So, last week, I had the occasion to share a mid-afternoon meal with three of my favorite people, Ryan, Dawn and Ken. Ostensibly it was Dawn’s birthday which gave us an excuse to follow up a just concluded business meeting with plain old fellowship. Ken, which is his nature, invited us out and we gladly complied. The four of us have grown especially close in the last couple of years, sharing a lot of life and a host of responsibilities. As an aside, the chances of us being at that table together, from a vantage point of awhile back, would have been less than winning the national lottery. There’s a lesson there.

Anyway, Ken mentioned something that I immediately latched on to and I mentioned I need to write about that. He said, “Why don’t people normally behave as they do when confronted by an overwhelming crisis?” He was referring to the aftermath of the fires that swept through our region on two occasions, the more recent of which in 2007 took his home and the home of hundreds of others. Ken has great faith in the human capacity to be generous when challenged. In the period following this large regional tragedy, he and we witnessed an outpouring of selflessness and love. His question was, of course, why do we not live the rest of our lives this way? I should say, coming to know Ken as I have, he models the ideal as well as anyone I’ve ever met.

We all know this pattern. The existential threat arrives. It is not your garden variety threat. It is not some future imagined threat. It is the “it’s happening right now and it’s tearing the fabric of life apart” kind of threat.

Which raises the question of what really constitutes the kind of existential threat that leads to an almost universal outpouring of love and selflessness?

Certainly, in our present mess, we are daily inundated with threats. Threats are everywhere and victims are so numerous we can’t keep track. Of course, it’s all a matter of perspective and one person’s sense of threat is another person’s establishment of justice. Thousands or millions march in the streets. Many thousands and millions are angry in their homes or places of work. They are threatened by the loss of jobs, the loss of dignity, the loss of security, the loss of environment, the loss of freedom. We are led to believe that things like terrorism, global warming, racism, sexism, nationalism, socialism, too much central government, too little central government are each grave threats to our existence and the kind of life we believe is best. Accordingly, we act and shout out because, you know, if we didn’t, there will be hell to pay.

And, of course, we draw the lines, separate ourselves accordingly, based on the right and wrong way to look at things, each puffing ourselves up as righteous and honorable. Our chests get big and our voices loud and, of course, it’s all completely justified. Because, you know, the threat is that great.

And, then, the fire burns through the community. The hurricane levels an entire region. The earthquake levels the city. A horrendous group of planes comes out of the morning to attack a peaceful Pearl Harbor or downtown Manhattan.

Suddenly, there are no Democrats or Republicans. There are no Christians, Muslims, Jews or Atheists. There are no Environmentalists or members of the Tea Party. No one is LGBTQ or not. There is only fire and wind and death and destruction and we are all of the same species with the same inclination.

That is what Ken asked. Why?

What is happening here? I’ll hazard a guess.

So much of what possesses us (not all, but so much) is a perceived threat of some harm. It may be because of something that happened to us before or we think is happening to us now or we anticipate could or will happen to us in the future. In our minds and hearts, these threats are real but they don’t rise to the level of the thing we’re talking about that triggers something entirely different.

No one cared who voted for whom or who favored this or that cause when our community responded to the fires. We linked arms. No one cared who voted for whom or who favored this or that cause when the first responders raced up the towers. No one cared who voted for FDR or not after December 7. For moments, we were one.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case and the altruism Ken described is not the only response to immediate and overwhelming threats. When Katrina blew through, we saw both the best and worst of our species. We saw the great predisposition to love and sacrifice and we saw the great predisposition to violence and destruction.

My hope is that those of us who care about these types of things reign in our base impulses that are antagonistic and respond with love and self-sacrifice.

Is this Pollyanna? Probably. When the conditions deteriorate to reflect the laws of the jungle, things can quickly get ugly. Think Lord of the Flies. It’s hard to be Pollyanna if you’re in the middle of Lord of the Flies.

While I think I know quite a bit about psychology, I know less about sociology, although I know some. So, I’m only marginally conversant when it comes to social psychology … or how and why people respond differently as members of a community. Which means I’m way out on a limb here trying to resolve Ken’s question.

