85 Sermon Illustrations on Hero

2007 was a banner year for atheism. Anti-God manifestos by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins were bookstore blockbusters. And The Golden Compass, a not-so-subtly atheistic children’s film, hit theaters last month.

With all the attention the atheist agenda is receiving, doesn’t it seem strange that most Americans find heroes among those who reflect a biblical worldview?

Earlier in 2007, CNN began polling people for a list of their heroes. As the results began rolling in, it became apparent that the frontrunners had something in common. Whether or not they professed belief in God, they all lived their lives in a way that would not make sense if He did not exist.

One of the nominees, Wesley Autrey, a construction worker with two small children, jumped onto the New York subway tracks to rescue a young man who had fallen off the platform. Then Autrey sheltered the man with his own body as a train passed overhead.

After the rescue, Autrey told an interviewer: “It was as if something was telling me to do what I done. A voice out of nowhere said, ‘Go and save that life, that life is a life worth saving, and don’t worry about your own.’ It seemed like something just lifted me up off the platform.”

Another nominee was Major Scott Southworth of the Wisconsin National Guard, who adopted a severely handicapped orphan boy when he was serving in Iraq several years ago. Now he is working to bring more than 20 other neglected and abused handicapped boys from Baghdad to the United States for medical treatment.

Then there was Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor and the professor at Virginia Tech who used his body as a shield to protect his students from the gunman. And 15-year-old Zach Hunter from Atlanta who has raised more than $20,000 to help free modern-day slaves. And American Jewish doctor Rick Hodes who volunteers his time and expertise to care for the sick in Ethiopia.

Atheism has no explanation for these acts of self-giving and even self-sacrificing charity. As Chuck Colson has said many times, Darwinian evolution cannot explain this kind of altruism: How does one who willingly dies for another pass on his or her genetic traits for the improvement of the species? No, defenders of atheism and Darwinism, if true to their convictions, should sneer at this kind of self-sacrifice as weak and pointless.

But we know better. Why? Because we — and these modern-day heroes — are made in the image of God. His very character is stamped into our beings. We see in these heroes a reflection of the same God, who in Christ “being made in human likeness . . . humbled himself and became obedient unto death — even death on the cross.” This is the same God who tells us “to lay down our lives” for our friends, “to let the little children come,” and “to act justly and love mercy.”

Tragically, many people, including many Christians, are practical atheists, living our lives in a way that ignores God’s existence. But in the final analysis, we are all still wired to find heroes in those who live life as though God does exist.

________

Copyright (c) 2008 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

A friend sent me a quote from David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, the second president of the United States. Adam’s wife Abigail was a woman of great faith and enormous insight. This is what she wrote to their 10-year-old son, John Quincy Adams (he later became the sixth president), who traveled with his father to Europe during the Revolutionary War:

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

My friend added these words: “The time will come when the Lord may cause us Americans to be truly challenged in our faith. What great Christian heroes and statesmen would come to light!”

David Granger, editor of Esquire magazine, wrote to over 200 prominent people, asking them about their ideas on heroism. Most of those who wrote back claimed that they weren’t even sure what a hero is. Actor Paul Newman wrote, “I’m embarrassed, but I have no heroes that I know of. Everybody that I know or have read about is seriously flawed. Including myself.” The best he could recommend was a good role model. For that post, he chose his dog, Harry. Harry’s best qualities, according to Newman, are that he’s “funky, curious, (and) always of good humor.”

________

David Granger, “Boy, Do We Ever Need A Hero,” Esquire, November 1998, p.26.

By the time Josh Hamilton brought down the House That Ruth Built, my son Daniel was already in bed.

He and I had started watching the Home Run Derby a little earlier, and you could tell that Daniel was impressed. For 5-year-olds who are burgeoning baseball fans, home runs are a big deal.

So we watched as Dan Uggla, Grady Sizemore, Chase Utley and Evan Longoria took their turns. We counted the home runs they hit and the outs they made. I had to explain to Daniel more than once why they weren’t running the bases.

Then it was bed time for him. After tucking him in, I returned to the living room intending to watch the rest of the show. That was before Hamilton, the Texas Rangers outfielder, stole it.

Hamilton mashed ball after ball out of the park, and turned in a performance that I might not have believed had I not witnessed the whole thing. By the time his first round was complete, he had sent 28 baseballs flying out of Yankee Stadium, smashing Bobby Abreu’s Home Run Derby record of 24 homers in a single round.

The showcase would have been impressive enough no matter the player. The fact that it was Hamilton doing this made it even more special.

Most baseball fans by now know Hamilton’s story. The top pick of the Tampa Bay Rays in the 1999 baseball draft, Hamilton received a plump $4 million signing bonus from the team. Everyone expected him to be a superstar. Cooperstown, here he comes.

But then the demons were unleashed. Hamilton wasted his millions on drugs, and earned a suspension from Major League Baseball in the process. His tattoo-stained arms are a constant reminder to him of the lifestyle that almost killed him. He got most of the tattoos while he was high on dope.

Hamilton seemed destined for the baseball scrap heap, his immense talent wasted so he could pursue a junkie’s life and die an early death.

But then God in His mercy spared Hamilton from that path. He saved the young man’s soul, and helped Hamilton straighten out his life. Last year, Hamilton returned to the game of baseball with the Cincinnati Reds and put up respectable numbers, before being traded to the Texas Rangers in the offseason.

This year, Hamilton has exploded. He’s hitting .310 with 21 home runs and 95 RBI after half the season. He’s on pace to put together one of the greatest offensive seasons in decades. And then last night, he forever earned a spot in Yankee Stadium lore with his home run heroics.

“It’s amazing over the past few years what God’s done in my life, and how quickly He’s done it,” Hamilton told ESPN’s Erin Andrews after his record-setting performance. “I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving me this opportunity.”

All the pundits are raving about Hamilton. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti dubbed him “Comeback Player of All Time.” The Washington Post’s Dave Sheinan called him “a new folk hero.” ESPN’s Jayson Stark wrote that Hamilton had “an evening in Yankee Stadium that told a story that ought to restore our faith in mankind.”

Fortunately, I recorded the entire thing. And tonight, I’ll sit with Daniel and let him watch Hamilton’s home run barrage for himself. He’ll be impressed with the long home runs, and I fully expect to hear him exclaim, “Awesome!” multiple times.

As we watch, I’ll undoubtedly tell him a little bit of Hamilton’s story. And while I’ll compliment Hamilton’s ability, I’ll tell Daniel that we should always remember from where his ability comes. For if we watch Hamilton play baseball, and marvel at him for how he has turned his life around, we miss the point entirely.

Hamilton is only a man -– a man who has been incredibly gifted by God to play baseball, but a man nonetheless. As admirable as his successes are, he is not the real hero to the story. The real hero is the Lord, who is truly mighty to save. Hamilton is simply another piece of evidence that nobody is out of God’s reach, and that no case is too desperate for God’s saving grace.

Jayson Stark is wrong. Hamilton’s accomplishment should do much more than “restore our faith in mankind.” It ought to restore our faith in God.

