In a World Full of Cowards, Be a Caleb

Topic: Perspective

Nearly one year ago to this very day, I attended an event in Bastrop, Texas, with four other prominent figures in the Freedom movement to talk about something other than elections, mandates, or injustice.  The event, in which the five of us shared our testimonies of Christian faith, was the first chance for many people following the ongoing cultural battle on social media to see any of us in a different light in an in-person setting.  Venkat Varada, an immigrant from India who spurned Hinduism to turn to Christianity decades ago, hosted and moderated the event.

Testimonies, if shared sincerely, are hard to give and can vary in heaviness based on previous traumatic experiences or upbringing.  They reveal great brokenness and past sinfulness, and obviously, since it is a testimony, recognition of those things and a contrast to attitude, beliefs, and actions adhered to in the present.

I have told my story of faith many times in small, personal settings.  I was the first person in my family to become a born-again Christian, and I gave my life to Christ at the age of 17, just after 9/11 and at a time when the fear of death gripped my very soul.  I had never given my testimony as a “public figure” to people who might find it empowering to have dirt to spread and trash to talk.

As usual, I didn’t rehearse much.  I put a framework and some slides together and wound up delivering something even I didn’t expect.  The words resonated with the crowd, helped them understand what it was in my spirit that drives me, and even drove some of the audience to reflect on their own life experiences and need to change direction in life.  My testimony acknowledged my deep affirmation and confidence wounds from youth, my own sin which has caused me and others great harm, and most importantly, the Savior who delivers from those pits of despair.

My talk focused on the topic of “A Different Spirit,” and throughout it, I reflected on the story of the Old Testament warrior, Caleb.  Caleb and Joshua were two of the spies who were sent out to explore the “Promised Land” on a reconnaissance mission.  The other ten spies came back and reported to Moses that the land was filled with abundance, but also giants.  Big and scary, much bigger than they were, and certainly not conquerable – at least according to those who didn’t trust God’s plan.  They made excuses and defended their cowardice and desire to remain passive in hopes that someone else would save the day and drive out the giants.

But not Caleb:

But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”

Numbers 13:30 (ESV)

Simply put, Caleb was a badass.  Scripture attests to this in many other places.

·      Caleb is recorded as having a “different spirit” and is commended for it (Numbers 14:24).

·      Caleb’s willingness to charge into the Promised Land showed his confidence in and reliance upon God (Numbers 13:30).

·      Caleb was indefatigable and driven, and at 85 years old asserted to the multitude of Israel that he was just as strong then as he was when Moses sent him to spy out the land.  He recognized no boundaries to his strength and to what God could do with him if his heart was willing (Joshua 14:6-14).

·      Caleb followed through on his boasting and drove out inhabitants of the land while many others sat by idly, paralyzed with fear (Judges 1:20).

I made the point in my testimony that Caleb’s “different spirit” appears to reflect the Holy Spirit of Christ.  As such, that “spirit” mandates courageous action.  When the spies brought the bad report of the land and broke faith with God, who swore to defeat their enemies and lead them into that land, the hearts of the people melted with fear, causing a rebellion against Moses (Numbers 14:1-4).  God judged the people for their unfaithfulness and sent them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, sparing only Joshua and Caleb as the others died off.

How does that relate to our plight today?  Are you one of those armchair warriors who sits back, talking about how powerful the government and its bureaucracy is, while failing to compare it to the power and just nature of God?  I have always been personally touched when reflecting on the tiny shepherd defeating the giant champion of the Philistines, Goliath.  Had David focused on comparing himself to the giant, thought to be perhaps more than nine feet tall and plated in heavy armor, while armed with the most fearsome weaponry of that time, he would have been easily defeated.  Instead, he compared Goliath to God:

“You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.  This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head…For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand.”

I Samuel 17:46-47

On both occasions, the heroes Caleb and David turned the tables on fear.  Scripture states in Numbers 14:1-4 and I Samuel 17:24 that the men of Israel were terrified, by the bad report regarding the Promised Land in the former and the presence of the giant in the latter.  It took heroes to reverse this decline, and that came at great risk and trepidation to the ones that stepped up.  But what happened?

Caleb and Joshua were rewarded for their faithfulness, and the lesson of cowardice was passed on to the generation that did enter the Promised Land so they did not repeat the failure of 40 years prior.  Israel went on to route the Philistines after David felled the giant, and onto a period of incredible prosperity brought about by God under David’s leadership.  David emerged as the chief ancestor in the line of Christ himself, all because of his act of courage and obedience to God, and his continued reliance on Him.

We will not get anywhere if people choose passivity, complacency, and obedience to fear instead of God.  We will remain buckled into a terminal ride into a tyranny in which the consequences of inaction today will make everyone regret having stayed silent, compliant, or complacent.  I am reminded of the words of U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant (later Sergeant Major) Daniel Daly, who in the 1918 battle of Belleau Wood uttered one of the most timeless battle cries in history:

Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!

