Real Life Heroes - Taking Bullets for Others

After running the luxury liner Costa Concordia aground on the French coast back in January, its captain was labeled “Chicken of the Sea” for abandoning his ship and trying to save himself. There were other reports of cowardice among men on-board. An Australian woman reported, “We just couldn’t believe it — especially the men, they were worse than the women.” A grandmother recalled, “I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls.” A third passenger said, “There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats.” So much for the honor code of the sea, “women and children first”.

C. S. Lewis once observed, "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful." When a culture devalues the traits traditionally considered manly virtues — courage, honor, duty, protectiveness, heroism – and consider them obsolete, sexist or politically incorrect, we should not be surprised when many men behave crudely, cruelly and cowardly.

Yet we are often heartened and encouraged by stories of men who do what men are called to do and wired to do.  Such behavior should remind us that God never leaves us “without evidence of himself and his goodness.” Acts 14:17

On 9/11 evil men turned airplanes into bombs and crashed them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, murdering nearly 3,000 people. We also saw that day courageous men running into those buildings to save hundreds of lives. There was another brave group of men that day on-board United Flight 93 who lined up behind Todd Beamer as he called out, "Let's roll." and prevented another flying bomb from hitting the US Capital. Great evil brings out the best in good men.

 On January 8, 2011 in a Tucson Arizona parking lot when Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot by a lone gun man, Daniel Hernandez in the midst utter chaos sprang to action clearing Giffords’ air passage way and applying pressure to her forehead to save her life. Great evil brings out the best in good men.

Last month in Aurora CO great evil once again unfurled its wings and snuffed out thirteen lives out and wounded seventy-one others. In a theater of horrors we now know that the moment the shooting started three young men -- Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn, and Alex Teves -- reacted instinctively to sacrifice themselves for others. Pushing their girlfriends to the floor they made themselves human shields. They embodied Jesus’ words in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Great evil brings out the best in good men. We are also reminded the words of Paul in Romans 5:20, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."

The mother of Jansen Young, Jon Blunk’s girlfriend, said that Blunk, 26, pushed Jansen under the seat. “He was 6-feet-2, in incredible shape. . . . He pushed her down on the floor and laid on top of her and died there.”

Alex Teves, 24, did the same, pushing his girlfriend, Amanda Lindgren, to the floor to protect her. His aunt reported: “He pushed her to the floor to save her and he ended up getting a bullet.”

Matt McQuinn, 27, dove in front of Samantha Yowler and took three bullets. Samantha was hit in the leg as well, but survived.

What makes men such as these?

It seems there are men who believe there are things worth dying for and the "Aurora Three" died for the innocent women sitting next to them that ominous night. Their instincts, unlike those of the Captain and many men on-board the Costa Concordia, were to protect, not run away. This is not an old fashioned notion or a social construct but an outward expression of how God has wired men to live unconditionally and sacrificially for others; anything else is a counterfeit masculinity.

Commentator William Bennett writes, “In an age when traditional manhood has been increasingly relegated to fiction -- capes, masks and green screens -- these three men stand as real-life heroes. Their actions remind us that good triumphs over evil, not just in movies, but also in reality.”  

© 2012, Dave Brown is a pastor and the director of the Washington Area Coalition of Men’s Ministries (WACMM) and has been the men’s pastor at McLean Bible Church in McLean, Va. He served 30 years in the federal government’s Senior Executive Service (SES), including eight years as an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. He did his seminary work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Reformed Theological Seminary. He’s been a leadership consultant, university administrator, member of the board of directors for the C.S. Lewis Institute, chairs Foundation for Manhood and is the blogmaster for the National Coalition of Ministries to Men (NCMM).

Watching the Olympic Games and Thinking Eternal Gold

As we watch the 30^th modern Olympiad, it would good to remember that the Bible has something to say about these competitions.

Beginning in 776 BC the Olympic Games took place in Greece every four years. Everyone around the world even in those days knew about them, including the people who lived in Palestine. That is why Paul used them to point to an ultimate reality and a higher level of competition with eternal stakes. He writes that athletes train to win a temporary prize, while followers of Christ run to win an eternal one. 

“Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.” – 1 Corinthians 9:26

 When you see the athletes running, training, disciplining themselves and working through pain, as believers, we should see another kind of running, striving and award ceremony:

John Piper writes “the games . . . are meant to be seen and heard by Christians as a tremendous impulse to fight the fight of faith and run the race of life with nothing less than Olympic passion and perseverance. . . .”

Life is a proving ground where we reveal who we are, whom we trust, and what we love. It is a place for showing whose power, intelligence or goodness we trust—ours or God's. Life is not a field for demonstrating our own ability to make good choices. It's a field for showing how the goodness, truth and beauty of Christ take us captive and move us to choose and run for his glory. 

The race of life has eternal consequences not because grace depends on the way we run, but because grace is verified and showcased by the way we run. How we run not only affects us but also impacts others.

