Chapter 2. What changed? As I looked to my left, a large section of cement, covered with smears of multicolored graffiti, broke off from the top of the wall and tumbled to the ground, crashing into pieces as it hit. Cheers in Russian, English, and German seemed to ring out from every direction. Looking to my right, I saw that a group of Germans had fashioned some sort of battering ram out of an old signpost and were ramming it into the wall with all their might. Dust could be seen in the air.
As it mixed in the glow of the old-fashioned security lights, it gave the night sky an eerie orange-colored glow. Uniformed Russian and East German soldiers were leaning through recently made holes in the wall, offering champagne and handshakes as they shouted and sang of peace and brotherhood. It seemed completely dreamlike to me, standing there just a few yards away from the infamous checkpoint Charlie. I was witnessing the Berlin Wall literally being torn down to the ground by hand.
What made the experience even more remarkable to me was that barely a year earlier I had walked through that same checkpoint. Only the setting had been completely different. In compliance with the strict mandate that I be in full uniform, I had made my way through an intimidating exhibition of surveillance cameras, concertina wire, and machine gun-toting wall guards. Once on the eastern side, a man had even spit down at my feet as I walked by in my polished military shoes.
I had enjoyed my trip to the eastern side, but I remember being puzzled that in East Berlin the quality of life differed quite notably just on the other side of this man-made partition. But now, right before my eyes, that very partition was coming down. Caught up in the excitement of it all, my wife and I and another couple from the army band, Rick and Don Shirley, joined in taking pot shots at the wall to see if we could tear a little bit down.
As I stood there taking it all in, I pondered the contrast between the two trips to Berlin. The question that pummeled my mind was this: What changed? This staggering question continued to dominate my thoughts as I made my way back home. In those days, travel between West Germany and Berlin required driving a long and lonely stretch of about 110 miles of fenced-off, nearly ghost town-looking freeway. West Berlin sat like an island in the middle of communist East Germany.
Although the Berlin Wall now was coming down, it was a few years before the East and West actually united. A thoroughfare linked the East with the West through a series of fortified NATO and communist checkpoints. Arriving at the first checkpoint in Helmstedt, we had undergone a series of briefings. The military guards had warned us not to stop, slow down, sightsee, or even break down on the three-hour trip through East Germany.
They had even given us a folder with pictures of our exit signs and papers containing various Russian and German phrases to ward off possible undesirable encounters. We were instructed not to even roll down our windows or speak to anyone, but to hold up an appropriate sign in our car window should we need help for any reason. We also had needed to complete a series of security briefings back home before being granted permission to visit. We were fully aware of the strict regulations we would be expected to observe.
The ride into East Germany was uneventful. We drove in without a hitch. The only notable thing was that while we were sailing in on the eastbound side, lines of cars were bumper to bumper in the westbound lanes as hundreds of barely operable Russian cars made their newly legalized exodus from the east. I couldn't help but wonder if this traffic jam would be waiting us on our way out. Traffic, however, would prove to be the least of our problems.
Pushing our trip to the limit, we didn't head back to the west until late at night. That probably would have been okay if it hadn't started to snow heavily. As we checked out of our hotel and headed to the first checkpoint to leave East Berlin, the snow was really coming down. Having been raised in Texas, I had little experience with snow. It was very intimidating to me. I recommended to our group that we stay one more night in the hotel. Unfortunately, however, I wasn't driving.
As providence would have it, Russell, a young army band member from Michigan, had driven us to Berlin, so we were completely at his mercy for the ride home. Tanya and I tried to encourage ourselves that Russell was born and raised in Michigan, so he should be used to driving in such conditions. Besides that, he surely seemed confident, albeit young and inexperienced. He insisted that he was more than competent to drive at top speeds in heavy snowfall, as he always had done before in Michigan.
As we plowed our way through the heavy snow on the way home, feeling little slips here and there, we tried to hold our tongues and give poor Russell a chance to prove himself. But alas, we could take it no longer. We started out gently. "Russell, could you please slow it down just a bit?" Finally, we found ourselves somewhat outraged. "Russell, we may be from Texas, but if you don't slow down, you're going to kill us.
