“You have to be willing to slay who you are to become who you want to be”
My company’s Chief Drill Instructor said this to us during our first PT session. At the time, I related those words to the work outs. I thought he meant that we needed to push ourselves when we exercised and give it 100%. But those words mean so much more than that.
Every day at Parris Island was a small piece to a puzzle. Becoming a United States Marine is a process. There is no timeline for this process. The Crucible at the end of training does not create a Marine. It is the opportunity to demonstrate that an individual already is one. It is an a proving ground where recruits show that they have set aside their old mindset, their old habits, and have embraced new ones.
Throughout the training cycle, I had to remind myself again and again that every day I woke up, I had to make a decision to stab at who I was and bleed myself of the weaknesses that hold me back. The drill instructors would often scream at us to “stop acting like disgusting civilians”. This is what they meant. Every day at Recruit Training we had to choose to put away our old selves and learn the Marine Corps ways.
The Bible speaks of this concept as well. Romans 6:6-7 says “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, since a person who has died is freed from sin’s claims” (HCSB).
Christians understand that every day is a battle between two natures: our old sin nature and the new nature that the Holy Spirit gives us. Just like I had to choose every morning that I woke up to bleed myself of those things that held me back from being a Marine, Christians have to make that same decision to slay the “old man” and embrace their new identity in Christ. I’ll conclude with 2 Corinthians 5:17, which affirms this idea.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” (HCSB)
