Faith in the Military: I Switched to the Army, and Believed in my Tank

By re-enlisting in the Army, I was running away from God, or at least running away from the people who said they knew Jesus loved them.

I volunteered for Armor and became the platoon guide (student leader) at Fort Knox, Kentucky.  From the first day at Fort Knox, I liked the Army so much better than the Air

Force.  I was finally in the military.  We marched, we ran the obstacle course, and we had classes in tanks in the sun in July and August. 

Since I came to faith in America, not in a Muslim or Communist country, I did not know that suffering is one of the definite promises of Scripture. The Lord and the Apostles said suffering is a mark of faith.  And their example is one of intense suffering. 

It would be another year before I would find out there was a “health and wealth Gospel” and a few more years before I understood this was a perverse twist on real faith.  But the Army and leadership in the Army were teaching me the lessons I missed by not playing sports in high school. 

I never stopped believing during the year that followed, but I stopped learning about the faith.  I started learning about tanks.  The first year I believed, in 1974, I read through the King James Bible.  My first year as a tank commander I read through entire operators manual for the M60A1 main battle tank.  As far as I know, I was the only tank commander in the battalion who read the entire 800-page manual.  It worked out well for me.  At annual gunnery my first year as a tank commander we fired in the top 10% of the battalion.  It’s like shooting Expert with a rifle or a pistol.

In September of 1976, then entire 4^th Brigade, 4^th Infantry Division relocated from Fort Carson, Colorado, to Wiesbaden, West Germany.  In Germany, my tank became my job and my faith became vivid again.

Faith in the Military: Which Church to Attend?

First I was blind.  Then I believed.  Then I got my sight back.  I should have quit smoking right at that moment.  It was soooooo hard to light cigarettes when the slightest flash was blinding.  I had to flick the lighter and look out of the corner of my eye to get the cigarettes lit.

As my sight and use of my fingers returned, I had to get to the practical matter of going to Church.  I knew enough about faith from Collin that Christianity was not a solitary faith.  I had to commit to a Church, or at least start attending one.  The base chapel was not an option.  Then as now, whatever the military blesses as faith is what the old soldiers believe.  In the 1970s, the military chapel system was run mostly by priests and pastors from Catholic and Mainline Protestant denominations.

In a later post, I will talk about today's chapel system, but for now, I was not going to the base chapel.

Since I was in Utah, the biggest Church was the Mormon Church.  I went to a Baptist Church just off post.  It was founded by non-Mormons who worked at Hill Air Force Base.  In fact, the pastor of this Church believed his main mission beyond leading the Church was to convert Mormons to Christianity.

This may seem strange, but before 1980, most Churches, especially those that were theologically conservative, had a statement of faith that was central to their mission and membership.  Christians actually believed doctrine was a matter of life and death, at least spiritually.  After I read the Bible (King James, of course) the next book the pastor gave me was Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults.

This book was an encyclopedia of the beliefs of religions other than conservative protestantism and was clear that most of these religions were heretical.  Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Bahai Faith, anything that used the name of Jesus, but departed from orthodox Christianity was a pathway to Hell.  Liberal Protestantism was also condemned as was Catholicism.  With this view of the world, more than 99% of the planet was a mission field.  Because pretty much everyone in the world was wrong.

Wow!!!  Being a Baptist was like walking down a slightly cone-shaped cave.  With every step the cave gets smaller.  By the time I finished The Kingdom of the Cults the number of believers in the world was huge, but the number of believers who knew the truth was tiny.  I, of course, was in the elect.  I was in a Baptist Church.

I could have settled in for a comfortable life of knowing I was one of the elect and most everyone else was not.  But then the cave got too narrow.  The pastor said Collin and all of his kind, Pentacostals and Charismatic believers were wrong too.  At that point, I did not know a lot, but if Collin my old roommate was not a Christian nobody was.

At that point I got out of the Air Force and my luminous faith went rather dim.

So I re-enlisted in the Army.

Faith in the Military: Having a Blast, Finding God

November 9, 1973, just after 9 a.m., I was connecting wires to detonators at a U.S. Air Force missile test site in Utah.  Someone turned on the power, and my world turned bright blue and white.  Several minutes later I was strapped in an all-terrain ambulance headed for the first of six eye operations that would eventually restore my sight.  Along with the eye operations, I had surgery to reattach two fingers on my right hand and to remove wires, screws and various pieces of metal from my face, arms and chest.

         
It was Friday.  I had planned to ride my motorcycle up into the mountains for the weekend.  My plans changed. On November 9, 1973, I woke up an agnostic.  

Before the day ended, I believed in God and a few months later, I went the whole way to become a Christian.  I would have preferred a smoother path to faith, but at 20 years old, I test-fired missiles for a day job and rode a motorcycle in mountains of Utah for recreation.  I was not inclined to listen to a still, small voice—blindness was the right size megaphone for God to announce His existence to me.

