More Than Entertained

“Jesus said, 'A new commandment I give unto you; that you love one another just as I have loved you'” (John 13:34). The way Jesus has loved us is the way of the cross. Through the suffering He endured, He won our salvation and definitively made suffering redemptive. Now, we can participate in the salvation of souls when we unite our suffering to Christ’s and “offer it” in conjunction with His. During the season of Lent, we are asked to pray and fast, indeed to suffer, in a special way to prepare for Easter and to “fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24).
 
Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, one of the better films released in the last decade, offers a beautiful image of how we can embrace redemptive suffering and the fruit it can bear. Set during World War II and based on a true story, Hacksaw Ridge follows Desmond Doss (played by Andrew Garfield) as he becomes the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for courage under fire. However, as he says in the film, he likes to think of himself as more of a conscientious cooperator.
 
As a deeply convicted Seventh-Day Adventist, Desmond takes the Sixth Commandment of the Lord, "Thou shalt not kill," very seriously; so seriously, in fact, that he refuses to carry a weapon even on the front lines of Okinawa, Japan. But to the front lines he wishes to go, for he thinks it not right for other men to fight and die while he stays at home. Even still, his position does not sit well with his fellow draftsmen nor with his commanding officers. They think him soft, cowardly, and extremist in his religious beliefs. While at boot camp, both his peers and superiors abuse him physically and emotionally, but he endures it with meekness and humility of heart.
 
The last attempt by his superiors to break him is to court-martial him for refusing a direct order to demonstrate his ability to use a rifle (which he is not required to carry), an order they know he will not follow. In a moving speech given at his trial, Desmond offers a beautiful vision for his participation in the war:
 
“I need to serve. I got the energy and the passion to serve as a medic right in the middle with the other guys. No less danger, just while everybody else is taking life, I’m gonna be saving it. With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it don't seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit of it back together.”
 
Although these are powerful words, it takes some additional intervention from his father’s connections as a World War I veteran to have the court-martial withdrawn and to allow Desmond to go to Okinawa. He and the rest of the 77th Infantry Division are meant to take Hacksaw Ridge from the Japanese. In classic Mel Gibson fashion, there is a gruesome display of blood, death, and heroism wrapped up in the chaos of war. In the first day of fighting, Desmond immediately proves he is no coward, but it is in his efforts the following day that we really witness the kind of love with which Christ loves us.
 
It seems obvious to me that it is nothing less than supernatural grace that allows Desmond to do what he does atop Hacksaw Ridge. Indeed, his actions are driven by the marriage of his love for God with his love for neighbor. Over the course of about 12 hours, he manages to save 75 wounded men from dying, searching for his fallen comrades either in the midst of heavy artillery or lurking Japanese soldiers. In addition, securing the safety of each man entails lowering that man down a 30-foot ridge before being able to search for the next.
 
Naturally, there comes a point in this cycle of search and rescue where he is fatigued and clearly in quite a bit of pain, and here he begins to ask the Lord for just one more. Each time he saves another, he asks the Lord again for one more. At one point, he comes across a man whose eyes have been covered with blood, causing the man to think he has gone blind. Desmond pours water from his canteen over the man’s eyes, and he is able to see again. It’s a fairly insignificant scene relative to the whole story, but I highlight it because so does the real Desmond Doss.
 
In a clip from a 2003 interview with the then 84-year-old Doss, he recounts the experience eventually re-presented in the movie. He says that when the blood washed away from the man’s eyes, “he just lit up… And if I hadn’t gotten anything more out of the war than that smile he gave me, I’d have been well repaid.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed” (1765). In the case of Desmond Doss, the good he desired to possess was the saving of human life, and it was indeed a good he came to possess, 75 times over, as a fruit of suffering borne with love.
 
In Desmond’s story, the truth of redemptive suffering is revealed. Through the passion and death of Jesus Christ, the suffering He endured and the love with which He endured it became the way of salvation for all the world. If we wish to join Him in His resurrection, we must join Him in His suffering, just as He came to join us in ours. He did not do this to condemn us nor to leave us alone with the consequences of sin. He did it to meet us face to face in the midst of those consequences. “For the sake of the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2), and it is to be face to face with you that is His joy, just as it was for Desmond to see the smile on that man’s face. Let us all then endure the sufferings of this present age in union with Christ so that we may obtain our salvation and that of others and be face to face with Him forever in the Kingdom of Heaven.
 
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Brennan Garriques serves as Campus Minister for Men’s Ministries at Christ the King on the campus of LSU. He resides in Baton Rouge with his wife, Teresa.