Maj. Daniel Iverson, Decorated Marine Pilot
Early in May the Battle of the Coral Sea had taken place, after which the Japanese moved their forces to attack Midway. Included in the massive fleet were four heavy aircraft carriers. It was the second day of battle, June 4, as events unfolded, Iverson and his gunner Private First-Class Wallace Reed climbed aboard their SBD-2 [Scout Bomber Douglas-2] Dauntless dive bomber and joined fifteen other planes to engage the enemy. Iverson selected his target which he described as having “two rising suns on the flight deck—fore and aft” indicating the carrier was the Hiryu…When the weary duo climbed out of the plane Reid surveyed their SBD-2 counting 219 hits from bullets, but only one of the bullets concerned Iverson, the one that passed close enough to cut the cable to his throat microphone.
Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, Marine 2nd. Lt. Daniel Iverson, Jr., was ordered from San Diego to Hawaii as the machinery of American militarization and manufacturing might were thrown into high gear to defeat Japan. Dan’s stay in Hawaii was brief because early in January he sailed aboard the sea-plane tender U.S.S. Thornton for Midway. Midway is a two-and-a-half square mile atoll located 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu that provided an airfield and submarine base half-way between San Diego and Japan. It was crucial that Midway be defended successfully to protect Hawaii and prohibit invasion of the United States. As Dan looked out over the waves from the Thornton, little did he or any of his colleagues know what was in store for them on the postage-stamp island named Midway.
Dan’s background was no more unusual than many of the individuals that joined the war effort. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, November 11, 1916, the son of Daniel and Vivian Fraser (Thorpe) Iverson. His mother was from Savannah and would come to enjoy a long life passing away at 103; his father had recently been installed pastor of St. Matthews Presbyterian Church after supplying its pulpit during his Columbia Seminary studies. He left St. Matthews in 1919, then after two brief calls in North Carolina, the Iversons moved to Miami, Florida, 1926. Dan’s father was the organizing pastor of Shenandoah Presbyterian Church which grew to include numerous families in the congregation that provided many young people for Dan to befriend with his engaging smile. He graduated Miami High School in 1934. Davidson College was the next step for him, and when it was time for his senior photograph for the yearbook in 1938, the staff instead included a picture of him smiling as he casually descended some wooden stairs. The yearbook editors’ caption noted that Dan “quipped with the professors,” “held down a forward position on the basketball team”, and “added a clowning touch” on campus. He returned to Miami to work for Equitable Life Insurance Company but then enlisted to become a Marine pilot in November 1939. Two months earlier Hitler had launched his blitzkrieg of Poland resulting in its occupation, so possibly Dan signed up for service realizing his country was headed for war. He was trained to fly in Pensacola and was given his wings in October 1940.
Once Dan arrived at Midway, he settled in to a pilot’s life logging hours in the air and fulfilling other duties while waiting for something to happen, and it did. Early in May the Battle of the Coral Sea had taken place, after which the Japanese moved their forces to attack Midway. Included in the massive fleet were four heavy aircraft carriers. It was the second day of battle, June 4, as events unfolded, Iverson and his gunner Private First-Class Wallace Reed climbed aboard their SBD-2 [Scout Bomber Douglas-2] Dauntless dive bomber and joined fifteen other planes to engage the enemy. Iverson selected his target which he described as having “two rising suns on the flight deck—fore and aft” indicating the carrier was the Hiryu (Miami News, 7/29/42). He pushed the stick fully forward beginning his steep plunging through heavy anticraft fire while pursued by two Japanese Zeros. At an altitude of 800 feet he released his bomb, but it fell just to the side of the carrier. Pulling out of the dive the two Zeros were still in tow firing at the SBD-2 until Iverson was able to lose them in the clouds. It is remarkable that he and his colleague survived. The Marines did not sink the Hiryu but despite what appears to have been a pointless attack by the Marine flyers, they had caught the enemy by surprise creating confusion that contributed to a break in formation and challenges for the Japanese command. Returning to base were only eight of the sixteen planes that engaged the enemy; five of the planes required considerable repair work. Iverson had to cautiously land his plane on one wheel, with a damaged wing, and without hydraulic controls because the system had been damaged by enemy fire.
When the weary duo climbed out of the plane Reid surveyed their SBD-2 counting 219 hits from bullets, but only one of the bullets concerned Iverson, the one that passed close enough to cut the cable to his throat microphone. He was awarded the Navy Cross and Reid was given the Distinguished Flying Cross. When the Battle of Midway ended on June 6, it had been primarily a naval conflict that inflicted considerable damage against the Japanese forces with four carriers, a heavy cruiser, and more than 320 aircraft destroyed while the United States suffered the loss of a carrier, destroyer, and 150 aircraft. The victory at Midway severely affected Japan’s ability to wage war and is considered the turning point for the Pacific theater of World War 2. Young Iverson now had battle experience under his belt and would go on from Midway to other assignments.
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So, You Want to Be a Pastor?
The young man who sits in awe of the public ministry of the pulpit needs to know that the pastor who preaches to the church must also shepherd it. To be an under-shepherd in God’s church is a noble calling and a life well spent (1 Tim. 3:1). Yet the aspiring pastor must never forget that a call to pastor is a call to suffer.
A young twenty-something sits stapled to the pew, gripped by the power of his pastor’s sermon. The exegesis is precise, the illustrations are impactful, the zeal is palpable, and he is held in rapt attention to the Word of God. Everything snaps into focus as he thinks to himself, “This is what I want to be. This is what I want to do with my life. I want to be a pastor.”
Praise God!
The church always needs more pastors, and when a young man expresses an honest desire for the noble task (1 Tim. 3:1), the church should celebrate.