Throughout our nation’s history there have been champions of freedom who bore a dramatic influence in the rise of freedom in America. I wish to honor these Christian leaders with this column.

• William Bradford.

Gov. Bradford came to America on the Mayflower with his wife, Dorothy, who drowned on Dec. 7, 1620, when the ship was anchored in Provincetown Harbor. Despite the anguish of losing his wife, Gov. Bradford wrote “Of Plymouth Plantation,” which gave account of the Plymouth Colony.

In 1623, the notion of Thanksgiving was born as Gov. Bradford declared: “Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience ....”

This man of faith proclaimed that Nov. 29, 1623 (their third year on the new continent) serve as a day for “render[ing] thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.” The colonists had actually celebrated with a feast in 1621, as Indian chiefs Massassoit, Squanto and Samoset and many of their men joined with the Pilgrims for a three-day event.

• George Washington.

Throughout the 1700s, individual colonies initiated individual days of thanksgiving each year. Informal thanksgiving festivities were held in 1777 throughout the colonies as a form of celebrating the surrender of the British.

But in 1789, military hero George Washington, who was serving as America’s first president, declared that America should officially honor God with a National Day of Thanksgiving. Recalling the many blessings on the young nation, President Washington wrote a proclamation setting aside Thursday, Nov. 26 as “A Day of Publick Thanksgiving an[d] Prayer.”

Signed on Oct. 3, 1789, the decree designated the day “to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.” It was an important declaration that reminded all Americans throughout the young nation that God had indeed blessed them with the gift of freedom.

• Abraham Lincoln.

On Oct. 3, 1863, with our nation embroiled in a bitter conflict that set brother against brother, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a national Thanksgiving holiday to take place on the fourth Tuesday of November. This great man, noting the “severity” of the war, said the nation needed to turn its collective hearts heavenward in the time of national struggle.

“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things,” President Lincoln wrote. “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

He noted that the way to bring the nation back to unity was by imploring “the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

• Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday to the third Thursday of November (to extend the Christmas shopping season and boost the economy). After a storm of protest, Roosevelt changed the holiday again in 1941 to the fourth Thursday in November, where it stands today.

On Thanksgiving Day 1943, with the world at war, President Roosevelt issued this proclamation: “God’s help to us has been great in this year of march towards world-wide liberty. In brotherhood with warriors of other United Nations our gallant men have won victories, have freed our homes from fear, have made tyranny tremble, and have laid the foundation for freedom of life in a world which will be free.”

Several other presidents issued Thanksgiving proclamations. In 1898, President William McKinley said the blessings on the nation should “inspire us with gratitude and praise to the Lord of Hosts. ...” In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson described the annual tradition of giving “in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation.”

And in 2001, President George W. Bush issued his proclamation, saying: “In thankfulness and humility, we acknowledge, especially now, our dependence on One greater than ourselves.... May Almighty God, who is our refuge and our strength in this time of trouble, watch over our homeland, protect us, and grant us patience, resolve, and wisdom in all that is to come.”

This year, as we celebrate Thanksgiving nearly 400 years after Gov. Bradford’s first official proclamation, we continue to see an aggressive assault on the Judeo-Christian values that served as a foundation for the young nation. As we can see from the writings of great men of the past, these values have sustained and strengthened our nation at critical times.

It is imperative that those who understand the Christian heritage of this nation ensure that future generations have the ability to defend Thanksgiving and other God-inspired celebrations and observances that define our nation against those forces that wish to drive us into secular oblivion.

________

Jerry Falwell was pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, and chancellor of Liberty University before his death in 2007.

Most of you will recall several years ago when golf superstar Tiger Woods took a nose dive. The man who had the world at the tip of his putter lost respect, fame, millions in sponsorships and, of course, his wife after revelations surfaced of various and tawdry extramarital affairs. Despite Woods’ profuse apologies to fans, colleagues, and competitors, his career was in the rough, and no one knew how long it would take him to get back on his game — professionally or personally.

Four years later, Woods has made a comeback and has had little trouble racking up enough victories to reclaim not only his number one ranking in the sport but also the sponsorships.

Of the few corporate sponsors that stuck with him through those troubled days, Nike may deserve its own award for sheer tenacity and guts — especially in advertising. One controversial commercial, which the company aired shortly after the scandal, shows Woods clad in the Nike hat and shirt as his late father, Earl, asks his son if he learned anything from his experiences. Tiger doesn’t reply.

This year, on the heels of Woods’ latest victory, Nike has taken an even bolder shot with a single image released on Twitter and Facebook sporting the caption, “Winning Takes Care of Everything.”

This, of course, has been the catchphrase Woods has been using for years to silence critics of his game. But as Washington Post columnist Cindy Boren points out, in this context, just as Woods’ career is taking off again, Nike’s implication is all but stated: His delivery on the golf course compensates for his indiscretions in private. Athletic victory is far more important than moral character.

Woods himself has said nothing about the ad, and it would be wrong to speculate about his feelings. But this instance of “Nike being Nike” as one sports marketing consultant told USA Today, might reflect a far broader trend in our culture — one that reaches beyond golf or even professional sports into the realms of entertainment, business and politics.

Our heroes are changing, and you can see it all around us. The generation of Jackie Robinson, the Lone Ranger and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has given way to vampire boyfriends, doped-up athletes, and politicians whose moral indiscretions do little to damage their popularity or influence. Nike’s daring ad reminds us that the assumption of moral success going hand-in-hand with professional success is a thing of the past.

Not that we’ve completely given up on the old kind of hero. I mean, we still admire the honest athletes of the world, the consistent Tim Tebows and especially the courageous first responders who rescued bombing victims in Boston last week.

But alongside these timeless role models of generations past, a new breed of hero has cropped up: brazen, volatile, self-absorbed, often promiscuous, and proud of it.

I was reminded of this when reading a profile last week in the Washington Post on former NBA great Allen Iverson. Throughout his career, Iverson personified this new type of hero, most famously in a post-game rant against his coach Larry Brown who had criticized his bad practice habits and sense of entitlement. At the time, sports analysts and commentators defended Iverson for his independence and “don’t care what anyone thinks” attitude.

But today, they pity him. Iverson, who made millions and was probably the best player ever of his size, is now broke and lost, according to the Post profile. Having been enabled in his delusions of self-importance without responsibility, he has no idea what to do now that he can’t play basketball anymore. It’s a sad story, and indicative of the fact that a culture that leaves moral clarity out of the equation for a hero does even the heroes themselves a grave disservice. The assumptions of Nike and of our culture, that somehow winning fixes everything, and that moral integrity just can’t compete with a good swing, is delusional. It just isn’t true — not today, not ever.

________

Copyright (c) 2013 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In September of 1940, a Polish army captain named Witold Pilecki, did what no one could imagine, he sneaked into the Auschwitz concentration camp. Pilecki was a committed Christian and Polish patriot who couldn’t sit by and watch what was going on in there. His goal was to gather information on the horrible things happening inside the barbed wire, but knew he could only do that if he was inside.

