My deceased brother and the power of one

We've all watched the heart-wrenching news this past week: COVID-19 deaths crossed 100,000, the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the ensuing riots in major cities across the U.S. After America has been shut down for over two months and 40 million lost their jobs, not to mention all the other fallout, our country definitely doesn't need another crisis.

First, my wife, Gena, and I extend our heartfelt condolences and prayers to all of our fellow Americans who have suffered and are suffering. We pray for healing, unity, provision and peace at every stratum of our society.

Times like these make many wonder: Where's the hope for a better tomorrow?

I think the answer to that question at least starts in understanding the insight I recently ran into and read while waiting for a medical appointment. Practicing clinical psychologist Dr. Noam Shpancer writing in Psychology Today was probing the subject, "What coronavirus reveals about us." While I don't agree with everything he stated, I found his conclusion worth pondering.

Dr. Shpancer was cynical about Americans learning much at all, at least any lessons that would really stick for the long term. He doubted man's ability to change. He wrote that humans by nature are rigid and unwavering:

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We respond strongly to – and synchronize quickly and powerfully with – our immediate, current context. When we have one dollar, having two dollars is a dream. When we have a hundred dollars, having two dollars is a nightmare. Our current context dominates our experience. The memory of the past may remain, but its hold on our immediate actions and attentions loosens markedly over time.

This is why we may predict that however grave its social impact, the coronavirus pandemic will eventually become a memory. Most of the lessons of coronavirus – the clarified priorities; the acute awareness of life's fragility and worth; the new appreciation of simple social pleasures; those grand promises we make to ourselves when our taken-for-granted assumptions are temporarily violated – will fade with time, becoming mere tales of contexts past. And we will go back to being short-sighted, self-focused, conflicted and as mired in trivial preoccupations as ever. Only by becoming aware of this default mode in our system do we gain the possibility of subverting it.

It's the last sentence that intrigued me, and I've found true. Once we know that our inner and indeed innate human condition and default mode is to revert to self-preservation, self-focus and self-service, we've met our real demon. But therein also lies the hope for change: confessing those inclinations and then committing to live a life just the opposite. Our liberty should not lead to lawlessness and licentiousness. Rather than unleashing the inner beast, we harness and change its nature with God's help to do good. We create a new consciousness and then make daily (and sometimes hourly) decisions to look, listen, love and live a life of sacrifice for others.

I'm reminded each year at this time of someone who did just that: my brother, Wieland, who gave his life during the war in Vietnam on June 3, 1970. I still remember it like it was yesterday.

At the height of the war, both of my younger brothers, Wieland and Aaron, enlisted in the U.S. Army. As a veteran myself, I understood their desire to serve, and I concurred with their decision to enlist. After all, the U.S. Air Force turned my life around. It helped me get on the right path. Maybe the Army would do the same for my brothers.

Aaron was stationed in Korea on the DMZ, and Wieland was sent to Vietnam. As Wieland headed off to Nam, I hugged and kissed him and said, "I'm going to miss you. Be careful."

In 1970, I was refereeing a Karate tournament in California when I heard an announcement over the loud speaker: "Chuck Norris, you have an urgent call." I hustled over to the phone. I recognized the muffled voice of my mother-in-law, and she was crying. "What's wrong, Evelyn?" I asked. "Your brother Wieland has been killed in Vietnam."

If I had been kicked in the stomach by a dozen karate champions at the same time, it could not have impacted me more. I staggered back away from the phone as though that would somehow make Evelyn's words untrue. It didn't.

I hung up the phone, moving in what felt like slow motion. For a long time I couldn't function. I simply sat in shock, thinking about my little brother, Wieland, my best friend whom I would never see again in this life. Right there, in front of anyone who cared to see, I wept uncontrollably.

I learned later that Wieland had been killed while walking point. "To walk point" means to assume the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation. It's the lead soldier or unit advancing through hostile or unsecured territory.

Wieland's squad was surrounded in dangerous enemy territory, when every other soldier refused in fear to walk point. Odds are it meant most certain death. Wieland courageously stepped forward when no one else would. When the Vietcong fired on him, the rest of his squad knew their location and were then able to fight their way out. Wieland sacrificed his life and saved dozens of others that day.

In those early years after his death, I tried to help our mom the best I could, but hers was a pain particular to parents of war – something I would never fully understand. In fact, for the first time, she wrote about Wieland's life and sacrifice in detail in her autobiography: "Acts of Kindness: My Story."

When Wieland had been 12 years old, he'd once had a premonition that he would not live to be 28. Wieland died June 3, 1970, one month before his 28th birthday.

It's hard to believe that this year and week marks the 50th anniversary of his death. I still miss my brother terribly – we all do. I think of Wieland often and am comforted only by the certainty that one day we will be giving him a great big hug in Heaven.

I shared his story because I wanted to honor my brother. But I also wanted my readers to see what happened inside them when I did. I bet for a moment you forgot all that negative news you've been seeing over this past week. You forgot about your own struggles and were taken up in his heroic battle and sacrifice.

And it did something inside, didn't it? It did again to me writing about it. It reminded us that the world is not all bad, that there are still good people, that there are still those who do show the greatest love, that one really can make a difference – and that includes you and me.

The doctor was right: Only by becoming aware of this default mode in our system do we gain the possibility of subverting it.

D.L. Moody wrote the following words next to Isaiah 6:8 in his Bible: "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do, and what I ought to do, by the grace of God I will do."

Isaiah 6:8 reads: "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here am I; send me.'"