The greatest challenge in the Spiritual Warrior’s life journey is self-mastery, particularly in conflict situations with others. The discipline of self-mastery is one of the hardest lessons of all, requiring total submission to higher principles and a sacred order that does not make war on others or fight to demonstrate manhood, prowess, and power in the so-called subjugation of foes but learning and understanding what it means to fight the good fight in the Way of Christ to win the day to establish a greater peace for a better self and better world ultimately.
Self-mastery means not being afraid to be oneself to live sacrificially for the greater good by purposing good and not co-signing, endorsing, and practicing evil. Shedding the restrictions of categorical thinking that thwarts the power of reason or is unserious about the pursuit of truth, establishing self-discipline that honors the value of knowledge, intelligence, spiritual skills and capacities, and the power of transcendence. It means surmounting stultifying conventional dogmas and obsolete regimental practices driven more by sentiment than the cogency of current knowledge. It is not waging war for war’s sake where greed, hatred and retaliation are catalysts to human conflicts more than a desire to selflessly establish the greater good of peacemaking, not peace faking or peace breaking. It is living by the moral code of duty, humanity, strength of spirit, kindness, resolution, generosity, and wisdom in the spirit of the Christian Beatitudes, similar to the Buddhist Eight-Fold Path and Samarai Bushido Traditions.
Here, I include the great spiritual warrior traditions of Africa, Japan, Indigenous North American, and South American Indian traditions, the Western warrior concepts, precepts, and exemplars, King Arthur, Deborah, King David, and Jesus of Nazareth, the inspired Kingdom of God Jewish prophet and later ascendant Christ of faith and other heroic examples of spiritual warriors from ancient times to the present.
Such traditions and spiritual warrior principles can also be gleaned from Holy Books; the Bible, the Tanakh, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Shambala, Tibetan, Buddhist traditions; the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Seneca Falls-Women’s Rights, Emancipation Proclamation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other texts and documents citing the moral imperatives of love, truth, justice, peace and freedom as pragmatic goals of spiritual praxis engendering concrete results not only for the individual but collective societies and institutions in their fair and just treatment of citizens.
Some traditions falsely claim spiritual foundations as the bedrock of beliefs and practices but are rooted more in tearing down than building up the person, family, community, nation, and world. It is destruction for the sake of destruction with no follow-up reconstruction plan for revitalization and renewal for the greater good after battles have been “won.” Sometimes wars are won, but the peace is lost due to a lack of vision, fealty, and industry by willing conscripts and workers in the acquisition of sustained discipline in finishing the work. When war has won, the peace may diminish or cannot be fully finished due to fatigue, disillusionment, moral and physical wounds or those inertial forces that subdue the resiliency, discipline and spirit of the Spiritual warrior’s capacity after battle to press on to the end.
Part of studying spiritual warriors’ traditions is fostered by my experience as a Christian Pastor serving Christian Churches for the past forty years. Somehow, despite the warrior preparation, images, and stories of good faith fighters in the Former (Hebrew Bible) and New Covenants of the Christian Bible, many believers do not understand the necessity of spiritual training for spiritual combat in fighting the good fight of Christ in the church because they believe the church is a spiritual playground but not a spiritual battleground.
Some believe that Spiritual warfare should never occur in defense of the church or that believers and faith practitioners should spiritually disarm themselves in deference to any prospects of spiritual battle emanating from the hallowed halls of the church. The truth is many of the attacks encountered by Christian Churches come not only from the outside by external adversaries but from members within the church.
I believe that serious Christians should understand what it means to fight the good fight God’s way by putting on the full armor of God and undergoing some form of spiritual warrior training in preparing for membership and service in the church. The battle is indeed the Lord’s but the battle is also for those who would take up the mantle of leadership in fighting the good fight God’s way with the power of prayer leading the way.
One of the greatest spiritual warriors in the Judeo-Christian tradition is Paul, the battle-tested antagonist of the Jesus Movement, was struck down on the Damascus Road and experienced a personal transformation from being a hellacious votary of violence to an architect of non-violence and peace in constructing new churches throughout Asia Minor. God understood that for the mission of Jesus to be taken up and completed, God needed men and women with spiritual warrior spirits and temperaments, a willingness to learn (Mathetes) and fight for what is right to establish and implement faith communities prepared for continuing battles of the mind, body, heart, spirit, and soul prerequisites for a cohesive and sustainable future. Many will forget the early church battled against Rome two hundred and fifty years before Rome adopted the “Way” and Christianity as the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire.
Paul urges putting on the The Whole Armor of God.
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand, therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. 15 As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. 19 Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.
Contrary to some images of Jesus that view him as a passive, disinterested person who always turns the other cheek to please and appease oppositional and oppressive powers, his prophetic-healing ministry to the people was grounded in an intimate awareness of the discipline and weapons he would employ in the spiritual and practical battles to accomplish the Kingdom of God’s mandates of God the Father, and Holy Spirit in heralding a new Word order where the divine power of love and justice would triumph over man’s World order of the fanatical love of self-power capable of, intentional chaos, permanent division and disorder among camps.
Two basic principles in the Warrior codes of Jesus are mastering the fear of self and fear of others in the transactions of life. Fear of self is a continuing challenge for persons conditioned to be “afraid of their shadows,” so to speak, or unwilling to conduct an honest self-evaluation to determine their role in continuing conflicts in the church and world. We are born into this world and have not arrived at our present state or condition on our own or by ourselves. Since birth, creative and destructive forces have shaped us into our present persons. Fear of self is a form of flight from self-truth, a categorical denial of personal and collective complicity in sinfulness thwarting the true advancement of the greater good. Individuals are either of the Way or in the Way of human development and spiritual progress.
E. Stanley Jones reminds us that human beings are born with only two fears: fear of falling and fear of loud noises. All other fears have been implanted in us by our parents, family, friends, mentors, colleagues, teachers, and other significant or insignificant sources of influence we’ve met and experienced along life’s way. The imprints of fear we have learned and adopted become blueprints for an entire way of life that obviates the spiritual as something exclusively heavenly and not earthly, which ultimately stymies or postpones the true spiritual development of persons living in real-time.
Even religion has historically been a tool or weapon used to instill fear in us, and that fear is often related to hindrances related to actions and beliefs thwarting our actualization as true spiritual beings because we live by dominating fear related primarily to fear of punishment and or fear of rejection or fear of being outcast and repudiated from a particular group.
In the words of Teilhard De Chardin, “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a spiritual experience.”
Healthy fear and respect can be good preventatives to looming disasters, but chronic fear is the latent impulse residing in us that compels us to never take risks or engage in positive change due to the abrasions that may come from change resisters of peers and or higher authorities.
It is not only fear of failure but fear of success that is the problem. To fail is one thing. Failure is a failure. You get knocked down and get back up. maybe. But success demands responsibility, the repetition and continuity of practices that enabled initial and perpetual success. People fear taking on that responsibility because of its moral demands, personal interests, continuing pressures and latent requirements. Writer and Church Builder Speed Leas said, “Our successes have become our excesses.”
Fear of self and fear of others are two primary stumbling blocks overturning the cornerstones of self-development on the paths of life.
Part Two Next Installment.
FCDCCS5
Carlyle Fielding Stewart
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