The obituary read, “A man who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” The date was April 12, 1888. The man for whom the obituary was written invented dynamite, a powerful explosive that was used in wartime to blow up bridges, tanks, and buildings. So what would you do if your obituary read that way - - that you got rich by inventing a faster way to kill people? That’s not really a very good legacy, is it?
In this case, this obituary caused the man described to change his life - - because in reality, he was not dead. Someone accidentally mistook him for his brother, Ludvig, who had instead died.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist, engineer, and innovator got a second chance at life after that obituary was published. All his life he had been successful at his work, but that obituary raised questions in his mind as to whether his great knowledge and gifts were being used to help or to hurt people. Over his lifetime he earned 355 different patents, and spoke six different languages (Swedish, French, Russian, English, German and Italian) but the destructive nature of dynamite was what he was remembered for.
We hear stories like this every year at Christmas, don’t we? We watch movies like “A Christmas Carol” or “It’s a Wonderful Life”, or even “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. In each of the movies the main character gets a chance to see how good or bad the first half of their life has been and then they get a second chance to make some kind of amends.
In Alfred Nobel’s case, when he DID die, he decided to leave all of his wealth to a foundation that administers the Nobel Peace Prize, a prize that has honored men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace for more than one hundred years.
That’s what the spiritual gift of Knowledge is all about. God gives us the power to do wonderful things with gifts he’s given us, but we have the freedom to decide HOW we will us this knowledge. Will we use it for good or for evil? Will we use it to help ourselves or to help our neighbor? Will we use it to build up our kingdom, or God’s Kingdom? As the Book of Deuteronomy says “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
It’s no surprise, if you think about it, that this struggle goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. God asked Adam and Eve NOT to eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, but they did anyway, and their eyes were opened, such that they now knew good and evil like God, but they were naked and ashamed (Genesis 3).
I know in my own life, I’ve used my gift of knowledge often to help people but also to hurt people. It’s not always easy to walk the right path.
When I was 15 age, one of the families I grew up with in Aurora decided to move to Hawaii to go to work and live with a Christian mission. I had always admired them and enjoyed their company. We went camping, fishing, canoeing, and hiking together in the summer and always had a great time. When I heard they were moving to Hawaii I decided to do something special for them. So I went through the drawer of old family photographs we had and put together a special photo album of them and all the places we traveled together over the years. It was a nice thing to do and it served as a lasting memento of all the experiences we shared. They liked it.
On other occasions, as a young man, I used my gift of knowledge to get away with things I knew were wrong. One summer I had a job patrolling the parks and nature trails in town. It was a great job, an easy job, and it paid pretty well too. But I had to spend hours driving around by myself, and it was pretty boring. So I filled my time listening to the Cub games all summer long. Day games, night games, afternoon games, I listened to them all.
To listen to the games, I borrowed a friend of mine’s portable radio and must have gone through four or five sets of batteries just to keep the radio going throughout the summer. One week, however, the batteries went dead while I was patrolling the nature trail, but I got an idea. What if I wired the radio to the battery in the car, then I wouldn’t need to buy any more batteries? Seemed worth a try, so I found some wire and connected the positive terminal of the radio to the battery, and then the negative terminal of the radio to the battery. Within a few seconds, a small plume of smoke rose up from the wires and with it the smell of burning plastic and metal. Huh. I had just fried the radio. I had just fried my friend’s radio.
Well the honest thing to do would have been to apologize to my friend and buy him a new radio, right? I went to the hardware store to see how much a new radio would cost and it was $25 dollars. Twenty-five dollars? Forget it.
So I thought about it and came up with a scheme. I came up with $25 to buy a new radio, but that’s not all. When I got home I unpackaged the brand new radio from all the plastic and styrofoam and set it aside. Then I took the broken radio and repackaged it in the box as if it were new. A day or two later I waltzed back into the hardware store, carrying the box under my arm and plopped it on the counter, and told the cashier, “I’d like to return this radio. I decided I didn’t need it after all.” And a minute later, the cashier handed me $25. So now I had a brand new radio and my $25 back. Clever, huh?
Well that story is not something I’m particularly proud of, but I tell it to make a point. God has given us incredible gifts and the knowledge to use them for good or for evil. The Bible says, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Which will you choose? Alfred Nobel decided to change his life and his legacy by using the money he made after inventing dynamite to honor great thinkers and great leaders who have made a difference in the world by giving out the Nobel Peace Prize. What will your legacy be? How will you use your knowledge? You have the freedom to choose. Choose well.
