From the Editors May 30, 2011 Issue

Exposed only to Love

The Editors

During the first weeks of the crisis in Japan, more than 500 individuals cycled in and out of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex, scrambling to keep a terrible crisis from growing even more terrible. According to most reports, these individuals knowingly and selflessly put themselves at enormous risk. Their admiring countrymen began calling them the “nuclear samurai.” People around the globe began calling them heroes.

As the world eyed ongoing events in Japan, people everywhere also nervously monitored radiation levels, as they inched up even thousands of miles from the disabled power plants. But to get the whole picture on matters of exposure, the scope of one’s gaze must open wider still. That wider view could take in, for instance, the Biblical account involving three young Hebrews—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—who experienced a potentially devastating exposure while in a fiery furnace. In a fit of anger, the king had ordered the three of them thrown into the inferno. This was the same king, looking into the furnace a short time later, who said in astonishment, “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Dan. 3:25). 

While scholars debate the date of this account, they agree it was written several centuries prior to Christ Jesus’ ministry. Yet, “the form of the fourth . . . the Son of God” appeared. How could that be? Because the Christ was then—and is now. The Christ was there and is here. Think of Christ as the spirit of Love, coming from God to human consciousness. This Christ-Spirit cuts across time and space with deliverance for those in need of it. Christ comes even to those who don’t believe in Christ.

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