This morning's reading from Romans[1]
invariably evokes, for me, memories of Marine Corps' Officer Candidates School,
where I was the chaplain for almost two years in the early 1980s. The Marine
Corps relies upon the Navy to provide both healthcare professionals and
chaplains. I don't want to bore you with sea stories about the military, but
realized this week that I have spent approximately 40% of my life and almost
60% of my adult years on active duty in the Navy.
Unlike OCS for the other armed services that
train officers, Marine OCS screens and evaluates candidates to determine if
they possess the requisite physical, academic, and leadership qualities to
become Marine officers. Only about half of the candidates who begin the course earn
a second lieutenant's commission.
Many candidates' most difficult physical
challenge was the endurance course. The endurance course begins with a standard
Marine Corps obstacle course – about two minutes of total physical exertion, presuming
you know how to overcome obstacles that include running along an elevated log
then vaulting a wall, climbing an eight foot high sheer wooden wall, and climbing
a rope. Next is a four-mile run through woods and fields in combat boots that
requires traversing thirty combat obstacles such as a low crawl under barbed
wire. The final obstacle, located near the end of the course, was a stagnant
pool of muddy, chest high water. In winter, the first person through the water
sometimes had to break the ice; in the summer, candidates occasionally spotted
a cottonmouth moccasin swimming alongside.
I, along with the drill instructors and
officers in charge of the candidates, routinely ran the endurance course with
the candidates. I'm not athletic and doubt that I had ever run a mile before
joining the Navy at age 29. In the beginning, just finishing the endurance
course was a personal challenge. With practice, I became comfortable with the
course and sometimes even enjoyed a feeling of personal achievement at
finishing the entire course in less than 35 minutes.
Paul wrote that suffering
produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
which does not disappoint us because of God's love. On more than one occasion,
especially in my early days at OCS, I lived those words. Everything about the
obstacle course, the four-mile run in boots, and the thirty combat obstacles
seemed designed to make me suffer. But, in time, I developed endurance. I became
friends with a Gunnery Sergeant, one of our drill instructors. We got into the
habit of running five miles at noon on those workdays when I did not join the
candidates in a run or forced march. He loved to discuss theology and our
conversations helped to make our runs bearable.
And as I developed endurance, I
realized that endurance produces character. Very few of the candidates lacked
the physical ability to complete OCS. The greatest number of candidates failed
because they lacked the personal grit and determination to succeed. Marine OCS,
in other words, is primarily a moral or spiritual challenge designed to measure
a person's character.
Life is a lot like Marine OCS.
No, if you succeed in life God will not commission you an officer in God's Marine
Corps. And unlike the 50% attrition rate at OCS, life has a 100% attrition
rate, because everyone eventually dies.
Nevertheless, life is a lot
like Marine OCS. Suffering is unavoidable, though thankfully it is rarely
constant. Illness, disease, and advancing age all cause physical suffering. We
experience emotional suffering when a loved one dies, our beloved fails to share
that love, or we fall short of personal expectations or the expectations that others
have for us. Everything from unfair treatment, being burglarized, or sexually
assaulted to facing famine, war, or plague, and much more – all forms of
personal and systemic injustice – cause suffering. As hard as anyone might try,
nobody can indefinitely avoid all suffering.
We can allow suffering to wear
us down and ultimately to defeat us.
Alternatively, suffering can
produce endurance. Developing endurance requires hard work and is not always
enjoyable.
At Marine OCS, the other staff
members and I participated in physical training events for two reasons. First,
we believed in the OCS motto of Ductus Exemplo,
leadership by example. That motto is profoundly Christian, far more than most
Marines realized. The incarnation represents God's leadership by example, Jesus
suffering that we, through his endurance and character, might begin to discern
the depth of God's love for us.
Second, and much more
importantly, I learned that my presence symbolized hope and encouragement. The
purpose of hardship was not simply proving one's endurance but to develop character.
OCS was ultimately a moral or spiritual test. Will a prospective second lieutenant
soon to be responsible for the welfare of about 30 young Marines, and perhaps tasked
to lead them into harm's way, have the character – the courage, the integrity, and
the endurance – to be worthy of her or his nation's trust?
The Church is in the character
formation business. The Bible is not a rulebook. Instead, the Bible is a
collection of stories, proverbs, and other materials by which, with the help of
God's Spirit, we can become the persons of high moral and spiritual character
whom God created us to be.
Suffering is inescapable. God
does not cause our suffering – there is already too much suffering. However,
with God's help, suffering can produce endurance. And endurance, with God's help,
produces character.
No shortcuts exist for becoming
a person of great character in whom hope lives because one is so aware of the
indwelling of God's Spirit. Neither Christianity in general nor Holy Nativity
in particular has a single set of exercises or courses guaranteed to transform
suffering into endurance and then into character.
Spiritual
growth is an individual endeavor and each person must run his or her own race.
But we run confidently, enduring the suffering, knowing that the pioneer of our
salvation has gone before us and that we do not run alone, for the Holy Spirit
runs with us.
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