Abandoning the Battle

1 Peter 5:8-9
(... resist him steadfast in the faith...)

For reasons yet enigmatic to historians, Moscow in 1812 was surrendered to the invading French as its inhabitants fled north east to St. Petersburg and all other points north. Then, in a fateful lumbering lurch Napoleon's hoard collapsed wearily onto the vacated couches of Moscow. Like a workman weary from a day's energies the grenadiers fell into a languid pose only a few short months shy of a bitter Russian winter. This repose was their demise.

Tolstoy painstakingly describes the ruin of this adamant force through both essay and narrative in the second half of his timeless work; War and Peace. The following is from one of those essays:

"Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army. But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left. Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors, lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the shops and houses- but there was no army."

And thus continues the trend ultimately decimating the French forces, not as a result of battle, but poignantly in the very absence of a confrontation with the enemy. When the disciplined companies abandoned their purpose, they fell predictably into an individualistic mob demonstrating the true nature of humanism and moral decay. They were never again assembled into any resemblance of their former glory.

As a follower of Jesus Christ we face the same peril. How many times have I grieved for the spiritual ruin of a friend who, once evidently contending for the faith, has in times of ease and repose settled too deeply into perceived peacetime comforts? How many times have I moved from Christian soldier to marauder? Though at moments the cannon fire dies down and the enemy recoils, we are fools to forget that the battle exists around us. That is our reality, and our relationship to this created space and time. We exist within a battle. If at any time we acquiesce to the weakness of our flesh and expose an apathetic - or worse, arrogant - flank to our enemy, then an advance against our moral battle lines should not be unexpected.

Photo from here.