This can't be safe." It seemed the more Tanya and I protested from the back seat, the faster and more recklessly young Russell drove. All the while, he continually insisted that, being from Michigan, he was well accustomed to driving in far worse conditions than these. I started to really question how this was all going to work out. By the time we neared the first checkpoint of the 110-mile fenced-off road to the west, the snow was coming down in sheets. However, it seemed that it just might be somewhat manageable.
So, lacking the needed experience and discernment to make a proper judgment call in the situation, we decided to head out on the long crossing. Inevitably, it wasn't far down the road until the snowfall really started to get worse. The flakes poured down like showers of silver dollars. As we continued on, the situation became downright frightening as the wind picked up and created moments of pure whiteout. We all knew that once we passed that first checkpoint, there was no place to stop, pull over, or turn around.
Our friends Rick and Don Shirley were in the car ahead of us, and we tried desperately to keep each other in view. However, the storm steadily continued to worsen, and visibility was quickly diminishing. My friend kept driving so fast that the car began sliding more and more. "This is ridiculous," I protested. "You have got to slow down." "Ah, this is nothing," he barked back. "You should see the snow in Michigan." Slip, crash, fluff. The inevitable finally happened as we lost control and crashed into a snowbank.
After trying to pull ourselves out and start the car, we eventually gave up. We sat there, numb, in silence. There we were, stuck in the snow, in the middle of a blizzard in a communist country, in between checkpoints, in the middle of the night, in a broken-down car, in a place where we were instructed not to speak to anyone but to use signs that might fit our particular calamity to communicate. On top of it all, we would now be absent from work the next day without proper permission. AWOL, AWOL.
There was no sense blaming anyone. We immediately started to think about survival. Fortunately, by the divine mercy of God, there were four of us in the car, and we each had purchased big fluffy blankets from the eastern side as souvenirs. So, we bundled up and prayed that when Rick and Don reached the checkpoint and noticed that we never made it over, they would send for help. It proved to be one long, cold, restless night.
As the sun slowly began to creep its way up over the horizon, we noticed that the snow had now stopped, and we sat there completely covered in several inches of snow. Then it happened. The enemy started to come over to us. The only puzzling thing was that they weren't acting much like enemies. These "enemies" were simply East Germans who had spotted us there stranded in the snow. They felt compassion for us and offered to help.
Afraid of the political ramifications of talking to communists, we tried to remain good American soldiers and rejected their help. I still can vividly remember one of them standing there at the window, offering us a steaming hot thermos of coffee. It looked so good. But with all the programming and propaganda we had received on espionage and the communist threat, we couldn't help but wonder if he might be a spy. So, we rejected his kindness. This all seems rather silly now.
Eventually, a wrecking truck came by and took us back to Berlin. As we were there going through the difficulty of proving why we were back in Berlin, I thought about how friendly the face of my enemy was. I couldn't get the image of that steaming hot thermos of coffee out of my mind. I had played up the communists in my mind to be monsters, but my enemy had offered me a drink, and as it says in the end of Romans 12, he had "heaped burning coals upon my head." Back home.
Thinking about all of this when I got home, it really bothered me that only a month before I could have been called on to shoot these men. But now, due to a few political changes, they were considered my allies. The obvious fact was that, in reality, nothing had changed. The only change that had taken place was that a few days before, a small group of global leaders had gotten together, made a decision, and suddenly my enemy had become my friend. This bothered me.
I wondered how God looks at these man-made walls, and then I wondered how God wanted me to look at them. Should my love for others await the order of human authority? Or has an even higher authority already called a truce and broken down these walls? Later, as I began to study the Bible, I realized that, in Christ, those walls had already been torn down 2,000 years ago. Christ has broken down the wall of partition.
In the Old Testament era, the Hebrews were a major source of nationalistic contention to the world around them. In the time of King David, Solomon, and the subsequent kings, even the very geographic area of the nation was considered God's country. National pride and elitism was not the result of some big egos; it was a historical and biblical fact. But when Christ came, God, in His mercy, expanded His kingdom to include all who by faith believe on His Son.