"By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain, but I labored [I ran, I fought] more exceedingly than all, yet it was not I but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Paul's running did not nullify the purpose of God's grace; it verified the power of that grace at work in and through him. And so it is with us. 

Eternal life hangs on the way we run and the way we fight not because salvation is based on the merit of our works, but because faith without works is dead (James 2:26). Life is a proving ground for whether our faith is alive or dead—a proving ground for whom we trust and whom we love.

© 2012, Dave Brown is a pastor and the director of the Washington Area Coalition of Men’s Ministries and has been the men’s pastor at McLean Bible Church in McLean, Va. He served for 30 years in the federal government’s Senior Executive Service (SES), including eight years as an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. He did his seminary work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He’s been a leadership consultant, university administrator and member of the board of directors for the C.S. Lewis Institute.

Are You a Saint?

Saint is one of the most widely misunderstood words in our Christian vocabulary. At some point in church history, people began to call the original apostles saints, contrary to the plain meaning of the word as used in the New Testament. So now we hear of Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, and the like. In the Roman Catholic tradition, people of unusual achievement are sometimes designated as saints. Among evangelicals we often think of saints as exceptionally godly and holy people.

The truth is, though, every believer is a saint. That’s why Paul’s greetings in his epistles often include something such as, “To the saints who are in Ephesus” (Ephesians 1:1, see also Philippians 1:1, Colossians 1:2). Even when addressing Corinth, a church that was all messed up both theologically and morally, Paul wrote, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. . . . (1 Corinthians 1:2). In fact, sainthood is not a spiritual attainment, or even recognition of such attainment. It is rather a state or status into which God brings every believer. All Christians are saints.

It is a very unfortunate and unhelpful thing that we so often misunderstand this short, simple word. To use a word that applies to all Christians in a way that suggests there is a special, elite class of Christians is doubly wrong: it steals from the church important truths that God intended to communicate through the idea of sainthood, and it promotes jealousy and division within the body of Christ by suggesting a hierarchy that does not exist. 

—Jerry Bridges, Who Am I? Identity in Christ (Cruciform Press, 2012), 66.

Jerry Bridges is an author and conference speaker. His most popular book, The Pursuit of Holiness, has sold over one million copies. Jerry has been on the staff of The Navigators for over fifty years, and currently serves in the Collegiate Mission where he is involved primarily in staff development, but also serves as a speaker resource to the campus ministries.

The Intolerance Police, Chick-Fil-A and the Big War

The Cathy family, founders and owners of Chick-Fil-A, have always been strong supporters and promoters of biblical manhood. Truett Cathy who has some 130 foster grandchildren wrote a great book in 2004, It's Better toBuild Boys Than Mend Men, that challenges and equips men to reach out to youth.

 

Recently Dan Cathy, president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-a, in an interview with Baptist Press, pleaded “guilty as charged” when asked if he supported traditional marriage. He went on to say, “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit.  We are a family-owned business, a family-led business … our restaurants are typically led by families. … We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families.”

While he said he believes there is no such thing as a “Christian business,” he did say organizations such as his can operate on biblical principles “asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on decisions we make about people and the programs and partnerships we have.”

Cathy’s admission set off a media firestorm that headlined his remarks as “anti-gay”. Bloggers labeled Chick-fil-a a “hate group”. The mayors of Boston, San Francisco and Chicago said they would block the company from opening any new stores, Boston’s chief politician declared “Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston”; Chicago’s mayor asserted “Chick-fil-a values are not Chicago values.”; San Francisco chief pol tweeted Chick-fil-a “doesn't share San Francisco's values & strong commitment to equality for everyone.”

Jim Henson of Muppet fame pulled out of a partnership with the company and liberal groups organized boycotts, including homosexual “kiss-ins” at Chick-fil-a restaurants, Facebook temporarily censored a grassroots campaign to applaud and support the family-run business.- all this despite the fact there’s never been a hint of discrimination of any kind in Chick-fil-a's history.

Dr. James Emery White recently observed that not many years ago a business that supported of homosexual practice would have gone out of business. White says that today, “the threat to your business is support of the traditional family”. 

In many ways the moral battle lines are starker than ever before. Full-out war against historic Christianity seems more ominous. There’s a certain trajectory at work here which seems to mirror the disintegration described in Romans 1. 

First, Christianity has been increasingly marginalized by the culture; it is also being ostracized from the public square and marketplace; it is becoming demonized and penalized. The next step would be its being criminalized. Much more could be said about this trend and what is at stake now and in eternity. Suffice it to close with this truth and great assurance for every man of God.

“He told his disciples this:  “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.” - John 16:33

© 2012, Dave Brown is a pastor and the director of the Washington Area Coalition of Men’s Ministries and has been the men’s pastor at McLean Bible Church in McLean, Va. He served for 30 years in the federal government’s Senior Executive Service (SES), including eight years as an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. He did his seminary work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He’s been a leadership consultant, university administrator and member of the board of directors for the C.S. Lewis Institute.