A Great Danger

On April 26, 1986 the greatest nuclear disaster the world has ever known took place in Chernobyl, Kiev, of the former U.S.S.R. The explosion and fire in the graphite core of one of four reactors released radioactive material that spread over part of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and later Western Europe. It was in the town of Pripyat during an unauthorized test of one of the plant's four reactors that engineers initiated an uncontrolled chain reaction in the core of the reactor after disabling emergency backup systems. An explosion ripped the top off the containment building expelling radioactive material into the atmosphere. More was released in the subsequent fire. Only after Swedish instruments detected fallout from the explosion did Soviet authorities admit that an accident had occurred. Airdropping a cement mixture sealed off the reactor core, but not before eight tons of radioactive material had escaped. Twenty firefighters died immediately from overexposure to radioactivity, while hundreds suffered from severe radiation sickness. Pripyat, Chernobyl, and nearby towns were evacuated. People who lived near the plant in Ukraine and Belarus at the time have seen a greatly increased incidence of thyroid cancer, and genetic mutations have been discovered in children later born to exposed parents. Ukraine has estimated that as many as 8,000 people died as a result of the accident and during its cleanup. The agricultural economies of East and North Europe were temporarily devastated, as farm products were contaminated by fallout. One Chernobyl reactor remains in operation today. All of this destruction came from a comparatively small tubular material deep inside a huge structure. It is an illustration of the destruction that a comparatively small part of our own bodies.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:19-27 NIV).

There is an ancient fable about a monster known as Proteus who had the power of assuming many shapes and appearances. He could become a tree or a pebble, a lion or a dove, a serpent or a lamb. He seemed to have little difficulty in passing from one form into another. That fabled creature reminds me of the human tongue. It can bless or curse; it can express praise or whisper slander; it can speak a word of encouragement or spread the poison of vindictive hatred. Can it be that the average person spends one-fifth of his or her life talking? That's what the statistics say. If all of our words were put into print, the result would be this: a single day's words would fill a 50-page book, while in a year's time the average person's
words would fill 132 books of 200 pages each! What kind of book will you “write” today?