But what if this young man aspires to something he doesn’t understand? What if he—quite mistakenly—thinks that pastoring is just preaching great sermons, leading big meetings, and studying, writing, and praying forty hours a week?
My aim in this article is not to scare young men away from ministry, but to give them a clearer vision of what a life of shepherding looks like and to challenge them to count the cost before entering it (Luke 14:28-29). The ministry of the pastor is a ministry of sacrifice, most of which is unforeseen.
Here is my appeal to the aspiring pastor: brother, count the cost.
1. Count the Emotional Cost
Jesus, the great shepherd, wept over the flock (Luke 19:41). His ministry was one of deep emotional distress (Luke 22:44).
We are not greater than our master (John 15:20). Gospel ministry was an emotional cost to Jesus, and it will be to us too. Defections from the faith will shake you. Writer’s block will aggravate you. Biting sheep will frustrate, sadden, and wound you. And because Jesus loves you, he will humble you (2 Cor. 12:7-10). Pastoral ministry isn’t easy; it’s not supposed to be.
The good news is that God will work his strength in your emotional weakness. But make no mistake about it, the ministry will take an emotional toll on you (2 Cor. 11:28, Phil. 2:28). If it doesn’t, something’s wrong.
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Vaclav Havel and the Semiotics of Public Masking
Havel, the great scholar of theater and social semiology, would have no problem correctly identifying our current mask theater as the destructive and repressive farce that it is, and those that refuse to play along as the bearers of light, and the custodians of the creative energies we will need to reconstruct and sustain freedom in the world.
For me, one of the worst inventions of the contemporary university is political science, a discipline that, with its mainly presentist and transactionalist orientation, tends to dramatically minimize the always very intimate relationship between politics and culture, especially the cardinal importance that public rituals have in every effort to radically reorient the operational concepts of the “reality” among the citizenry.
When, in his speech to the US Congress 31 years ago, Vaclav Havel said that “consciousness precedes being, and not the other way around,” he spoke not only as a politician, but as a man of culture, and more specifically, a man of the theater, a place where the semiology of the stage is often as important as the words that come out of actors’ mouths.
Thirteen years earlier, in the most decadent years of the Soviet period in Czechoslovakia, Havel wrote “The Power of the Powerless,” an essay in which he uses his very detailed understanding of the symbolic codes of the stage to explain certain mechanisms of the system of oppression then in force in his country.
He focuses his exposition on a fictional manager of a fruit and vegetable store in his country who every morning puts up a sign in the window of his shop that says “Workers of the world, unite!” The playwright then wonders to what extent this gentleman, and people passing in front of or entering the establishment, believe in the words written on the poster. He concludes that the vast majority of them probably don’t think much, if at all, about its content. The, referring to the greengrocer, he goes on to say:
“This does not mean that his action had no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore have the right to be left in peace.’ This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superiors, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers ”
In this way, according to Havel, the greengrocer is saved from a confrontation with himself, and the feelings of humiliation that this inner encounter would bring on:
“If the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan ‘I’m scared and therefore I’m unquestionably obedient’ he would not be nearly so indifferent to its semantics even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation on display in the shop window, and quite naturally so, as he is a human being, and therefore has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome his complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction…..”
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The Real Function of Third Way Rhetoric
Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
So much of the teachings of the urban church flatter the sensibilities of the people in the pews rather than fundamentally challenging them about the way they are living their lives…The pedimental nature of third way rhetoric is very effective, and it’s easy to see why it appeals to the striver class people who populate evangelical urban churches.“Third way” rhetoric that has been deployed by some evangelicals was once praised but is now often criticized. People are rejecting the idea that the truth is somewhere in the middle of left and right, or is some hybrid thereof. Today, even the evangelical proponents of third way rhetoric have adopted new language like “diagonalizaton” to suggest that the Christian truth is not simply somewhere in the middle but something else entirely. (I believe Christopher Watkin came up with this formulation).
I actually think that a third way approach can be valid in a lot of circumstances in describing truth. For example, Aristotle said that virtue was a mean between two extremes. Not that perfect virtue always was at the midpoint of the two, but that it lies somewhere in the middle.
Similarly, in a theological context, we could say that it’s possible to over-emphasize Christ’s humanity and end up falling into Arianism, or over-emphasize his divinity and end up in Docetism.
Very often in life there actually are ditches on both sides of the road. So in terms of conveying truth, I think talking about a third way can often be accurate.
The real function of third way rhetoric is not conveying a truth claim, however. It is to elevate the status or moral position of the person using it—and often that of his audience as well.
Third way rhetoric is a pedimental structure. I first encountered the idea of pedimental language in reading Mary Douglas’ wonderful book Leviticus as Literature.
A pediment is an architectural feature that looks like this.
While this public domain image has four columns, you often see it with just two. The left and right corners of the triangle serve to emphasize the corner that is elevated in the center.
When used in rhetoric, pedimental rhetoric functions similar to a chiasm in emphasizing the central point. We see this structure in Leviticus. Douglas argues that chapters 18 and 20 have a pair of repeated sexual regulations that emphasize the social justice regulations in Leviticus 19 (which I believe she argues is actually the central focus of the book).
Let’s apply this to contemporary evangelical rhetoric with a simplified example. If I get into a pulpit and say, “Christianity is conservative because it cares about sin, but it’s also liberal because it cares about the poor,” what is the function of this?
Factually, it conveys that true Christianity cares about both sin and helping the poor, which is true. But it also suggests that I am better than both liberals or conservatives, because I have the complete truth in contrast to their partial truths. And because you, my parishioners, are in my church, you are probably better than all those people too.
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