This is the way of the warrior.
This is the desire of gang members.
I am a descendant of slaves. The Lissongo.
I felt a desperate desire for the way of the warrior as a boy and young man.
I feel a kinship with African American boys who seek what they do not know they want in gangs.
In the movies "Ghost Dog," and "Attack the Block," there are two characters that exemplify the desire of the warrior for honor.
The character Ghost Dog assumes the way of the samurai as a code of life, in repayment of a debt he feels that he owes to a member of the mafia. As my friend and warrior brother James-Michael Smith accurately pointed out in a discussion he and I had, Ghost Dog does not actually embody the true code or spirit of the samurai. (See James-Michael's article, "The Way of the Samurai...or Disciple?")
Yet I see what Ghost Dog wanted in his own warped understanding, and based on his assumed background and story in the movie. He wanted a purpose bigger than himself and beyond himself, something and someone to devote himself to; a "transcendent cause" worth suffering for and dying for, as described in the book "Raising a Modern-Day Knight."
I believe the same is true for the character "Moses" in the movie "Attack the Block." Moses was a leader of a young gang in London, all of whom seemed admirably (though foolishly) brave in the face of "battle;" especially and primarily Moses. Moses and his gang had a loyalty for their territory: "The Block." Many gangs feel this, desire this, fight and die for this. But they do so in ignorance, not realizing that "The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to man." Psalms 115:16. Yes. God intended men and women to take dominion; to rule the earth as He rules heaven. We all want this and should have this in submission to the God of creation. But Satan stole our birthright. And we all want it back.
Again, Moses' gang seemed admirably brave in the face of battle.
In fact, all they seemed to really want was a good battle, a monumental battle, an epic battle against very real evil. Until they had this in the alien invasion, they acted like drug using, drug dealing thugs; menaces to society. But I saw in Moses' eyes the same thing that I saw in the eyes of Ghost Dog: the eyes of a warrior protector that needed a Master; a leader; a trainer; a mentor.
I think now of a quote from C.S. Lewis' "Perelandra." In this story, the quintessential protagonist, Ransom, fights ultimate antagonist, "The Unman." It is a physical battle to the death. As Ransom fights he has this revelation:
"All that rich world was asleep about them. There were no rules, no umpire, no spectators; but mere exhaustion, constantly compelling them to fall apart, divided the grotesque duel into rounds as accurately as could be wished. Ransom could never remember how many of these rounds were fought. The thing became like the frantic repetitions of delirium, and thirst a greater pain than any the adversary could inflict. Sometimes they were both on the ground together. Once he was actually astride the enemy’s chest, squeezing its throat with both hands and-he found to his surprise-shouting a line out of The Battle of Maldon: but it tore his arms so with its nails and so pounded his back with its knees that he was thrown off.
Then he remembers-as one remembers an island of consciousness preceded and followed by long anaesthesia-going forward to meet the Un-man for what seemed the thousandth time and knowing clearly that he could not fight much more. He remembers seeing the Enemy for a moment looking not like Weston but like a mandrill, and realising almost at once that this was delirium. He wavered. Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him--a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person: but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for.
As a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of coloured chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object. Bleeding and trembling with weariness as he was, he felt that nothing was beyond his power, and when he flung himself upon the living Death, the eternal Surd in the universal mathematic, he was astonished, and yet (on a deeper level) not astonished at all, at his own strength. His arms seemed to move quicker than his thought. His hands taught him terrible things. He felt its rib break, he heard its jaw-bone crack. The whole creature seemed to be crackling and splitting under his blows. His own pains, where it tore him, somehow failed to matter. He felt that he could so fight, so hate with a perfect hatred, for a whole year." (All emphasis mine.)
Think again with me of these words in scripture, as we reach the climax of my contemplations. This is the answer Eve gave God in response to Adam blaming Eve (and God) for his sin; and of Eve blaming the serpent for her sin:
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
"ENMITY!"
"PURE, UNMIXED, AND LAWFUL HATRED!"
This is what I feel for slavery, oppression, and the negation of the true masculine and feminine! As it is written,
"It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.
Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."
"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
I feel that those who have been enslaved, like the African American, the Native American, Jewish Americans, men and women, feel this.
They value that which has been and still is taken, or at least the attempts to take them.
But where, or who, is the true object of hatred that C.S. Lewis speaks of through Ransom!?
SATAN!
DEMONS!
THE EVIL ONES!
EVIL!
As it is written,
"The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; pride, arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse tongue I HATE." (emphasis mine.)
In "The Case for Hate," it is shown, as C.S. Lewis showed, that there is a place and a case for righteous anger, loathing, and enmity.
This is what I see in the eyes of Ghost Dog and Moses: a desire to kill the enemy of God's glory: their God given masculinity and ethnic identity.
I feel them.
Do you? Then Hate evil!
Hate the evil one!
With pure, unmixed, lawful hatred!
Embrace the enmity God placed in you and me for our TRUE enemy.
And if you meet a Ghost Dog, or a Moses, train them.
Teach them to focus their rage.
Teach them to embrace the Lord's mission, as it is written:
"The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." I John 3:8b
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