Master Chief

The Full Armor of God

One of my favorite video games is Halo 2. That's because I get to be someone quite the opposite of myself. In normal life, I'm overweight and slackerish, but the instant I turn on Halo 2, I'm Master Chief, and I'm in control of all my troops. We fight battles strewn along a campaign, and everywhere you go there's a new challenge and new weapons appear on the ground, magically, that you may need. It's fun, but you can develop headaches and eyestrains from playing for longer than three hours.

Master Chief has amazing armor, weapons, and abilities. He can use his enemy's weapons just by picking them up. He can pick up a camouflage pack and become invisible, then sneak up and blast aliens and steal their rocket launchers. Then he can jump ten feet up, or forty feet down, and run for hours without getting tired, and be shot several times without being injured. Even if he fails several times to kill the bad guy, his teammates say, "come on, Master Chief, waste `em!" Master Chief is invincible.

I am not Master Chief.

That's because the other day I got a rejection from a major ministry to work for them. Master Chief would have just crumpled up that letter and bombed the place. Actually, he wouldn't have been rejected. His application would reflect years of intergalactic battle experience and a counseling degree, which mine didn't. I was miserable. Then my friend's dog died and I cried. Mind you, it was my friend's dog. I get stressed out easy, I can't get up when I fall snowboarding, and I say dumb things.

I am not Master Chief, not even close.

Master Chief's body armor covers him from head to toe so that he can survive attack. So, I got to thinking, what armor do I have? Obviously, there's that scripture about "The Armor of God" and we've heard countless sermons on it. But what does it mean to wear spiritual armor? I don't think I know. Do I have to recite Ephesians 6:11 every morning in order to have it on? Some people think that. Or, maybe it's on as long as I have faith in Christ, and when I don't, it's like I'm taking it off. Master Chief is a picture of how we could be, spiritually, in the world. A book I read, recently, made a good point. It said we spend too much time battling the world on cultural and scientific grounds, i.e., worldly grounds. The world attacks Christians on traditional or religious grounds, and, instead of using the resources God gave us, we pick up their weapons and fight on cultural or moral grounds. It's like we're trying be justified by our culture and not our faith. In other words, it's like we're riding around in armored tanks in the morning, but by noon, the enemy throws a rock and we're out of that tank throwing it back, and often getting stoned to death.

This is how the enemy is clever. He doesn't attack the word of God itself, or God, but he goes after things that cannot necessarily stand, hoping we put stock in them. He attacks traditions, methods, paradigms. Not prayer, but the way we pray. Not the act of praising God, but how some of us do it. Not the Ten Commandments, or Christ's two commandments, but how we rewrite them for ourselves, and become sphincter police against each other. Satan attacks temporary things.

Mandy Moore's movie "Saved" is a good example. The makers of that movie hauled up many Christian paradigms on the slab, but why were Christians so mad? At what point was Jesus personally attacked? What scripture was directly challenged? They only made fun of what we've become on our own, and I think Jesus would have been hanging out with the wheelchair guy and the Goth chick. In terms of "hot or cold," these were more true people, and the kind He would have recruited to spread the gospel.

Instead of following Christ's example, many visible Christians fight the world on its terms or fight each other. They turn a cheek, only because they are cocking back their arm for a big whollup. But Paul's Armor of God is defensive armor, and the only offensive weapon is the sword, which isn't a sword, but is actually the word of God. God's word; the thing Jesus quoted to Satan in order to survive his temptations; the thing that cuts into the soul when swung in either direction. Paul taught about the Armor of God so we'd be prepared to stand against the devil's schemes.

When culture began to question God on scientific grounds, the Church reacted in kind. We developed the science of Creation, among others, to fight world on it's own terms. It's like Master Chief picking up his enemy's weapon and fighting him, except I'm not Master Chief. We might as well call it the science of Gospel, or Gospel science, which can't be proven. In fact, that's the argument atheists cite, that faith issues are not provable. We're fighting for nothing when we try to prove God exists. Don't get me wrong. I love reading Gospel science, but I do it believing the Bible is true, and evidence only strengthens my belief. Gospel science is great, but it can never replace loving relationships.

Developing a loving relationship instead of fighting on moral or scientific grounds will always win a soul.

What is the Sword of the Spirit? It's the Word of God, or the Bible. It's not just quoting scripture. I saw this couple on Jerry Springer one night. I can hardly watch that show. It's at the bottom of my list when there's nothing but test patterns on. So, this lady was complaining that her husband was too religious. Everything he said was a scripture. "Do you love me?" she said.

