{"id":77858,"date":"2018-08-26T12:55:31","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T17:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=77858"},"modified":"2018-08-26T08:48:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T13:48:10","slug":"his-life-for-his-nation-john-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2018\/08\/26\/his-life-for-his-nation-john-mccain\/","title":{"rendered":"His Life For His Nation: John McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

On John McCain\u2019s faith<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) passed away on Saturday evening, he saw in person the God to whom he had prayed for five and a half years in a Vietnamese prison camp. McCain\u2019s faith in God sustained him during the darkest part of his life.<\/p>\n

McCain was a war hero because when the North Vietnamese offered him unconditional release less than a year after his Navy bomber was shot down, he refused, demanding that the Vietnamese release American prisoners who had been captive longer than he. Badly crippled from his crash and what little medical treatment he was given, McCain embraced torture and more than two years in solitary confinement rather than break the P.O.W. honor code.<\/p>\n

The Vietnamese starved him and beat him, he suffered dysentery, and his body was permanently scarred by his injuries and the beatings.\u00a0McCain, a lifelong Episcopalian who attended an evangelical Baptist church, found his strength in prayer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree things kept me going,\u201d\u00a0McCain told\u00a0PEOPLE<\/em><\/a>\u00a0magazine in 1992. \u201cFaith in God, faith in my fellow prisoners and faith in my country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were times when I didn\u2019t pray for one more day or one more hour, but I prayed for one more minute,\u201d\u00a0McCain told the\u00a0Christian Science Monitor<\/em>\u2018s Linda Feldmann in 2007<\/a>. \u201cSo I have very little doubt that it was reliance on someone stronger than me that not only got me through, but got me through honorably.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0long first-hand account<\/a>\u00a0he wrote for\u00a0U.S. News and\u00a0World Report<\/i>, McCain recalled, \u201cI was finding that prayer helped. It wasn\u2019t a question of asking for superhuman strength or for God to strike the North Vietnamese dead. It was asking for moral and physical courage, for guidance and wisdom to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked for comfort when I was in pain, and sometimes I received relief. I was sustained in many times of trial,\u201d the former P.O.W. recalled. Indeed, the American soldier experienced two potentially miraculous events in the Vietnamese prison.<\/p>\n

While in solitary confinement, McCain would be left for the night with his arms tied back in a painful position. One night, a guard walked in and loosened the ropes, then came back five hours later and tightened the ropes again. The American soldier did not know why the guard gave him this moment of reprieve.<\/p>\n

Two months later, on Christmas Day, McCain stood outside for 10 minutes, and the same guard came up to him. The guard stood by him, then drew a cross in the dirt with his sandal, looking at McCain. Then the guard erased the cross, and walked away.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friends, I will never forget that man,\u201d McCain said in a town hall meeting with voters in 2007.\u00a0\u201cI will never forget that moment. And I will never forget the fact that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult things are, there\u2019s always going to be someone of your faith and your belief and your devotion to your fellow man who will pick you up and help you out and bring you through.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More on\u00a0John McCain<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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By<\/span>Editorial Board<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

August 25 at 8:41 PM<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

JOHN MCCAIN\u2019S sense of obligation to his country was shaped by a long family history of military service that included the contributions of two four-star admirals: his father and paternal grandfather. It was tested to the utmost by\u00a0five years of cruel confinement<\/a>\u00a0and torture in a North Vietnamese prison \u2014 an ordeal from which he emerged to spend many years in public office and national prominence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But it may be that the most important episode of his life \u2014 in terms of giving him an understanding of what Americans owe to each another \u2014 was one that occurred a few months before he was brought down over Hanoi. In late July 1967, he was in the cockpit of his\u00a0A-4 Skyhawk<\/a>\u00a0fighter jet on the deck of the\u00a0USS Forrestal<\/a>\u00a0when a rocket was accidentally launched across the deck, wreaking havoc on the ship. Mr. McCain, then a lieutenant commander, escaped the inferno, his flight suit in flames.\u00a0One hundred and thirty-four lives<\/a>\u00a0were lost in the explosion and fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a short while,\u201d he wrote in an affecting passage\u00a0in his memoir<\/a>, \u201cI went to sick bay to have my burns and shrapnel wounds treated. There I found a horrible scene of many men burned beyond saving, grasping the last moments of life. .\u2009.\u2009. Someone called my name, a kid, anonymous to me because the fire had burned off all his identifying features. He asked me if a pilot in our squadron was okay. I replied that he was. The young man said, \u2018Thank God,\u2019 and died. I left the sick bay unable to keep my composure. .\u2009.\u2009. Men sacrificed their lives for one another and for their ship. Many of them were only eighteen and nineteen years old.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that book, \u201cFaith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir<\/a>,\u201d Mr. McCain spoke frankly of his imperfections: \u201cI have spent much of my life choosing my own attitude, often carelessly, often for no better reason than to indulge a conceit. At other times, I chose my own way with good cause and to good effect. .\u2009.\u2009. When I chose well I did so to keep a balance in my life \u2014 a balance between pride and regret, between liberty and honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

American politics was badly out of balance during Mr. McCain\u2019s final years, and while he angered some and made his share of mistakes, he accomplished as much as any politician of his time toward restoring some sense of equilibrium \u2014 and of truth, honor and integrity \u2014 to the governing of a nation that he served well and courageously in war and in peace. He became a dominant figure in the Senate through willpower, persistence and determination, because he commanded the respect due one who has sacrificed much for his country, and because, more often than most these days, he knew what he believed and stuck to it.<\/p>\n

Mr. McCain represented a conservative state, and much of his record reflected that fact. He did some things in the interest of getting elected that he later\u00a0regretted and renounced<\/a>, such as a vote early in his Arizona political career against the creation of a national holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and his failure in 2000 to take a stand against the display of the Confederate flag in South Carolina at a time when he was running in a presidential primary there. After the primary, he returned to South Carolina and\u00a0said of his evasiveness<\/a>\u00a0on the flag issue: \u201cI feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth. .\u2009.\u2009. Honesty is easy after the fact when my own interests are no longer involved.\u201d He also let politics push him to choose Sarah Palin, the untested Alaska governor, as his presidential running mate in 2008 when he would have preferred the more-qualified Connecticut senator, Joseph I. Lieberman.<\/p>\n

We disagreed with Mr. McCain on various matters over the years, but when we did so, it was more with a sense of disappointment than of anger. He was such a respected figure that his views had credibility even among many who strongly opposed them. And on some of the great issues of his time \u2014 campaign finance reform, immigration, human rights, promotion of democracy, treatment of prisoners, national defense and deterrence of foreign aggression \u2014 Mr. McCain was a courageous and principled leader. With his\u00a0climactic vote<\/a>\u00a0in the summer of 2017 against a health-care bill that he thought bad for the country, he made\u00a0a dramatic plea<\/a>\u00a0for cooperation and mutual respect in Congress. It was a message that should be heeded, especially by those in his party who seem to have come unmoored from their conservative principles by the faux-populist exploits of President Trump. Mr. McCain, on numerous occasions, rose above party politics to pursue what he honestly saw as the national interest, and he accomplished a great deal. The country has lost an irreplaceable asset.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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On John McCain\u2019s faith: When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) passed away on Saturday evening, he saw in person the God to whom he had prayed for five and a half years in a Vietnamese prison camp. McCain\u2019s faith in God sustained him during the darkest part of his life. McCain was a war hero because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHis Life For His Nation: John McCain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On John McCain's faith: When Sen. 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