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| Self-sacrifice is man’s most
noble endeavor |
Philip D. Brown
Police Beat
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Recently, I was helping
a child I know with his homework and one of the questions read somewhat
like this: ‘Have you ever risked your way of life for anything,
or is there anything that you would risk your lifestyle for? What
is it?’ His response pointed out his youth to me. It said,
simply, no.
I think he didn’t want to write anymore than he had to (a dilemma
I don’t often suffer from), but the question provoked me into
deep contemplation.
I wondered what most men would be willing to risk it all for, and
came up with ideals, love, glory, wealth, comfort and sundry others.
However, the noblest reason, I believe, to risk one’s way of
life is for the benefit of another, especially one who is powerless,
like a child.
Several scenes, driven by this chivalrous premise that deeply affected
me over the years came to mind.
Scene #1: When I was eight years old my parents had separated, a
fact that it took me a long time to understand and forgive them
for. I was living with my mother, brother and sister, but my grades
at school had dropped and I was exhibiting what I now realize to
be serious emotional and behavioral problems.
At that time, my grandfather was a retired highway patrolman peddling
used cars, and my grandmother was a fifth grade school teacher approaching
retirement. The last of their three children had moved out of the
house before I was five years old, and they looked forward to spending
their golden years in relaxation having fulfilled their obligations
to their children.
However, they saw that for whatever reason, I was one of those children
who really needed two parents in the home to love them. I was, more
so than my brother, sister or other children I knew, most likely
due to a negative self-image that still torments and hampers me
to this day. They saw that I was developing into an extremely morbid
and offensive young man, and decided they had to act.
Putting away their dreams of a peaceful house and world travel in
their old age, they took me as their own and showered me with love
probably more than they had their own children. I am still a slightly
morbid and quite offensive man, but to their selfless acts I am
forever indebted.
Scene #2: In my early teens, despite the careful and copious guidance
of both sets of grandparents and both parents and stepparents, I
began experimenting with some things that I could have never predicted
would hurt me as deeply as they would. The chief fascination of
mine in that time was sex.
Needless to say, I didn’t realize the consequences of sexuality
at the age of 14, and not long after beginning to have sex, I impregnated
a girl I went to school with. When this fact came to light we both
had pressure applied upon us to murder the child through a federally
endorsed abortion clinic. I at once recognized this to be an immoral
action, and the thought of a person being torn from the womb (the
ultimate symbol of security and connectedness to another human)
and disposed of like garbage disgusts me to this day.
At that time the mother and I decided we would not make the child
pay for our mistakes with its life, and we refused to hear people
who objected saying ‘Now you’ll never be able to get an
education and make something of yourself,’ or ‘What will
people say?’
The last time I saw my daughter, I held her in my arms when she
was getting ready for bed. In my mind I was thinking of how people
had been so adamant that she not be allowed to grow into the beautiful
young lady that she’s become (and she is so beautiful), and
tears ran down my cheek. She asked me why I was crying, and I told
her “Because I’m so happy.” That wasn’t a lie.
We made the right decision.
Scene #3: Finally, I met a man not long ago that has changed me
more deeply than either my grandparents or my daughter. This man
is a source of contention among most of the people who are confronted
with him. I’ve seen him hated on by more people than anybody
else I know.
That’s the funny thing about this guy. The more you hate him,
the more he loves you and tries to enrich you. This quality drew
me to him because I sensed that he possesses a strength that I don’t.
This man was falsely accused of a crime by hypocritical government
officials, but he didn’t let himself become a victim and he
didn’t give up, he used the circumstances they thrust him into
for the good of others.
This man’s name is Jesus, Yeshua in the language he spoke while
he was on earth. His birth and life was predicted thousands of years
before it happened, and was the centerpiece of the rituals of Judaism.
As an infant, his parents had to escape with him to another country
because word came to an angry king that he’d been born. Despite
the fact that he was public enemy number one as far as the buearacracy
of his government was concerned for three years, no one could find
a charge to bring against him that would stick. Mind you, this was
in a time before trial by jury.
Despite all these efforts concentrated on his bodily destruction,
he never embraced violence, if he had the thousands of people that
hung on his every word would have surely taken up arms and started
a civil war that would have disrupted the peace of the ancient Middle
East during the Pax Romana and the workings of the Roman Empire.
Instead, he told his followers not only to love everyone, but to
be the personification of love. It wasn’t just words either.
When he finally went to trial on trumped-up charges, he didn’t
flee the country like his parents had when he was a child. He accepted
death at the hands of those who judged him, but claimed his death
not to be exclusively his. He said that he accepted death so that
he could become a sacrifice for others.
He saw that he had a chance to enrich others by giving up his own
life, and resigned himself to carry that out. Though he is despised
and routinely cursed and called all sorts of terrible things by
people all around me, I see that he is beautiful, and what he did
has been recorded in the annals of history as the most heroic act
of self-sacrifice ever. |
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