A Lesson From a Prisoner
“Nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.”
This was the stirring lesson John McCain shared during his speech at the Republican convention in September. Perhaps every American whose ears weren’t clogged with cynicism was moved by his account of how that lesson was etched in his mind during his ordeal as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Though he was in bad shape, McCain refused his captors’ offer of release in order to deny them a propaganda tool. “I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it,” he said. “But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me. When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners.”
It was within the crucible of that trial—being reduced to a broken shell of a man—that something extraordinary happened. This man came to see the poverty of his own cockiness and, as he put it, “selfish independence.” As his POW buddies encouraged him and helped him endure, he recognized his place in the bigger picture.
“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s,” he said. “I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea—a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.”
In an age saturated by that “selfish independence,” such words are deeply refreshing. They echo the sacrifice, the commitment to duty, the loyalty, the unsoiled patriotism that we admire and want earnestly to share in.
The Bible prophesies that the years ahead are going to be excruciatingly difficult for the country McCain fought for. However, he believes, and he has convinced countless followers, that if only he becomes president, he can circumnavigate the challenges ahead.
“Today, the prospect of a better world remains within our reach,” he said in that same speech. “We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I’m not afraid of them. I’m prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. … I know how to secure the peace.”
No, he does not. That is the lamentable truth. As the Prophet Isaiah wrote, “The way of peace they know not.”
In a very real sense, the unfounded optimism that inspires so many to hope that this election will take the country in a better direction is closely akin to the cockiness and “selfish independence” of that naval aviator in the early days of his imprisonment at Hanoi.
But the horrors of that imprisonment broke him as a man. It was that trial that, at the time, unshackled him from the prison of his own arrogance. It was that pain and shame that ultimately exposed him to the free, refreshing air of a greater perspective. It was then that he could at last recognize the nobility of something far greater than self—in this case, the idea of a nation with a government that offered dignity to its citizens, a civilized government, one that stood for freedom, one that served its people rather than subjugating them. The pain of the trial inspired a love for the greater cause. The loss of self meant the gain of purpose.
This is exactly the sort of crucible that America is about to experience. “Great tribulation,” Jesus called it, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” And it will break this nation.
But then, in that broken state, will come a moral awakening. “In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God” (Jeremiah 50:4). Like Job in trial, America and the other nations descended from ancient Israel will at last come to see God. They will, in fact, come to love Him.
At that time, all men and women will serve the great God—and in so doing, come to know their greatest happiness.
For nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.
