LOSING TO WIN

Just a quick note before I go to "work" (I just have to let this out)!

This morning, following my quiet time in the book of Romans chapter 10- for which I see three different facets to one reality it poses- I went and took a brief visit to a rather unique part of World War 2 history-- actually, post World War 2.

Twenty-year-old Hiroo was called up to join the army. At the time, he was far from home working at a branch of a trading company in Wuhan, China. After passing his physical, Hiroo quit his job and returned to his home in Wakayama, Japan to join the Japanese army.

In the Japanese army, Hiroo was trained as an officer and was then chosen to be trained at an Imperial Army intelligence school. Hiroo was taught how to gather intelligence and how to conduct guerrilla warfare.

In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang, Mindoro. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended two years after he was sent; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.

The first facet-- Like Hiroo Onoda, a lot of people go through life believing the war goes on. He was never officially told that the war has ended. There are millions who have not heard of Christ's victory at the cross and so they live daily in fear and in the deep recesses of sin simply because they haven't been officially told that the war is over.

The second facet-- there are people who are supposed to officially tell about the story of victory but fail to do so. That's why Paul posed a challenge in verses 14 & 15- "How can they believe in someone they have not heard of, how can they hear unless someone tells them, how can they tell unless they are sent? It is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things." The idea behind the person with beautiful feet who brings the good news of good things is an ancient war "hero" who runs back into the city to proclaim among his fellow countrymen that the war is won. That is our role as Christians. We tell others that the war is over and we have won!

The last facet which isn't so explicit in the passage-- there are those who have learned that the war is over, and yet, they go to some Japanese straggler like Hiroo Onoda and surrender to a loser.

March 19 marks the final "surrender" of Hiroo Onoda. His surrender is an acceptance that Japan had lost the fight. And yet, his surrender gained him greater freedom.

In losing our lives in God, we don’t lose at all. We gain our true selves. Individually we become the person God sees and formed, no longer enslaved as the person we publicly project. Losing our lives in God frees us to shed pretense, to cast-off falsehood, to abandon bigotry rooted in our insecurity, and to break cycles of being and relating that no longer make sense. To the degree we succeed, losing our lesser selves enlarges our humanity. Do you see? Losing our lives in God is really gaining what God wanted for us in the first place – an authentic self.

The real challenge in all of this is learning to live authentically. It doesn’t seem to come easily. Since we’ve been so busy living another life instead of the one we were given to live, we have to learn anew how to make our way in the world, in our relationships, in our work, and in our faith.