Folks who really know me and who read this blog must be wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. If they’ve read my posts The One Where I Lose Friends, The One Where I Lose More Friends, and The One Where I Just Lose, they know that my life makes me practically a poster child for opposing abortion and gay marriage.

In college, I contracted epidydimitis, a kind of mumps gone south, which later led to a small, non-spreading cancerous tumor of the Lance Armstrong kind. In short, I could no longer father children with my own genes; adoption was my only option; and abortion really cuts down on the number of babies that are available to adopt.

My first wife left and, from all accounts I’ve been able to gather, lived with her girlfriend.

There is no reason for me to favor abortion for the sake of convenience or gay relationships made conveniently legal. And, to speak very plainly, I don’t.

But as a divorced person, I have also experienced being on the outside. I’ve shouldered my share of guilt. I’ve gone through the agony of trying to find a church home at a time, in the mid 1980’s, when it was still a little tricky for a divorced person to do so.

I was very blessed to find one.

At the same time, I found myself at that church yesterday morning with the shoe on the other foot: my lovely and loving wife and two beautiful adopted children on the pew beside me. I had just listened to a sermon explaining Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s planned Covenant Marriage event planned for Valentine’s Day and I was blissfully singing “God Give Us Christian Homes” when my eye caught a young, black single mom and her two kids a few pews in front of me. A lump caught in my throat. How did she feel about me singing about homes with a God-given father?

I could sing no more.

Then there was a verse about a godly mother’s “queenly quest” and all I could think about was a friend sitting a few rows over whose marriage is coming apart at the seams.

Then there was the verse about children, and I remembered how I felt when I found out I could not father my “own.”

It was never the intention of the song, I don’t believe, to pray just for the Dan Quayle vision of only perfect families. But suddenly that prayer-song went hollow and cheap for me.

And I thought about years before hearing a sermon condemning abortion – without making any distinction between the simply convenient and the medically-advised; without closing on a note of forgiveness or redemption or freedom from guilt – and wondering what the effect would have been on yet another friend who had endured an abortion because her fetus had become cancerous.

I don’t have a clever way to end this post. No witty way to express what I feel. No wrap-it-up conclusion or solution or prayer. Sorry.

Today I just hurt. For some of my friends who are hurting. For others I don’t even know. For the person that I forget I once was … and the one I too often become.

This post is the contents of an e-mail received yesterday afternoon by the wife of a lieutentant colonel in Baghdad and a brother in Christ. The title above is his. This note is an answer to prayers, many of them. (Note: “IED” refers to “Improvised Explosive Devices.”)

Today I got to witness first hand a new democracy take its first steps. My day started early … acutely (actually?) my day started about 4 days ago because we have been going non-stop since then, hence no updates lately. I was up at 5am and my head was pounding and my sinuses were killing me. I was up and out with my team by 5:30am … I had to get at least one cup of coffee in me before I left. The day started slow and we had some small arms fire, 8 rockets shot at us, and we found one IED. The small arms fire and the rockets missed us. The IED was another matter, but we called our bomb guys and they took care of it with their bomb robot. Which, by the way, is their third robot. The first two died in the line of duty. The polls opened at 7am and that when things got interesting.

The press showed up in droves. It would have been impossible to swing a dead cat and not hit a reporter in our area of operation today. I met Campbell Brown from NBC. She was likeable, but you could tell she did not want to be in Baghdad. She was very jumpy and looked a nervous. I guess we were that way when we first got here too but you get used to the shooting. Later, when we were dealing with the IED, a guy from PBS filmed the whole episode and told me that he was shooting a documentary for PBS. He had the camera in my face for about a half an hour while we got set to blow the IED. It is a little weird trying to get rid of a roadside bomb when guy has a camera in your face. I finally got him to leave me alone when I told him we were going to blow the bomb in place. Since the bomb was on a bridge there was no where to hide so I put him behind my armored hummer and he stayed put. We blew the IED and the PBS guy left.

We had very tight security on the polling sites and all around our area of operation. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers were at every polling site defending them. I have been planning for about 8 days for this mission and it was the largest we have done to date. Infantry, armor, attack helicopters, engineers…. you name it, we had it. The Iraqi government shut down all traffic in the country so the streets were deserted. At about 10am the streets were packed with large crowds of people walking to the polls. We were on edge waiting for more attacks that never came. By about 3pm we could start to let our hair down and talk to the people. The site was amazing.