"Husbands ought to love their wives as Christ loved the church," he replied.

"Why can't I get a job?" she said.

"Wives should submit to their husbands."

"Why don't you just talk to me, instead of quoting the Bible?"

"And the words of God are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay…"

He had an answer for everything, right out of the Bible. But he wasn't making sense, and was driving his wife away, instead of bringing her closer to God. Who knows if he was even a Christian – I think he needed counseling more than her.

The Word of God is the words of God, a.k.a., scripture, but it's also Love, because God is love, the word was God, etc. So, the sword can be made out of love, and the only offensive weapon we have, according to Paul, is love. It's also the Fifth Element, but that's another movie.

When we fight with non-Christians on Christian moral grounds, we lose because we expect non-Christians to obey God. It misses the point. It's like that O'Reilly Factor book for Kids. Shouldn't we raise them right and let them make up their own minds on politics? Just a suggestion. If you manicure the branches of people's beliefs, they'll only grow back. Love cuts to the root in every direction it's swung.

Sometimes, fighting scientific and logic battles with the world is like throwing down our spiritual armor. It becomes constrictive and uncomfortable to wear into battle.

Taking off the Full Armor of God

The first thing to go is The Shield of Faith. Why wear it if we believe our battle is against human-made arguments? The shield is for spiritual attack only, and we have to fend for ourselves against other ideas. The shield is quaint, and holding it makes us look out-of-touch with modern society. We no longer believe God prepares soil for us to plant in, so we take it upon ourselves to defend tradition. Besides, it's clear that the shield is for fiery darts. Has anyone seen a fiery dart lately? If you do, let me know, and I'll pick up my shield. I don't see in the spirit realm. All I see is some bozo fighting for bad legislation that disagrees with me, and some tongue-pierced Goth chick trying to come into my church. I can handle that in the flesh, no need for that Shield of Faith. These may be some reasons for putting down the Shield of Faith.

When we drop the Shield of Faith, our flesh is semi-exposed. We're telling God that we can handle the battle in our flesh, and the enemy recognizes and aims for it.

When we go to battle on worldly grounds, we drop the Sword of the Spirit. Instead of battling the enemy with the living Word, or with Love, we fight on the enemy's grounds, invoking their words. We use logical arguments to parry, historical facts and records to thrust, and if we pick up the sword, it's to quote hard scriptures in a proof-texting fashion. Proof-texting is using a scripture to prove a point, whether or not it does so. We don't thrust love into our enemy, or cut his soul of with the Bible's amazing, magical, mysterious power. The Word can actually cause the enemy to flee, or repent, or back down, which Jesus proved for us.

When we drop the sword and the shield, we look down at our feet and see that our shoes don't look like battle boots. They don't look like what Master Chief is wearing, but more like mukluks, or fuzzy slippers, or sandals. They were designed to be light and swift. They are the Gospel of Peace. We're not seeking peace, but a battle, because we think peace will mean compromise. If we make peace with homosexuals, atheists, and sinners, we will have to let go of our tradition and wade over to their side of the pool. Peace is not what we seek, but a battle, to defend our morals. If our shoes were supposed to be combat boots, Paul would have said "with your feet shod with the combat boots of Peace!" The disciples wore sandals, with their toes exposed to the elements, and they treaded lightly around the earth. I've seen too many visible TV Christians denouncing each other. That couldn't have been done wearing the shoes of Peace. When we reach down to change our shoes, we find the breastplate to be too confining, so we take that off. That's a big mistake. We are only righteous through the blood of Christ, and if we plead any other source of righteousness we must cast off that breastplate and wear something else.

One time I was with my girlfriend and we went into some gimmick store and I saw a rubber torso of a beach beauty. It was flesh colored and very, I guess, sexual. "So, that's what you'd look like in a bikini," I said, holding it up to her and not thinking. Whoops.

"I can't wear that, I'm wearing the Breastplate of Righteousness!" she rightly said. Now I'm sure there's a creature, and I'll have to ask my scientist friends about this, that eats pond scum. Well, I wasn't that creature, but I was it's crap, for the rest of the day. She was wearing the breastplate of righteousness, and there's no room for sexy rubber torsos or anything else in its place.

When we put on the breastplate of science, or cultural relevance, or politics, to protect our midsection, we may win a few arguments, but we can no longer wear the Breastplate of Righteousness. We are at the mercy of other ideas, at that point, and they'd better defend us.

