FRIENDLY FIRE

“Friendly fire” is military slang that means your own side has fired upon you. There was difficulty in communication between two battle stations, and the result is most often loss of life. The casualties are just as severe, whether they are deliberate or not and such events are not “friendly” at all. Friendly fire often kills.

Recently, a so-called friendly nation shot down three of our jet fighter planes. The pilots bailed out and were safe, but the billion-dollar flying machines crashed into the ocean.

There will not be that kind of friendly fire at the end of our lives. The angels will not need to shoot arrows at us to speed us to heaven. For example, there is an end times fire predicted in 2 Peter 3.10, when the heavens will disappear and elements will be destroyed by fire. It will seem like a war, but it is not a military battle.

When God disciplines us, it is not a mistake—although it may seem like friendly fire. Sometimes he takes us through literal or metaphorical fires, but he does not leave us alone. What can we do? Paul implores us in Ephesians 6.16 to put on the full armor of God. One vital piece of equipment is “the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” The evil one will not be engaged in friendly fire. He will be vicious, one who “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5.8)

However, at the end of the age, there is also a fire prepared for the devil, and it will not be friendly. Instead, it will be eternal (Matthew 25.41), and like one pizza establishment nearby advertises, it will be “hot and ready.”

Pastors who are engaged in ministry are often in the line of “friendly fire,” shot by parishioners and others who don’t like the words they are hearing or the events they are seeing. They fire at the messenger, often because they do not like the message.

Those who are the recipients of friendly fire should not fire back, or they will be as mistaken as those who are firing the “unfriendly” darts of discord. They must resort to protecting themselves with the shield of faith (Ephesians 6.16).

Fire can be literal, as when Abraham “carried the fire” (Genesis 22.6) and offered Isaac as a sacrifice to God. And it can be dangerous, as when the two eldest sons of Aaron were killed when they carried fire in their personal censers and offered it to God. (Leviticus 10,1-2)

I have seen people “carry fire” in their canoes, early in the morning on their way to gardens and I have seen Kewa men carry fire at night to find their way back to the village. It is a different kind of “friendly fire.”

I saw “friendly fire” of another kind when we were living in a village in Papua New Guinea. The village chief had just returned with a pig feast with some pork. He had two portions of meat, one quite larger than the other. He was also married to two women, so he gave, of course, the larger portion to his younger wife. Then he gave the smaller portion to his older wife, but she threw it over a fence into a garden. The chief was angry, went to the fence by the garden, extracted a post and began to beat the older wife. The younger wife did not like seeing her co-wife belted, so she grabbed a fence post and began to batter the chief. He turned on her, but the older wife also had a piece of lumber by now and was began raining blows upon the chief. It was not friendly, and he wisely called a cease fire.

The next day he came by our house, decorated, and smiling. “Where are you going,” I asked. “I’m going to buy another wife,” he proudly exclaimed. A slow learner!

Fre is also metaphorical when compared to a barren womb or dry land, each not yet “satisfied” (Proverbs 30.16), and to the Leviathan in Job 41.19, where “flames stream from its mouth, sparks of fire shoot out.”

We may also be “refined by fire.” We read of this in 1 Peter 1.7: “These [trials, sufferings] have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

God therefore tests the quality of our work with fire, and it is friendly: “their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.” (1 Corinthians 3.13)

We should therefore worship God with reverence and awe “for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12.29)

Karl Franklin