By D.S. Cook for Apostoic Venn
There once was a bright fortress, strong amidst a wide kingdom. It was a happy and prosperous land, with many distant villages feeding a capitol that ruled with justice and mercy. The king of this land inhabited the fortress, surrounded by a company of brave knights sent out daily to do good works. Of all of his devoted subjects, none served his vision so well as they, united by oath to preserve his legacy and mete out his benevolence across the land.
But the king was called away. “To a far country I must go alone,” he told them, clapping each upon the shoulder. “I cannot tell the hour of my return. My absence may be long or brief, and to you I entrust the preservation of my people from any threat of force or folly.”
For a time, the knights upheld their trust with greatest faith. But as months turned into a year, and then five, there began to arise divisions among them, and separation into proud clans. The Eagle clan was the first to inscribe their shield with a unique emblem, setting themselves apart from the others. Proclaiming this to be the purest symbol of the king’s soaring vision and far-sighted intellect, they held new remembrances in the courtyard, to which they alone were privy. Then another, the clan of the Lion, emblazoned the head of the king of beasts in silver upon their breastplates, holding that the magnificence of this symbol represented the king’s fierce protection and unbendable courage in the face of threat. They became ever more militant, holding exercises and marches in which other factions were unwelcome. Third, the order of the Rose emerged, with the crimson flowers adorning their banners, insisting that this alone could reflect the king’s tender heart for the poor, and his benevolent love for all his subjects.
Time passed, and the king still did not return. Smaller factions broke off from the first, each with their own rituals and rites, and each clinging to codes that they believed were the truest to keep his charge.
On firelit evenings, and in the mess halls over meat and mead, these differences fueled earnest discussion and exhortation. Debates began to grow heated, borne as they were of great passion, and backed over time by tradition now longstanding. Each desired to serve the king perfectly, and each believed their own faction to be the only true means. The factions grew in number and in distance from one another, with each passing year.
On one black night, when the fires burned late, the torch of a runner erupted through the open gate. A scout, panting and bedraggled from dogged distance, collapsed in their midst. “A vast army approaches!” he gasped. “They marched from the dark eastern kingdoms, and are here to make no peace treaty. Long have they reviled our king and his mercy, and long have their eyes been set on annihilation and conquest. They curse his name, spit on his images, and swear to expunge his followers from the earth. Even now, they are burning and plundering towns in the distant east. Rise now, and ride out!”
But a galvanized knight from the Lion clan stepped forward. “I will not ride among Roses.” He spat. “Their drippings disgust me; molly coddlers all, more likely to give garlands than righteous blows. They can be no true ally on a crusade of men.” The courtyard rang out with a clang, as an Eagle clan leader threw down his helm upon the stone. “And I will not fight beside Lions!” he roared. “Overzealous brutes, you so yearn for the clash of arms that you abandon reason and temperance, and are sure to foil any strategy laid by wisdom.” “Nor will we march beside Eagles,” rejoined a veteran of the Rose clan. “So infatuated with the sharpening of intellect that they abandon love… the very greatness of our king. Sooner would they lecture a peasant than feed him; there is not a true Kingsman among them.”
So it was that skirmish lines were drawn in the very courtyard of the fortress, and blows fell between brothers. For weeks they drew the blood of their fellows, each clan sequestered in a separate wing. The reports grew more dire. The foreign horde had already overrun distant cities, cut off supply lines, and murdered many. The horizon began to glow with the burning towns of the unprotected, and the once-lush fields razed into smoking ash. Still the infighting continued. Blood now stained the cobblestones, spilt not by invaders. A few voices were heard in the war chambers, speaking urgently, “We must stop this fighting and stand together as one! We must lay aside our disputes and ride out, before the king’s land is completely overpowered by the greater foe!” Tears shed by mothers with sons in split clans availed them nothing. All these were shouted down, overpowered by the cries “Their errors lie at the very heart of true loyalty to the king. How can we fight side by side with the bearers of false emblems, who dilute the king’s legacy with strange practices in his name!” The camps of the enemy now specked the horizon, in plain view of the walls.
