The javelin, the greenhouse, and ethics lessons

The Bible talks about “putting off the old man” (Col. 3:9, 10 , King James Version,) or getting rid of your “old way of life and its habits” (New International Readers Version). What a freeing concept! Who wants to carry around an old, outmoded self just because it seems easier than donning change? The past can be like a “ball and a chain,” as an old blues song by Janis Joplin puts it, and we often end up dragging it behind us like a child dragging their safety blanket around the house. 

There came a time when I dropped “the old man” in favor of a more spiritualized life, or “the new man.” Moral and ethical ambiguities cleared up through my study of Christian Science. As I gained a higher, more spiritual concept of myself, a clean-living and honest approach to life took root in me. And I began to set things right.

When I was in high school and college, the baggage of “the old man” seemed very woven into who I was. I thought of myself as someone who did what was right, told the truth, and was responsible, but my sense of right and wrong somehow had morphed into an “it’s-no-big-deal” moral numbness. This especially pertained to how I treated others’ property.

The first instance of this occurred during high school. My friends and I would, on occasion, have informal mini-track competitions: We’d run, long jump, and do the shot put. Usually these Saturday events took place near or at the US Coast Guard Academy practice fields in our hometown. During one of these events on Coast Guard property, I found a javelin lying around and was psyched that it was international regulation-size. I decided to take it. I was not the type who would walk off with things and can’t remember anything else I ever took. But I suddenly wanted it. The javelin ended up in my parents’ attic—out of sight and out of mind.

Years passed. On one of my trips to my parents’ house I began thinking about the javelin I’d stolen. Well, Christian Science teaches that “right adjusts the balance sooner or later” (p. 449 ). So I knew I should return it, and it felt like the right was finally kicking in. I dismissed the thought and returned home to New York. But the thought of that stolen javelin just wouldn’t leave me alone. Truth had grabbed my attention, bringing me face to face with my past actions. 

So on my next trip to my folks’ house, I borrowed a car, pulled the javelin out of the attic, and headed for the Coast Guard Academy. An impeccably dressed cadet came out of the gatehouse and asked where I was going (with a long javelin sticking out the driver’s side window!). Without thinking I answered plainly, “I’m going to the field house to return the javelin.” He looked completely disarmed and waved me through. Honesty had been my passport. When I put the javelin down in the field house and walked out, I felt as if a burden had been lifted.

The second instance of a faltering sense of right came when our dorm basketball team won the intramural championship. That night we celebrated at a local tavern, came back, and regrouped at the college greenhouse, where I climbed onto its glass roof to see if campus security was nearby. Near the top I must have stepped squarely onto a glass pane. The glass shattered under me. As I whirled around and tried to come down, pane after pane shattered beneath me. Only metal blinds prevented me from falling down into the greenhouse. I jumped off, and my friends and I ran for our lives.

College officials knew it was guys from our dorm that had done it. Threats of expulsion were in the air. None of us (especially me) had the courage to come forward, and we escaped with no consequences. A couple of seasons later I graduated, and memories of the greenhouse incident faded. As time went by, I began to learn that my desire to know God, divine Truth, would leave no stone unturned when it came to making up for past actions. Things I didn’t necessarily like about myself were coming to the surface to be cleared away. I realized that it takes an obedience grounded in humility to own up to something. The humility is in the willingness to “face the music”; the obedience is the moral act of setting a situation right, or “atoning.” Being upright and fulfilling laws become natural expressions of living that resembles Jesus’ obedient example.

Jesus courageously followed the “straight line of Spirit,” and established the Christ as the model for all humanity. I love what Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures says about Jesus’ life: “. . . he swerved not, well knowing that to obey the divine order and trust God, saves retracing and traversing anew the path from sin to holiness” (p. 20 ).

My inevitable “retracing” came unexpectedly—a few decades after the greenhouse incident. One day at work the thought suddenly came, “You have to pay the college back for the greenhouse.” I knew that thought was right, and I yielded without a flinch. I remembered the name of the local glass company that did the repairs and called them to see what it would cost to make such a repair today. Within a short time I’d written a substantial check and sent it to the college, earmarking it for the facilities department. I felt a quiet sense of completion as if I’d closed a chapter in my life.

In John 14 we hear how the Comforter, the presence of the Christ, “will bring all things to your remembrance.” This does not mean identifying yourself by your misdeeds; i.e. “I am/was a bad person.” Rather, I’ve found that this passage is an exhortation to wake up to the Christ in our lives. Practicing “putting off the old man” can enable each of us to more clearly distinguish between right and wrong, and to gain a much better view of who we really are.