He devised a daring plan that his superiors approved. They provided Pilecki with a false identity card that bore a Jewish name, and then Pilecki allowed himself to be arrested by the Nazis during a routine street roundup in Warsaw. He was sent to Auschwitz and given inmate number 4859. Pilecki, who had a wife and two children, knew he was saying goodbye to all that he knew and loved on earth, aware that he very well might not survive. Inside the camp he was treated like every other prisoner; he was beaten, harassed and threatened with death.

From inside he began to carry out his mission, organizing inmates into resistance units, boosting morale and documenting war crimes. Pilecki had couriers who smuggled out detailed reports on the atrocities he saw firsthand. He helped organize a secret radio station using scrap parts. His information provided Western allies with key intelligence information about Auschwitz.

In the spring of 1943, Pilecki joined the camp bakery where he overpowered a guard and escaped. From the outside he completed his report which estimated that some 2 million persons had died in the camp. When his eyewitness reports reached London, officials thought he was exaggerating.

This is an amazing story about a dedicated and selfless man. One Jewish writer summarized Pilecki’s life this way: "Once he set his mind to the good, he never wavered, never stopped. He crossed the great human divide that separates knowing the right thing from doing the right thing.”

________

Rob Eshman, “The Man Who Snuck into Auschwitz,” JewishJournal.com,12-5-12; Captain Witold Pilecki, The Auschwitz Volunteer, A. Polonica, 2012

=================

Version from NPR:

“Meet the Man Who Sneaked Into Auschwitz,” NPR staff, September 18, 2010

This weekend [September 2010] marks the 70th anniversary of a World War II milestone few people have heard before. It’s the story of a Polish army captain named Witold Pilecki.

In September 1940, Pilecki didn’t know exactly what was going on in Auschwitz, but he knew someone had to find out. He would spend two and a half years in the prison camp, smuggling out word of the methods of execution and interrogation. He would eventually escape and author the first intelligence report on the camp.

The Mystery of Auschwitz

In the early years of the war, little was known about the area near the town Germans called Auschwitz.

Poland was in a state of chaos. It was divided in half — Nazi Germany claiming one side, Soviet Russia on the other. The Polish resistance had gone underground.

Pilecki wanted to infiltrate the Auschwitz camp, but he had difficulty getting commanders to sign off on the mission. At the time, it was thought of as POW camp.

“They didn’t realize the information from inside the camp was that vital,” says Ryszard Bugajski, a Polish filmmaker who directed the 2006 film The Death of Captain Pilecki.

Pilecki was eventually cleared to insert himself into a street round-up of Poles in Warsaw on Sept. 19, 1940. Upon arrival, he learned Auschwitz was far from anything the Resistance had imagined.

Life As A Number

“Together with a hundred other people, I at least reached the bathroom,” Pilecki’s Auschwitz report reads. “Here we gave everything away into bags, to which respective numbers were tied. Here our hair of head and body were cut off, and we were slightly sprinkled by cold water. I got a blow in my jaw with a heavy rod. I spat out my two teeth. Bleeding began. From that moment we became mere numbers — I wore the number 4859.”

That was a small and early number for a camp that would — one year later — see numbers in the 15,000s.

Alex Storozynski, president and executive director of the Kosciuszko Foundation, tells NPR’s Mike Pesca that one of the early signs of Auschwitz’s true purpose to Pilecki was the prisoners’ diet. “The food rations were calculated in such a way that people would live for six weeks,” Storozynski says.

Here’s Pilecki’s description of what a German officer told him: “ ‘Whoever will live longer — it means he steals. You will be placed in a special commando, where you will live short.’ This was aimed to cause as quick a mental breakdown as possible.”

Smuggling Out Word of the Horrors Within

Pilecki was assigned to backbreaking work — carrying rocks in a wheelbarrow. But he also managed to gather intelligence on the camp and smuggle messages out with prisoners who escaped. SS soldiers assigned Poles to take their laundry into town, and sometimes messages could be smuggled along with the dirty clothes to be passed to the underground Polish army.

“The underground army was completely in disbelief about the horrors,” Storozynski explains. “About ovens, about gas chambers, about injections to murder people — people didn’t believe him. They thought he was exaggerating.”

Pilecki also hoped to organize an attack and mass escape from the camp. But no order could be procured for such a plan from Polish high command.

“We were waiting for an order, as we understood that without such one — although it would be a beautiful firework and unexpected for the world and for Poland — we could not agree to do that,” Pilecki wrote.

For the next two-and-a-half years, Pilecki slowly worked to feed his reports up the Polish chain of command to London.

“And in London,” Storozynski says, “the Polish government in exile told the British and the Americans, ‘You need to do something. You need to bomb the train tracks going to these camps. Or we have all these Polish paratroopers — drop them inside the camp. Let them help these people break out.’ But the British and the Americans just wouldn’t do anything.”

Pilecki’s Escape

Eventually, after nearly three years, Pilecki reported, “further stay here might be too dangerous and difficult for me.”

He planned an escape through a poorly secured back door in a bakery, where he’d managed to get a job. With a few other inmates, he ran into the night.

“Shots were fired behind us,” he wrote. “How fast we were running, it is hard to describe. We were tearing the air into rags by quick movements of our hands.”

After his escape, Pilecki continued to fight in the underground. But after the war, the Germans were replaced by a new occupying regime — the Soviets. Pilecki was again asked to gather intelligence, this time on the ways in which the communists were establishing themselves in Poland.

Filmmaker Bugajski explains, “He was actually captured by the communists, he was accused of espionage, and he was shot.”

A Story Revealed — At Last

There’s a reason many Americans have never heard the story of Witold Pilecki’s infiltration of Auschwitz. The communist regime in Poland censored any mention of his name in the public record — a ban that remained in place until the fall of the Berlin wall.

Only since then have documents emerged that reveal his story — and that allowed Bugajski to accurately portray it in his film.

That film ends with an epilogue, as the actor who plays Pilecki, Marek Probosz, walks outside the same prison where Pilecki was executed.

“To our surprise, we see that this is free Poland,” Probosz explains. “That you can talk about Pilecki, and no one is going to spit in your face or stab you with a knife.”

Today there is a street in Warsaw named after Pilecki. A square might be named after him, too.

“Having a beautiful wife and two kids he loved dearly, he decided to leave them behind and go to Auschwitz.” Probosz says. “Human beings were the most precious thing for Pilecki, and especially those who were oppressed. He would do anything to liberate them, to help them.”

As Chuck Colson shared yesterday on BreakPoint, these are troubling times for human dignity and the pro-life movement. President-elect Obama has promised to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate every common-sense restriction passed on abortion at the state level and federal level in the past 20 years. The new administration is also encouraging embryonic stem cell research. And nowadays, 90 percent of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome prior to birth are aborted.

In times when many evangelicals are tempted to retreat from the front lines of the battle for human dignity, we need some modern-day heroes for life — people whose bold and countercultural stand for life can serve as inspiring role models.

So as the 36th anniversary of Roe V. Wade ominously approaches, I want to recognize a few people have chosen to put life first — way outside the boundaries of what most of us would call our comfort zones.

For one Illinois woman, being pro-life cost her her job. As a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, Jill Stanek discovered that babies were being aborted alive and left to die in a utility room. When Jill publicized the atrocity, she was fired. That was seven years ago. Since then, she has fought relentlessly for the rights of the unborn, particularly for the passage of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which protects children who survive abortion.

