Does Jesus Still Walk the Dark Hills? Introduction
I’ve been sitting on a book I wrote for over a year now. I think it is because the fun part of writing is done, and now I am into editing and formatting sources. However, recently, I began working on it again. It is a short, 28,000 word book about where Jesus meets us in our own failures and pain. This morning, I have attached the introduction in hopes of sharing different parts of the book on here as I continue to edit and format. Here is the introduction:
There he was on a rooftop just across the street. He appeared to be kneeling down with only his chest and above exposed from behind a cement wall and he was looking in our direction. I had him in my sites, literally. Looking through my ACOG scope on my M-16 service rifle, I had him perfectly lined up. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I exhaled to land on my natural point of aim. Perfect. Nervous, I remembered my training and I gently squeezed the trigger. Bang! He never got up.
I still picture this moment in time every single day. We were engaged in the initial raid of Fallujah, Iraq in April of 2004. To this point in our mission, we had been taking both direct and indirect fire. Moments earlier, a man popped out of a doorway shooting an AK-47 and his rounds were impacting near my feet. Another man on the rooftop next door had also been observing us, and we had been taking danger-close mortar fire on our position. So this man, the man who now laid breathless, though not directly firing at us, was another forward observer. I knew that, and I knew that I was fighting in a war. But I still could not shake the truth that Matt Pifer, a young man from a small town in Michigan, had been responsible for taking another man’s life. The Marine Corps trains you for this moment, but I still wasn’t ready for it.
What about the man? He was still an Image Bearer. He couldn’t have been any older than 35 with his hair and beard all still dark in color. What was his name? Did he have a family? A wife? What was he like? Sure, he was trying to harm my brothers and me, but maybe there was another solution. Maybe, later that day, he got up and walked away. After all, he fell behind the cement wall. Even though it was a head shot, I wanted to deny it. Even though the Red Crescent ambulance approached the building quickly and drove away slowly, I wanted to deny it. Even though one of my brothers saw the impact and called me “One Shot, One Kill Pifer” I wanted to deny it. Emotionally, the best way I can describe it is “numb.” There were so many feelings occurring all at once, and I couldn’t quite zero in on any of them. It was as though I was in an “emotional shock” from my actions. At one point I even tried to push it down and never face it, but I couldn’t. I was guilty, and I had to come to grips with that. Perhaps it was justified, and maybe it wasn’t. Either way, the end result was still the same, and it was uncharted waters for me.
This book is not a confessional, nor will it focus on my time in the Marine Corps. Perhaps that will be written on another day. Both would require much more time than I am going to devote here. Rather, this moment in my story is what I believe changed my view of God’s grace for several years, and it is still something I struggle with. I believe that on that day in Fallujah, Iraq, my worldview changed from “God is good and his grace is sufficient, no matter what I’ve done,” to “God’s grace is sufficient for others, but not for me. I’ve let him down too many times.” Of course, the former is a biblical worldview, the latter is a lie that was developed through a traumatic experience. The starting point of how I viewed myself and God’s view of me had changed during that process, and I had put stipulations on grace.
Our experiences have a way of shaping us, and I don’t want to dismiss how important those experiences are. However, experience and our personal feelings do not take authority over what God says. What I want to do is take these experiences and find where they meet with God’s Word. Therefore, this work will examine where God’s truth meets people right in their pain- especially when it is seemingly “self-inflicted.” We will look at the effects of sin with St. Augustine’s view of original sin and the truth about being an Image Bearer. We will look at the grand story of scripture and how God used imperfect people for his perfect story. Then we will look at some questions that either I have asked myself, or I have received from others who have experienced guilt or shame in their lifetime, and we will look to Christ for our answers. Ultimately, we will answer the question, “Does Jesus still walk the dark hills?” I hope that you will receive as much healing out of reading this as I will get in writing it.
The Book Title
The title of this book was inspired by a song called, “The Dark Hills” by the band, Day of Fire. Since it released, it has been one of my favorite songs, and I call it my favorite worship song. It is raw in emotion and just very real to me. The chorus says,
They say Jesus walked the dark hills
He broke bread with beggars and thieves
If I cry out in this darkness
If I fall down on my knees
If he walks the dark hills
Will he come for me?
Will he come save me?
-Day of Fire, The Dark Hills
As someone who has asked the same kind of questions over and over, this song has always spoken directly to me. After all that I have done in my life and all of the people I have hurt, this song has always stuck with me.
When I started brainstorming and outlining this book, I kept coming back to this song, and I kept asking the questions of “does Jesus really walk the dark hills and come for people like me?” or “Does Jesus still walk the dark hills and come for people like me?” In the people and passages chosen, the answer to these questions was, without a shadow of a doubt, yes. The more I thought about it and the more I challenged it, the more clear it became. My hope, then, is that as you read through this book and all that has been poured into it, that you will draw the same conclusion that Jesus does indeed still walk the dark hills, and he has come for people like you and me.
References
Day of Fire (2010). The Dark Hills [Recorded by Day of Fire]. On Losing All. Razor & Tie Records.
