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We’ve been watching Band of Brothers lately. Episode three, Carentan, which takes place about a week after D-Day, includes this exchange:

Lt. Ronald C. Speirs: Got some nervous privates in your company.

Pvt. Albert Blithe: We do, sir. Yeah, we do, I can vouch for that.

Speirs: They just don’t see how simple it is.

Blithe: How simple what is, sir?

Speirs: Just do what you have to do.

Blithe: …Sir, when I landed on D-Day, I found myself in a ditch all by myself. I fell asleep. I think it was those air-sickness pills they gave us. When I woke up, I didn’t really try to find my unit… to fight. I just… I just kinda stayed put.

Speirs: What’s your name, trooper?

Blithe: Blithe, sir. Albert Blithe.

Speirs: You know why you hid in that ditch, Blithe?

Blithe: I was scared.

Speirs: We’re all scared. You hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function as a soldier’s supposed to function.

Blithe held onto hope in this world. Speirs did not. Blithe obsessed over survival. Speirs accepted death as inevitable. Both were scared — Speirs admitted he was scared! — but only one was an effective soldier: the one who rejected false hope.

It struck me that this is how we must function as followers of Christ: we