The Soldier Who Wouldn't Pick Up a Gun

In the 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson, Private Desmond Doss stands before a military tribunal facing court-martial. His crime? Refusing to carry a rifle. Every commanding officer, every fellow soldier, and every reasonable argument in the world told him he was wrong. You cannot go to war without a weapon. It is foolishness. It will get you killed.

But Doss had made a promise to the Almighty. He believed God had called him to serve as a medic, to save life rather than take it. And obedience to that calling meant enduring ridicule, beatings from his own bunkmates, and the threat of prison. He could have quietly picked up the rifle. No one would have blamed him. The pressure to conform was relentless.

Yet Doss climbed the cliffs of Okinawa unarmed and, through one impossible night, lowered seventy-five wounded men to safety on a rope, praying after each one, "Lord, help me get one more."

Obedience to God rarely makes sense to the world around us. It often looks foolish, impractical, even dangerous. But Scripture reminds us that the Lord does not see as we see. He looks at the heart. When Doss obeyed what God had spoken to him — even when every voice said otherwise — heaven moved through his hands.

The question is never whether obedience will cost us something. It always does. The question is whether we trust the One who asks.