|
|
|
|
|
|
We have heard a lot about the dissensions in the Anglican Church in the UK, in the USA, in Nigeria, in . . .! I thought a couple of stories about commitment to your self and to others might not come amiss.
Ex-President Jimmy Carter at one time applied to sail on a nuclear submarine and he was interviewed by the then head of the US Nuclear Navy - Admiral Hyman Rickover. This is Carter's recollection of that interview:-
I had applied for the Nuclear Submarine Program, and Admiral Rickover was interviewing me for the job. It was the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss. Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most at the time - current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery - and he began to ask me a series of questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen.
He always looked right into my eyes, and he never smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat.
Finally, he asked a question and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, "How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?" Since I had completed my Sophomore year at Georgia Tech before entering Annapolis as a Pleb, I had done very well and I swelled my chest with pride and answered, "Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
class of 820!" I sat back to wait for the congratulations - which never came. Instead the question: "Did you do your best?" I started to say, "Yes, sir," but I remembered the times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, "No, sir, I didn't always do my best."
He finally looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. He asked me one final question, which I have never been able to forget - or to answer. He said, "Why not?" I sat there for a while, shaken, and then slowly left the room.
What about this recollection, by a victim of the Holocaust - Pastor Niemoller?
"First they came for the communists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist.
Next they came for the Catholics
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Catholic.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me"
Paul expresses it, very concisely, in his letter to the Christians of Rome - "For none of us lives to himself, and no ones dies to himself." (Rom 14.7)
Before we condemn or criticise, we need to look at ourselves and ask what we
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
have done. It is difficult to see a way forward other than by following Jesus' invitation to his disciples on how to live - "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another." (John 13.34)
Keith MacLeod
Reader
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
