By C. T. Giles
“…take the helmet of salvation…”
Who doesn’t want their own signature helmet? I wouldn’t bother with setting mine out in some formal looking display. No. Mine would have a place alongside the jackets and shoes, right by the door, ready to grab and go. God bless… how badly I wish that we inhabited a culture of swords.
This isn’t a clean fight
Any time that I have heard the armor of God preached on, one of the points that has been regularly emphasized is how all of the armor is forward facing. The preacher then adjures us all to look out for one another, because none of us have any back protection! If we aren’t fighting shoulder to shoulder, triangulating and orienteering together, then we aren’t going to win much. It’s a wonderful admonishment, but I think it is erroneously founded on the assumption of forward-facing armor. Warfare is inherently messy. Fighting does not stay on the fencing line of the exchanges we watch in the Olympics. The enemy, whichever enemy, means to rout you and come sidelong upon you unawares.
Consider how difficult it is to fasten a belt around the front of your waist only, and remember how a helmet generally hangs on the head. Do we really imagine that the Romans strolled around with something that was no more than a decorative sash at the belly, or that they were unconcerned with protecting the backs of their heads? Let’s get forensic for a moment. A body can take some tremendous blows to the face and brow and stand up well enough beneath the pressure. You strike somebody in the back of the head, however, and things tend to get dark pretty quickly.
These weren’t tradesmen suiting up for a day of welding or pressure-washing. They were soldiers stepping into a battlefield that would soon become a melee. Swords, maces, weaponized shields and horse hoofs a’plenty would be roundabout them on all sides. A body wants a helmet about the entire dome, 360 degrees of coverage (technically we would be discussing steradians of coverage, not degrees, but the editors will censor me if I tarry too long here… I may have said too much already).
Before the Bludgeoning
In life, as in combat, it is the blow we don’t see coming that poses us the most harm. Boxers mean to strike their opponent right behind the ear, with that hook out of the shadows. Push the button; turn out the lights. Hasn’t that happened to you before? Maybe you haven’t been in a fistfight, but I am sure you have been knocked onto the dark side of your behind, emotionally, at least.
Our greatest assaults are suffered without warning. Some specter sneaks up on us. We have to “come to” before we even realize how out of sorts we had become. Great loss, the death of a loved one, failures in business, careers, education – something was removed from us quite suddenly.
Perhaps the worst hurts we suffer are those we inflict upon ourselves. When we decide to go against the Way, that act is tantamount to removing the helmet, and willfully forgetting, well, all of it. The sins that we return to in selfishness, pride, are no surprise. Pornographers know what they’re getting themselves into. They simply choose to exchange the reality that they know for the delusion they find easier.
For my part, the greatest crises I have encountered came at the cost of unprecipitated questions against God’s saving goodness. One morning I woke up and realized that there was no insurance policy against the contingency that my kids might ever encounter a pedophile. That day began a very long and dark three years.
Isn’t that about the worst thing we have to contend with as Christians? The world is fraught with ugly and yet we insist that our God is good and true and beautiful all the way through. Enter the Dragon.
We have no easy answer for this mess. Anyone who addresses the problem of pain without wincing is not to be heeded. In truth, the best we can do is to contend with it. We will never solve it. This part of the curriculum is ongoing. Until the consummation of the ages, we must strive for harmony within the dissonance.
Helmets and Hardships
This is why we are given a helmet for those tragedies that catch us off guard, in our blindsides, at our most vulnerable. We will suffer debilitating blows, no doubt about it, but they will not be lethal to the reality of our salvation. That story will continue to unfold in our lives. Nothing may interrupt its work.
All we must do is receive this assurance of His steadfastness. This means having our imaginations baptized in His truth, seeing the world as Jesus Himself would see it: God-bathed. Remember, “Jesus wept.” He grieved. He was blindsided Himself, too. Yet He always remembered to inhabit the truest story, the Deepest Magic. He was a Man acquainted with sorrows, but He was even more so a Man intimate with joy, consummate with the ecstasy of truth, beauty, goodness. This is what the helmet is.
So now I leave it to you to simply remember, to practice the memory, of whence you came, where you are going – and Whose you are. This is all we need to inform us as to what we should be doing. You will wake up to dark days, no doubt about it, and I am sorry for that, truly. Nevertheless, we have been equipped for this.
Training is supposed to be gritty. No warrior ever came through their adventures unscathed. If you want to become mighty in His Namesake, then that is going to mean getting brutalized from time to time. To be very clear, you will suffer knockdowns.
The helmet will help with that. Just receive it. And remember.
Final Opportunity to sign up for Proven Men’s Conference: “This is War”
We can no longer settle for the mistreatment of women and the self-abuse of lustful pornography. “This is War” is here to train men in honor and integrity and signal a battle cry for men to stand for Sexual Integrity and fight against the use of Pornography.