How Did You Get In?

It may have begun with an innocent inquiry over the wall, but the master story teller John Bunyan understood quite well the surreptitious deviance of the devil who goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. (I Peter 5:8) What a paradox that our greatest adversary can be, at the same time, both a devious adversary and a roaring lion—as the smiling wolf so coyly reminded Little Red Riding Hood about his big teeth—“They are the better to eat you with, my dear!”

How often are we fooled by the strength of our fortifications and our underestimation of the hatred of our enemy. Certainly there should have been no argument in Mansoul that Shaddai was much more powerful than Diabolus. Power wasn’t the question. If Mansoul could have correctly assessed the caustic hatred of Diabolus for their true King, then they could have better realized the raving vengeance he would attempt to exact on all who belong to the King. The aim of Diabolus was to violate Shaddai. The price was the violation of Mansoul.

Even the ancient, pagan writer Virgil understood the miscalculation of self-confidence and the blinding rage of jealous vengeance. Virgil also understood that preservation from the enemy comes only by obedience to the Commander. The war-weary Aeneas of Virgil’s Aeneid well understood that in his absence, his forces were best protected within the walls. To venture outside without his leadership would mean certain destruction by the raging Turnus and his army.

But as is the way with foolish men, two guards underestimated their enemy in their joyful contemplation of a plan of their own. Why should they stand there and do nothing while the enemy slung taunts against them? We often cheer heartily for the underdog; and certainly these besieged Trojans were the underdogs. These ragged left-overs from a decade-old war had left their ravaged Troy under divine guidance of the Fates to begin a new city. The current residents were not obliging to these arrivals nor convinced of their fated settlement in Latin land. So when the taunt from a swashbuckling Latin rang out—“What, not ashamed to be besieged again, pinned by a rampart, walling yourselves away from death? You Phrygians [Trojans] twice-conquered!”[1]—the Trojans couldn’t just stand. They weren’t cowardly wimps.

But Aeneas wasn’t there. In an emergency, his instructions had been to remain safe within the walls and hold the camp and “not to do battle, not to entrust their fortunes to the field.”[2] How could he have known when he left that the times would so drastically change? The enemy was bombarding the wall. They were slinging accusations that the valiant Trojans were wimps who wouldn’t fight. A new day called for a new plan of action. Isn’t waiting an action? Isn’t holding an action? Isn’t obeying an action?

My, my! Why is it no surprise that this new plan was hatched by two gate-guards—the least qualified to do so? Toggling back to Bunyan’s Mansoul—at least it was the town’s leaders who made the decision to open the gate. Although the taunting of Diabolus was a bit smoother—“If you allow yourselves to refuse such good counsel, then you are not the men I thought you were.”[3]—taunting it was, luring the foolish listeners into the very action they should have spurned.

So it is that Virgil tells us that two guards whose obligation was to secure the safety of the camp, spurred by the action of the battle and the taunts of the enemy, found it necessary to disobey orders. What these men failed to understand was that their commander understood the bigger picture. He was competent to protect his men against the viciousness of his enemy. He, not his men, had been issued the divine mandate to leave his beloved homeland to subdue an enemy in a foreign land and build a city that would rule the world. He knew his men would be required to fight, but he also knew they would need reinforcements to be “a very present help in the time of trouble.” (Psalm 46:1; John 14:16)

But his men couldn’t endure. They had lost their Troy and then their ships; now they were falsely accused. After all of this, they just couldn’t bear the taunts of the enemy. But what were they thinking? Aeneas had suffered the loss of all as well. He, too, had been naked and hungry without a place of safety. Their valiant leader had come to this shore in peace and had been met with hostility. Yet, these two offended brothers, “relying on their arms alone, unbarred the gate their captain had assigned them, daring the enemy to come in.”[4] Their overweening confidence planted them on each side of the far-flung gate, “mailed in steel, their heads adorned with high and windy crests.” What will be the price of such an unwise decision?

So it was also that such impetuous pride flung open the gate of Mansoul to the insidious wheedling of their sugar-lipped enemy. They had ears only for his pompous ridicule that their King had refused their rights. Why had their princely privileges been kept from them? What other injustice had they been made to suffer? Mansoul wasn’t able to endure one simple speech of mouthy mockery. The foolish town had no notion of the cost for their one defiance.

But Virgil tells us that a messenger, “blooded with fresh kills,” apprised Turnus that the Trojans were “offering combat at an open gate.” Turnus, “in a towering rage” dropped what he was doing to rush the gate and “the insolent brothers.” Such is the recorded legacy for these brothers grim and bloodied with a combat of their own concoction. Turnus charged brother Bitias with a pike, a “great beam given a spin”; and poor Bitias’s trusty armor failed its test nor was “his shield’s two bulls’ hides…proof against it.”

As is so often the case, the first blunder births a second more gross than the first. Brother Pandarus, “seeing his brother in the dust,” heaved closed the gate so naively opened. Now haste compounded by haste, he left his own men outside the gate engaged “in desperate combat” while swallowing to the inside enemy combatants. What could be worse? Oh, Virgil tells us the “demented man” did not see the raging Turnus push in among the enemy wave making every Trojan a possible victim. What a silly question at such a desperate time: “How did you get in?” But Virgil answered: “By his free act, he shut the prince inside the town, a tiger mingling with cowed cattle.”[5] Spurred by his own rage, with no time for coherent thought, Pandarus faced the tiger to join his brother mauled in the dust.

Perhaps the opening of Mansoul’s gates was of a different flavor. But the fact remains that the silly town had so cordially opened their gate to the enemy but had so pompously shut it to their Protector. Turnus would eventually be driven from the Trojan camp but not without the divine help of the Tiber. Diabolus would be driven out of Mansoul; but that, too, would require divine combat. The Trojan camp had suffered casualties and death in that most unnecessary slaughter. Mansoul suffered under the heavy hand of the evil liar, and a remnant of his liegemen would remain to skulk in the walls.

Eventually, Aeneas would conquer his enemies and lay the foundation of the city that would rule the world. The Prince Emmanuel has triumphed and will return to remove Mansoul to the city He has prepared. “I will carry the stones, the timber and the walls, the dust and all the people of this town into My country, the kingdom of My Father. I will set up a town there in such strength and glory as has never been seen in this Universe.”[6]

The lesson? Failing to endure always winds us up with raging Turnus inside the walls and the inevitable, ridiculous inquiry: “How did you get in?” The simple antidote is obedience. It is not for us to draw up the battle plan. It is not for us to improvise in emergencies. It is not for us trust in our own armor.

The Commander will return. While the enemy lobs his taunts, remember the Commander will return. Consider Him. He is the One who for the joy to come, endured the contempt of His enemies and the shame of the cross. Consider Him who “endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself…” (Hebrews 12:2-3). He knows well the enemy. Remember His singular command: “…having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore…” (Ephesians 6:13-14)

He is coming back. See the signal? “Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

Teresa Suttles

June 2016