“Wage the good warfare” (part 2)

WHAT IS THIS “GOOD WARFARE”? (1 Tm 1:18, part 3)

What is the “good warfare”? To what can we compare it?

Across thousands of years, leaders and countries have made great, heroic, sometimes ludicrous efforts to make their conflicts appear just. In the American Civil War, both sides prayed to the same God for victory in arms. Even the Nazis tipped their hats to this principle, going so far as to stage a phony attack on a radio tower in a border city as the “justification” to start a ground war in Europe.

We need to be on guard, though, lest the cynical acts of others make us cynical as well. History does provide examples of struggles against tyranny, battles to liberate oppressed peoples and endangered communities, conflicts begun with dubious motives but the end of which occasions much good. Much of the best Christian teaching recognizes the principle of “just war” engaged in righteously and rightly, if reluctantly.

This is not even to mention moral campaigns such as the “war on poverty”, “war on drugs”, “war on terror”, the civil rights struggle and the battles against ills such as illiteracy and obesity.

Struggle, it turns out, is a normal, even necessary, part of life. It is with struggle and strain that we are born into the world and see our first light of day. Too-easy deliverance from struggle can even be harmful, such as for the animal who is helped to break out of its egg, and whose ability to fight to survive is compromised thereby. And some of our nouns representing the most noble traits and qualities were themselves born in struggle: hero. Duty. Valor. Virtue.

In annals, story, and song ... in sources as disparate as Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and “The Ballad of Private Rodger Young”, it is not the one who has nothing to live for or who knows no fear, but the one who has his or her whole life ahead and future at stake, who may feel that he or she has every good reason to flee the battle and turn their back on the fray, yet who is drawn or driven on by something higher, deeper, more important than one’s own existence, who is valorous.

What Paul is speaking to here is the passion of the quest. Paul recognized it in Timothy, saw a reflection of his own “upward calling”, that prize to which all else was subordinate, the struggle of most supreme importance that claims even one’s life.

The question for each of us, daily, is: have I given myself fully to the quest? Am I waging the good warfare?


Lord, remembering that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor riches to the wise, let my life’s energies be bent with all my strength to the quest and struggle for Your Kingdom. Let whatever lack there is in my swiftness, or strength, or resources be supplied by Your goodness. Let my heart’s cry be for that which is most important to You. In Christ, Amen.



Romulus, Michigan (DTW)

"Wage the good warfare”

CLARITY, DISCIPLINE, AND SACRIFICE: 1 Timothy 1:18 (part 2)

The Apostle calls his young charge to “wage the good warfare”. Military imagery – which Paul uses often – is out of fashion in many quarters today. Still, it’s quite apt for the Christian journey, beset as it is with problems, opposition, and the need for continuous focused effort. This is all the more true for those exercising leadership in the body of Christ.

What are some of the characteristics of this “good warfare”?

Clarity. A clear, precise battle plan, taking into consideration not only troop movements and the probabilities of enemy responses, but also capacity, supply, endurance and potential political and noncombatant complications, is essential. Are we as disciples clear on our purpose and mission? If we are leading others, is it seat-of-the-pants or week-to-week, or do we have a sense of the direction in which God is guiding and how our following should be lived out? I believe that if we’re putting more time and thought into our vacation, career, or dinner plans than we are into our discipleship, then the Holy Spirit is urgently calling us to take another, more careful look.

Discipline. Indiscipline yields negative results. In a sport, I lose the game – or at a minimum, Coach yells at me. Taking a class, I get a bad grade. Eat unhealthily and don’t exercise, and I feel bad, get gluey stuff in my arteries ... and maybe keel over at an early age. Spiritual indiscipline is no less a problem, even if the results can take time to show up.

In the military, the disciplines of rank, regulations and training serve a purpose: to keep the soldier alive and make him or her an effective weapon against the enemy. As disciples, we being molded into instruments that fight evil in the world and seek to establish God’s righteous, life-giving policy (i.e., the Kingdom of God).

Sacrifice. For the serviceman/-woman, distance from family, limited comforts, even privations and perhaps injury or even death are part of the service rendered for the sake of duty to one’s country. In every age this has been true, whether the “heat and burden of the day” has been borne for the Senate and People of Rome, King and Country, or the Flag and Constitution. Ultimately, indeed, every fight is for home and hearth and the ideal of one’s native land.

Recently, I’ve been reading a bit on the American Civil War, and retracing the steps of the Confederate cabinet after its flight from Richmond. Gradually, travel became harder, supplies less certain, dangers more oppressive, and even formerly rebel-aligned cities began to make their former leaders unwelcome. Yet with courage and equanimity, and even good humor, they bore all this for the sake of “the Cause”. If they could bear such things for a cause which history has shown to be defective (in fact, I think it was awful on a number of levels), how much more should I, a citizen of a vastly nobler Homeland, be willing to bear for its sake and the sake of my King!

There is of course one more aspect to warfare: allegiance. We have to know whose side we’re on, and live with full loyalty, to “the last full measure of devotion” as President Lincoln put it. This is both simpler, and more intricate, than we typically make it out to be.

On the way here, I was waiting in line at the airport in front of an enlisted man en route to his duty station. From his insignia, I could see that he was one of ours (i.e., a U.S. soldier), and also could clearly see his name and rank. This gave me the opportunity to thank him for his service. Gratitude aside, can others observing us clearly see both our allegiance and our identity in Christ?


Lord, you have called me to wage a sustained fight for You. Help me to do so with clarity and discipline, despising and bearing patiently the sacrifices, and with full and loyal allegiance. Help me to remember also that my fight is “not against flesh and blood”, and to need to approval beyond Your own. In Your hold Name. Amen.


Ellensburg, Washington (Lazy F Camp)