OK, I'm still reading this book, Facing Your Giants. This chapter talks about us naturally mistake making humans and provokes us to ask ourselves whose code we choose to live by each day.
There is this POW named Gordon who is in the Death House of Chungkai, Burma. He listens to the moans of the dying and smells the stench of the dead. Pitiless jungle heat bakes his skin and parches his throat. He has lost his appetite and energy for life.
The war has taken it's toll on him. He entered WWII in his early twenties, a robust Highlander in Scotland's Argyle and Sutherland Brigade. But then came the capture by the Japanese, months of backbreaking labor in the jungle, daily beatings, and slow starvation. Scotland seems forever away. Civility, even farther.
The Allied soldiers behave like barbarians, stealing from each other, robbing dying colleagues, fighting for food scraps. Servers shortchange rations so they can have extra for themselves. The law of the jungle has become the law of the camp.
Gordon would happily receive death. Death trumps this life. But then something wonderful happens. Two new prisoners, in whom hope still stirs, are transferred to the camp. They are also sick and frail, but they heed to a higher code. They start to share their meager meals and volunteer for extra work. The cleanse Gordon's ulcerated sores and rub his atrophied legs. His strength slowly returns and, with it, his dignity.
Twenty years later, when Gordon served as chaplain of Princeton University, he described the transformation with these words:
Death was still with us--no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip....Selfishness, hatred...and pride were all anti-life. Love... self sacrifice...and faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life... gifts of God to men....Death no longer had the last word.
Selfishness, hatred, and pride- you don't have to go to a POW camp to find them. The boardroom of a corporation or the bedroom of a marriage or the backwoods of a country will do just fine. The code of the jungle is alive and well. Every man for himself. Get all you can, and can all you get. Survival of the fittest.
Does the code contaminate your world? Are some of your thoughts, my career, my dreams, my stuff. I want things to go my way on my schedule. If so, you know how savage this giant can be. Yet, every so often, a diamond glitters in the mud. A comrade shares, a soldier cares, or a friend intervenes.
Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
-1John 4:11-12
For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time.
-1Timothy 2:5-6
