Home > Behind the Scenes > Crew Journal >
By Don Hart
Posted: June 1, 2005
On March 12, 2005, Colonel Bill Hendersen, flanked by his son and grandsons, sat before the entrance of a concrete and steel reinforced bunker, overlooking Green Beach. Inside the bunker, an ancient and rusted 20-millimeter machine gun remained bolted securely to the floor. Sixty years before, it poured deadly fire onto the brave soldiers hitting the beaches below in what would prove to be the defining battle in the history of the U.S. Marines Corps. Sobered by the setting in which we found ourselves and the growing understanding of what Colonel Hendersen and his comrades endured in the shadow of Mount Suribachi, the Vision Forum film crew listened in rapt attention as the patriarch of the Hendersen family began to explain how ordinary men accomplished the extraordinary.
While the Faith of Our Fathers cameras rolled, Colonel Henderson explained how boys become men, and how heroes are born. While I can neither quote him exactly nor communicate his sentiments as eloquently as he did that day, the wisdom of Colonel Henderson’s message remains very strong and clear in my mind. Colonel Henderson explained that before a man can learn what he is able to do, what he is made of, he needs battles to fight and difficult challenges to overcome. Men need these things. They are what a man is made to do. No man will ever achieve his potential or understand his true calling if he runs from the battle. Character is sharpened and hardened and shaped through adversity. The trials which we so often dread — which some men seem determined to avoid at all costs — are actually blessings which make us men.
Why do we see so many irresponsible forty and fifty-year-old “little boys” today, while Iwo Jima was filled with seventeen and eighteen-year-old men whose legacy of “uncommon valor” still rings true to this day? Why have so many fathers and husbands abandoned their families to pursue their own pleasures? Why do more than half of professing evangelicals believe it is right to starve a helpless woman to death? Why does much of the Christian community scatter like frightened quail when a principled man stands against a tyrannical judiciary for the truth of God’s law? Little boys run from battles. Men run toward them.
Trials are the proving grounds for friendship and faithfulness. We do not really know one another until we have faced adversity together. What is your character when you are hard-pressed by difficulties? Are you a friend who can be trusted when times are tough?
Every man needs a friend who will stand with him and even bleed with him in battle. Men who have such friends almost always are such friends. We must wisely choose men of strength, courage, and honor as those with whom we walk. We must be such men in our relationships with one another. Such character is not something that necessarily comes naturally and automatically for those with a sin nature. It is something we must self-consciously think about and choose.
The defining crises of our day, the weakness of so many families and churches, is directly related to lack of strength in the men who lead in these institutions. It has never been more critical that we tell the stories that teach, model, and encourage a legacy of valor. As men, the time has come to take to heart the admonition of Proverbs 24:10, “If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.” God forbid that we should dishonor the Lord, our strength, with a legacy of weakness. As we consider the lessons of strength and heroism wrought by the warriors of Iwo Jima, may we as men run toward the roar of the battle.