About the issues of mortal risk and death we seem to know little about them, and talk of them even less. We understand that the general population looks rightly upon safety from risk and death to be a sign of human responsibility and maturity. In the story about Le Mans, the wife raises the question to her race driver husband that the constant death threat of high speed racing seems bizarre. She asks that if one is going to risk life it ought to be something worthwhile. She does not see that racing to win over another driver is worth the risk. The driver reveals himself to be an addict when he answers that the race is the thing and that everything else is just waiting. He just waits between races. I enjoy the excellent quarterly alumni magazines I receive from several colleges and universities. They communicate both a sense of student family, and also the advances in this or that research in science or life experience related to the changing world. The current one from the University of Washington included stories of alums and mountain climbing. One paragraph solemnized me. Part of it reads: a stark reminder of the extreme dangers was delivered as news of Chad Kellogg’s death spread. He was struck by a falling rock as he descended Mount Fitz Roy in . . . Argentina. The story goes on, mentioning he was a son of missionaries in Kenya, and that his wife had also died in a descent from an Alaskan peak in 2007. It is reported that Kellogg’s only brother and several other relatives, along with his close climbing partner, Joe Puryear, have also died. Kellogg died a month ago from this writing on February 14, 2014, so it is intense in my thought of the sorrows in his family. Long ago a climber was asked why he put himself at such risk and suffering to climb a mountain. His answer was simply: Because it is there. It is a line much quoted. It is an inadequate answer.
The stories of risk are many. A professional football player, recently retired, argues that he and others knew the risks of concussions leading to early death for athletes in rough contact sports, but it was something they wanted to do – willing to take the risks. Families need to understand that, he believes. His view carries some weight in that he is now being reviewed for some injuries that are already indicating at least some debilitation for him. For suicide missions, nations have no great difficulty in recruiting persons volunteering for service. Managing current terrorism in the world is greatly hampered in that the terrorists seem to be able persons to volunteer their lives for suicide purposes. Do their methods succeed?
As a general rule we hold rather tenaciously to life – rightly so. Life is the only thing we have that is larger to us personally than our bodies. With the death of the body it is the only thing to save, and we may feel it is being taken from us. We gave up all the other stuff of our lives, but we would like to hold on to life, whatever life is. Life is conscious self-awareness for us, that invisible thing given of an invisible God. It is the one factor that identifies us to God in the creative gesture that raises mankind above the animal world, but is permissible to us for a period in the animal world. Some persons are brave in their lives, even to the point of giving up life for the benefit of another. Usually there is found a reason, as suggested in the text above. The brave person is killed trying to save the life of a child from an oncoming car. That person believes the child deserves years already given to the adult rescuer. I have read the stories of young mothers who chose to die for the safety of the birth of their child. Some persons have given up their lives in experiments they believe will aid the future. It is common for a buddy to give up his life for a buddy in warfare. Sacrifice is offered in the belief that it is proper humility for the good of others. Would we make that sacrifice for killers, cheats, indigents, and dysfunctional characters of society? Not likely. The text makes clear that the redemptive story of Christ begins in his death for the worst among human beings, those who have no possible recourse, and would perhaps receive him as Savior as did a proven thief on a gibbet like his. But since persons can’t save themselves, no matter how excellent their lives, he includes all who find the humility to admit their inadequacy for self-salvation. From these humbled and needy persons, he forms the family of God and provides for their sustenance in his society, the spiritual Church. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020