A few states over in Michigan, Lucy Talbot, a mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, is fighting hard to combat the horrifying and rising trend of aborting babies with Down syndrome.

Lucy points out that no one congratulates the new parents of a Down syndrome baby. But she says, “It’s a baby first, and we have to congratulate” them.

Lucy has started a nonprofit organization to educate prospective parents about the joys and struggles of raising a child with Down syndrome — and to challenge obstetricians to offer a more positive perspective on Down syndrome to their patients. She even goes to hospitals during lunch to challenge the healthcare professionals to view Down syndrome differently.

In Ohio, a single woman named Anita White is making perhaps an even more unusual sacrifice. Anita always dreamed about getting married and starting a family. Although she has yet to marry, that didn’t stop her from making the heroic decision to adopt three “unwanted” children. One of her children survived a premature delivery and was born with cerebral palsy. She says, “I’m willing to take the children whom nobody else will take.”

In a culture that tells single people to live for themselves, Anita’s example is radically countercultural — and radically for life.

People like Jill, Lucy, and Anita remind me that there is still hope for those who can’t defend themselves. Life might be on the rocks across this country and in our courtrooms, but that doesn’t stop these remarkable individuals from continuing to champion human dignity one life at a time. Their examples challenge me to think creatively about how I can fight for life.

________

Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

It may have been the most memorable - maybe even the most defining moment in the history of our generation - the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Most of us were marked indelibly by just watching it on television. My friend Nathan lived it. It was his first visit to New York, and his business took him high up in one of the Twin Towers. After the attacks, while there was still great confusion as to whether to evacuate or to stay in the building, Nathan disregarded the announcement to “return to your offices.” That decision saved his life. He made his way down the long stairwell until he neared the bottom. There rescuers guided him and many others with him to a safe exit, not long before the tower collapsed in those few horrific seconds. I'll never forget when Nathan told me about the firefighters he saw as he neared the main floor: he said, “I looked in their eyes and thought, 'They must be as frightened as I am.’ Except I was going down, and they were going up.” Is it any wonder we call them heroes?

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “When Fear isn't Final.”

When rescuers go into a deadly situation in order to save lives, are they afraid? Oh, yes, they are. Does their fear decide what they will do? No. When the Bible talks about rescue, it's not just referring to saving a person so they can live maybe thirty or forty more years on earth. When God talks rescue, He's talking about saving a person so they can live forever. Some of the spiritually dying people Jesus came to save work where you work, they live where you live, they go to school where you go to school, they participate in things you participate in. And He's placed a rescuer in their lives so they can have a chance at Jesus, and a chance at heaven. You probably looked at that rescuer in the mirror this morning.

And what is it that keeps most of us who know Christ from actually talking with the people we know about the Jesus they don't know? Isn't it pretty much fear? We're afraid of what they might think, of how it might affect our relationship, of what we might lose, of how we might mess it up. All too often, the fear decides it. We remain silent, and they remain unwarned.

In Exodus 3, beginning with verse 8, our word for today from the Word of God, the Lord is telling Moses that He is no longer going to tolerate the slavery and misery of His people. He says, “I have come down to rescue them.” I can just hear Moses saying, “Oh great!” Then the Lord says, “So now, go. I am sending you.” I can just hear Moses saying, “Oh no!” He wants the people He cares about rescued - but he's afraid to be the one to try it. Just like us, when God says, “I'm sending you to rescue the people around you.” God's answer? “I will be with you ... Go: I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” And Moses becomes God's rescuer.

A correspondent who observed the heroism of the GI's who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day knew they were afraid of those mined beaches and those German guns. But still they went in - like the rescuers of the Twin Towers. The correspondent made this challenging observation: “Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the disregard of it.” That's what will finally give the people you know their chance to belong to Jesus - God's courage in you that will not be the absence of fear. Mine has never gone away. It will be your disregard of your fear. It will no longer be the fear that decides what you do. For two reasons: one, you are simply going to be God's glove, with His hand in your life helping you do what you thought you could never do. And two, because there is a greater fear than what might happen if you do try to rescue a spiritually dying person you know - it's the fear of what might happen if you don't. Nothing could be worse than that.

The heroism of saving a life isn't reserved for those who aren't afraid - but for those who disregard their fear - because a life is at stake! And you can't just let them die.

__________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

As Americans, we honor the Unknown Soldiers, those men who anonymously gave their lives to serve and defend our nation. In Arlington National Cemetery, “Where Valor Proudly Sleeps,” lay three soldiers who have received the highest military honors, including the Congressional Medal of Honor, while no one even knows their names.

On the Tomb of the Unknowns are the words “Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God.” The soldiers of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Regiment who guard this tomb memorize the Sentinels' Creed, which says in part, “It is he who commands the respect I protect. His bravery that made us so proud. Surrounded by well meaning crowds by day[,] alone in the thoughtful peace of night, this soldier will in honored glory rest under my eternal vigilance.”

The American people understand that these men died for a cause, they died to defend our nation, they died to promote democracy. The Unknown Soldiers gave the ultimate sacrifice -- their own lives -- to see freedom extended to the world. While we do not know their names, we celebrate their deeds.

In God's army, the greatest works of revival and evangelism often stem from the efforts of unknown Christian soldiers. The Christian church needs more soldiers who are willing to work, to serve, to die in order to see the mission accomplished. The finest, most trustworthy soldiers are those who work not for medals, awards or recognition, but instead to protect one's brothers and finish one's missions.

While a few soldiers in the army receive acclaim and honor for their heroic deeds, the great majority of soldiers defend their country quietly, anonymously -- simply because it is their job, their duty. As Christian believers, we need more faithful, humble soldiers who serve not for awards and recognition, but simply to do their duty to serve Christ and to bring others to Him.

You know the names of a few famous soldiers who have demonstrated bravery and honor during times of harrowing danger. Each of us has read about Eisenhower and MacArthur and Pershing and Bradley. But the average citizen knows not the untold millions of American men and women who have served this nation faithfully, quietly, heroically.

In the church of Jesus Christ, we have a few famous, recognizable leaders. These well-known ministers preach on television and radio, they write best-selling books, they pastor large, prominent churches. Undoubtedly, God has a place in His Kingdom for Christians who receive acclaim and honor because of their influential status in religious circles.

I believe, however, that God would have us to know the untold millions who throughout the centuries have served in the army of God faithfully, quietly, heroically. The greatest spiritual accomplishments occur when human beings achieve extraordinary things for God, and He alone receives the credit. In Acts 20 [actually, 21:19], Luke writes that the Apostle Paul “began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it they began glorifying God.”

Did you notice that? Did you notice who received the acclaim? God was glorified when the elders heard about the happenings within Paul's ministry. God the Father received the glory and praise, not Paul. Though he had been faithful when faced with opposition, Paul understood that spiritual successes do not prove the power of the minister, but rather demonstrate the majesty of a sovereign God.