For starters, I think that many people who would not go out of their way to think about helping a stranger on a normal day, have a switch flipped when tragedy strikes. We suddenly recall that we are social beings in relationship and not isolated animals bent purely upon protecting or strengthening our own circumstance. I think Ken would agree that we do contain some measure of hard wiring for altruism. My guess is that this hard wiring is more pronounced in some people than others, for all sorts of reasons. We are right to ask why that is.

Dystopian imagery is all the rage these days. It would be interesting to think about which side of the political spectrum is more drawn to the high volume of media built around the theme. Would it be conservatives who see traditional values disappearing at an alarming rate? How about progressives who object to traditional values as antagonistic to the arc of history? Or, maybe it’s generational. I have my opinion. Regardless, the story is one of the ultimate dark landscape, punctuated everywhere by violence and degradation. While I really avoid spending my time with this stuff, in the rare instances I’ve run across it, there have been small pinpricks of virtue, even to the point of self-sacrifice and attempts to love.

So, which is it? Joining hands together as we forget the smaller threats that seem so absorbing the day before? Or, constant anger at an obviously topsy turvy world? Or, allowing the beast inside us to do things we could not have previously imagined as we fight to protect what we have?

I am reminded of the life and death of the very famous Eric Liddell, he of the Chariots of Fire fame and Olympic champion in 1924. I pulled this short piece by a Karl Smallwood in case the story is unfamiliar.

Imagine you dedicated your adult life to helping those less fortunate than yourself -that you spent your entire adult life trying to make the world a better place, and when you died (after sacrificing your own life for someone else’s) all most people remembered about you was that you once ran really fast… You’d be pretty annoyed right? Well that’s what happened to Eric Liddell. Although, as you’ll see, he probably wouldn’t have minded.

Liddell is mostly famous for being one of the subjects of the film Chariots of Fire along with running buddy, Harold Abrahams. If you’re unfamiliar with the film or just want to see us clumsily stumble our way through describing the plot, the film basically follows Liddell and Abrahams through their university years up to their respective individual gold medal wins at the 1924 Paris Olympics. The film is noted to be fairly true to actual events, give or take a few creative liberties.

For example, one of the films most iconic scenes and one of the reasons Liddell himself is so famous is when he refused to compete in the 100 metre heat because it took place on a Sunday. As a devout Christian, Liddell steadfastly refused to run any race taking place on the Sabbath. In the film, this decision is made on Liddell’s journey to Paris from Britain. However, in real life Liddell was well aware of when the race took place several months in advance and planned appropriately, mainly training instead for the 400 metre race.

Liddell was harassed for months about his decision and was even reportedly “grilled”  by the British Olympic Committee, particularly because the 100 metre was his best event and his best time in the 400 metre (49.6 seconds) had little chance of winning anything in the Olympics. Despite this, he didn’t back down on the issue.

Long story short, when the 400 metre final rolled around, Liddell, defied the odds and won the event with a world record performance (47.6 seconds). A performance usually attributed to the fact that Liddell treated the race as a dead sprint, running all 400 metres as fast as he possibly could. To quote the man himself when asked about his plan for victory.

“I run the first 200m as hard as I can. Then, for the second 200m, with God’s help, I run harder.”

Now we don’t want to downplay how impressive this achievement was, but it’s child’s play compared to what Liddell did next. We didn’t mention it in the intro, but Liddell was originally born in China prior to being raised and educated in Scotland.  In fact, due to this, he’s often regarded as one of China’s first Olympic champions on top of all the other stuff he did. A year after his Olympic victory in 1925, Liddell went back to China to serve as a missionary like his parents before him had done.

For a few years, Liddell served as both a science and sports teacher at a college in the Chinese city of Tianjin, the same city in which he was born. After 12 years, Liddell opted to become an ordained minister and then continued his work spreading the word of God in the Xiaochang county as an evangelist and humanitarian.

