The Way of the Warrior

by Erwin Raphael McManus

  Jesus said there would always be wars and rumors of war.19 History has sadly proven him right. All around us wars wage—nation against nation, tribe against tribe, people against people, brother against brother. Human history is like a fire out of control. It seems that violence will always rage and that peace will always elude us. Yet Jesus was equally convinced that he knew the way to peace and that peace would in the end stand as victory.

  For wars to end, there would have to be the end of violence.

  For violence to cease, there would have to be the end of hatred and greed.

  For hatred and greed to breathe their final breaths, forgiveness and generosity would have to take their places.

  Where there is peace, there is no fear. Where there is fear, there is no peace. So then the journey for peace begins within our hearts. This is why we must face our fears, stand in our pain, and walk courageously into the uncertainty and mystery of a better future.

  It may seem like a small thing, but when you get up in the morning and face your fears, you are participating in the redemption of the universe. When you refuse to allow yourself to be paralyzed by the uncertainty of tomorrow and set forth with courage and faith, you become part of creating a new world—a better world.

  The peace that your soul longs for is the very peace the world needs. I cannot speak of peace and not speak of Jesus, for it is Jesus alone who leads us to the way of peace. The way of Jesus is the way of the warrior. It is Jesus who is the warrior of peace. There are not different kinds of peace, just different contexts where peace can be realized. When you have won the battle for inner peace, you now carry within you what the world desperately needs. It is only when you have inner peace that you can bring peace to a world at war with itself. The warrior fights for peace.

  CODE 2

  The Warrior Seeks to Become Invisible

  The warrior does not need to be seen. They are most powerful when they are invisible. It is impossible to defeat an enemy you cannot see or disarm a warrior whose weapon never seems to strike. The warrior knows that lesser opponents depend on swords and bows and arrows, but the weapon of the warrior is their wisdom.

  Wisdom is hard to define but easy to identify. It cannot be purchased or easily gained. You may overpower an enemy and yet still die a fool. While there are many expressions of wisdom, for our purposes it will be defined as the ability to bring peace. When the warrior is wise, they fight only for peace. The proof of their victory is that they have created a world where what is good and beautiful and true prevails. The fool is the enemy of wisdom. The fool is driven by greed and power and violence. The fool uses their weapons to harm, injure, and destroy. The warrior wields a weapon only to defend, protect, and liberate.

  The warrior does not wield a weapon; they are a weapon. Their strength does not come from the weapons they hold but from the wisdom that has taken hold of them. The novice believes that their power lies in being seen; the warrior understands they are most powerful when they are unseen. The way of the warrior is not a path toward war but a path toward wisdom. The warrior knows they have not learned everything but that they know everything they need to learn.

  Wisdom is the warrior’s greatest weapon. When you have wisdom, you are never unarmed, you are never defenseless, and you are never powerless. You need skill to know how to shoot an arrow straight, but only wisdom can teach you how to never need to shoot it. Wisdom is not the result of having learned enough; it comes when you know there is never enough learning.

  Wisdom is less like a deep ocean and more like the force of a river. The power of the river is in its ability to adapt to its environment, change its course when necessary, and yet always find its way toward its destiny. The river reminds us that it is not always the straight path that leads us to where we must go. The meandering of a river might cause you to think that it has lost its intention, yet the river, as wide as it may bend and as often as it may change its course, always moves forward toward its intended destination.

  The warrior is like a river, with fluid and adaptive moves. The warrior is not rigid or unchanging. The warrior is not like a stone that cannot be broken but like water that even when cut in two cannot be divided. It is not a weapon that makes you a warrior—it is your wisdom.

  Stealth Mode

  My grandfather was a man who could be described as both a person of small stature and a man of great weight. I imagine this is the way they described Napoleon. He was one of those unusual people who, though he never grew taller than five foot five, had a presence that filled the room whenever he entered. It’s hard to explain presence but easy to identify it. There are some people who seem to do nothing to garner our attention and yet the room tilts in their direction whenever they enter.

  A man by the name of Hermanindo de Cardona was accustomed to carrying the weight of power and influence. In a nation where the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, he defied the odds and rose above the status of his birth, using his intellectual prowess to become a high-level government official in the nation of El Salvador. I will be forever indebted to him for shaping who I am. He taught me how to play chess when I was three years old, pulled out maps and explained to me continental drift when I was five, and taught me about global economics before I was ten.

  One of the curious things about my grandfather was the way he would both stand and move when he was in a room. I remember he once told me never to lean against a wall because it was a sign of weakness but to always stand straight. I also remember when he was nearing a hundred years old how he refused to let me help him up and down stairs, insisting that he must do it for himself.