As a siege began in earnest, and hunger and thirst began to gnaw, one young warrior knelt weeping amid the chaos. “Are we so blind?” He cried with a loud voice. “The true foe hammers on our gates while we tear ourselves apart!” But the reply drowned his voice, lifted from every corner of the streets. “Truth before survival! Unity without purity is no better than surrender.” The weeping warrior, eyes downcast but determined, gathered a few friends and rode out to meet the enemy on the field. There he fell, nearly alone, an arrow through his neck.
With a crack that sent tremors through the earth, the great gates peeled under the enemy ram. The dark horde surged in, teeth gleaming in victory and slaughter. The defenders, weary and fractured, fought valiantly in pockets but could not hold. One by one they fell, brave souls whose strength might have repelled the enemy and saved the king’s people, had they only stood together. Smoke plumed above the fallen fortress, and a land that no longer bore the king’s name.
In hushed tones in the caves and sewers, the few survivors told their children of the home that need not have been lost, of walls that could have endured. The exiled underbelly grieved, broken over the loss of what might have stood unbroken, had the clans remembered that they served the same king against a common foe.
Finally, in his appointed time, the king himself did return, with a sweeping and unstoppable army that no enemy could resist. As he reclaimed his kingdom and banished the rapacious wickedness that had enslaved it, he paused at the unmarked grave of the weeping warrior. On this mound, and this alone, did he erect a stone. It bore two words only. “Well done.”
A Call to Action: Be the Weeping Warrior
Brothers and sisters in Christ,
It is with great sorrow that I penned the Parable of the Weeping Warrior and the Besieged fortress. If my sorrow has been imparted to you through its reading, if it brought a lump in your neck as you thought of Charlie Kirk, pierced through the neck by an enemy missile, and the unsung friends with lesser-known stories, do not let it fade quietly away. This fortress is not a fairy tale. It is us. Now. While we sharpen our words against one another over emblems and doctrines that all pale before the Cross, yelling “I am of Catholic,” “I am of Anglican,” “I am of Baptist” into the internet forums that make up our courtyard, the enemies of our King have knocked down the gates of our culture, raped and enslaved the minds of our people. Inhabited and directed by principalities and powers that are not of the light, they shape the minds of our children in the classrooms, and mold their values in constant reinforcement through the screens in their palms. This enemy is not another faction, a differently principled alternative under the shady branches of truth. They hate truth. They hate righteousness and justice. They hate moral order, goodness, and beauty. They hate Christians and want them wiped from the earth’s surface, indiscriminate of denomination. Most of all, they hate Christ and the authority He rightly wields over all creation. And we, His professed followers, stand in the courtyard, weapons raised against brothers and sisters of other doctrine that name the same Savior, and who will be our neighbors in eternity. We will not hear “well done” for this, my friends.
I am tired of standing in the courtyard. I choose to be the weeping warrior. Not because I am braver or wiser or more learned than anyone else, God knows I am not qualified; but because I refuse to bear arms against brother when there is a devouring dragon inside our very gates. The enemy is upon us. I will do battle with him, with or without you. But will you stand with me? I do not ask you to abandon conviction, and throw important theology in the trash can. What I do ask is that you refuse to permit important nonessentials to become the bludgeon with which you spend your time beating other believers over the head. Refuse to exhaust your speech in the public square addressing the errors of allies when there is a voracious, rapacious enemy bearing down upon us. Deal with the dragon. Spend your limited strength peeling off his scales, so that others may strike.
If you are with me, please share this parable. Send it to your pastor or priest. Send it to your small group. Send it to your friends across the theological divide. Post it where other believers will see it. Allow it to travel further than the few people I can personally reach. Let them know that the hour is late, and the time has long since come to ride out. Let us turn, shoulder to shoulder, Eagle, Lion, Rose, and every smaller banner besides, and face the common foe while there is yet time. The King is coming. May He find us not scattered in inner strife, but faithful on the wall, having spent ourselves for His kingdom and one another. Come and be the weeping warrior. There is no time left for anything else.
In the Name of the Returning King,
- D.S. Cook
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