While serving there, Liddell rescued two wounded Chinese soldiers, despite the significant risk involved. Other stories tell of Liddell refusing to travel with an armed guard when visiting sick and needy people because relying on a gun instead of God wasn’t his thing. Why was this all so risky? At this time, the Japanese were attacking China and Liddell ran the risk of being shot every time he walked out of the door.  The situation was so dangerous that the British government advised him and other British citizens to leave the country.  Liddell’s family left, but he stayed to work at a mission station setup to help the poor.

However, his luck eventually ran out and when Tianjin fell under Japanese control; Liddell was sent to an internment camp in Weihsien in March of 1943. Though his situation was certainly dire, his spirit certainly didn’t wane and while some people in the camp selfishly hoarded their supplies, Liddell spent his time teaching children and sharing what he had. When a few rich businessmen managed to convince the guards to smuggle them in extra rations, Liddell’s natural charisma was such that he was able to convince them to share the food with everyone, and he was the first port of call when any dispute in the camp needed to be settled.

He even reportedly finally took part in a sporting event on a Sunday.  A fight broke out in game.  To stop it, Liddell, who was well respected by all in the camp, stepped in and then after things settled down volunteered to referee the rest of the match.  Given this wasn’t about his own glory, but rather about keeping the peace, it presumably didn’t conflict with his ideology.

If you’re not impressed yet with Liddell’s integrity.  Here’s the part that really shows you the kind of man he was. While in the camp, Liddell was ravaged by malnourishment and ill health. (It was later found that he had a brain tumor, but he knew nothing of this.) Despite this, when Winston Churchill managed to secure Liddell’s freedom in a prisoner exchange, Liddell declined and instead offered his place to a pregnant woman who was also in the camp, saving not only her life but her unborn child as well.  Besides his declining health, this must have been a particularly difficult decision given that he had a wife and three daughters he hadn’t seen in well over a year; one of them, Maureen, he never got a chance to know.

Much like most of his life’s work, he didn’t do this for any sort of fame or recognition.  In fact, he didn’t even mention this fact to his family in subsequent letters.  In his last letter to his wife as his health deteriorated, he simply mentioned that he thought he was perhaps overworked.

On the 21st of February 1945, just a few months before the camp was liberated, Liddell died.

Now, after reading about how Liddell spent over a decade in China helping others, some of the time voluntarily in a war-zone, and how he gave away his one chance at freedom for the life of a virtual stranger when he was in ill health and desperately in need of a doctor, perhaps the fact that he could move his legs slightly faster than other athletic humans for 400 metres isn’t the thing we should all be remembering him for.  It’s true that athletic events have the power to inspire us and that can be very important; but in the end, it’s typically superficial.  This is a rare case of an athlete doing something even more meaningful, and no less inspirational.

As Liddell said when asked about walking away from athletics at the peak of his career to become a missionary and humanitarian:  “It’s natural for a chap to think over all that sometimes, but I’m glad I’m at the work I’m engaged in now. A fellow’s life counts for far more at this than the other.”

We’ll leave off this one with a quote about Liddell from Langdon Gilkey, a fellow survivor of the camp the two were prisoners in:

“Often in an evening I would see him bent over a chessboard or a model boat, or directing some sort of square dance – absorbed, weary and interested, pouring all of himself into this effort to capture the imagination of these penned-up youths. He was overflowing with good humour and love for life, and with enthusiasm and charm. It is rare indeed that a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known.”

I wish I had a firm answer to Ken’s question. I, too, wish people would behave more commonly like they do in situations he describes. On the other hand, I’m realist enough to know that those situations can bring out the worst in some.

I’ll leave it with the observation that I think far too many of us raise threat levels to nearly hysterical levels unnecessarily. And, with floodgates of social media and non-stop cable TV and internet access pounding us from every angle, I don’t see it getting better soon. As tightly wound up as many are, I wonder how the example of Eric Liddell sits. I can only hope that if I’m ever called to the test, I might meet it even remotely like he did. In the meantime, I need to meditate on what characterized the life of such a man to get him to that point.