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The Who wouldn't be a Soldier?
by
Commissioner Wesley Harris
AN EARLY- DAY Salvation Army officer – Staff Captain Jackson –
wrote what became a popular chorus with our forebears in the
faith:
Then who
wouldn’t be a soldier,
An Army soldier, a valiant soldier?
Every soldier goes to war,
Which we’ve all enlisted for
And we don’t want any dummies in the Army.
I have to say
that my becoming a soldier was singularly lacking in ceremony.
I still have the rather tatty copy of the Articles of War
handed to me when I was fifteen with the request that it be
returned the same day. There were no preparation classes and
no public swearing-in. Only years later did my local officer
brother come across my signed copy and give it back to me for
safe keeping.
However, the significance of the undertakings I made has
become increasingly evident to me through the years. The
promises have been solemnized and confirmed again and again
and by God’s grace I have tried to live in accordance with
them and found great joy and fulfillment in so doing.
.
Then who wouldn’t be a soldier? Unfortunately there must be
many because in some, though not all parts of the world, the
number on soldiers rolls has been in decline.
That may be because we live in an uncommitted generation when
people are less willing to enter into formal undertakings. As
an increasing number shy away from formal commitments in
marriage so many seem to prefer a kind of de facto
relationship with the Body of Christ which doesn’t sit easily
with the idea of God’s people as an army.
Some are intimidated by the ethical requirements of
soldiership and particularly by the insistence on total
abstinence from alcohol although just as most people now
accept the wisdom of our longstanding prohibition of smoking
mounting evidence of the evils of alcohol would confirm the
rightness of Salvationists being examples of the alcohol free
life-style. Certainly, this is not the time for a lowering of
standards. We do not entertain a ‘holier than thou’ attitude
towards others but neither should we baulk at the acceptance
of the disciplines of soldiership but dare to be different,
for Jesus’ sake.
Some people do not become soldiers because they have never
been asked. Recruitment has not always been a strong point
with us. From long and wide experience I would say that around
most corps there are people who could well become soldiers if
someone thought to ask them. The rolls of the youth group, the
home league or the companion club could ‘happy hunting
grounds’ for keen recruiting sergeants and others who could
well include all Salvationists able to speak a word in season.
Face it, no soldiers no Army! Our friends in the United States
currently have a campaign with the slogan, ‘Come join our
Army!’ What would stop something similar in other places? In
the word s of another old chorus, ‘I’m glad I’m a salvation
soldier’ I can think of nothing better!
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