NOBLE DEEDS 28 JUN 2015

One of my goals is to call & inspire people to do noble deeds. In fact, we are advised in the Word of God: “…whatever things are true, whatever things are noble,…whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is any praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” This is a report on some virtuous, praiseworthy, noble deeds. In life we have to take the good with the bad, and thankfully, it is not always bad.

A HIGHER CALL. There is a book entitled “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos w/ Larry Alexander. This amazing book tells an inspiring, incredible story of a noble deed during the savage combat of WW 2. But the book really contains another great story—the story of how this noble deed changed the hate of the author into realizing that good people can be found on both sides of a hellish, horrid war. The author Adam Makos, had the immature concept that WW 2 was a clear cut case of good guys against the bad guys. The allies were saints, & the Germans & Japs were evil beyond redemption. It is a common belief in America promoted by our literature & movies, which often refer to all the Germans during the Hitler years as Nazis. (One example I noticed years ago was a WT magazine in its English version of a human interest story referred to a German as a Nazi, which he wasn’t, & in the German translation it did not use the word “Nazi”!) Our movies dehumanize & ridicule the enemies, but many viewers are so used to it, they are not aware.

On 20 DEC ’43, Franz Stigler was a German fighter ace flying a Bf-109. He needed only to shoot down one more allied plane to get the coveted Knights Cross, and he set out that day to get it. Charlie was the pilot of a B-17F (named Ye Olde Pub) with the 527th bomb squadron, U.S. 8th Air Force. That day, Charlie’s bombing mission had been Bremen, Ger. The leading plane in Charlie’s group exploded. Charlie’s B-17 had so much damage inflicted upon it, that it should have crashed, & not have continued flying. It had one good engine (of 4) left. The entire plane had been shot up. The radio & intercom were dead. The hydraulics were shot up & leaking. The rear ball turret gunner was dead, & others of the crew were wounded. The left horizontal stabilizer on the tail was shot off, leaving a 3’ stub of what had been a 16’ rear wing. When Franz came up on the B-17 to shoot it down, he muttered to himself, “My God, how are you still flying?” Franz surveyed the damage on the B-17 and decided he did not want this easy victory on his conscience. Instead, he escorted the bomber through the German flak concentration on the coast which would have easily shot the disabled bomber down. His little fighter protected the big bomber, as the flak gunners could clearly see the fighter was German. In an amazing set of events, the two pilots actually met years later & became close like brothers. The rest of the surviving bomber crew did a lot of crying when they met Franz, realizing that they and their large families owed their existence to his noble deed of sparing their lives. If the German Luftwaffe (air force) had ever learned how Franz had saved a crippled B-17 he would have been given the firing squad. I highly recommend the book for those who love true accounts of WW 2.

GOOD LEADERS. This section focuses on the noble Brazilian leader King Pedro II (called “the Magnanimous”). (Every so often I refer to the good kings of Israel. The Bible mentions good leaders such as King Melchizedek, Judge Deborah, & King Josiah. For instance, Josiah inspired his nation to return to God & morality, & do away with: the sodomites, child sacrifice & idolatry. And I also wrote an earlier post about Korea’s noble King Sejong the Great, 1397-1450, who improved his nation in all areas of life, incl. creating for his people the hangul alphabet, which is the world’s best alphabet script, helping invent globes, water clocks, a better rain gauge, the astrolabe, an improved calendar, etc.) Similar to King Sejong, Brazil’s King Pedro II promoted the arts & sciences & civil rights. He insured that Brazilians had freedom of speech & civil rights. He loved to learn and he really promoted education all over Brazil. He brought new technology to Brazil: photography, telegraphs, & telephones. He was a savant who learned several languages incl. the obscure Tupi language of the (now extinct) Tupi Brazilian tribe. He abolished slavery, which helped anger the evil military clique that overthrew him. The military clique that replaced him instituted a dictatorship.

A “NOBLE” EXPERIMENT. The Christian view is that there is an afterlife and that this world is not all that there is…that there are realities beyond what we can see. Christians can be quoted at times saying, “God works in mysterious ways.” There is a book entitled The Afterlife Experiments about a scientist Dr. Schwartz, who decides to investigate whether evidence can be obtained of life after death. This was a brave endeavor that could have cost him his career. His extraordinary experiments provide evidence that there is existence after death, and caused him to quit being a skeptic. His work is helpful to Christians because here we have a non-Christian using non-Christian experiments to prove what we believe—that the afterlife exists. It can’t be discredited as having a Christian bias. The downside of Schwartz’s experiments for Christians is that they involved non-Christian experiments, for instance using mediums & parapsychology. Some of the research was done at the Univ. of AZ. As a follower of Christ, I don’t want to support non-Christian belief systems…at times the belief in the supernatural & afterlife of other religions & spiritual thinking is in line with Christian beliefs, so if science proves that the afterlife exists, that is of benefit to all who hold such a conviction. I thought it was noble for a scientist like Dr. Schwartz to risk his career to disprove the scientific idea that what we see is all that there is. While I don’t recommend the book, I am pleased that faultfinders who think Christians have no basis for their beliefs are wrong. In America, Christians are not popular, and now-a-days Christianity is widely belittled (in a way Islam & Judaism are not) yet there is lots of substance to what Christ taught.

FINAL THOUGHTS. Every day, people do noble deeds. The doer may be you. When we see the good in people… and enjoy & like people, we can draw that nobility out in them. Our views & expectations of people can become self-fulfilling prophecy. We expect our enemy in war time to be brutal & uncaring. We expect scientists to be hostile to ideas of the supernatural. We expect those with power to become corrupted with that power. But such is not always the case. Have a blessed day!