  One of the funny things about my grandfather is that he always found it entertaining to move so silently that no one would realize he had entered the room. He loved being able to walk into a room, seemingly invisible to everyone who was there, and just stand there in his silence until someone realized he had been there all along. My grandfather taught me the power of being invisible, of not drawing too much attention to oneself, of conserving movement and cutting through sound.

  The warrior understands that their greatest power is in what is not seen. Long before the warrior is seen or heard, they must be felt. The greatest of warriors wins battles without their opponent ever even knowing a war has been waged. Although others may see your skill with a bow or your expertise with a sword, you must never forget that your greatest weapon is wisdom.

  Years ago I endeavored to describe the essence of wisdom in my book Uprising:

  An essential component of wisdom is the ability to get to the core. Wisdom always finds a way through the mess we make of life. It doesn’t find the easiest way, but the way marked by the footprints of God. Wisdom knows that ancient paths will lead us into a divine future. Wisdom is the product of a sacred imagination. Wisdom knows the way to freedom. Where there is wisdom, there is always hope. Wisdom simplifies. Wisdom clarifies. Wisdom untangles. Wisdom unshackles. Wisdom illuminates. Wisdom liberates. In the end wisdom enlightens us to live lives of nobility.20

  This is the highest expression of wisdom—to live our lives for others rather than ourselves. The fool lives to consume all they can take from the world. The wise live to create a better world. The way of the warrior is to choose the path of nobility. The warrior also understands that wisdom is gained not in a moment but in an endless number of moments in which choices must be made. The path toward wisdom is not taken by steps but by choices. When you choose to take, you choose the path of the fool. When you choose to give, you choose the way of the wise.

  The warrior never fights out of anger; they fight only out of honor. They never fight to conquer; they fight only to liberate. The warrior fights against evil so that good may prevail. Wisdom is revealed by what a person fights for. If you fight for yourself, you have given yourself to too small a thing. The warrior fights against injustice, against poverty, against despair, against depression.
<
br />   The wisdom of the warrior establishes both their enemies and their battles. Only the fool fights battles not worth fighting or even worth winning. Because of their wisdom, the warrior does not engage in battles that should not be fought. And at the same time, they do not shrink back from battles that must be fought. This is the true wisdom of the warrior. The warrior can win the battles where even the strongest have known only defeat. This is why the warrior is never powerless. You can try to take all their earthly weapons, but you cannot take their wisdom. And because the warrior has learned the way of wisdom, they are never powerless.

  Invisible Leadership

  Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, and he once saw wisdom so great that it astonished even him. He wrote in his annals, known as Ecclesiastes,

  I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. So I said, “Wisdom is better than strength.” But the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded. The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.21

  We are not given many details about this unknown man’s life or of the circumstance in which Solomon discovered him. And it is curious that of all the different encounters in Solomon’s life, he found this one to be the most noble expression of wisdom. I would assume he came to know many great kings and queens. He sat at the table and shared meals with the most powerful men and women of his time. He had available the greatest thinkers and the most profound philosophers and the most skilled artisans the world had ever known. Why is it that here Solomon finds wisdom that astonishes him?

  Solomon is described as the wisest man who ever lived. But the one thing he was never able to know was what his wisdom would have looked like without his wealth and power and status. His wisdom would always be seen through the vantage point of his stature. Solomon understood the power of wisdom when combined with wealth and position and power. Here in this moment, he was able to see the power of wisdom stripped of any advantage. Here Solomon saw the power of invisible leadership.

  Scripture tells us, “There once was a small city with only a few people in it,” which means that it was a city very different from Jerusalem. It was not an epicenter of power and influence; it was an obscure city. In fact, it would be better described as a town. And in that city there were only a few people. It was not a hustling metropolis with endless activity and trade, but for some reason a great king decided to conquer it. An ominous, powerful king suddenly surrounded the small city, built a huge siege work around it so no one could enter and no one could leave, and eventually conquered the city and held it captive.

  The details are left out, but the implications are clear. It is unlikely that even this city fell without a fight. This had to be a moment filled with loss and grief, with hopelessness and despair. Those young men who had trained all their lives to protect their city and its citizens had failed in their efforts. Their blood filled the streets. The weeping and wailing of widows and orphans must have created a deafening sound across the city gates. Yet there lived in that city a man who was poor but wise. I am convinced this is what caught Solomon’s eye. Solomon had never known what it meant to be poor. He always had access to every resource he could ever need or desire. But this man had nothing available to him—no wealth, no power, no status, no weapons, no army. Only wisdom was available to him, and he saved his city by his wisdom.

  Can you imagine saving a city with nothing in your hand except the wisdom you’ve gained and stored in your heart? Solomon failed to give us the details of how this was done. Maybe he never knew how. Maybe he was incapable of seeing how it was possible, and he could see only the conditions and the outcome. What seemed to bother Solomon the most was that nobody remembered that poor man, which might explain why he remains unnamed. Solomon probably used all his resources to try to uncover the identity of this one poor wise man who set an entire city free but who was remembered by no one. It’s almost as if he were invisible: no one saw him, no one heard him, but no one could deny what he had done.