In our churches, we need more people who would seek to glorify God and care less about getting the credit for religious accomplishments. We are not called to build buildings or write books, we are called to glorify God. If buildings and books bring praise to the Almighty, then go ahead and build and write. However, if earthly accomplishments done in the name of Christ are used to advance the name and reputation of a Christian worker, we have missed our assignment.

May we all remember the words of our Savior, who instructed us to “let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). God the Father wants and needs anonymous soldiers who faithfully fight the good fight and point all praise toward Calvary. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers announces to the world that American military personnel have a cause worth fighting and dying for. Our churches and our ministries must also demonstrate to the world that our cause, our Christ, is worth fighting and dying for.

Are you a soldier for God? Have you enlisted in His army by taking the oath of allegiance called the prayer of salvation? If you have not, may I invite you to join the only army guaranteed to win every battle, every time? If you are already a soldier of Christ, are you seeking to advance the cause of your Commander, or do you seek medals and public notoriety? May we all seek to be soldiers of God, unknown soldiers, who faithfully serve God because our duty is to glorify Him, not to make a name for ourselves.

__________

Trey Graham is senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Melissa, Texas.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18420]

A year after the Paducah shootings Ben Strong is still standing up for God. [see update below]

______________________

When Ben Strong and Michael Carneal arrived at school on that Monday morning more than a year ago, both of them knew exactly what they wanted to do.

Ben wanted to pray with his friends. Michael wanted to shoot them.

And so at 7:37 a.m. on December 1, 1997, Ben and about 35 other students gathered - as they did every morning before the first bell rang - in the front lobby of Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky.

There they stood, huddled together, holding hands, singing songs and talking to God.

While they prayed, Michael, a 14-year-old freshman, stood nearby, calmly putting in ear plugs. As soon as the students said, "Amen," Michael pulled out a pistol and started shooting.

The first bullet hit Nicole Hadley, a 14-year-old freshman who was a popular basketball player. Nicole fell to the floor and later died.

Michael pulled the trigger about 10 more times, sending more students to the floor. Three girls died in the attack-Nicole, 15-year-old Kayce Steger, and 17-year-old Jessica James. Five other students were injured, including Missy Jenkins who is paralyzed from the chest down.

The whole time Michael was shooting, Ben kept yelling, "Mike, what are you doing? Put the gun down!" But Michael ignored him and kept firing.

Then the principal, Bill Bond, who heard the shots from his office, came running into the lobby. Michael took aim at the principal. But before he could pull the trigger, Ben stepped in front of Michael and demanded that he stop the shooting.

This time, Michael listened. He put the gun down, then slouched to the floor and told Ben, "I can't believe I did that." Soon, police arrived, arrested Michael, and took him away.

The principal says Ben is a hero. "I have no doubt that Ben saved my life," says Bond. "There was one bullet left in the gun, and I know it was meant for me."

REACTING RIGHT

When people say he's a hero, Ben says, "Not me. I was just reacting to what was happening."

Just reacting? That was no ordinary reaction. There aren't many people who could do what Ben did.

"That took courage," said the principal.

Courage may have been Ben's first reaction, but in the following days, his reactions were more typical: shock, grief, confusion, pain. But never did he get angry at God.

"I guess I never thought of it that way," says Ben, whose dad is pastor of Concord Assembly of God church. "You don't know why stuff like this happens, but it does. And you can't really do anything to change that. You can change how you react to it, but you can't change the past. And you need to remember that God is always in control."

Ben says the tragedy has made his faith stronger, that he's never doubted God's love, even for a second.

"God is the only one who got us through this," he says. "God's always there for us, no matter what happens. He's our ultimate hope, and we have to stay focused on him.

"If I wasn't a Christian, I don't know how I'd react to something like this. It would be easy to just go nuts. But when you have God in your life, something like this forces you to lean on him even more."

Especially when it came to forgiveness. Ben says he forgave Michael "immediately."

"I'm not saying I wasn't mad at him, because I was," Ben says. "But I knew that forgiveness was the right thing to do. You can't hang on to bitterness, because it'll ruin the rest of your life. I forgave Mike because that's what God wants us to do."

Ben's not the only student to have forgiven Michael. Many others have publicly stated their forgiveness. Within days of the shooting, some of them had put up a huge banner in the Heath hallways that read, "We forgive you, Mike!"

None of the students has spoken with Michael since the shooting, but several, including Ben, have visited the Carneal family to express their love and forgiveness. "We've got to remember Michael's family," Ben says. "They're hurting, too."

LASTING EFFECTS

A tragedy like the one that occurred in West Paducah can affect people in drastic ways.

It can tear them apart.

Or it can bring them closer together. Which is just what happened with the prayer group at Heath, says Ben.

"We've all leaned on each other, prayed for each other, talked about it a lot," he says. "We've needed each other's support to get through this."

Other students - including many non-believers - noticed the group's solidarity. And they wanted to be a part of it.

Before the shooting, about 35 people regularly attended the morning prayer sessions. By the end of the year, that number was up to at least 100, says Ben, who was the group's leader before graduating last spring.

"All kinds of kids started coming to the prayer group," says Ben. "Now, I don't want to say that everything is peachy, because it's not. There's still some underlying stuff that a lot of people are dealing with.

"But other kids are curious. They're seeing the hope that we have in God. They're saying, 'If there's that much hope in it, there has to be something in it for me, too.' Some kids were coming to the group and getting to know God for the first time."

That's the most important thing to Ben, an evangelist at heart. Since the tragedy, Ben has been asked to speak in churches around the country. At one church service in Ohio, about 200 students approached the altar after Ben spoke, deciding to follow Jesus. That thrills Ben to the core.

"People are getting saved," says Ben, who has known since he was 12 that he wants to be a preacher, just like his dad. "To see kids get saved, to encourage kids, that's what I like to see."

Ben has had a year to reflect on what happened that tragic morning last December. He says he's learned a lot of things in the wake of it all. And he wants to tell those things to others.

"Some of the kids at my school realized this thing was so close to them," says Ben. "They realized life is real, and life can sometimes end quicker than we thought it could."

As a result, Ben wants to get the word out about getting right with God.

"I want to tell people about Jesus," he says. "I've learned it's important to stand up for God no matter what happens. God's always there for you, no matter what.

"As Christians, we have to live our lives strong, and be faithful to God. He'll always be there with us."

Just as he was for the three girls who died. Ben says the others in the prayer group have been comforted by knowing that Nicole, Kayce, and Jessica are in heaven.

"It hurts to see them go," Ben says, "but to them, there was no better way. They were praying. As soon as they said, 'Amen,' they saw the face of God."

________

Condensed from Campus Life (December 1998), © 1998 Christianity Today International.

=========

Holwick: After I preached this illustration in 2016, I googled Ben Strong to see how his life had turned out and found this article:

"When Grief Wanted a Hero, Truth Didn’t Get in the Way," by William Glaberson, New York Times, July 25, 2000; .

He was the teenage hero who turned a horrifying school shooting into a parable of good against evil. His name is Ben Strong, the gregarious son of a preacher, and he was said to have displayed remarkable courage when he disarmed Michael Carneal, the 14-year-old killer who opened fire on a prayer group at Heath High School here [Padukah, Kentucky] on Dec. 1, 1997.

