What's Our Job?

When I was in the Navy I spent my last couple of years training sailors in various areas like maintenance, alcohol awareness, and integrity.  One of the questions I used to ask the men and women in uniform was, “What do we do?”  I’d get lots of answers depending upon who I was training, like “We maintain ships,” “We support the fleet” or “We make steam to propel the boat.”  “Simpler than that,” I’d say.  “What is it that we do at our very core?”

After letting them think about it for a minute, I’d let them off the hook and say, “Guys, in the military our job is very simple: we kill the bad guys and blow up their stuff.  And when we’re not killing the bad guys and blowing up their stuff, we’re training to kill bad guys and blow up their stuff and threatening to kill bad guys and blow up their stuff.”

Before we could fulfill our mission, though, we needed to know who the bad guys were! Picking out the bad guys is one of the biggest challenges anyone in the military faces.  To be able to do our jobs as soldiers in Christ’s army we need to know who our enemy is as well. 

Source: John Correia, 07.08.05 2 Timothy 3:1-9 A Crafty Enemy