Fallen Man, Fallen World and Chris Beck: Navy SEAL to Navy ‘She’AL
Yet, others among that Brothers‘ band (also portraying real-life characters) genuinely bug me, some of them bonafide knuckleheads: irresponsible, boorish, obnoxious at turns; downright dishonorable, even criminal, at others. I so appreciate their self-abnegating manning of my country’s front lines. In any substitute context, however? I suspect not a few of them would be guys I’d just as soon not hang out with.
Still — I stand mesmerized by this account of Easy Company’s collective contribution to Western Civilization’s rescue; and by its depiction of these soldiers’ individual valor and exploits.
People are complex — because every one of them inhabits this fallen world, lives within its creaky, cankered confines. Everyone is fundamentally stamped with the image of his/her Creator, while anomalously hobbled and disfigured by both the principle of sin and its explicit manifestations. Man’s turning from God has made everything a whole lot more complicated, more perplexing, and that reality must be factored into every evaluation of happenings on planet earth.
As noted in a Washington Post review of one of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke: “beauty and horror go hand in hand in this life.”
Because all have sinned and fallen short. A.L.L. Even the grandest among us.
Those who properly esteem Chris Beck for launching himself into harm’s way on our behalf, bear no obligation to high-five him over his most recent weird, sad lifestyle choice. Celebrating the intrepid warrior does not require applauding the “warrior princess”. As Jacquelyn Mitchard has mused, “even the beautiful and brave can be wrong.”
Homosexual tub-thumpers can show praiseworthy kindness for their mothers, help little old grannies across the street, raise money for worthy causes – or take up arms for their nation; and I’m glad of it. That doesn’t automatically ennoble their wrong headed crusade to sanitize what, heretofore, has been called out as sexual perversion.
Fire-breathers for biblical sexual purity and traditional marriage, conversely, can grump, snarl and fall down in other areas of personal comportment — that doesn’t, of itself, invalidate their convictions.
What we’re talking about is damaged, imperfect people, all of them working through their personal shortcomings, while, perhaps, advocating for their cherished causes. Sometimes those causes are admirable; their proponents, not so much. Others act out in the most unfortunate ways, but promote concerns deserving placard-waving support.
Though a hero may transform himself into a “she-ro”, the chivalry of his previous life endures. We’re allowed to remember that – in fact, we must do so – even if we don’t buy into all the rest.
Image: Kristin Beck (Chris Back) Twitter page
