Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: DEFENSE (06/02/22)
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TITLE: God's Testuda | Previous Challenge Entry
By Noel Mitaxa
06/09/22 -
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In my visit to Rome in April 2013, I found the city in party mode to celebrate its 2766th birthday, after Romulus and Remus founded the city on April 21st 753BC at the Palatine Hill which overlooked the festivities spreading around us. This hill became popular among aristocrats and emperors as the site for their lavish residences, and had there been a medical elite back then, the Palatine Hill might have been nicknamed as the “Caesarian Section.”
From my vantage point, I watched the soldiers holding their shields overhead as in their Testuda - or Tortoise – formation. Testudas protected them in an ambush, affording lateral safety behind unbroken circles of shields, with more shields linked overhead as a defense against airborne arrows or spears. But testudas became offensive as well as defensive when centrally placed soldiers briefly withdrew their shields to launch volleys of spears, before replacing them overhead.
It’s not hard for me to visualize a testuda as a possible forerunner to today’s armor-clad tanks, if you install caterpillar tracks underneath and mount a gun turret to replace the volleys of spears…
Almost two thousand years ago, Paul the apostle was also in Rome, but guarded under house arrest by elite-level praetorian guards. He could not escape from them, but neither could they escape from him nor his teaching as they overheard his conversations with anyone who visited him, or as he spoke with them one-on-one. So, by the quirkiness of God’s grace, the gospel began to reach into Rome’s families of influence.
House arrest helped him to see similarities between his guards’ battle dress and different aspects of Christian discipleship, which he included in a letter he wrote to friends in Ephesus, on Turkey’s western coast.
Shields were strong, but light enough to lift and defend against oncoming blows, and they could absorb the fiery darts that came too quickly for swords to deal with effectively. Paul saw these shields as a parallel of how faith works to defend us against corrosive doubts and sudden panic - even quenching the heat these negatives can generate. And without resorting to blind, dumbed-down escapes from reality, faith takes on the intellectual and practical challenges we face, because it’s energized by God’s Spirit within us.
Whenever we feel defenseless or totally alone in our struggle, our shield of faith can be a part of God’s testuda – when the shared faith of other believers protects and nourishes us, so we may tap into their encouragement and inspiration. And as our confidence regrows, we can begin to step out with a new perspective, a clearer purpose, and a greater appreciation of God’s family.
Yes, faith protects us, but it also projects us - stretching our perspective and firing our imagination with possibilities to break new ground for the gospel, so people with no defense against the evil in their world may recognize and embrace God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.
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