  From this, Solomon came to a profound conclusion that he could have never known from his own personal experience: wisdom is better than strength. What Solomon was not doing here is creating a dichotomy between wisdom and strength. Wisdom is not the opposite of strength, nor is wisdom the absence of strength. It might be fair to say that without wisdom, strength becomes a weakness. But what Solomon was discovering is that wisdom has its own power.

  For nearly ten years of my life, I worked in one of the most violent districts in the United States. For years, my daily patterns put me near the world of drug cartels and some of the world’s most violent people, yet never once did I carry a gun, or any weapon, for that matter. I could not possibly begin to count the number of times I would be in the middle of an intense encounter between the police and those suspected of criminal activity. There were numerous times when gang warfare was avoided simply because we chose to stand in between the two parties. All those moments needed in order to explode was one person to lose their cool and pull the trigger.

  In each of those situations, the environment was already unstable, and violence was the norm. It would have been easy to rationalize that I needed to protect myself and carry a weapon too, yet the only reason I am alive and writing these words right now is that all my weapons were unseen. Even in the most volatile circumstances, I was convinced that wisdom could bring peace, even if just for a moment.

  In a much less dramatic environment, I found this principle to be true as a husband and father. To stay married for thirty-five years takes more than love; it takes wisdom. No matter how much you love someone, you will inevitably have conflict and disagreements. Wisdom understands that it is less important to win a fight or a point than it is to win the person. Wisdom knows that you should never fight against people; you should fight for them. What’s the point of winning a fight if you lose the person? When you love someone, the real fight is to keep winning that person.

  This is the way of the warrior—not simply that wisdom is better than strength but that wisdom is our strength. To strike a sword as a fool is only to add to the violence. Wisdom never seeks to wound except to heal. Wisdom never longs for war but for peace.

  You can almost feel the tension that was tearing at Solomon’s soul. He heard about a poor man who set an entire city free by using only wisdom, while he was the son of King David, a man of war. In fact, the very reason Solomon was commissioned to build the temple was that his father had blood on his hands. All Solomon had ever known was a history of violence, but that violence was the very reason Solomon inherited a time of peace.

  We might wonder why God would involve himself in the wars of men, yet the reality is that this is the only history we have. Human history is a history of war. God intervenes in a broken world and steps into our violence, knowing only he can bring us peace.

  As Solomon looked more carefully at the aftereffect of the poor man’s life, he realized that not only was the man forgotten but that after he secured his city’s freedom, the people despised his wisdom and no longer wished to hear what he had to say. Solomon saw from this moment that wisdom is better than the weapons of war, though it was equally clear to him that wisdom brings no promise of fame, recognition, or even respect. The most dangerous thing in the world is to put weapons in the hands of fools, and the most powerful force in the world is the wisdom that makes us drop our weapons.

  It is the quiet words of the wise that are more powerful than the shouting of a ruler of fools. We have come to confuse the ability to make noise with the power of having a voice. The fool feels powerful beca
use they have a weapon in their hand; the warrior knows they are powerful when their hands are empty.

  Though the way of the warrior is a way of peace, you will have many battles to fight. Each battle will require different skills and weaponry. The one weapon you must always take with you is wisdom. It is the one resource that is endless and without limit. If you take wisdom with you, you will always have everything you need. In that sense the wise are never impoverished. One of the perplexing things about wealth is that if you take on a big enough challenge, you will be overwhelmed by your sense of poverty. When you pursue a great mission, you will inevitably feel that you don’t have enough resources for the task.

  Wealth cannot secure your victory, and poverty cannot prevent it. There is no more powerful situation than to be poor with nothing but wisdom as you engage to save your city. A rich fool is not more powerful than a poor sage. Never let your lack of resources justify your lack of ambition. Never allow the measure of your wealth to be the measure of your life. Solomon was a man with both great wealth and great wisdom, but now he could see clearly that only great wisdom ensures the best future.

  There was a time in our lives when Kim and I slept on the floor because we could not afford a bed, but this did not diminish our joy nor steal our intention. The scope of our dreams was not limited to the size of our income. In the same way, that lack of resources must not limit the battles you fight. You must not allow yourself to be paralyzed by what seem to be overwhelming circumstances. It’s absurd for one poor man to think he could set an entire city free. What in the world was he thinking? Couldn’t he see that those who were better prepared than he was, more skilled than he was, more talented than he was, more powerful than he was, had already failed in pursuit of the same outcome? Yet somehow he seemed undaunted in his determination to do what everyone else would certainly know was impossible.