Stephen
Terry, Director
Grace,
Love, and Fellowship
Commentary
for the September 26, 2026, Sabbath School Lesson
"When
the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an
army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. 'Oh no, my lord! What
shall we do?' the servant asked.
'Don't
be afraid,' the prophet answered. 'Those who are with us are more than those who
are with them.'
And
Elisha prayed, 'Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.' Then the Lord opened
the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots
of fire all around Elisha." 2 Kings 6:15-17
I graduated high school during
the heat of the Vietnam War, right after the Tet Offensive. During the length
of that war, almost sixty thousand Americans died. Many of the youth of our
nation, including myself protested our involvement. A few even gave their lives
in protest as happened at Kent State University in Ohio. I would have avoided
Vietnam altogether, but as luck would have it the draft lottery was begun in
1969 and my number came up. I was faced with a choice. Either I could wait to
be drafted and likely end up an 11Bravo infantry rifleman, or I could
voluntarily enlist and seek a better job category. I decided to go see the army
recruiter. He told me that I would need to take a test to see what job
offerings were open to me. I did well on the test, and he told me I could have
any job I chose. I told him I enjoyed languages and had taken French and
Russian in high school. He told me there was not much call for French but that
Russian interpreters were in high demand. I asked if that would require me to
be killing people. He said it would not, and I would probably end up just sitting
in a radio room for hours monitoring broadcasts and translating them. So, I
said, "Sign me up."
The reality was much different.
When I got to basic training, I was required to train with weapons, since it
was only shooting at paper targets, I did not protest and qualified as an expert
marksman. However, basic training was very much about killing the enemy, something
I told them I could not in good conscience do. Of course, battalion command was
not very sympathetic to my position. Since there was a special draft
classification for 1-A-O conscientious objectors, we discussed an application
for recognition as a soldier in that category. However, they did not want to do
the paperwork and offered a compromise. They said a translator would be
required to carry a weapon and therefore might potentially be required to kill
the enemy, but a combat medic was not required to carry a weapon. They told me
if I gave up the translator position, they would transfer me to Fort Sam
Houston to be a combat medic, and the problem would be solved. For the duration
of the war, that worked. But once the war ended, so did the draft and the idea of
a medic without a weapon also vanished, and I was severely persecuted as a
result. Eventually, the Army understood something clearly at last and honorably
discharged me as a conscientious objector but not without attempts on my life
and field grade punishment before we got there.
Being a conscientious objector
to taking life is hard for many to understand. There is so much fear in the world
of what might happen. That fear is fed to us through thousands of hours of
media programming where every problem is solved by killing the enemy from the
time we first began to watch television cartoons until the end of our lives
decades later. Worse, in cartoons, the animated people and animals do not
really die, and in the television series and movies, the central characters
make a career out of dying and reappearing later in the series or in another
movie. Whether they realize it consciously or not, most come to understand from
all of this that the answer to every problem is ultimately a gun. And like the
hero who always comes out on top, most who feel that guns are the solution to
every problem also come to believe that it is always the bad guy who will die,
and it is always the other guy who is the bad guy.
People have asked me through the
years if I will not carry a gun to protect myself, what about my family? Wouldn't
I love them enough to protect them? The assumption here is that I am their
ultimate hope for safety, like John Wayne riding in with the cavalry to rescue
my loved ones who are surrounded by Indians who are about to massacre them.
(When I think about the portrayal of those Indians, and the white heroes riding
to the rescue to massacre the savages, the whole scenario gets really ugly,
really fast and makes me want to throw up at the thought of the massacres that
took place with just such a scenario.) This assumption attempts to set a man's
family against the one who refuses to kill others. It assumes God will protect
that person but not his family, so he must compromise his love for his neighbor
and gun that neighbor down to save the family that God refuses to save. This
plays into the idea that God does not care and for humanity the only hope is
that gun in their hand.
Fear and decades of
indoctrination have made this idea so real to some that they can think of no other
option. But in over seven decades of life, I have never seen such a scenario
anywhere but in movies and television shows. But in that time, I have tried to
walk the path Jesus outlined for us, and through experience, that path has
become more real to me than all the movies and shows in the world. It is hard
to see that when we have spent our lives walking the other direction. But we do
not have to keep walking away. The Bible offers what it calls repentance. In
the Greek of the New Testament the word literally means to turn around, to stop
walking away from God and start walking toward him. That is really all we need
to do. He takes care of the rest. All the decades of being taught to be afraid
and to hate our enemies have turned our hearts into a cold stone. But once we
start walking toward him and eventually with him, those hearts begin to soften,
and we become more human with each step. God offers that to us. "I will give
you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart
of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26)
Many times, in the past, God has
delivered his people from those who would assault or slay them. He delivered
Lot in Sodom. He delivered Daniel from the lions' den. He delivered Elisha and
his servant from the Aramean army sent against them. He delivered Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace on the plain outside Babylon. He
delivered Jeremiah from his persecutors. He delivered Elijah from Jezebel. And
yes, he even delivered me from those who would have taken my life in Alaska
before I could be discharged from the army. God is faithful. But people live in
fear, not only of their enemies, but fear that God will not love them because of
the things they have done and will not deliver them but instead punish them for
their failures. This is why repentance, walking toward and with God is
important.
It is extremely hard to get to know
someone if we never walk with them or talk with them. But God offers us that.
We can choose to believe what others who have never walked with God want us to
believe or what the movies want us to believe, or we can get to know God
one-on-one. The first thing we will discover is that "God is love." (1
John 4:8) We also learn he is merciful and compassionate. (Exodus
33:18-19) It is not God's will that anyone should perish. (2
Peter 3:9) As we walk with God his character shapes our own. We become more
loving, more merciful, more compassionate, and more patient. And as we do so,
we begin to see fear dissipating, just as Apostle John said it would. "There is
no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with
punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." (1 John 4:18)
Sadly, there is a class of
people who call themselves Christians, they may even wear little gold crosses
to prove it, but they are all about fear and judgment, and they are not happy
with those who give their lives over to trust in God's love. It is obvious they
do not walk with God because their own lives are given over to fear and
judgment. But the Bible tells a different story. "For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to
condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (John 3:16-17) This is
why Paul could write to the church in Rome, "there is now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)
Fear condemns us, but love saves
us and as Paul also told the Romans, "God's kindness is intended to lead you to
repentance." (Romans 2:4) Those who would drive people to God through fear only
succeed in hardening their hearts from fear of how they falsely characterize
God, but those who come seeking the kindness of God will "enter Zion with
singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake
them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." (Isaiah 51:11)