Rambo is my wife’s favorite movie franchise. And so when we found out that we were free one night because her mom came in to babysit, we settled into our movie theater seats and watched the fifth and last installment of the Rambo series, Rambo V: Last Blood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the movie took about as many hits from critics as John Rambo’s character took in the course of the movie’s 1 hour 39 minute run time. Nonetheless, I think we can learn something from Rambo. 
The basics of Last Blood are that John Rambo has settled into semi-retirement on his family’s ranch in Arizona. He spends his days training horses, digging a series of intricate tunnels, and spending time with his adopted family. He’s retired, but he isn’t healed. The effects of the PTSD that were clear in the first movie, First Blood, are no less a part of his reality now. He has just learned to deal with them, or in his own words, “I haven’t changed. I just try to keep a lid on it every day.”
Often we hear a narrative of Christianity that goes something like, “Once I was (a drunk/gossiper/idolater/fornicator/covetor/Sabbath breaker/__________), but now that I’m a Christian….” But most of the time the reality is that we still feel like those things are inside of us, even if we have stopped doing whatever sin in a manifest way (thoughts/words/deeds) we still recognize their pull on us (the theological term for this is “concupiscence”). Like John Rambo, our relationship with sin is less “I’ve changed,” but even when it is good (and it isn’t always) it’s “I just try to keep a lid on it every day.”
Of course, John Rambo doesn’t keep a lid on it. He instead goes on a killing spree that rivals if not topples the violence of his other four movies. The sense that we get out of this is that Rambo’s life, even in his brokenness – perhaps because of his brokenness, has a meaning. Rambo’s brokenness engages him in wars against evil; makes him a “hero” albeit a messy one. That is our story too. God uses us, broken sinners struggling to keep a lid on our post traumatic sin disorder. He doesn’t wait for us to become non-Rambos, but He redeems our lives, sins and all, for use in His Kingdom that fights against evil.
The shift from First Blood to Last is significant. In First Blood, all Rambo wants is someone in the civilian world to see him as useful. But by the end of the movie franchise, all John Rambo wants is to live in a world that doesn’t need him anymore. As Christians, we are promised both of Rambo’s wishes. We are given lives of significance in our vocations with our neighbors, but we are also given the peace of knowing that the world doesn’t need us. What the world needs isn’t us. What the world needs is Jesus. We’re just here to point the way to Him in our vocations while we try to keep a lid on it every day.