Basically, we're pretty well exposed to attack. The only hope we have is some kind of camouflage, like Master Chief wears. Some people hide in Christian stealth. It's when you go about the world gaining people's trust by not leading on that you're a Christian. If your cover is blown, you can't trick anyone into church. Christian stealth is popular in rock bands lately. It's actually pretty cool when bands who don't flaunt their faith make it into the Helm's Deep of the secular music industry. But some never reveal their faith at all. They think secrecy amounts to some kind of currency, some kind of respect in the world. The problem is, what they see is someone walking around wearing a helmet and underwear, because that is all that's left of your spiritual armor. Actually, some versions say to gird your loins with truth, some say buckle. Picture some sort of elaborate underwear with a huge belt on it. There's probably an example of this at that gimmick store.

I practice Christian stealth. I go into a new place to work, or a school, and people begin to wonder what it is about me. I build up currency or credit and people just wait to hear my political views, or conclusions, or judgments so they'll know what category to put me in. They've never heard a Christian talk like me, so they don't know where to put me. Instead of saying, "do you want to go to church with me?" I make the stealth account increase and lead on. Then they think I'm gay. No guy can be nice and straight; besides, I'm going around in a helmet and underwear. Sometimes we have to decide if we're being stealthy or just hiding our faith.

"This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls."

– Keith Green, to the people of the `Seventies.

Wait a minute! Why wear underwear? We guys call it "going commando.'" It's where you go underwear-free into the world. Truth is like underwear in that it holds everything together. In football, you want the Buckle of Truth fastened. To be false would mean to have no underwear on, or nothing holding anything together, and that could be devastating in a pile-up. But fighting the enemy on his grounds is like answering statements that are false to begin with. You almost have to assume false things, like that you have to prove God exists. "Can God make a rock so big He can't lift it?" That's my favorite. It's a clever statement that really only says, "In the limited realm of human reason, it's easy to rule out God." But He created reason, not to mention humans. To fight on these grounds with these ideas, you have to remove your underwear.

Now that you have nothing on but a helmet…

In kindergarten I remember presenting Mrs. Arnold with a difficult problem. We were in a disaster drill, which is where the bell rings constantly, instead of three times, and you're supposed to get on the floor and hide your head under your desk. I asked Mrs. Arnold why we protect our heads only. "What if giant pieces of debris falls and crushes our bodies? What difference would it make to protect our heads?" I said.

"Well. Better your head," she said.

She was doing her job, and so was everyone else in the class, and I should have been killed by some debris instead of standing there, questioning her. But I had a point. I liked to challenge traditions even at six years old. I liked to go commando and throw out those obvious things for people to ponder.

Why protect your head with a helmet if the rest of your body is under attack? Paul indicates that the helmet represents salvation and he pairs it with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the last item in his list. Maybe the helmet protects our minds, or the hope of salvation. Maybe the entire battle is in our minds, and if we take the helmet off, we're really screwed. One thing is certain. If I were naked, I would want a helmet with a really good facemask.

At the end of that passage, Paul says to pray always. He says pray for all the saints. How is prayer fighting? What do we do, put on all this armor and hide in a closet somewhere? Can you see Master Chief doing that? NO WAY MAN!

Paul says to put on your armor and intercede.

Intercession

Everything we do earns currency, either for now or in heaven. There's this "Joan of Arc" movie where Joan of Arc rides around with a sword and full armor, and no helmet. This was so we could see Milla Jovovich's beautiful face, I guess. Actually, Joan of Arc didn't wear a facemask because she wanted her face to be seen, so all those Master Chiefs of her day could see that they were fighting a small woman. Some faiths would say, in my scenario, that the helmet was the first thing to go. When you go to war on the world's terms, you take the helmet off so your face can be shown. There's so much social currency available to the Christian today. People attend meetings to be seen, or show up at the new, postmodern house church to show their endorsement, or hang out there and therefore, are very spiritual. A helmet would conceal the face and no one would know you are there and no currency could be credited to you. Intercession is an example.

One time we had this band come to church. They were of the postmodern ilk which, for some reason, has come to be equated with youth, long, emo'd hair and thin glasses and raggedy pants, although I've met tons of postmoderns who don't fit that description. Their band was great, but they had this couple on stage with them who weren't playing any instruments or singing in microphones; they just sat there, Indian style, with their eyes closed. In fact, they looked like they were meditating in the Eastern sense. Pastor was so impressed that, before giving his mandatory three-point sermon, he asked the couple what their purpose was. They said, "we are intercessors, we're just here to pray for the message to get through." Pastor knew this, but asked so that we could hear.

