One of the longest-lived internal turmoils I experienced in my life was when I had to struggle with my decision not to become a U.S. Navy chaplain. In 1998, when I was 36 and still single, I had received a very strong inspiration to become a navy chaplain. I had to process a lot of unknowns, what I thought about who I was and my relationship with God. It took time. It took decades.
Back then, several conditions in my life helped point me in that direction and the sensation was extremely clear to me. I was suffering in a depressive state having a broken long term relationship and while in a deep state of prayer, when I was able to clear my mind, the idea of becoming a navy chaplain entered as though from out of nowhere.
Several circumstances in my life seemed to align and the attraction of putting on the uniform of a navy officer and serving in the navy again seemed like an indestructible motivation, meaning, that status objective alone made a connection with who I was, and I had a sense that that alone would be able to feed my drive to achieve that goal.
Although that motivation of status was clear to me in the privacy of my mind, it was nothing I wanted to share with anybody. I spoke about my desire to pursue a navy chaplaincy with one my mentors in my home church and he and his wife seemed to agree I could make a good chaplain, but didn’t think becoming a pastor was a good idea (I never asked why they thought that, but I should’ve asked).
I contacted the Navy recruiter (officer placements) and charted a clear course to achieve the academic goal of completing my AA at Foothill College to transfer to San Jose State for a dual major in Psychology and Behavioral Science, and then I would attend a local seminary to earn my Master of Divinity. In my senior year I could enter the navy reserve and I would reestablish my navy career as an officer. I was still young enough (with credit from my 6 years on active duty) and the circumstances just seem to be in this magical alignment.
The clarity of a path to a cherished career just seemed to give me a sense of peace.
I was so inspired by this plan that the burden of trying to get married was completely lifted off my shoulders as if it never existed. That change in itself was like a miracle.
With all this propelling me towards the navy again, long story short, in 2000 I got engaged to be married. It certainly seemed like not having the burden of getting married actually helped finding my wife who’ve I’ve been married to since 2000.
However, a new issue arose, so I thought, I married someone who was not going to be able to live the life of a navy wife, much less a navy chaplain’s wife. My wife and I afforded some time to see if the life-style obstacles would clear in time to still be able to move forward with the Navy plan, but in my heart, I knew this issue was going to persist and I wasn’t ready to admit it until time forced me to make a decision on the course of my education and new occupation.
Once I made the decision not to pursue becoming a chaplain (and instead to become a Licensed Acupuncturist), I knew my decision had to be final. Final or not, it was a decision that caused me turmoil years later, when I could not establish myself as a full time Acupuncturist. Becoming a successful acupuncturist required much more business knowledge to establish oneself compared to the more institutionalized role of an ordained minister.
Although I wrongly held some resentment that I had to give up my inspired navy plans, I struggled with this problem quite alone while I lived through a return to an engineering career and rearing a family.
The turmoil only stopped once I exhausted researching more ways to come back into the Navy even as an Acupuncturist. Interestingly, I discovered many other medical specialities could apply for a commission in the navy, but not an acupuncturist. Then one day I was too old for any kind of navy service. Again, I resigned to the realities of life.
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Clarity after Surrender
In 2022, when I finally surrendered my heart to the Lord, one of the benefits I received was clarity and peace on many anxieties in my life, including why I had been so confounded about my failed calling to the ministry as a navy chaplain.
First of all, without the correct attitude towards Jesus as Lord and fidelity to the Word of God turmoil ought to be resident for someone who thinks they are called to a Christian ministry. I knew that the uniform was somehow not the right motivation, and that just amplified the need to search for the correct motivation. What was being amplified was a very weak signal that amounted to almost nothing, because, although Christ was my Savior, I was not obedient to Christ as my Lord so I obtained no peace.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. – MARK 12:30
In reality, without the valuing of my relationship with God through His written word created a significant void, resulting in ignorance. From my experience in the church I attended when I was “called”, the Scripture was not held as authority, as I now understand it, and so I suffered an internal spiritual dissonance.
There should only be one motivation, first and foremost, to go into the Christian ministry and that it to serve God and to obey His will with both surrender to and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
One needs to embrace the gospel in all its Biblical glory, with an honest grounding that none are good and fail to achieve goodness by works for salvation. Moreso, unless one understands the gravity of need for repentance, he remains at risk for going to eternal hell, without the saving grace of God through Christ.
…No one is good but One, that is, God – MARK 10:18B
It further shows the magnanimous nature of God to have commissioned John the Baptist, that God-awesome messenger, to pave the way with the exhortation to repent before the arrival of Jesus Christ:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” MARK 1:15
Maybe there are other people who have succeeded in entering the ordained ministry without this attitude of surrender to God, but without this simple criteria, going into the ministry must be a non-starter. It’s one thing to embark on Christian studies, but to consider your motivation to be a representative of God as an ordained minister, one needs to be faithful to seek God’s will and have fidelity towards the Scripture as God’s inspired instructions.
It’s true, had I been faithful to God’s word, I would’ve married a woman who was equally yoked.
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? – 2 CORINTHIANS 6:14
BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT, my marriage was not a mistake, it was exactly what God had in store for me in order to come to the realizations I have. My lack of fidelity to God’s laws and ignorance to serving Christ as Lord was so insidious. It took living 22 years into my marriage to find out I was not respecting God’s mercy revealed in the many circumstances I had been delivered from. By not surrendering and seeking His Lordship after each rescue, I was only exhibiting to God my continued ignorance and self-righteousness.
It is very clear, God is love (along with many other glorious attributes), and unless I strive to place Christ as the Lord at the center of my being, it is not possible to love others, including my own family as God would have me love them. I certainly would not be able to effectively serve as an ordained minister, a channel for the glory of a just, holy, righteous, and compassionate God.
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I could have been a short-lived Navy Chaplain
I suspect I would have surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ while studying for my Bachelor of Arts, but that is completely irrelevant. Now, secure in the Justification made possible by Christ’s taking my sins for me on the Cross, I am where I am, secure in God’s eternal kingdom, and all the more joyous for it.
Had I gone into the chaplaincy in the military as a born-again Christian in faithful obedience to the Word of God, who is Christ, as revealed through Scripture, the Pluralist environment that is enforced in the military, where I would be possibly forced to compromise my convictions in effort to unify differing religious beliefs, would have been quite the theological crisis in uniform.
Bravo Zulu for any born-again Christian military chaplains who can navigate those difficult waters to the glory of God.
Just musing, had I been allowed to proceed to ordination by a secularized system, where I could have become a chaplain without having surrendered to Jesus as my Lord, I may have become a heretic of protestant U.S. Navy chaplain. Sobering.
In that hypothetical case, I could only hope, God in His wisdom and mercy, that He would have given me cause to repent from my deep set ignorance and idolatry before I would have caused much damage.
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? – 1 JOHN 5:4-5
CKY
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