It would be a week before I could see again with one eye.  A month before both eyes could see again.

Faith in the Military: Belief Begins with Missiles

With Holy Week beginning in a couple of days, I decided to write about faith in the military.

In general, the military makes more clear the muddy world of faith most people live with in America.

I joined the Air Force in 1972 an agnostic, not because I had any informed idea of faith, but because I did not know or care if I believed in anything.  Neither of my parents practiced religion in any form.  My Dad was Jewish.  My Mom was Protestant.

Early in our childhoods, somewhere around three years old, both my sister and I got about a month of religion.  My sister went to Church.  I went to Temple.  Then we dropped out.  My main religious instruction was the puppet show "Davey and Goliath" which aired on Sunday morning.  I watched that show pretty much every Sunday morning while my parents slept in when I was four and five years old.

Although I knew a lot of kids who went to Catholic School growing up, I never met an overtly religious person.  In the fifth grade, I got beaten up by Catholic boys who said I killed Christ.  I did not know the story of the Crucifixion at the time, but the Gospels seem pretty clear that Roman Soldiers nailed The Lord to the Cross, not a skinny, 11-year-old Jewish kid.

On my 12th birthday, my Dad started talking about getting me a Bar Mitzvah.  The rabbi in the local synagogue would not allow boys to read a phonetic Torah, so I learned enough Hebrew to recite my Torah passage reading from the Hebrew.

Then religion was over for another seven years.

I enlisted at 18.  After Basic Training and an eight-month technical school, I went to my first permanent duty station at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.  My roommate, Collin, was a 20-year-old who did not drink, smoke or smoke dope and professed no interest in sex before marriage.  He read the Bible every day, prayed on his knees and was really a great roommate--clean, quiet and gone a lot.

Not only was Collin religious, he was Pentacostal.  One Wednesday evening I went to his Church.  Wow!  For a barely believing, barely Jewish Bostonian, Pentacostalism was a circus.  I wanted no part of Collin's faith, but I continued to admire him as a person.  He took a lot of shit from everyone else in the barracks.  But I did not want to be him.  Faith was for old people.

Then November 9, 1973, I rode my 750 Honda to the missile test range at Hill Air Force for work.  We were live-fire testing interstage detonators for the Minuteman Missile that day.  At 9:30 a.m. I started my journey of faith in the blast room where we connected the detonators to our test equipment.

And Just That Fast the Adoption is Over

Wow!!

I wrote earlier this week there was one final chance to adopt Xavier.  That hope fell through.

Here is the story well told by Miser Mom.

Homework After 10 p.m.

I am sitting between my sons at 10:35 p.m.  They are doing their math homework.  They are doing algebra now and will be studying for a social studies test after that.  J is demonstrably yawning.  But earlier in the day, I allowed J to go to they gym for an hour while N had squash. In a further indulgence, we all watched an episode of "Alias" the show our family is currently watching together when we can.

The boys are currently in 8th grade.  Next year the work will get harder.  I don't know how often we will be up this late, but they really don't like doing their school work.  

When I am home every night next school year, I will be able to sit with them and make sure the homework.  I suppose if they had more "normal" parents they would have an more sympathy.  But with a Dad who loads his iPhone with language apps to parse French verbs and study Greek vocabulary, they don't get much slack on studying.  And Mom stays up at night writing papers that advance the field of projective geometry.  They can't even whine about math or Mom might break into a five-minute explanation of how beautiful math is.  

Life Coming at me Fast--Faster Than I Thought

Maybe not THIS Fast. . ..

We got a message from Haiti tonight that it is possible (MAYBE) we can adopt Xavier after all.  All the indications up to now had been negative, but a ray of hope came through tonight in the form of an letter from a Haitian attorney who really seems to know what is going on with the case.

If we decide to retain her and make this one last attempt to adopt Xavier, I will be using some of my vacation in the next couple of weeks to travel to Harrisburg, New York and Washington to get the required paperwork notarized, apostiled (a special notarization) and certified by the Haitian consulate or embassy.

I had already planned to stop working full time and become a consultant/writer for my current employer.  That will mean I work a lot less, but more importantly I will work at home.  I will no longer be commuting to Philadelphia.  I will work at home and take care of the boys.  In addition, I may be doing whatever paperwork is necessary to get Xavier here to America.

I thought the change would begin June 5 when I go to Army Annual Training.  But it turns out I will need to use or lose my vacation and personal days before June 6, so I will be in Philadelphia much less than I thought while I use all the vacation I saved up to take care for the boys this summer.

Last week I thought my new life was coming slowly into focus.  Now it is happening a lot faster.
It should be interesting.