I always wondered about that. What is intercessory prayer? Don't you ever wonder what it means, especially when people come on TV and say their thoughts and prayers are with the troops, even though they have neither? I asked my ultra-spiritual, Christian Spirituality professor, Dr. Crabtree, who I adored, and who had us march around class seven times in Jericho fashion. "I feel led to intercessory prayer, but just can't get the whole praying by myself in a closet thing down," I said. She didn't realize how ridiculous I sounded because she didn't laugh out loud, or march around me seven times so that I would fall like Jericho.

"That's exactly what intercession is all about, Steve." She said, "If you are called to be an intercessor, you are called to pray for people every day, and you will usually be alone. It's about having the discipline to carry that out when you're not seen." She always had a way of driving the importance of words home with emotion. To her, I was a potential warrior for the Kingdom who was on a wrong path, and this was her opportunity to set me straight.

I read about Billy Graham's ministry, and how little old ladies gathered months before the crusades in a basement and prayed for their city. That's intercessory prayer. They are praying directly to God, and no one knows it. They are doing things in secret, and God, seeing in secret, rewards them. The couple in that band (bless their hearts) wasn't praying in secret. If they wanted to be true intercessors, why didn't they pick a room down the hall, empty and dark, and pray there? I'm just saying, what would have been the difference? That would have been like putting a helmet on, with a face shield. They wouldn't have been seen. We were more impressed by the visible act of prayer on stage than we were by the music, or the message. There wasn't anything interesting about that, but the interesting thing was the intercessors. Intercessors aren't supposed to be interesting, or seen, should they?

Master Chief is interesting, though. He has lots of cool equipment and abilities, and we can become him for long hours and destroy Halo, and incur eye and brain damage, and are victorious.

But I am not Master Chief.

I'm not Master Chief, and I make a crappy intercessor. If I ever pray for someone it's usually short, and then I call to say they were on my heart. I guess I'm more of an edifier than an intercessor, both of which are important, but I think intercessors will be rewarded more handsomely. I edify someone and expect some reward for it, or I need to see my reward in his or her joy, like following a homeless person to see what he or she did with my dollar. But intercessors see no personal thanks for their effort. Intercession is anonymous work, and most of the time you will never see the fruits, much less receive thanks from those you pray for. Intercession is something we do with our helmets on. It's invisible battle, in an invisible war.

So why did Paul use battle terms in the first place? Didn't he know we would see that and find ways to fight? He probably knew we would anyway and wrote to get our attention. He wrote to remind us that we are in a different kind of battle, and need invisible armor to stand against invisible schemes. We can't see them, and certainly the people in the world can't, but God can. That's why He made the armor and gave it to us freely. We have the choice to wear it or take it off and fight on our own. We have two offensive weapons, prayer and love. Truth, righteousness, peace and faith are defensive parts of the armor. Without these, we go through the battlefield naked.

Master Chief has visible armor, fights with his enemy's weapons, takes their spacecraft, dies and comes back to life, and always wins. And he's a muscle-bound hard body.

But, alas, I'm not Master Chief.

Copywright 2004

Dust Trap Manna

I was fashionably miserable sitting outside Café Palermo and could barely see the luke green, miserable sky for the undulating mist of garbage. My jaded tongue told me I was drinking burnt milk, though I'd paid for a triple latte.

A man walked by, gaited to a Paleolithic cadence and carrying a broken floor lamp with the shade freely swinging, like a dead duck’s head. He looked at me, then the sidewalk, like I was trespassing on his front lawn. Then he fell and worshipped the ground like it was the face of God, always half-watching my hand. He'd come out of character for some change. His name was New York Moses, and I’d heard of him.

He was an institution in the City, always giving portions of his gain to friends of his ilk. He wore a long bathrobe and bore his staff, reciting the Ten Commandments as they applied to passersby, and often for that coveted jingle of pocket change. It was a good racket. Somewhere in Central Park was his home, Union Square his Gulf, and Bedford his Paris. But he rarely came to Little Italy or Chinatown.

I got up and followed him.

New York Moses took me through the crowded streets and to the courthouse, where a nation of birds darted, like missiles, through giant columns. A collusion of pretzel and hotdog smells waved in and out of the air mixed with a swill of ten grades of industrial strength urine.

Moses breathed two lungs full. “Aaaahhh. Piss and ambition,” he said and waved his staff, instantly parting the crowd in two. “Damn the torpedoes!" We walked on.

A woman came out of the crowd, not affected by the parting, and walked right between us. Her clothes, hair, makeup, eye shadow hues, were a taste of the Midwest. She strode through like a stray prop amid inert, nomadic slouchers and men defeated by gravity.

