A good long while ago, my husband and I
were watching the Band of Brothers series, a dramatization of the wartime
actions of Easy Company in the 101st Airborne Division, during WWII. I had
never seen it, but I love history, particularly WWII history, so I was enjoying
it immensely.
During the first few episodes we discussed
the various characters—who are all drawn, however dramatically, from real men
who really lived and really had these experiences—and how and why such and such
a man would act such and such a way, etc. My husband told me that his favorite
character wasn’t actually the calm, serious, eminently moral Lieutenant
Winters—the ostensible series protagonist—but the almost silent, hard-bitten, rumored-to-be-ruthless
Lieutenant Speirs.
Throughout a portion of the series, most of
the soldiers hold this Lieutenant as a mystery, and tell semi-mythic stories
about his brutal wartime actions. He is not the classic protagonist, but he is tough
and enigmatic, and it is one of his lines that struck me as the most powerful.
In one scene, there is a soldier who is
paralyzed by fear. He is hiding in a foxhole when he should be taking action.
He is ashamed of himself, but he can’t seem to break out of the fear
strait-jacket.
Lieutenant
Speirs walks up to him, crouches at the foxhole and tells him the ultimate
paradox: “The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already
dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function as a
soldier is supposed to function.” The reason that soldier had become useless is
because he was unwilling to give up his life…to give himself wholly over to the
task at hand.
Lieutenant
Speirs, on the other hand, figured he was as good as dead already, and for this
he was able to be courageous, decisive, and capable in the midst of a horrible
and life-threatening situation.
This is the classic Christian paradox shown
true in an entirely secular context: the harder you try to cling to your life,
the more useless that life is to you. It becomes a waste. You become
paralyzed—“dead” in effect, as far as anything meaningful or purposeful is
concerned. Try to save your life, you lose it. Give your life up and you might
survive, and save many other lives along the way.
True in battle, true in life.
More recently, I watched some films and TV
shows in which characters—who were not the heroes—sacrificed themselves for the
sake of the greater goal. They got no glory. In some cases they scarcely had
names or faces. In others, they were the convenient scapegoat which enabled the
Hero or Heroine to live. This culminated in my watching Mockingjay Part 1; I
was struck by two scenes in which nameless characters took coordinated action
against the oppressive government and, in so doing, ensured their own deaths. It
was very moving to me, but I found myself resistant to this idea. Perhaps a few
survived, but most of the people in those uprisings had to know that they were
going to die. They were cannon fodder for the sake of the higher goal of
defeating the Capitol. If they didn’t believe in their cause with all their
heart, soul, and body, one might say they had just been used and discarded in a
heartless and utilitarian manner. But they had to want to fight, badly, to do that. It had to mean
something to them.
It bothered me. It had me wondering if I
would ever, for the right reasons, have the courage to be like that: to run
into the cannon’s mouth without having any hope of survival, or any hint of
fame or glory, just so that someone else can get past the cannon to do
something greater. To die quietly so someone else can live loudly. Would I ever
be willing to be the nameless not-hero who enables the victory without anyone
ever noticing or caring?
I realized that I always want to be ‘the
main character.’ Because not only is the main character the hero, but they
usually survive, albeit with a few cuts and bruises. It’s those unnamed
characters in the gray background that die in spades so that the protagonist
can scrape through at the last second and see what all that fighting and dying earned. Because if you die without
seeing the end, how do you know that it was really worth it? How do you know
you weren’t being duped?
I find this mentality—mine—a problem. Not
only are we “already dead,” as Lieutenant Speirs put it, but if we’re obsessed
with being the hero—the name of renown—we aren’t going to get anything done
either. Our role may be small. It may not be flashy. There may be a hundred
other people doing the exact same small thing. But if it serves the higher
goal, does it matter if no one ever sees us or knows our name?
Besides, if you’re not willing to sacrifice
something—or yourself—because you can’t prove
right now that it will have been
worth it, you would never sacrifice yourself for anything. It takes faith—in a
cause or in person. In God.
It reminds me of Brother Lawrence, a monk
whose duties were very low and mundane; he worked in the kitchen, and it was
tedious. No glory. No grandness. No heroism. Just simple work that has to be
redone every day (like the dishes, which are the most depressing and endless of
chores). But he took “do everything as unto the Lord” to heart. He did
scrubbing as unto the Lord. How was he able to do this? How could he be so
humble and patient in his heart with such dull work?
Because he had already died to himself. He
yielded his goals and dreams and preferences to the Lord. The result? His words
and advices, written hundreds of years ago, are still read today and influence
many. His small work was a seed and it grew great. I don’t know that he ever
lived to see it do so either. He couldn’t guess that, in the 2000’s, a young
man would read his words and decide to volunteer in a kitchen at a summer camp
in order to learn how to honor God in that simple work. He couldn’t know that I
would remind myself of Brother Lawrence at times when I am tempted to be angry
that my work or my life seem mundane, or lack the glory and adventure that I
crave. When I try to cling to my idea of my life, instead of embracing the
actual circumstances, I lose. I am paralyzed.
How can we be effective—in war, or in life,
or especially in the Kingdom of God? By remembering that we’re dead already,
and glad of it despite the way it sounds. Dead to things that chain us down,
tether us to our selfish selves, and our foolish plans. We’re free to risk
everything, free to be fearless, free to do things small or great with all our
hearts, free from the need to be validated by others, free from the need to
prove ourselves or measure ourselves against the achievements of others.
Because we’re not clutching to our life (or our reputation, or our popularity,
or our fame, or our accolades) like a security blanket. And, unlike Speirs, we
haven’t given up our lives to become hard or nihilistic. We’ve given them into
good hands. God’s. And, if we trust him, we will not regret letting go.
“The best way to live above all fear of death is to die every
morning before you leave your bedroom.”
-Charles Spurgeon
