I recently watched the movie 1917. The storyline runs somewhat similar to Saving Private Ryan, to which it has been compared favorably. It’s a different war with different uniforms and different accents, but the setting is the same continent and the dangers are similar. I think it’s a good movie, worth watching at least once. I’m going to describe a particular climactic scene late in the movie, so if you haven’t watched the movie yet, and think you might want to, I would suggest you stop reading this and come back after you’ve had the chance to watch it.
I don’t want to give away all of the story, so those who have seen the movie will notice that I am leaving lots of things out. The scene I want to talk about is when the young British lance corporal (and you will have to forgive me, I know virtually nothing about military rank except that Sergeant Carter was higher in rank than Private Pyle and also that Sergeant Carter was lower in rank than Colonel Hogan) finally arrived at the destination of his mission. He was to deliver a vital message to the commander of the 2nd battalion, a Colonel Mackenzie. Colonel Mackenzie is only on for this one short scene, and as soon as I saw him, I thought, “Is that Benedict Cumberbatch?” and kept staring at him until I assured myself it was. Anyway, Mackenzie was leading the 2nd battalion on an advance against the enemy, and Lance Corporal Schofield’s message was that they should stop the advance and pull back because the Germans had been luring them into this as a trap.
Mackenzie responds to Schofield first by questioning who he was. Schofield didn’t outrank him. What right did he have to even be standing there with them, let alone trying to tell them they were wrong? His second response was that he has tried following the commands from higher-up before, many times, and has never seen any progress. With his plan, they are beginning to see progress, unlike previous attempts where they have got started only to be called back. But finally, he agrees to read the letter sent from the general, and the authority of the message and its sender are enough to force Mackenzie to relent.
So, what is it about this scene that has prompted me to write? Immediately after watching it, the thought occurred to me - that’s how I do, that’s how we all do, when God interrupts our plans. We make our plans, and some of those plans are rotten, tainted by sin, and will lead to disaster for us. So God sends someone to try to talk us out of those plans, and we respond by saying, “Who are you? You can’t judge me!” Maybe that someone is our own conscience that we push away. But God keeps trying. And we tell God, “I’ve tried it Your way, and that doesn’t work.” We look at the progress we’ve made with our plans, and think that is more of an indicator of future success than God’s old, timid plans. And sometimes, we will finally see what God’s Word has to say about it.
So when God pushes back on your plans, how do you respond? Are you really going to tell God that you’re smarter than Him? Instead, see what God has to say about it in His Word. Common sayings like “God wants me to be happy” or “I really feel God is calling me to this” or “Love is love” have no validity at all if they contradict with Scripture. What they become at that point is a means of allowing you to directly disobey God. That is what all sin is - directly disobeying our commander, an act of treason.