We dismounted from our vehicles and were instantly mobbed by about 200 kids. The kids were all over the place playing in the streets while their parents voted. The kids walked with us for about 2 miles while we were talking to the adults. I have never seen anything like it. People everywhere wanted to talk to us and thank us. This is what it must have been like when the Allies liberated Paris. Iraqis of all ages wanted to shake our hands and thank us for allowing them to vote. The kids were proud to tell us that their parents voted. Adult after adult wanted to thanks us for making this day happen. When the Iraqis voted they dipped their fingers in indelible purple ink so that polling officials could tell who had already voted. When we walked the streets the Iraqis would hold their purple finger up in the air as a mark of pride. They were very proud of their purple finger. The Iraqis statements to us were all the same; “Thank you for your sacrifices for the Iraqi people”, “Thank you for making this day possible” “The United States is the true democracy in the world and is the country that makes freedom possible”, “God blessed the Iraqi people and the United States this day”, “We have never known a day like this under Saddam”, “This day is like a great feast, a wonderful holiday”. I shook more hands today then I have ever in my life. If you missed a hand they would follow for a mile to get a chance to shake and say thanks. It was nothing like we expected or have ever seen. The Iraqi people were strong and brave today. The Iraqis stoic to danger, faced fear, and went out and voted. Then after they voted the Iraqis stayed on the streets to celebrate by singing dancing and trying to shake the hand of any American that they could find.

Even though today was a great day for Iraq, the Iraqis took their lumps. There were 6 car bombs in Iraq today, 2 of them in Baghdad. One I believe did more for Iraqi moral then any other event I that I have ever witnessed here. A suicide car bomber drove up to a polling site, which was not to far from us, and blew up. The bomb did not kill anybody but the bomber himself. After the bomb went off the Iraqi voters calmly walked out of the polling site and spit on the remains of the suicide bomber. The polling site stayed open and the voting continued. That incident ran all day long on Iraqi TV. It was a beautiful act of defiance for the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people stood up for themselves today and stuck a purple finger in the enemy’s eye.

Later in the day I thought about our sacrifices that we have made. I wondered if the three men that my unit has sent home in flag draped coffins was worth what I saw today. I am still not sure if that is the case, but when a grown Iraqi man thank me with tears running down his face it made me feel better about what we have accomplished.

Addendum:

Much later that night we had two Kiowa attack Helicopters working for us. One of our sister battalions was in contact and needed help. We diverted the helicopters to the other battalion and watched. A unit of the other battalion was under attack by 15 insurgents. The enemy was trying to flee on foot in the open. That was a mistake. The Kiowas launched 10 rockets and hammered the enemy. The pilots report after they attacked was two words, “Target Destroyed”!

— Scott

Please continue to pray for Scott, all the troops, and all of the good people of Iraq. If it’s God’s will and the U.S. armed forces permit, Scott’s schedule will rotate him back home in March.

… if you are looking for a truly outstanding parable about the difference between knowing what’s right and doing it. You need to click over to Chris Gonzales’ Home Front and read the post The Religions of Good and Right.

In a similar vein, if you’re searching for a really powerful one about misplacing the object of worship and losing the power of worship, you’re just a click away from Fred Peatross’ abductive columns, specifically the post titled Parable of the Bridge.

You won’t find them here.

Children who lived in the inner cities as I was growing up knew the sign and what it meant: an 8-1/2 x 11″ poster in the window of a neighboring house with a big red hand pictured on it.

It meant they’d be safe there.

They could run there when they were in trouble at home, at school, or on the street.

They’d be taken in, any time of day or night, and protected.

They’d find the kind of home they may not have had at home.

They’d find a father-figure, or an older-brother figure, who would keep them from harm.

When troubled people are in our assemblies and hear us speak of such a father and brother in our songs and prayers, do they find that kind of home?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! — Luke 13:34

Remember the really immemorable Star Trek movie, number V: The Final Frontier? The one where the Enterprise suddenly went from having twenty-some decks to seventy-some? Where a bargain-basement special effects menace tried to pass itself off as God? Where Captain Kirk had the audacity to ask it: “Excuse me … what does God need with a starship?”

There’s at least one almost-redeeming moment near the last of the film, where Federation crew and their Klingon guests are tossing back a few together in the officer’s lounge. Kirk, with Spock and McCoy, ponders the futility of their quest for “God” at the “center of the galaxy” – that’s some shielding the ship now has, too! – and posits: “Maybe God is right here” (and he touches his chest) “in the human heart.”

Pretty profound for the galactic humanist (and shameless womanizer). When I first suffered through the movie at a theatre near some of you, my journey through the cosmos was still at a point where that thought was brand new and had to be weighed.

God, as we all knew, was in his heaven and all was right with the world. The Christians I knew believed the right thing, occasionally did the right thing, and anyone else was on his/her own. We were in Him; not vice-versa.

I had to think: In the human heart? Like, like being possessed? Like … being bought with a price? Like … are we talking the Holy Spirit here?

In the human heart?

Looking back, I imagine that the inspired Hollywood writers who contrived the script were probably just saying, “You know, the concept of God is fine for anyone who wants to believe in it.”

But I’ll always be grateful for the inkling of insight that I probably read into that movie moment … and for the fact that it opened the door of my heart a little wider to the possibility of God in me.

That isn’t the most profound thing Kirk said, though. I think that came when Dr. McCoy challenged his description of the trio’s relationship as brothers: “I thought you said men like us don’t have families.”

He smiles the Kirk smile in reply: “I was wrong.”

