Once more unto the breach, dear friends…

I don’t know about you, but it’s difficult for me to watch the news these days. I don’t want to care anymore. I find myself wanting to escape, to own a cabin somewhere remote and to live there forever with my family, just focused on our well-being, God’s Word, and our relationship with Him. There are reasons for my weariness.

Fourteen years ago, I was a Christian citizen, working at an industrial plant. After thirty years of hard work I had arrived at near-retirement with five weeks of built-up vacation. I was in the home stretch and it was time to enjoy life. Yet I was increasingly concerned about the trajectory of my community, American culture, and American government. I was concerned for my adult children and young grandchildren. I decided that God would have me do something about it.

As a life-long student of history and political science, I felt I was called to do more than just vote regularly so I started a political column. That went well and the column got picked up by some national outlets. Then I volunteered to help with a couple of political campaigns. I got invited to speak at several conferences and rallies. One thing led to another, and I quit my job, left my vacation behind, and sold my home to serve in government as a senior staff position for one of the most conservative Christian governors in the nation. From there I accepted a high-level federal staff position in Washington D.C.

Everything was going perfectly, right? I was surely in the center of God’s will. I was going to be a part of a revival of government, a return to Judeo-Christian ethics. Then we lost an election. I lost my job. The wheels came off.

For me, it wasn’t just a career setback, it was personal. My beloved dog died after suffering a terrible illness that was hard to witness. I got stuck with a house that I couldn’t sell but that I no longer needed in a town I no longer wanted to be in. Then I got cancer. It was a bad one, nearly fatal, and it took me out for a full year. I’m still trying to get back to full health. My wife and I were stuck in Washington D.C. living on disability payments. We knew almost no one. We had a massive rent payment in D.C. and a house payment on an empty house back in our old state even as summer riots raged all around us. We finally sold the house but in the deepest economic valley of the COVID pandemic and for far less than we could have gotten had we known the real estate market would explode. Near the end of 2020, I went into a depression.

I wasn’t depressed so much about the life-threatening illness I was battling. I was depressed because I felt that I had totally misread what I thought was a calling. Surely, if I had been answering a call from God, things wouldn’t have gone this horribly wrong.  And to what end? So much that our administration had fought for, had worked such long hours for, was now being reversed.

Then I remembered Paul. He answered an historic, world-changing call, and things didn’t exactly go smoothly for him (2 Corinthians 11:23-30). Better yet, I could look to Christ who never lost his house because he never had one (Luke 9:58).

In other words, who do I think I am to give up? Considering the blessings of freedom that I have enjoyed for most of my life, freedoms built upon the cultural and economic capital won through the blood of saints and patriots that came before me, what right do I have to retreat to a cabin? (That is, if I even had a cabin or a means to retreat to it.)

As I write this, I have just been told that on the one-year anniversary of my bone marrow transplant, I am cancer free. There will be medical mountains yet to climb. There is still COVID, which is a greater threat to me than to the average person my age. But aside from that, what more do I need? I now mostly have my health back, I have the support of an amazing wife and family, and most importantly, like many of you reading this, the Omnipotent Creator of the Universe has chosen to reveal to me the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and resurrected.

It just so happens you and I have been entrusted with this knowledge at a time when American culture…no, it’s more than that…when the world at large is ON FIRE. Mankind seems more bent on all-out rebellion against God and we are steeped in more lies, unrest, and fear than at any time in recent history. We have an obligation to Christ and the saints that went before us to share this knowledge with a lost and dying world. We have an obligation to the patriots that went before us not to stand by and watch the outrage of the destruction of our country and our heritage.

So, I find myself once again — without particular means or even a clear sense of the “how” of the thing — thinking of Shakespeare’s words in Henry V: “Once more, unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

As Christians we have a responsibility to Truth that we will be held accountable for. Let us not grow weary, let us not withdraw, and let us advance the Gospel of Christ regardless of the circumstances. May God grant us strength and wisdom.