In the days after the shooting, Mr. Strong, an appealing high school senior, was a regular on national television, where he was portrayed as a symbol of hope. His inspirational story of confronting the killer was repeated in newspapers across the country, including this one. Since then, he has been the subject of cover articles in magazines and has traveled the country preaching to young people. Now 20, and working at his father’s Assembly of God Church, he is often introduced as the hero of Heath High.

But as new information about the events that morning is starting to emerge because of a civil lawsuit, some people here are openly challenging the portrait of Mr. Strong as a hero who rushed up to a killer as he was firing and persuaded him to drop the gun he had used to kill three girls and injure five other students. In a brief interview recently, even Mr. Strong acknowledged for the first time to a reporter that the heroic picture of him might have been inaccurate.

“Sometimes,” he said in the interview, “people get the wrong idea.” In terse answers to questions, he agreed that he had not taken the gun away from Mr. Carneal, as he sometimes suggested after the shooting, and he agreed that he might not have influenced Mr. Carneal at all in his decision to stop shooting.

The Ben Strong story shows how chaos and panic can distort the accounts that witnesses give of the rampage killings that periodically horrify the country. It may show, too, how the stories of the killings are often shaped by the powerful desire of reporters and everyone else involved to find some good news, even signs of heroism, in horrible, inexplicable events.

A striking finding from a New York Times examination of rampage killings, published in April, is that long after the reporters depart, a different story of the events often emerges. Usually, the first accounts present inaccurate information about the killer, the crime, the victims or the roles of bystanders.

After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, for example, one student, Cassie Bernall, was widely described as having answered “yes” when one of the two killers asked her whether she believed in God. She was killed, it was said, for her faith.

After that account put her in the realm of martyrdom and inspired a best-selling book, some news accounts last year reported that the “yes” most likely came from another student, Valeen Schnurr, who survived.

At Heath High School, the press took its lead from Bill J. Bond, the principal at the time of the shooting. Mr. Bond was the first person to tell reporters that a prayerful senior who was a football player, Benjamin Scott Strong, had probably saved lives, including Mr. Bond’s.

“The whole world wants a hero,” Mr. Bond said in a recent interview. “It is natural to look for some goodness in a tragedy, and I probably contributed to it.”

In testimony filed in McCracken County Circuit Court here this spring, which has received little public notice, Mr. Strong said he had won praise for his bravery “because of what people said, how things were portrayed” after the shooting, not what really happened.

The families of the three murdered girls sued Mr. Strong, as well as school officials, and many other people here they said could have prevented the killings. In the deposition, Mr. Strong testified this winter that the killer had discarded the gun on his own. “He just got done, and he dropped it,” Mr. Strong said.

Mr. Carneal, who is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty but mentally ill to murder, also testified in the suit. When a lawyer asked whether Mr. Strong had stopped him from shooting he replied, “No sir.”

When Mr. Bond was told in a recent interview about Mr. Strong’s newly released testimony, he said information about Mr. Strong’s actions had come from Mr. Strong initially and had always been somewhat imprecise.

“I asked him what he did,” Mr. Bond said, “and he said, ‘I told him to lay the gun down,’ and I took that at face value.”

With scores of reporters pressing around the school the afternoon of the shooting, Mr. Bond said, the story of Mr. Strong’s actions may have been exaggerated and “it probably developed a life of its own.”

Mr. Strong helped the story along. Within hours of the shooting, he was giving interviews and standing by as reporters described him as the leader of the prayer group, a title he no longer claims.

His descriptions of the shooting varied in the early interviews. But in some accounts he suggested there had been a tug of war over the gun. “And then I went for him and I grabbed him, you know,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” the day after the shootings, “and he put down the gun and everything.”

Sometimes, he simply stood by or denied he was a hero, which some of his new admirers took as humility. On CNN’s “Larry King Live” a week after the killings, Mr. Strong listened silently while another guest, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, called Mr. Strong a “major hero” and repeated the widespread story. Mr. Falwell described how Mr. Strong “literally walked right up to the young man in the face of a firing gun and said, ‘Give me the gun.’ “

In Mr. Strong’s deposition, on Jan. 20, a transcript shows, the lawyer for the victims’ families, Mike Breen of Bowling Green, Ky., read him a Time magazine article published the week after the shooting.

Time, which had interviewed Mr. Strong, said that Mr. Strong “turned his eyes” on the killer “and, forcefully said, ‘Put down the gun.’” In his deposition, Mr. Strong said he could not guarantee that he had actually said any of that out loud. “Now the forcefully part,” he added, “that was written by them.”

Mr. Strong was questioned under oath by the lawyer for the victims’ families, partly because they had sued him. Mr. Strong has always acknowledged that Mr. Carneal warned him not to come to the prayer group that Monday because something was going to happen.

But Mr. Strong has denied that he had any reason to suspect that Mr. Carneal would commit murder. The judge dismissed the case against Mr. Strong and most of the other defendants.

It is clear from the deposition testimony that Mr. Strong did eventually go to Mr. Carneal while some other students ran away. He might have reached Mr. Carneal the same time as Mr. Bond.

Mr. Carneal, according to the testimony, had by then stopped shooting, discarded his gun and was slumping to the ground, perhaps in tears. It is undisputed that when Mr. Strong and Mr. Bond arrived, Mr. Carneal was distraught and asked Mr. Strong to “kill me, please kill me.”

Mr. Carneal said in his testimony that Mr. Strong did speak as he approached. He quoted Mr. Strong as saying: “What are you shooting people for?” Then, Mr. Carneal said, Mr. Strong groaned, gritted his teeth and took Mr. Carneal by the shoulders and shook him.

Mr. Strong ended two brief interviews recently by saying that he was not comfortable talking about the subject any longer. But he was accepting of the idea that the story of what happened the day of the shooting might be different from the one that is widely known. “Truth is truth,” he said very quietly. “That’s a good thing.”

In his deposition, Mr. Strong suggested that he wanted to be brave. But in shock, he said, “Your body doesn’t function like it normally does.”

After the first days, the story of Mr. Strong as a hero might have been beyond his ability to control it. In large ways and small, the story was being used by other people who wanted a hero in a tragedy, including the news media. But in West Paducah, the families of the murdered girls seethed as they said they believed Mr. Strong was profiting from their daughters’ deaths.

“I think he’s got some problems, some reason he has to think of himself as a hero,” said Joe James, whose daughter Jessica was killed in the shooting. The parents of the three girls who were killed all said they were infuriated by a Web site, bstrong.com, which advertised a CD with a song by professional artists titled “BStrong” and included remarks from Mr. Strong. In the recent interview, Mr. Strong said he had not received any proceeds from the sale of the CD. The producers of the CD have said it was a fund-raising effort for the victims’ families.

Whatever part Mr. Strong played in perpetuating his story, his public image has quietly divided people here. To some, he remains a young man who, no matter what, represents positive values in stark contrast to those of the killer.

But some here say the Ben Strong story has overshadowed the tragedy itself and they are bitter about him. In May, about 30 students from a parochial school near here, Christian Fellowship School, traveled to an intramural event at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla.