One of my favorite books as a junior high-schooler was The Gospel According to Peanuts by Robert Short, and though I think he’s gone way off the deep end in his universalist beliefs, he did a great job of using Charles Schulz’s immortal characters to illuminate everlasting Scripture for my young mind.

Most of my other favorite junior high reads had Star Trek in the title.

So it’s no real surprise that from time to time I find a nugget of universal truth buried in the interstellar quagmire of rampant humanism that is Trek.

One instance popped into my mind today as I read Greg Taylor’s blog review of Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialog by Edward Fudge and Robert A. Peterson. Though I haven’t read the work, Greg’s review is so comprehensive that you feel you’ve got the major gist by the time you’ve read it! (And he cites Seinfeld, which is almost always a good thing.)

What came to mind as I read it was a scene from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, where Admiral Kirk is trying to wrangle permission from his commander, Admiral Morrow, to return to the newly-created Genesis planet to retrieve Spock’s body (and hopefully his katra, or soul) at his father’s request.

(Okay, if you don’t follow Trek, this is probably already too bizarre for you to pursue.)

Morrow shakes his head, “Honestly, I never understood Vulcan mysticism …”

But Kirk sees through his reluctance: “You don’t have to believe,” he interrupts. “I’m not even sure that I believe.”

The nugget of truth?

Not understanding something is often our excuse for not believing it.

The trouble is, if we wait until we understand everything eternal in this life … we’ll never believe.

Whether it’s the theodicy of tsunamis, fatal car accidents, everlasting punishment, or some mystic process by which life can be returned to a lifeless body, we’re not likely to grasp it as a prerequisite to believing.

It’s not that God doesn’t want us to reach, and wonder, and ask – just as Job did; as Fudge and Peterson and all the rest of us do. Quite the opposite!

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) | “Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always.” (I Chronicles 16:11; Psalm 105:4)

Tomorrow at 4 p.m. Central before evening services at 5, there will be a prayer service at the church I attend asking God’s protection of our troops in Iraq, especially in the days preceding free elections there.

Our minister’s sermon afterwords will be about prayer, and I’ve been asked to read two scriptures: Luke 18:9-14 and Psalm 51.

I haven’t been asked to pray at the prayer service before, and I confess that I’m relieved.

I wouldn’t know how to pray among my siblings, the vast majority of whom have a very definite perception of the war in Iraq and the policing/nation-building activities that continue. Having neither the writing talent nor the wit of one of my literary heroes, Mark Twain, I would be unable to equal, let alone excel, his deservedly reknowned War Prayer. Still I wondered yesterday, as I was driving home from work, how I would pray genuinely if I had been asked, and this, in prettier words, is what I prayed:

Father God,

I don’t know how to ask this, because I don’t know where Your heart is in this matter. There was a time when You commanded Israel’s armies to give over to You entire cities – men, women and children – by completely destroying them … something there’s no word for in my language. My heart believes that’s a good thing, because at a later time Your Son taught people to be peacemakers; to offer the other cheek to those who would strike them … Someone whose most violent act was to drive animals out of Your house and flip over the tables of swindlers there.

I don’t share the belief of many of my brothers and sisters in Him that our nation engaged in a “just” war; that it was the right war in the right place at the right time. As nearly as I can tell, we were misinformed or even misled about the reasons we sent our soldiers to Iraq. Thousands have paid for that error or lie with their lives.

I’m troubled because it feels like it was an act of vengeance – which I know should be Yours when wrong is done – whether it was to avenge the attack on our nation, or on Kuwait years ago, or even for the promises to pay others who would terrorize and kill our citizens, even our current President’s father.

At the same time, I have to agree that some good has been done. That genocidal despot who tortured and murdered so many of his own has been toppled like the statues he built at their expense; captured and jailed. I am grateful for that.

The evil of some of his places of torture somehow seemed to have infected our soldiers, Father; yet there are so many more of them and of other volunteers who have gone far beyond their mission to rebuild schools and hospitals; to help little children; to see that food and clean water and electricity get to where they are needed.

And too many have been ambushed, kidnapped, and even executed to repay this kindness. Now we have asked them to put their lives on the line to make it possible for the people of Iraq to freely choose their own new government.

Please, God, protect them as they extend this gift. Bless them with good judgment and kind hearts. May the election proceed untroubled by violence. May it lead to a beneficent government. May it lead to peace. May it be to Your glory.

Bless and protect Mike and Dara and Scott and their sweet families and all the thousands I don’t know, Father. Keep them from harm.

Frustrate and confound the ones who kill others and themselves in the name of Allah. Untwist their hearts and intentions. Help them to see good for what it truly is: not killing, but healing; not forcing one’s will on others, but letting others choose.

And if they cannot and will not be reached by Your love, then when they have exterminated themselves in their own futility, may the meek truly inherit the earth.

All of this I pray not knowing what Your will is in this matter, so I must add the “nevertheless” Your Son added in Gethsemane … and I ask Him to bring you this prayer and all of the other groanings which only Your Spirit can put into words.

Amen.