“Anyway. This blows, I’m outta here,” I said, grossly averse to spending opportunities on my diversion any longer.

“Patience!” said Moses, losing his own. “We’re halfway there.”

We were going somewhere? I lifted my collar and glanced around, like James Dean. We’d traveled twenty blocks so far, and if he seemed to have a destination and counted me his companion, I decided to stay the course. We steered into a pub and lathered our faces with yeasty black stuff. It was McSoreley's, a pub that only allowed women in the last decade. They have two kinds of beer, light and dark, and saltines in a bowl for food. You could starve in a place like that, or get drunk fast.

My thorax shivered with beer and I remembered Dad’s camper—when we took that Grapes-of-Wrathian slog across God’s country. It was the summer of ’80 or ’81, with a puppy, two siblings, and some stale Cheezeballs. For a month down the humid Southern highways, in near passing-out heat; the smells of Gaines Burgers, puke and number’s one and two burned in our heads—and the heat was so unbearable. So unbearable that we’d fight for the window whenever Stepmom drained the ashtray of air conditioner dew and flung it out, misting our faces with a tint of smokey spearmint gum. Briefly sated, we’d fall back on hot mounds of clothes and sleeping bags to a kind of half-sleep.

“Aaaahhh!” Moses vented, blowing foam through his tattered tussocks. He slammed the stein on the bar like he’d done a day’s work and we left, walking up 5th Avenue toward 14th Street, then Union Square. The sun peeped and beamed down on the chewing gum spotted sidewalk. We came to a fat woman trenching between slabs of sidewalk with her fingernail. The fifty feet she’d cleared looked like a circuit board, or a maze for mites. It took years to bore. I handed her my bag of pretzels from McSoreley’s. Moses reached out, parried my arm with his staff, and, clenching my wrist, shook the bag loose into a trashcan.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said, “Never let your right hand see what your left is doing. Otherwise, ten people’ll try and steal it from her.” He smiled back at the trenching lady as she retrieved her prize.

These outbursts fortified my diversion that day. Moses fascinated me. Rarely were my classmates so interesting, or fun, or so attached to what they believed. They bolted out the door, like they all had pressing affairs, but never did. Moses hung around. He allayed a certain disquiet in my soul, and gleaning the streets with him brought a metrical peace and liberty, like I woke up and the dullness was gone. He had no words or ruminations for it. He just supplicated the earth like a bovine, rising daily to his low deployment with fatigue in his eyes and a wobbly staff. He’s an infomercial of dearth and compliance to circumstance, listing his head down below the sneering world.

But this he had over me. He'd pass easier into the hereafter with what little material he'd attached to himself. Much will wrest off of me when I pass, but he’ll slip fluidly into Abraham’s bosom. My crustaceous skin is a heap of barnacles, and now that I think of it, I wish he’d wave that floor lamp and part the dead out before too much of me is transferred to it’s mass. Sometimes I think I'm in a Hefty bag, and God holds the drawstrings, and they're stretching thin.

Moses and I walked down the windy helices to the Brooklyn L and boarded. Next stop, Bedford. Paris. “Buy me a tea at the Verb,” he said, and like a Bohemian playwright, added, “and I’ll bid thee adieu.”

I’d out-followed my welcome. Fair enough. We went into the dark, cavernous café, where, again, his undulations parted a sea of tackle box-faced rabble. A half-eaten, triple-decker PBJ on a glass plate made an inviting table for the Moses.

“Dust trap manna,” he said, handing me his staff. I brought his tea and set it down with five bucks, then turned to the door. Moses grabbed my arm, and I spun around like the kid in the Mean Joe commercial.

“We all snuggle up to quality of life like a heat lamp, thinking it’ll never dim,” he said. “And when it does, everything’s the pits. No Aaron or Hur to hold you up, two-by-two, however you go, it’s like this—we all have an avarice.”

“Do you have a commandment?” I said.

"Oh, yeah." Moses pondered. My sudden question made him cocksure, like a sage. “The one with the parents,” he said. He held out both hands, open. “It’s like all ten in one.”

I bore my confusion loudly, but lost out to the sandwich. Moses crossed his legs, dangled a blackened sandal and sipped his tea with a smile.

The L was packed. I squeezed back for a jumpseat, but they were all gone. The train descended below the river and I thought about the man. Compared to the price I paid to urge out a smile from some people, his was the better value. I go to Union Square more often, now. My right hand, as if with a mind of it’s own, leaves perfectly uneaten food in the trash. It's been acting strange lately.

Copywright 2003, Steve Sheppard