This uneven ground

MOSUL, Iraq—There’s a lot to watch out for in a country like Iraq, a place long torn asunder by war and terrorism. One is the stairways. Houses are constructed using concrete and rebar, not traditional framing you’d see in the United States. For a long time there was no standard on the rise and depth of a stair tread.

This became a life-or-death problem for U.S. Marines fighting in Anbar province at the height of the Iraq War. Imagine storming a home of suspected al-Qaeda snipers in the dark, sprinting to the rooftop wearing night-vision goggles, carrying 70 pounds of protective gear and weaponry, gun at the ready—and stumbling or falling simply because the fifth stair rose 2 inches higher than the fourth. To compensate, some units actually ran drills on Anbar’s staircases.

On my recent trip to Iraq, I spent several hours in security training. Not all areas liberated from ISIS in recent months have been cleared of IEDs and other hidden explosives. Rubble is everywhere to be navigated. Massive networks of ISIS tunnels threaten building structures. I learned how to recognize an IED poking out from the ground. I drilled with others how to exit a car without touching the ground in a potential minefield. I did not practice the stairs.

Visiting front-line areas takes security or military escort. It’s work. Staying several days with an intrepid aid group in a vacant house mostly lacking electricity and running water poses challenges. But it was taking the stairs at night to the rooftop that almost did me in.

At home in America, I find this new political era unsettling, jarring like an uneven staircase.

At home in America, I find this new political era unsettling, jarring like an uneven staircase. Judging by the new amount of mail and messages I receive, others are finding the same. Many of you, like me, are wondering what to do about the disconnect we feel and the way politics now suffuses our waking days.

I find it harder than ever to plant my feet beneath the noise and the charged atmosphere. One moment I’m heartened to see smart political appointments, only to be disappointed when they appear neutered by a bombastic president. The executive order on immigration, we are seeing, is causing confusion and chaos in an area where we most need order, and rule tightening. Even Muslims in the Middle East will say so, and few I met in Iraq argued against the temporary travel ban, only the way in which it was carried out. Yet to argue for the middle ground, these days, wins you no friends.

For too long, in the words of writer K.A. Ellis, “some Christians have felt pressured by the political right to trust the state to restore a cultural utopia that, arguably, was dystopia for many. The left pressured others to entrust the state with building a utopia that’s impossible on this side of eternity—and proven historically also to end in dystopia.” Finding our primary identity in the transformational power of Christ, she argues, can free us from the quest for dominance and help us live boldly for the truth.

We can reject, for example, the notion of American carnage to see that America remains a land of opportunity and plenty. One worth preserving so that more of the world’s downtrodden may come.

Being caught off balance is a signal to recalibrate and toughen up. The Marines had to take in the whole stairway before taking the first step. Our times call for a wider lens too, and it doesn’t have to require going to a war zone. Deep searching of Scripture and deep love for neighbors, for others, may be first steps.

It takes fresh stamina to scale rough ground. Aid workers I was with approached their day like Marines, up before dawn to run on a desert road or do extra hospital rounds. I came back from a war zone oddly renewed, wanting to be fit in mind, body, and soul for whatever ascent lies ahead.