In a large meeting for all the high school students, a speaker told the assembled crowd that teenagers today should be more like Ben Strong, the student who confronted the killer in Paducah, said Cathy Davis, a parent from here who was with the group as a chaperone.

Quietly, the group from here rose and left the room, said some who were there. “Some of the kids were terribly offended,” Mrs. Davis said, “because they know Ben Strong is not the hero he was played up to be.”

I was one of those fortunate enough to attend the dedication of the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico — a beautiful structure rising out of the Virginia countryside in the shape suggestive of the famous image of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. While I waited for the festivities to begin on that glorious autumn day, I was struck by the incredible camaraderie displayed by all of the Marines and former Marines.

An 85-year-old man sitting right behind me said, “I’ve been a Marine for sixty-seven years.” Once a Marine, always a Marine. He enlisted when he was 18, did his duty in the Pacific, came home, and built a life for himself. And here he was, halfway across the country, celebrating the opening of the museum.

Jim Lehrer, the PBS newscaster and a former Marine, was the day’s emcee, and he explained it well. “What’s important to understand about Marines,” he said, “is that they know that their safety depends on the person on their right and the person on their left.” You are bonded together in battle.

Then the question hit me: Why is it that the Church does not feel the way the Marines do?

Do we believe that our safety or our Christian faith depends upon the people in the pews on our left and on our right?

The story of Jason Dunham says it all. President Bush introduced Dunham’s parents, who received their son’s posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military award.

Dunham, a corporal from upstate New York, was leading a squad of Marines in Iraq when they were ambushed by insurgents. During the hand-to-hand combat, Dunham leapt to place his helmet over a live grenade. Dunham’s bravery saved his friends — and cost him his life.

Why did he do it? To save the men serving under him. It was true heroic altruism — the one thing that Darwinian theories of natural selection can never account for. But would you or I be prepared to show what Jesus called no greater love? Would we lay down our lives for our Christian brothers?

As the various Marine battle flags were paraded in front of the dais, bearing names familiar to every Marine — Tripoli, Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Fallujah — I know I wasn’t the only one in the crowd with my spine tingling, my chest swelling with pride in the heritage of the Corps.

But then I wondered how many Christians really understand the proud heritage of our faith; how the martyrs in the first century gave their lives to preserve the Gospel; how Christians through the centuries have championed great causes for the benefit of mankind: the abolition of slavery, the development of hospitals and universities, care for the poor, the protection of human life. We all remember Mother Teresa, of course, and some of the great missionaries, but how about the saints of bygone years? How about the Christians in the Roman Empire who gave their lives to tend the sick during the great plagues when pagan doctors fled?

The story of human history is a great cosmic battle between good and evil, a greater struggle than any war in human history. We’re engaged in it, and we’re on God’s side. What if we Christians had the same sense of loyalty, commitment, and responsibility for OUR heritage as do these proud Marines?

A nagging question in the midst of a glorious autumn day.

________

Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

A friend sent me a quote from David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, the second president of the United States. Adam’s wife Abigail was a woman of great faith and enormous insight. This is what she wrote to their 10-year-old son, John Quincy Adams (he later became the sixth president), who traveled with his father to Europe during the Revolutionary War:

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

My friend added these words: “The time will come when the Lord may cause us Americans to be truly challenged in our faith. What great Christian heroes and statesmen would come to light!”

As Chuck Colson shared yesterday on BreakPoint, these are troubling times for human dignity and the pro-life movement. President-elect Obama has promised to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate every common-sense restriction passed on abortion at the state level and federal level in the past 20 years. The new administration is also encouraging embryonic stem cell research. And nowadays, 90 percent of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome prior to birth are aborted.

In times when many evangelicals are tempted to retreat from the front lines of the battle for human dignity, we need some modern-day heroes for life — people whose bold and countercultural stand for life can serve as inspiring role models.

So as the 36th anniversary of Roe V. Wade ominously approaches, I want to recognize a few people have chosen to put life first — way outside the boundaries of what most of us would call our comfort zones.

For one Illinois woman, being pro-life cost her her job. As a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, Jill Stanek discovered that babies were being aborted alive and left to die in a utility room. When Jill publicized the atrocity, she was fired. That was seven years ago. Since then, she has fought relentlessly for the rights of the unborn, particularly for the passage of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which protects children who survive abortion.

A few states over in Michigan, Lucy Talbot, a mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, is fighting hard to combat the horrifying and rising trend of aborting babies with Down syndrome.

Lucy points out that no one congratulates the new parents of a Down syndrome baby. But she says, “It’s a baby first, and we have to congratulate” them.

Lucy has started a nonprofit organization to educate prospective parents about the joys and struggles of raising a child with Down syndrome — and to challenge obstetricians to offer a more positive perspective on Down syndrome to their patients. She even goes to hospitals during lunch to challenge the healthcare professionals to view Down syndrome differently.

In Ohio, a single woman named Anita White is making perhaps an even more unusual sacrifice. Anita always dreamed about getting married and starting a family. Although she has yet to marry, that didn’t stop her from making the heroic decision to adopt three “unwanted” children. One of her children survived a premature delivery and was born with cerebral palsy. She says, “I’m willing to take the children whom nobody else will take.”

In a culture that tells single people to live for themselves, Anita’s example is radically countercultural — and radically for life.

People like Jill, Lucy, and Anita remind me that there is still hope for those who can’t defend themselves. Life might be on the rocks across this country and in our courtrooms, but that doesn’t stop these remarkable individuals from continuing to champion human dignity one life at a time. Their examples challenge me to think creatively about how I can fight for life.

________

Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Mark Felt, a consummate FBI professional, whom I dealt with often and trusted completely, turns out to have engaged in cloak-and-dagger escapades worthy of a Fredrick Forsythe novel in order to bring down what he believed was a corrupt presidency [Felt was revealed as the "Deep Throat" of the Watergate scandal]. Was he a hero? That's the question the secular media have been asking me all week.

Now, I understand why Felt wanted to stop Watergate. In my memoirs published this month, titled The Good Life, I recall those moments in the White House when now I realize I should have acted to stop the spreading scandal. One night, when, in my presence, Nixon ordered Halderman to get a team in place to do break-ins, I should have stood up and said, “No, Mr. President, you can't do that.” But I rationalized that there was a war going on, friends of mine were POWs, and the Cold War was hanging in the balance. Maybe the president was right; we had to take extreme steps to protect the country. And getting Richard Nixon re-elected was, as I saw it then, the most important thing I could do for my country.

What I now realize today, of course, is that we humans all have an infinite capacity for self-justification. Jeremiah was right: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can know it?”

So knowing what was right, I did what was wrong, and justified myself in the process. I employed wrong means for what I perceived to be good ends, and I was sentenced to prison, ironically for giving an FBI report to a reporter, another point at which I can identify with Mark Felt.

I'm willing to give Felt the benefit of the doubt that he acted to end corruption, not because Nixon had passed him over for FBI director. That's why many today say he's a hero.

But before we jump to that conclusion, let's look at what he really did. FBI files are maintained on perhaps half of all Americans. Grand-jury records and FBI interviews are sacrosanct. Felt sneaked around in the dark of night, looking for flower pots on a balcony to give sensitive FBI information to reporters — something that was illegal.

