Dead Already

 

Something I've been meditating on lately, and I'm not sure where I heard it: The only way to survive war is to think of yourself as already dead. 

I think part of this has to do with what we are willing to risk in order to live. In a recent documentary I watched on Elon Musk, the former head of NASA was describing the NASA culture after the Apollo disaster: Failure is not an option. While it sounds like a noble raison d'etre, this cultural attitude within the organization stymied innovation and a willingness to push boundaries; as a result, space exploration under the government agency plateaued into mediocrity.

Musk pushed back on this idea of risk-aversion if one wants to achieve great things in a limited amount of time. He reassured his employees at SpaceX: It's okay to fail here. That's an incredible thing to say, especially given that SpaceX's first three rocket launches failed--launches financed with millions of Musk's personal fortune--and they had only one shot left to make it work. The alternative was the company goes under. Astonishingly, the fourth attempt was a success. No risk, no reward.

Our Lord makes it clear in the Gospel that those who desire to follow him must lose their life in order to find it (Mt 10:39); you cannot follow Christ until you have died to yourself (1 Cor 15:31). 

St. Andrew (whose feast day was Wednesday) immediately dropped his nets, left his family and livelihood, in order to follow an itinerant preacher doing a "new thing" (Is 43:19). The Lord whom they followed promised that those who have left houses, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, or farms for him and the Gospel will receive a hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life (Mt 19:29). But that's a big risk, a heavy wager. You could lose it all, and be left with nothing, if this new preacher can't make spiritual payroll. 

We often play things way too safe in the service of the Lord. There's a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indiana is on a precipice and takes a leap of faith; the bridge is largely invisible but he doesn't know that until he steps into the chasm and his foot lands on it. If it wasn't there...you fall to your death. If it is, you live and cross. But you don't do either until you take that step. On faith.

This is what it is like to surrender to God. Faith is not a guarantee. If it were, it would not be faith. There will always be that part of us, that tiny room in our minds and hearts, that fear and doubt: what if this is a lie? What if I'm being taken for a ride? What if there is nothing beyond this world? During this times, we can want to hold back, play it safe, and stick to what we know. The way NASA did with "Failure is not an option."

But the Christian life is staking our lives on Christ and his promises, and potentially losing big--that is, losing everything. But are those things we have--our lives, our goods, our family--really worth anything if it keeps us stuck in mediocrity? Or as Henry David Thoreau wrote, "men living lives of quiet desperation." 

It's not just our goods, either. In living the Christian life in its truest sense, or becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, we risk looking foolish, risk our reputations, our good name and potential to live "normal" lives. We expose ourselves to ridicule and denigration in becoming "fools for Christ." 

To be a fool for Christ, however, is the only thing worthy of admiration in the eyes of the saints. They understand the foolishness--the willingness to lose it all, sacrifice everything, for the one we should love above all things. 

The hardest thing to give up, though, is our very lives. Be it survivor's instinct, or simply fear, our death grip on retaining our physical lives is strong. Christ offers a compelling case to risk it all for him, but there is still that part of us that holds back in order retain a sliver of autonomy. Unfortunately, we cannot be "99% disciples." It is an all-or-nothing, zero-sum game: We play and win, or we play and lose. But we cannot not play. 

We are taught that to be "conservative" is to act prudently, rationally, weighing all options and taking calculated approaches. It is strange, isn't it, that the Church herself is "conservative" in word and deed, falling back on slow deliberation, old ways of doing things, and judicious reasoning? But in terms of what the Lord asks of us, he demands that we have no Plan B, that we leave cart and farm and kin with no questions asked to become disciples of his, with only a promise of recompense in another life. 

I'm currently reading about the life of Servant of God Father Emil Kapaun, a military chaplain who fearlessly served his flock in war in whatever way he could by routinely running into the bullet-chewed fray. A man, a soldier, cannot undertake such valiancy without risk to his life; were he to regard himself as "dead already," and in fact does have his life taken from him in such service, he is simply fulfilling that destiny. If by some miracle he comes out alive, it is as if he is given a new lease on life.

In Christ, we are "lost, but now found" as sung in the hymn, Amazing Grace. It is grace that "saves a wretch like me." We were dead in our sin, but now live in Christ (Rom 6:11). The disciple of Christ risks everything for Christ in order to reap the reward he promises. There is no in-between in the Christian life (Rev 3:16). If we are not running into the fray as Christian men considering ourselves 'dead already' to this world in order to save others, we are cowering in our foxholes, fearfully guarding our lives which are not fully lived.