitute.  The Colonel's sin not only separates him from a most holy and perfect God, but requires a sentence of death at his final judgment.  But, when the Colonel, as all men will, stands before God to be sentenced to the eternal separation from God that the Colonel's many sins deserve, Jesus will step in between God and this black-hearted sinner and tell the most holy and perfect One, "This one accepted Me as his savior. I died for him."  

So, the Colonel's sinful nature, for which he was convicted of the need for repentance leading to salvation, is forgiven at his final judgment.  

But, the Colonel continues to sin.  And so, there is a continual need to confess, and repent of, those sins and to accept God's forgiveness. 

To the Colonel, that is the beauty of a personal relationship with God.  It is not a one-time, check-in-the-box, salvation event.  It is an on-going relationship, the health of which can only be maintained by continual confession and repentance.  Continual guilt over sin is not the goal, however.  Accepting God's forgiveness of sin replaces guilt with personal peace.

Cutting to the chase, unconfessed sin (an unforgiving spirit prominent among those of the Colonel's many) prevents him from drawing closer to God, because God cannot accept sin in His presence.  It follows then, that the more sin the Colonel admits, confesses, repents of, and receives/accepts forgiveness for, the nearer God allows him to draw to His presence.

In his epistle to the churches of Asia Minor, John wrote,

"If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."  1 John 1: 8 -- 9  

Faithful and just.  Forgiveness of our sins is a promise from a faithful and just God, whose one desire of us -- the reason why He created us in the first place -- is a close, personal relationship.      

Temptation and Deliverance

When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He concluded a model prayer with "...and lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil." (Matt 6: 13)

There has probably never been a more misunderstood verse of scripture.

How could a perfect, most holy, supreme God lead anyone into sin?  And, yet, we let that verse trip fervently off our tongues as if our lives depended on it, almost begging God to stop tempting us.

News flash: God isn't in the tempting business.

Succumbing to temptation separates us from God.  That isn't God's will for us.  God created us for communion with Him -- not as equals, but as free-willed sons and daughters of a supreme king.   

God created us with a free will so that our devotion to him would not be forced; so that when we followed His will, it would be out of love and not fear.  

But, because we are not perfect and we have free will, our decision-making is fraught with imperfection.  Our imperfections are not personality quirks at which God shakes his head mirthfully, "Oh, those kids..." or "...boys will be boys."  

Our imperfection -- our sin -- is abhorrent to God. 

The Colonel believes that God created him with all his many imperfections so that he would have no doubt in his military mind that there was a great, impassable gulf between his imperfect sinfulness and God's perfect holiness.  The Colonel believes that's why God, when He created man, put the ability of reasoning right from wrong in man's mind; and why at Sinai, God codified right from wrong with His Commandments.  God gave us the ability to reason right from wrong and the free will to act on that reasoning, so that as we failed to perfectly follow His will, we would realize that there would never be anything we could do in our own strength to merit entering into the physical presence of a perfect God.

Enter Jesus.

A perfect man, sacrificed to atone for our imperfections; whose blood both literally and figuratively covered our sins in God's eyes.  

So, why would Jesus tell us to pray that God would "lead us not into temptation."  That just doesn't make sense.   God doesn't tempt us.

Well, he's said it before and it bears repeating here -- the Colonel ain't smart and you can't make him.  So, the best the Colonel can figure with his pea-sized thought muscle is that Jesus was reminding us that temptation is everywhere in the world and that we can't resist evil without God's deliverance.  

It all comes back to God's supremacy.  And, it's all right there -- tightly summed up in what we call "the Lord's Prayer." 

God created, and orders every atom in, the universe.  That awesome God desires a personal relationship with each and every one of the billions of us who have ever lived or will ever live.  God desires that we seek His righteousness, and His will in our lives, as a condition for His provision of our every material and spiritual need.  Because we all fail to perfectly seek His righteousness and His will in our lives, we all require His forgiveness.  God expects us to extend His forgiveness to others -- not in our own strength, but by His power.  

Finally, God expects us to resist evil -- not in our own strength, but by His power.

Thence comes deliverance.   

Foundation of Forgiveness

The Colonel doesn't do the whole "forgive and forget" thing well.

When you mistreat, mislead, or disrespect him and his, the Colonel's first inclination is to retaliate.  Said retaliation usually isn't in like kind -- the Colonel most often just shuts the offender out of his life.

If the Colonel was a religion -- his detractors would be excommunicated.  

No effort wasted on revenge -- the Colonel ain't got time for that.

