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. Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:19-27 ESV). 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?