By James Wilson
I
recently saw a film that rocked my world. Lone Survivor is a story of the human dignity
that makes life worth living and without which we’re left with a pale
counterfeit. It showcases the difference
between living and surviving. It is about
the will to sacrifice survival, a will without which there is no hope of
achieving the dignity of authentic human life.
Lone
Survivor is the true account of a Navy Seals mission gone bad in
Afghanistan. A four man team is sent to
an inaccessible area to capture or kill a notorious Taliban leader. Unable to keep prisoners, they must make a
decision worthy of the Sword of Damocles when they accidentally capture a trio
of goatherds: kill non-combatants who have done them no harm – in cold blood –
or release them to the likelihood at least one will rat them out to the
Taliban. They decide releasing is the honorable
thing to do, at the sacrifice of their cover.
A short time later the four American warriors find themselves under
attack by more than two hundred Taliban fighters. In the bloody battle that follows three of
the four are killed, taking with them a lopsided number of attackers, and a
seriously wounded Marcus Luttrell is able to slip away. During the fight team leader Michael Murphy
sacrifices his life by exposing himself to heavy fire in order to call for
help.
Many
would find their decision to release the goatherds to be as senseless as it is
suicidal. But the whole story of Lone
Survivor is one of sacrifice piled atop sacrifice – from the unimaginable
punishment to mind and body the would-be Seals endure to qualify, the further
sacrifices of comfort and the right to say, “Enough” during training, to the
ultimate sacrifice of life itself in defense of country and honor.
The
four Seals are not the only sacrificial lambs in the story. Two helicopter loads of rescue troops are
shot out of the sky while landing to rescue Marcus; there are no survivors –
and no regrets. He falls into the hands
of Afghan tribal leaders who nurse him back to life while awaiting his next
rescuers. When the Taliban come to
demand he be given to them his host refuses.
The tradition of Pashtunwali – the honor of the Pashtun people –
requires that a host defend a guest with his life, no matter how or why that
person becomes his guest. (It predates Islam by centuries.) The film telescopes events into a final climactic
firefight – actually the Taliban simply return repeatedly to demand that Marcus
be handed over. The tribal elders must make
the courageous decision to risk death many times. Such decisions are obviously noble, but are
they reasonable? For strangers? For
goatherds?
Reality
is the world was structured around an economy of sacrifice from the
beginning. What we are taught in school
about survival of the fittest is a lie.
We buy into that lie only insofar as we are fallen from the state for
and in which we are created.
The
vestiges of that original economy of creation are still visible in nature. Astronomers know the earth is the product of
the sacrificial death of thousands of stars that went nova and, in their
explosive demise, hurled the right combination of heavy and light elements into
this corner of a backwater galaxy so we could live on a planet pregnant with
water and abundant life, walking with our God – as the Genesis account
proclaims – in the cool of the evening.
Every species of animal from spiders to salmon progresses from
generation to generation because parents sacrifice their lives for their
children by the instincts built into them.
Our own lives come about because a living sperm and egg sacrifice their
individual lives to come together as a new human being who knows them not. And any time this new human being suffers a
breach of his skin thousands of white blood cells sacrifice themselves in a
kamikaze attack on any infection that dares invade. The world is indeed based on the concept of
sacrifice, though most of us have forgotten or suppressed that concept except
when we admire it in a fallen hero.
When human beings
decide to live sacrificially over and over again, an economy of sacrifice
becomes a culture of sacrifice. Jesus
Christ offered the ultimate expression of this economy – this culture. He did not come to change the economy of this
world, but to restore it.
Does
Lone Survivor, a story of sacrifice – whether by risking or relinquishing
survival – leading to authentic humanity make any sense? Nothing else really does.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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