Unless you mess, physically, with his family -- then it's game on.  No brag; just fact.

The Colonel ain't the least bit proud of any of the above.  It doesn't jive in any way, shape, or form with his professed followership of the teachings of Jesus.  He recognizes that his unforgiveness is, in fact, an affront to God. 

The Colonel remains in constant state of seeking forgiveness.  Here's what he's learning:

When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, and for what to pray, He built his model prayer on the foundation of God's supremacy as the Creator of the Universe and our only salvation.  God's kingdom is supreme.  God's will is supreme.  God's law is inviolable -- disobedience is not without consequence.   God is the exclusive provider of our every material and spiritual need.

The concept of forgiveness is the logical edifice built on the foundation of God's supremacy, sovereignty, and provision.  Jesus taught His disciples, and us by extension, to pray for God's forgiveness.  But, how can a most holy and perfect God -- unable to even accept sin in His presence -- forgive our sin?

The simple answer -- the Colonel is a simple man, after all -- is that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross made Him our substitute.  Jesus -- the universe's ultimate expression of love -- stands between us and the wrath of God.  

"But," you ask, "how can God love us and yet have wrath toward us?"

The simplest answer is: God loves our souls and hates our sin. 

Matthew Henry, the great early 18th Century author of Bible commentary, had this to say regarding our debts to God and His forgiveness of them:

"Our sins are our debts; there is a debt of duty, which, as creatures, we owe to our Creator; we do not pray to be discharged from that, but upon the non-payment of that there arises a debt of punishment; in default of obedience to the will of God, we become obnoxious to the wrath of God; and for not observing the precept of the law, we stand obliged to the penalty."

In other words, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, "All have fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), and the consequence of falling short (commiting sin) is death (see Romans 6: 23). 

Matthew Henry's use of the word "obnoxious" in his commentary is instructive and useful to our discussion.  In Henry's day -- the early 1700's -- the term "obnoxious" carried the connotation of censure or judgement.  Today, we use the word most often in reference to olfactory unpleasantness or social immaturity -- a far less impactful use than Henry intended.  To be obnoxious to God, in Henry's meaning, was to be in complete contradiction to God's will and deserving complete, unpardonable condemnation.

Our sin is in direct opposition to the will of God.  The Colonel once asked a respected Christian mentor for some scripture references on finding God's will.  He answered with "Read Exodus 20."  

The Colonel has since used prayerful consideration of God's Ten Commandments as the basis for seeking His will.  If one is truly seeking God's will -- asking for divine guidance in decision-making -- His original commandments regarding the life-conduct of His people is the first place to start.  Examining your choices through the lens of His commandments almost always makes the right choice -- the one that will please God -- clear.

Now, don't start getting the idea that the Colonel always consults God in his decision-making, or even that when he does, he makes the right choice.  Too often the Colonel makes the mistake of presenting God with his Choice A and Choice B and asking God to approve one or the other.  That ain't how seeking God's will works.

There, then, is the divine reason for Jesus telling His disciples that when they pray they should begin by recognizing God's supremacy and sovereignty.  Seeking His will in our lives, and His forgiveness for not following His will as we live, flows as naturally from God's supremacy and sovereignty as water from a greater height.

Forgiveness from God comes only when we recognize His supremacy and sovereignty, recognize that everything we need both materially and spiritually comes from Him, and seek only His will.  God is, indeed, love.  He showed His great love for us when, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, "...while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."   

That's the bottom line of forgiveness.  God sent His son, who had been with Him from before the beginning of time (See John 1: 1 - 3), as the sacrificial substitute to atone for our sins -- to pay the price of death our sins demand from a perfect God.  You can't express forgiveness any better than that.

Jesus didn't end the forgiveness section of His model prayer there, however.  He took one more, final, step -- the step that sums up His ministry.  Jesus told His disciples to pray for the supernatural strength to forgive others.

For the longest time the Colonel misread the forgiveness section of Jesus' model prayer as asking God to forgive us in the same manner we forgive others.  Frankly, if that were the case, there would be no forgiveness.  Unfortunately, the imprecision of the English translations of Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, can cause us to focus on the word "as" in the line "...forgive us, as we forgive others."   It doesn't take any more than an Ole Miss grad to see that the original language we translate "as" wasn't meant as a qualifier, or a condition of God's forgiveness.  It's more of a conjunction -- a phrase connector.  Praying "as we forgive others" is not asking for equal measure.  It is in, if nothing else, remembrance of Jesus' focus on others.

Others...

Can't get to forgiveness without that focus.