The elite team of Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, is still a secretive subject. But in The Wall Street Journal, Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, revealed a couple of qualities that successful SEALS need—the ability to think about other people and a higher purpose. Here are excerpts:
“The rigors that SEALs go through begin on the day they walk into Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in Coronado, California, universally recognized as the hardest military training in the world. BUD/S lasts a grueling six months. Out of the elite selected for SEAL training,” only ten-twenty percent pass.
The pinnacle of that six months is Hell Week, seven days of drills designed to push men to the brink--physically, emotionally and spiritually. They average 2-5 hours of sleep per night. “What kind of man makes it through Hell Week?…I do know—generally—who won't make it…the weight-lifting meatheads who think that the size of their biceps is an indication of their strength, the kids covered in tattoos announcing to the world how tough they are, the preening leaders who don't want to get dirty, and the look-at-me former athletes who have always been told they are stars but have never have been pushed beyond the envelope of their talent to the core of their character. In short, those who fail are the ones who focus on show….
Some men who seemed impossibly weak at the beginning of SEAL training—men who puked on runs and had trouble with pull-ups—made it. Some men who were skinny and short and whose teeth chattered just looking at the ocean also made it. Some men who were visibly afraid, sometimes to the point of shaking, made it too.
Almost all the men who survived possessed one common quality. Even in great pain, faced with the test of their lives, they had the ability to step outside of their own pain, put aside their own fear and ask: How can I help the guy next to me? They had more than the "fist" of courage and physical strength. They also had a heart large enough to think about others, to dedicate themselves to a higher purpose.”*
Even though I come from a peacemaking tradition, I’m thinking out loud how our training of soldiers in the Lord’s army, the Church, should be more like the Navy SEALS.
- Think about others
- Focus on a higher calling
- Train tough
Sounds like Jesus’ requirements and recruitment methods:
“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2)
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).
*”The SEAL Sensibility,” May 7 2011, The Wall Street Journal.—Lt. Cmdr. Greitens is a SEAL in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the author of "The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL."
