“A Unique Position”

Christianity is to be handled carefully

They named three cities after him, two mountain peaks, a mountain range, an ocean current, a glacier, a bay, a river, and a university. Virtually unknown today outside of scientific circles, Baron von Humboldt was a world-renowned scientist in his own time.

Born Friedrich Heinrich Alexander Baron von Humboldt in 1769 of wealthy Prussian parents, he turned his back on the power, prestige and luxury of aristocratic Europe. With a colleague, in 1799, he embarked on a five-year scientific expedition into the South American jungles. His mission consisted of collecting and documenting myriad specimens of hitherto unknown plants and animals. His discoveries revolutionized the scientific world of his day. It was not his scientific discoveries, however, that caught my attention, but rather an incidental event that led to one of his most unique discoveries. Survival for the indigenous peoples of Amazonia has always been difficult.

Hunting with primitive bows and arrows, the tribesmen could only wound a larger prey and then attempt to track it through the dense jungle vegetation hoping to reach it before a larger animal took possession of the carcass. Humboldt’s curiosity was peaked, therefore, when he watched an older tribesman bring down a large animal with one shot from his bow. Further investigation revealed the old man to be a local witch doctor known as the Poison Maker, and he was willing to introduce Humboldt to the mysterious properties of a poison known as curare.

Curare, Humboldt would learn, had two distinct effects upon the human body. First it was deadly if injected directed into the bloodstream. It immobilized the extremities and then moved inward to the defenseless vital organs of one’s body leading to eventual death. The second effect Humboldt discovered in a more dramatic fashion. Falling ill, he was unable to resist as the witch doctor forced him to drink a cup of curare. Terrified at his impending doom, Humboldt was surprised to find himself feeling significantly better.

Curare, he discovered, taken orally, can have a positive medicinal value without any damage to the vital organs. The key to curare’s impact lies in the manner in which it enters the human body. Injected into their blood stream, it becomes a deadly killer. Ingested orally, it becomes a soothing muscle relaxant.

I’ve used this illustration with many young people in Juvenile Hall through the years and it has important value to teaching the young people about Christianity. The point of Christianity is this. Like curare, it is deadly and it must be handled carefully. Young offenders, like many people, are opportunistic, who want a maximum return on minimal investment of time and energy. When it comes to the Christian faith, they want the full benefits of Christianity without its obligations. They want to ingest Christianity in the same way they ingest drugs and alcohol. Such chemicals are used to ease the pain and induce euphoria of everyday life.

Christianity is applied by them when the synthetic drugs no longer work. It’s then that they run to Christianity for relief. Christianity, however, cannot be taken orally. It cost God his Son and it will ultimately cost us our lives before we can become partakers of God’s gifts. The Biblical injunction requires an injection.

The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, understood this well and wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him, ‘Come and die’.” Bonhoeffer did die for his principles on April 9th, 1945, when under a special order of Heinrich Himmler he was executed at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. The point I try to get across to the young people is, danger, high voltage. Christianity is deadly and will require your life. One cannot flirt with it around the edges. Either inject Christianity directly into your life or stay away.

Mere ingestion creates gluttons whose insatiable appetites are never satisfied. An injection, however, brings death and with it a joy and hope of life that brought the great missionary, Adoniram Judson, to exclaim, “When Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school.”