The fulfillment of all the promises, covenants, blessings, and even the genealogical lineage of the chosen people all came to reside in the person of Jesus Christ. When I gave my life to Christ, I became a partaker of all these covenantal blessings and promises of God. Ever since the time of Christ, every person, nation, and tribe is offered citizenship in God's kingdom by coming into it through His Son, Jesus Christ.
What I came to understand was that, although Christians have been scattered throughout hundreds of countries and thousands of years, in Christ, these nationalistic dividing walls all have been taken down. This means that as citizens of this Christian kingdom, I live here in my earthly kingdom as a stranger and pilgrim. My true citizenship and belonging are in Christ.
To the church at Ephesus, the Apostle Paul wrote: "For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity [that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace; and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity." Ephesians 2:14-16.
To the church at Colossae, Paul wrote that we "have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, nor free. But Christ is all and in all." Colossians 3:10-11. This liberating and empowering truth broke down my national and political walls. I found it a profound truth that all who are in Christ exist as God's chosen people, no matter which natural country they come from.
As I pondered this truth about the kingdom of God, my entire world changed. It was not that I became rebellious or defiant of my American citizenship. Rather, I was overcome by an even greater and more encompassing identity. My entrenched sense of patriotism and nationalistic pride began to falter under the revelation of this vast kingdom. I marveled that throughout centuries of time, this kingdom of God has continued to march forward.
Empire after empire has come and gone, nations have been raised, and nations have fallen, but this kingdom of God has remained. The Medes, Persians, Greeks, and Romans all have died out. The pride and schemes of powerful leaders such as Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Caesar Augustus, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, and even Stalin have amounted to nothing more than confusion and needless bloodshed. Old Testament Prophecy.
More than 700 years before the New Testament era, the prophet Isaiah spoke about the triumphant, eternal nature of the kingdom of God. He wrote: "For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end." Isaiah 9:5-7. This newfound realization wasn't easy for me. In a way, I felt I was losing all that had been dear to me. All these changes were causing me to realize that, deep within me, there was a strong need for acceptance and belonging. Losing my national, political, and even familial identity was threatening to unravel my very moral fabric. Indeed, citizenship was a coveted privilege to me.
Especially as a soldier, I felt I was now doing my part to fight to maintain it. There was no doubt that these emotions ran deep. But a question I began to ask myself was: Where should I put these feelings? For a while, I felt that these emotions were part of the old man, a carnal desire that needed to be put away. But as I continued to study and pray, I realized that God had put this drive within me for a reason; it merely needed to be redirected.
As the writer of Hebrews said: "By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Hebrews 11:8-10.
Unfortunately, for most of my life, the ability to express this natural quest for belonging existed only in the sense of a worldly patriotism for partisan causes. In the end, this type of patriotism was divisive and egocentric. Often accompanying this partisan-type spirit was the strange habit I had of showing my loyalty to my side by hating my opponents. When there really was nothing genuine to give allegiance to, it became easiest simply to despise everything that didn't agree with me.
I realized that this type of partisanship could never fill the void that God wanted to fill in my heart. Emptiness and controversy had always been the proven result. As I considered humanity on the larger scale, it became obvious that patriotism such as this had fueled disputes and fights for thousands of years, ranging anywhere from high school rivalries to nuclear wars. I became convinced that God did not put this drive in me for the sake of egocentrism or contention.
He put it in me to motivate me to seek His kingdom, where He alone reigns as King. Speaking of this God-given desire, the writer of Hebrews goes on to say that Abraham and the ancient people of faith also sought for this belonging and resting place in God's kingdom, saying: "For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland; and truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them." Hebrews 11:14-16. Putting It Together. Now that I was reading the Bible and asking questions, I thought back on that Berlin trip. The fall of the Berlin Wall planted seeds that opened my eyes to many of these truths. But while I pondered the aspects of these two kingdoms, more questions arose in my mind.
Taking it further as I considered history, I pondered: How has the church justified all the wars throughout the centuries? Countless holy wars, crusades, and endless just causes all seem to be conflicting with the plain truth of God's word: "Love your enemies." I was not comfortable just to let this matter go, so I went on a search to find the arguments for a just war. I started to look at church history to see how the church dealt with all this.
I wanted to see exactly where the just war theory originated, and I was shocked with what I found.