The Battle of Belleau Wood was a major American win during the last great German offensive of the Great War, one that cost over 1,800 American lives lost at the hands of German machine guns strewn among seemingly unclimbable hills, boulders, and rocky slopes.  Daly wasn’t admonishing them to preserve their names forever as heroes.  He was asking them if they wanted to merely achieve a certain age so badly as to slink away as losers or cowards in battle, preserving their lives, even if just for a little while.

The risk of death is one of the most beautiful things we have as humans, for it drives us to great accomplishment with its impending urgency and should remind us of the temporary nature of our mission here on Earth.

One of the greatest movie scenes ever commemorates the Battle of Falkirk, fought in 1298.  In Braveheart, William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson) encourages the Scottish soldiers by responding to one who proposed everyone run to preserve their own lives:

Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live, at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom?!

Historians debate the accuracy of much of Braveheart’s story line, but the main point rings true – not living is dying, and safeguarding “life” at the expense of freedom collectively brings about the death of a nation and its people.  Death takes many forms these days – tolerating toxic work environments to bank a few extra dollars in the company 401k, grinding out a couple more deployments to make that magic pension mile marker, remaining stuck in a fruitless pattern of life instead of pursing a dream and calling, along with more obvious examples like tolerating illegal medical mandates, economic shutdowns, drag queen story hour, elimination of American jobs, and the theft of our elections because you don’t want to piss off co-workers, Facebook friends, family members, or, worst of all, the political bureaucracy and its mainstream media allies.

That is not life.  It is death.  Accepting the decline of the freest nation in the history of the world without investing your full might into pushing back, while hoping you can ride out your own personal clock with enough rapidly devaluing money saved up, exhausting the twilight years of life trying merely to not die, constitutes moral bankruptcy and the definitive loss of all we as Americans hold dear.  To abandon hope of turning the tide on corruption in this country sentences coming generations to a future as subjects.  Americans do not exist to be subjects.

Many things about this movement exhaust me.  I am sickened by the lack of discretion shown with constant infighting plaguing efforts to reform elections or dividing the movement over personal disputes.  Most officers in a military unit don’t like one another but manage to keep it together for the sake of the mission.  There isn’t enough time in a combat environment to worry about who has different religious views, or who operates a side business that allows that person to make more money than the others, or who talked trash about your previous unit.  There are the men, and then the mission.  As time marches on, I meet more and more people who have been effectively silenced or cancelled at work, have had their businesses targeted by the left, or who have been otherwise forced to roll over and die or commit to this cause wholeheartedly, for there is truly nowhere else to go if we fail to preserve our liberties.

It takes no guile, special skill, or devotion to co-exist and go along to get along, to keep your mouth shut so you don’t offend someone with trust (what would Jesus do?), hope for the next pay raise that barely keeps up with inflation, and passively accept the death of a nation while donning an overplayed “I Voted” sticker every other year.  Likewise, it took no special conviction to be one of the ten spies who led an entire people astray and away from their destiny to take over the Promised Land, or to be among the armies of Saul, without a single man willing to challenge a giant who appeared day in and day out for 40 days looking for a fight.

It did take a Caleb, and it did take a David, to deliver the people from their plight.  They did not do the same things as others, and they were thought of as crazy by their peers.  After all, those giants are way too big to battle.  The giants of fear and failure are on the horizon today, and still many do not aspire to the challenge, forgetting that God cannot be pleased without faith (Heb. 11:6), that faith without works is dead (James 2:26), and that God battles for us when we do his will (I Sam 17:46-47, Josh. 1:9).

I get down all the time.  I don’t broadcast that and shouldn’t.  But when things are slow, and infighting appears everywhere, and setbacks like the 2022 midterms happen, I am as human as everyone else.  I count the cost to my own life, the abandonment of my successful career, personal setbacks, my increasingly high blood pressure I never had until recently, the sleepless nights, the hit pieces, and the valid questions about my future, and sometimes they make me second guess my path.

Then I remember this:

…Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew 7:13-14 (Berean Standard)

There you have it – everyone doing something doesn’t mean that is what should be done.  Everyone being quiet in the face of injustice or tyranny – are they on the broad or narrow path?  In fact, the few find the way to life, whether in an eternal or temporal context.  The few have made history and defied odds stacked against them.  My Dad would say, “nothing worth accomplishing in life should be done half-assed.”  Others would say, “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

I have embarked on a path I will remain on until pulled away, however long that may take, and wherever it may lead.  I consider myself called on a mission, my circumstances and connections too rare to have all been on accident.  To abdicate that mission would be to lay aside what I believe to be a calling on my life and pursue personal comfort, to aid in ushering in a world my children, their children, and infinite generations will suffer under.  That I will not do.  Those in my life are along for this journey, and anyone in the future must also be all-in.

My name, Seth, means appointed.  Your given name has meaning as well, and I hope that in this article, you find a purpose to find your fire, ignite your calling, and commit yourself to becoming a Caleb, no matter the risk.

Author’s Note: I strive to motivate you to great courage and action. This article will always be open to all my journal subscribers, but if you’re able, your paid membership is essential for keeping me independent and mission-focused. Thank you.