I recently watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge because I enjoy the occasional war movie—especially when it has some meaningful storytelling attached to it. This story is about a man named Desmond Doss, who was a conscientious objector to killing, but who still enlisted in the army as a medic during WWII. Two scenes in particular struck me concerning the idea of listening to God.
First, the army does its best to get Doss to quit after he enlists. They don’t want an unarmed, unwilling-to-kill man going into battle alongside them. At one point, he’s made to go through a psychiatric evaluation to see if he’s crazy. “Do you think God speaks to you?” the psychiatrist asks (or something like that). Doss answers that he doesn’t “have conversations” with God, but that he does pray. Though the movie is based on the true story of Doss, the dialogue of the movie is undoubtedly the writer’s creation. To suggest that God speaks to you is the equivalent of being crazy.[1]
In the Storyline 