Troop Carrier or Luxury Liner ~RADICAL

The language of Matthew 10 envisions Jesus as a military commander sending soldiers out on a mission. He summoned His disciples and then sent them out. In light of the needs before them and the danger around them, the disciples knew they were entering into battle. In the late 1940's, the US government commissioned William Francis Gibbs to work with United States Lines to construct an 80 million dollar carrier for the navy. The purpose was to construct a ship that could speedily carry fifteen thousand troops during times of war. By 1952 the SS United States was complete, the fastest and most reliable troop carrier in the world. The only catch is, the ship was put on standby once during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but otherwise she was never used in all her capacity by the U.S. Navy. Instead the SS United States became a luxury liner for presidents, heads of state, and a variety of other celebrities who traveled on her during her seventeen years of service. Things look radically different on a luxury liner than they do on a troop carrier. The faces of soldiers preparing for battle and those of patrons enjoying their bonbons are radically different. The pace at which the troop carrier moves is by necessity much faster than that of the luxury liner. After all, the troop carrier has an urgent task to accomplish; the luxury liner, on the other hand, is free to enjoy the trip. The church, like the SS United States has been designed for battle. The purpose of the church is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission. Yet we seem to have turned the church as troop carrier into the church as luxury liner. We seem to have organized ourselves, not to engage in battle for souls of peoples around the world, but to indulge ourselves in the peaceful comforts of the world. This makes me wonder what would happen if we looked squarely in the face of a world with 4.5 billion people going to hell and twenty six thousand children dying of starvation and preventable diseases each day, and we decided it was time to move this ship into battle instead of sitting back on the pool deck waiting for staff to serve us. Are we willing to obey the orders of Christ? Are we willing to be like Him? Are we willing to risk our lives to go to great need and to great danger-whether it's in the inner cities around us, the difficult neighbor across the street, the disease-ridden communities in Africa, or the hostile regions in the Middle East? Are we willing to fundamentally alter our understanding of Christianity from a luxury liner approach that seeks more comforts in the world to a troop carrier approach that forsakes comforts in the world to accomplish an eternally significant task and achieve an eternally satisfying reward? David Platt, Radical, (Multnomah Books, 2010) 169-171.