He could have used good means to pursue his noble objective: He could have met with the president, or if we had refused to see him, he could have held a press conference to announce what the bad guys in the Nixon White House were doing. He would have been well within his rights.

Today, I'm not concerned about how Mark Felt, or those of us involved in Watergate, or the press is judged by history. All of us have to be responsible for what we did ourselves. What I am concerned about is how, in the eyes of many people, Mark Felt's end justified his means.

I've watched some of the classroom discussions on TV, and, almost to a person, students say he did the right thing because his end was good. This is terribly wrong.

I know we live in an era of moral relativism — everybody chooses what is “right” for them. But this is a path to chaos and a lawless, ungovernable nation.

Let Mark Felt live his remaining years in peace, but please, don't make him a role model for our kids. The lasting legacy of this sad era in American life ought to be a sober reminder that the ends do not justify the means. Integrity means doing the right thing in every area of your life, and it's the real mark of a true hero.

________

Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Isn’t it great when sports superstars live as well off the field as they do on it? I’ll tell you about a couple of them -- and their faith.

A few weeks ago, Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter made his last All-Star game appearance, becoming the oldest player ever to collect two hits in the mid-summer classic.

As my colleague Roberto Rivera pointed out on the BreakPoint blog, on the day of the game, a Washington, DC, sports talk radio show asked listeners if any superstar in sports had “worn” his superstar status as well as Jeter.

Well, if you’re wondering what it means to “wear” your superstar status well, you’re asking the right question. The show’s hosts referred to all the famous and beautiful women Jeter had dated without any hint of scandal. They cited his opulent lifestyle — his mansion in Florida is nicknamed “St. Jetersburg” — and his ability to preserve his privacy.

The consensus of the radio listeners was, no, no one wears his superstar status as well as Derek Jeter.

Well, I beg to differ. Not because I dislike Jeter or even care about what he does off the field. And I won’t deny that his on-the-field deportment is the embodiment of class.

No, my problem is that I think there’s more to “wearing” your superstar status than where you live and with whom you sleep. And while I think avoiding scandal is a good start, it’s setting the bar much, much too low.

In fact, I can think of several superstars whom I would prefer my children emulate more than the Yankee captain and the future first ballot Hall-of-Famer.

Like Clayton Kershaw. This Dodger southpaw has also been in the news lately. In late June and early July Kershaw threw 41 consecutive innings without allowing a run — the fifth longest such streak since 1961. He also became “the third pitcher in the last 100 years to win eight straight starts in one season while striking out at least seven batters in each one.” The other two were named Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal.

Kershaw’s latest accomplishments only built on his growing legend: his career ERA is the lowest of any starting pitcher in the live ball era with at least 1,000 innings pitched.

But that’s not why Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci argued that he should have been that magazine’s “Sportsman of the Year” in 2012. Verducci cited Kershaw’s work with AIDS orphans in Zambia and the young people in his hometown of Dallas as examples of what he called “the awesome power of faith.”

Verducci wrote that Kershaw, “is one of the best pitchers in baseball who is making an even bigger impact without a baseball in his hands.”

Kershaw isn’t the only superstar whose impact off the field is greater than his impact on it. The winner of the NBA’s “Community Assist Award,” given each year to players for “community engagement, philanthropic activity, and charity work” is, as the inscription on the plaque reads, “Following the standard set by NBA Legend David Robinson, who improved the community piece by piece.”

While playing for the San Antonio Spurs, Robinson, a member of the original USA “Dream Team,” founded the Carver Academy, an inner-city school that offers “a challenging academic program ... and a nurturing family-like environment based upon the foundation of Judeo-Christian scripture.”

Not surprisingly, both Kershaw and Robinson are Christians. They’re doubtless aware of our Lord’s words, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required.”

Thus, they use what God has given them to further the Lord’s work of restoration in this broken world — at home and abroad. It may not be the stuff of drive-time sports talk radio, but it is the stuff of lives worth emulating.

________

Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Most of you will recall several years ago when golf superstar Tiger Woods took a nose dive. The man who had the world at the tip of his putter lost respect, fame, millions in sponsorships and, of course, his wife after revelations surfaced of various and tawdry extramarital affairs. Despite Woods’ profuse apologies to fans, colleagues, and competitors, his career was in the rough, and no one knew how long it would take him to get back on his game — professionally or personally.

Four years later, Woods has made a comeback and has had little trouble racking up enough victories to reclaim not only his number one ranking in the sport but also the sponsorships.

Of the few corporate sponsors that stuck with him through those troubled days, Nike may deserve its own award for sheer tenacity and guts — especially in advertising. One controversial commercial, which the company aired shortly after the scandal, shows Woods clad in the Nike hat and shirt as his late father, Earl, asks his son if he learned anything from his experiences. Tiger doesn’t reply.

This year, on the heels of Woods’ latest victory, Nike has taken an even bolder shot with a single image released on Twitter and Facebook sporting the caption, “Winning Takes Care of Everything.”

This, of course, has been the catchphrase Woods has been using for years to silence critics of his game. But as Washington Post columnist Cindy Boren points out, in this context, just as Woods’ career is taking off again, Nike’s implication is all but stated: His delivery on the golf course compensates for his indiscretions in private. Athletic victory is far more important than moral character.

Woods himself has said nothing about the ad, and it would be wrong to speculate about his feelings. But this instance of “Nike being Nike” as one sports marketing consultant told USA Today, might reflect a far broader trend in our culture — one that reaches beyond golf or even professional sports into the realms of entertainment, business and politics.

Our heroes are changing, and you can see it all around us. The generation of Jackie Robinson, the Lone Ranger and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has given way to vampire boyfriends, doped-up athletes, and politicians whose moral indiscretions do little to damage their popularity or influence. Nike’s daring ad reminds us that the assumption of moral success going hand-in-hand with professional success is a thing of the past.

Not that we’ve completely given up on the old kind of hero. I mean, we still admire the honest athletes of the world, the consistent Tim Tebows and especially the courageous first responders who rescued bombing victims in Boston last week.

But alongside these timeless role models of generations past, a new breed of hero has cropped up: brazen, volatile, self-absorbed, often promiscuous, and proud of it.

I was reminded of this when reading a profile last week in the Washington Post on former NBA great Allen Iverson. Throughout his career, Iverson personified this new type of hero, most famously in a post-game rant against his coach Larry Brown who had criticized his bad practice habits and sense of entitlement. At the time, sports analysts and commentators defended Iverson for his independence and “don’t care what anyone thinks” attitude.

But today, they pity him. Iverson, who made millions and was probably the best player ever of his size, is now broke and lost, according to the Post profile. Having been enabled in his delusions of self-importance without responsibility, he has no idea what to do now that he can’t play basketball anymore. It’s a sad story, and indicative of the fact that a culture that leaves moral clarity out of the equation for a hero does even the heroes themselves a grave disservice. The assumptions of Nike and of our culture, that somehow winning fixes everything, and that moral integrity just can’t compete with a good swing, is delusional. It just isn’t true — not today, not ever.

________

Copyright (c) 2013 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.