Into the Action

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     I am a soldier. I enlisted to fight. I am engaged in a war in which there can be no truce or armistice, no cessation of hostilities to pick up the wounded and bury the dead. When I pledged allegiance to the King, and got measured for my suit of armor, I took the sword of the Spirit and made a commitment to swing the weapon until I fell lifeless in the thick of the fray and the swirling dust of the battlefield.

     That is why I resent every retreat and deplore every inch of surrendered territory. I cannot live with myself unless I am planning a strategy by which to recapture every province overrun by the implacable foe. And no other such abandoned area rips me off like the field of higher education. By its very nature all education is the domain of the Sovereign under whose command I march. Its purpose should be to bring the universe intellectually, morally and physically to acknowledge his lordship. Men are to love him with all their minds. He is the creator of the cosmos, the ruler of heaven and earth. To see a domain which is his, captured by the enemy and using its resources to fight against his cause makes me burn within with a fierce determination to fight it out.

     I want to penetrate the lines. I want to take the fight through them, behind and beyond them. I want to be a commando for Christ, never forgetting that while a commando fights as a part of the regular army he must fight apart from the regular army. Sometimes he must fight alone. The great university complexes of our generation represent the place where the action is. Here secular man is seen in all of his vaunted glory, in the power of technology, scientism, and the wisdom of this passing age. Here the classroom may become the training ground for enemy forces, the arsenal of enemy strength. And I have an obligation to capture this humanistic stronghold. "The weapons we use in our fight are not the world's weapons, with which to destroy strongholds. We destroy false arguments, we pull down every proud obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ."

     That's war talk! It is battle language! I love it! Destroying strongholds! Devastating false arguments! Pulling down obstacles! Capturing thought and making it do obeisance to my King! That's great. It's terrific! The clash of arms! The din of battle! What exhilaration! What thrill! I am not too high on campus ministry which has as its only object the protection of "our young people" by building a corral and riding herd on them.

     Christian campus centers should be drill fields where young people are trained in the art and science of spiritual warfare, places for examination of the strategy of Satan, command posts where counter-strategy is developed and from which it is directed. They should be arsenals and ammunition dumps where one can come and secure a replenishment of fire power to get back into the lines again. All too often they are simply rest and recreation areas for those who have never smelled burning powder or seen the spiritual blood flow from gaping wounds.

     There is nothing wrong with providing an off-campus facility where students can retire from the raw paganism of the teeming campus, where they can play ping-pong and indulge in the great American pastime of criticizing the "institutional church" which is generally as impervious to their criticism as to everything else outside of its Sunday-school rooms. It is not sinful to have a place where you can drink hot coffee or sip iced Cokes with other young Christians, but if that is all we do, a generation will pass away and the revival of Greek philosophy and pantheism will pass unchallenged and unchecked.

     We have not been called to hold the

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fort, but to storm it. Our task is but half done when we make sure we go through four years of disciplined study and come out unscathed and unscarred. We are to guard the faith but also to share it. Every unsaved person on the campus, red or yellow, black or white, moral or immoral, brilliant or mediocre, must present a challenge. Fortified by prayer that God will open up a door to the heart we must move in upon him with love and rescue him from slavery, even while hating the garment that is spotted by the flesh.

     Jesus is not simply Lord of the foolish or of those with whom I feel comfortable. He died for intellectuals as well as people like myself. And when I am in a philosophy class where the faith once delivered is under attack I must bombard heaven with my request for reinforcements, but at the same time I must zap the attacking professor with love. If I allow my feelings of resentment and hostility to be directed toward him for whom Jesus died, instead of his fallacious rationalization, I render myself useless. "Whom the gods would destroy they first make angry," is a heathen adage which contains a kernel of truth. I propose to stalk relentlessly every teacher of error, shadowing him until I find the weakness of his reasoning and then moving in to capture his thinking for the Captain of my salvation.

     I do not resent his paying me back in my own coin, probing and poking at my faith, seeking to discover the chinks in my armor and the weak spots in my defense. War is not always one-sided. We have not been furnished a long-range rifle, but a sword. And a sword is not for sniping, but for close infighting, face-to-face combat where you can hear the steel ring and see the sparks fly. The shield of faith will extinguish all the fiery darts of the wicked. The helmet of salvation will never be dented by human philosophy.

     The ground I occupy is safe. I have fled for refuge to the Rock of ages. He is my strong tower and my defense. My position is unconquerable although frequently assailed. I represent no sect, party, or religious movement. I offer no defense for any group, segment or faction. My only creed is a person. That he is the Son of God embraces my position. I am simply a member of the fellowship of the unashamed. "I am not ashamed of the good news about Jesus, it is God's dynamic to save everyone who believes it, whether he is a Jew or a Greek." For this I live, and if I know my heart, for this I would be willing to die. This is the ground upon which I shall join battle with my opposers. This is the ground upon which they must face me. Jesus died for my sins. Jesus was buried in the grave. Jesus arose again the third day. Jesus is now seated at the right hand of God. Upon these facts I risk my soul and rest my hope. To a trust in these I seek to win every soul.

     For my faith in these facts I am a militant. I crave to do battle for trust in these things. The prime question of the universe is, "What think you of Christ? Whose Son is he?" All other questions are secondary to this. One can be right about all of them, but if he is wrong about this he is lost. If he is right about this, he may be wrong about many other things and still be saved. Let others argue, fuss and fume about little questions which they have puffed up into false importance. My concern is Jesus, Son of God and King of kings. I am not concerned that men bow to my feeble wisdom. I am only concerned that they kneel in acknowledgment of his sovereignty.

     The real enemy is out there and I refuse to fight with other soldiers in the tents of the saved! Let others who have time argue and debate with one another about this or that strategy, but I crave to make contact with the forces of sheer unbelief. The wisdom of this passing age can never overthrow that wisdom which is from above. But they were made to clash head-on and my task is to bring the truth as it has been revealed into direct conflict. I must conquer or be conquered, capture or be captured. My orders were not given by men but by

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the King. While others advise to take it easy, his words are to take it to them! I can never be happy unless I do! I've got a quarrel with Satan!