Staff Sgt. Ty Michael Carter is the most recent recipient of the hallowed Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award the military can bestow on a soldier. He earned it amidst a terrible day of battle in the baking heat of Afghanistan when an enemy ambush forced him to head into a hail of shrapnel and drag his fallen soldiers to safety. Earlier in the week Carter sat down with NPR’s Renee Montagne to talk about his experience. In a particularly vulnerable moment Montagne asked Carter the following question:
MONTAGNE: “You have every right to feel pride in your actions of the day that has earned you the Medal of Honor. I'm just wondering - it being such a public award, if there are also a mixture of emotions that you're feeling?”
CARTER: “Oh, big time. Even though this award is an awesome honor and a great privilege, in order to get such a prestigious award, you have to be in a situation where your soldiers - or your family, your brothers - are suffering and dying around you, and then you just did everything you could to either save lives or prevent further loss. And so I would never tell any soldier or service member, hey, go out and get the Medal of Honor because of the amount of pain and loss and tears that - has to be shed in order to receive it.”
As the words spilled out of my car speakers I found myself connecting to Carter’s reflection in deeply personal ways. This is the story of my life. I long for glory without cost, freedom without suffering, and joy without pain. It brought to mind the heroes of the faith whose lives have been held before us as examples of true discipleship. Missionaries like Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Bruce Olson, Gladys Aylward, Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor, Brother Andrew or David Livingstone. Saints of the past like Perpetua, Felicity, or Polycarp. Reformers like Wycliffe, Huff, and Tyndale along with more modern heroes like Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mother Teresa. Their lives beg the same question, “would I be willing to endure what they did to achieve for the Kingdom all the fruit that their lives produced?” Do I really want the honor?
I want their story, but without many of chapters the Author has used to write it.
And I am deeply concerned that this is all too often the story of the Church here in the West, holding out the promise of abundant life, the promise of blessing…free of charge. “Cheap grace” as Bonhoeffer would say. In contrast to this Dietrich reminds us that the grace offered to us is quite expensive, having purchased us life in return for the death of an innocent man. It is “costly because it cost God the life of his son…and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.” (The Cost of Discipleship, p. 48)
Carter’s reflection on the high cost of the medal pointed me back to this great truth for us all that if we desire to conform to the image of Christ, if we long for the honor of bearing his name before the watching world, and if we anticipate the privileged of living in his Kingdom, there is going to be a great deal of dying, suffering, sacrifice and (most likely for me) great humiliation and failure, before any sort remotely recognizable image bearing comes into view.
Of course, Ty Carter could have easily avoided the consequences of war. He could have escaped the PTSD that plagues him now and all of the sleepless nights and haunting nightmares associated with it. He could be free today from anxiety attacks and moments of panic, confusion and incoherence. He could have avoided the suffering and the ultimate cost of his honor by never enlisting in the first place. He could have been at home last week watching someone else receive the military's highest honor. He would have been safe...but the men he rescued during that infamous day in Afghanistan would not.
Perhaps Jesus was on to something of deep significance when he declared "whoever loses his life, will find it." Or as the famous missionary and martyr Jim Elliot once wrote, "he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot loose." Or, as Apostle Paul reminds us most bluntly, "You are not your own, you were bought at a price." The price was not cheap. Your commitment to the purposes for which you were purchased shouldn't be either, regardless of the cost.
