{"id":13207,"date":"2011-09-21T01:43:32","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T06:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=13207"},"modified":"2011-09-21T01:43:32","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T06:43:32","slug":"us-soldier-worked-as-for-the-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/21\/us-soldier-worked-as-for-the-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"US Soldier Worked “as for the Lord”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Killeen Daily Herald<\/em>, local to Fort Hood,\u00a0notes the July death of US Army CPL Frank Gross, who was killed in Afghanistan one month into his deployment. CPL Gross had a consistent motivation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Cpl. Frank Gross wrote the same Bible verse, Colossians 3:23, inside his baseball caps throughout his high school and college pitching career: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”<\/p>\n

“Basically, whatever you do, do it to the best of your ability,” his mother, Toni Gross, said…”That was his life verse.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notably, Gross had not only a Bachelors degree but also a Masters, meaning he was overqualified to be an officer<\/em>.\u00a0 The article reports he chose to enlist first because he “wanted to earn the respect of his soldiers by having first been enlisted.”<\/p>\n

The article notes a unique story to Gross’s service:<\/p>\n

His mother takes heart in a set of three dog tags she received after his death, along with his other belongings.<\/p>\n

The first set names his religion as “none.” The second names it as “nondenominational Christian,” and the third reads “Christian.”<\/p>\n

“It’s a great story,” Toni Gross said of the tags. “It’s uplifting and positive.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The issue of religious identification on dog tags is sometimes a controversial one, especially for those who claim they are not accurately defined by the official military system (most often those who claim a Jedi faith or get “NO REL PREF” instead of “atheist”).<\/p>\n

For some, the lettering stamped on that line of a piece of metal may mean nothing.\u00a0 For others, it carries great weight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Killeen Daily Herald, local to Fort Hood,\u00a0notes the July death of US Army CPL Frank Gross, who was killed in Afghanistan one month into his deployment. CPL Gross had a consistent motivation: Cpl. Frank Gross wrote the same Bible verse, Colossians 3:23, inside his baseball caps throughout his high school and college pitching career: “Whatever you do, work at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[58,88,20,96,2222,2223,97,2221,2,10],"class_list":["post-13207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-army","tag-atheism","tag-christian","tag-colossians-323","tag-dog-tag","tag-fort-hood","tag-frank-gross","tag-military","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}