The Faith of Desmond Doss

(Bill Knott, Executive Editor,
Adventist Review and Adventist World)

I find myself wondering, Jonathan, at a
place like this why something as tragic

and painful as war is so frequently
memorialized by beauty, by water,

by light, by symbols
that seem so far away.

Does that ever strike you as an irony?

(Col. Jonathan McGraw, Chaplain,
Office of the Chief of Chaplains)

Well, it does and I think
what soldiers who serve seek

is the peace that you see
in these kinds of environments.

Soldiers and service members
see the war as a necessary evil,

but they seek the peace.

For you, as you think
about the figure that

pretty much the whole world is
thinking about, this coming weekend,

with the release of "Hacksaw Ridge",

what are the qualities in
Doss's life that you as a chaplain

see worth us focusing on?

Well, as chaplains, we
work in a secular setting.

Part of what I see in society is this
real fragmentation of human beings,

that what you do at work, and what
you do in your private life is separate,

and so, human beings are more
fragmented in our society today.

And what Desmond Doss does
is show his wholeness--

- Okay.
- his wholeness, his body, mind,

his heart and his spirit is one.

And I think it just gives us all a great
opportunity to have a God talk with people.

What's the difference
God makes in your life?

As the stories unfold about how
Doss's comrades looked to him,

maybe some of them thought of
him like a good luck charm,

others genuinely
seemed to respect his faith,

and didn't want to be in
conflict if he wasn't there,

because they saw him as somehow a...

I don't know,
a spiritual force in the moment.

Then I do think that you could say there
was a supernatural sense of what occurred,

because if you look at
what happened at Okinawa,

of his company of a
hundred and thirty people,

only thirty of them were pushed
off, a hundred were left up on top.

And he stayed there, and
as they depict it in the movie--

and we've seen it in his documentaries--

he just asked, "Lord, give me one more."

A living reminder, some would call it,

of how we might expect
Jesus to act in that situation.

That, yes, the unconcern about himself,

the concern for other people who
are in difficult, desperate moments.

Doss has a certain ability to
resist the pressures around him

to conform to what everyone else is doing,
even when it comes to his own safety.

Talk to me for a moment about
that value as an Adventist value.

Our view of where we are in history,
is often underlying the importance of

being distinctive, differentiating
ourselves from the culture.

Doss seemed to do
that in a remarkable way.

He did it while he
stayed in the culture.

I think part of what we miss is, he
was as good a soldier as anyone else.

The skills you needed on the battlefield--
he understood, and that's how he operated.

But what I see with Doss
is, our focus of creation.

That God created us in the image of God.

And as Adventists, we take
that seriously in many ways.

I recently heard a sermon
on Matthew 14, about Peter

walking on the water
when Christ called him,

and Christ asks Peter, "Why did you
doubt me?" when he began to sink.

He trusted the power of the waves
over the power of Christ, and he began--

and I think with Doss, we find a human
being, that what he did on that ridge,

he totally trusted Christ's power.

But I see something there, the
heroes and the saints through history,

they have somehow already achieved the
sense of peace about their own circumstances,

and thus act with what looks
like fearlessness to the rest of us.

That is right. Whether they survive or
not, there's this sense of selflessness,

but also I think with
Desmond, when you look at it--

to pull seventy-five to a
hundred people off a battlefield--

there was this clear sense that he
had no doubt that God would use him.

Recognizing that there's somebody
out there, wounded, hurting,

who's really in need of help at a moment--

we don't even know who they are just yet.

- That's right.
- And this is Doss's commitment,

not just to buddies, but to
anyone who's out there.

That's right.