P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

CLIMBING JUST FOR BRAGGING RIGHTS

He'd paid something like $65,000 to be there. And now, on May 10, 1996, 53-year-old Lou Kasischke was just three climbing hours away from the summit of Mt. Everest. It was the dream of his lifetime - to stand at the top of the world at 29,028 feet. And after two months of training and acclimatization and going from Base Camp up to camps one, two, three, and four, he and the rest of the team members in Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants commercial expedition were just three hours from the summit in perfect climbing weather.
However, there was a nagging problem. It was already 11:30 in the morning, and Hall had said they should all be turning around, summit or no summit, by one p.m. And all the Sherpas were telling him they were still three hours away from the top, with a bottleneck of something like 30 climbers all knotted up at the tricky Hillary Step, where fixed ropes hadn't been put in properly.
Three climbers - Stuart Hutchison, John Taske, and this businessman from Detroit, Lou Kasischke - had to make a decision. Should they ignore the time warnings and keep pushing for the summit? Should they risk frostbitten fingers and toes, maybe even a hand or an arm? Or even a life? Or should they turn around and head back to the safety of Camp Four and the tents and the oxygen supplies they had there?
Of course, there was one element that made this such a wrenching decision: competitive pride. What a huge factor to be able to say to friends later: "I made it to the top of the world's highest mountain. I stood at the summit of Everest. Not three hours from the top. Not 28,000 feet. No, I planted my pick ax and my flag at 29,028 feet, the top, the summit, the highest point on earth, the 'Third Pole.'" These three men had spent $65,000 each and had invested a lifetime of training for the opportunity to go back home and brag to friends. All three wanted the instant and enduring lifelong status of being an Everest summiteer.
It was a wrenching discussion and a wrenching decision. The three men, already oxygen-starved and tired, went back and forth. Finally they turned around and headed down the mountain, leaving the top of the mountain to others. And of course, you maybe already are aware, if you've read the bestseller or seen the TV film, Into Thin Air, that a deadly storm blew in that afternoon and killed eight people. Doug Hansen, who just HAD to reach the top on this, his second try, finally staggered to the summit at four in the afternoon, well past the turn-around time. But he died on the way down. Rob Hall, the guide, who just HAD to get his clients to the top, who stayed with Hansen past his own announced deadline, died near the summit as well. But Lou Kasischke, one of four men who turned around short of the summit, lived to tell the tale.

A second book came out in late 1997 that adds a bit more insight to the drama. This one, entitled The Climb, was by Russian guide Anatoli Boukreev - and wouldn't you know it, now he too has perished on a mountain. This last Christmas he lost his life in an avalanche on Annapurna, another of the world's highest peaks. But his book shares some of Lou Kasischke's reasoning as he wrestled with whether to go up or down. The summit was so maddeningly close - just three climbing hours away. It was right there, just a few hundred vertical feet above him. He'd come so far, so many thousands of miles, from Detroit, and victory was so near, almost within his grasp. And that specter of competitive pride was right there too; it would be so delicious to go back home and tell his friends, his co-workers, the guys at the bar: "Yeah, man, I was there. I stood at the top."
But then, despite his pride, he played out the rest of that conversation in a bar. He could hear himself saying to someone in a sports bar: "I climbed Everest. I stood at the top." And how his friend might reply: "Great, Lou. And how about those Red Wings? What a hockey team! Did you see last night's game?"
Or some other co-worker might say, "Everest? Man, I thought you'd already been up that, with all the climbing you do. Well, great. Glad you're back. Let's have lunch." And he realized, standing there in the snow at 28,000 feet, that his fame, his bragging rights, were only going to last about 15 seconds. Nobody cared if he climbed to the top. He was about to risk his hands, maybe his limbs, maybe his life, for 15 seconds of Detroit pride.
If you were with us during our two-week radio series last fall, The Everest Chronicles, you were probably as fatigued as we were just THINKING about that grueling, exhausting expedition to the top of the world in bone-cracking cold. In a 1980 attempt without either Sherpas or oxygen - there's a bit more pride - Reinhold Messner finally staggered to the summit from the difficult Tibetan side. He wrote later in his book, The Crystal Horizon: "I was in continual agony; I have never in my life been so tired."
Well, friend, I want to segue from that snowy soundbite to our Bible topic for this week, where Jesus Christ offers us rest. "Come unto Me," He promises. "And I will give you rest."
For just about all of us, it's the competitive Everest spirit of pride that is the most exhausting element in our lives. Pride pushes us forward; it makes us work when we should rest; it forces us to climb up when we should turn around and go back down. We compete in the marketplace, in our games, our sports. In our homes and even in our churches. Pride and that conscious or subconscious urge to have something to brag about keeps us pushing our way up, up, up, despite our snow-blindness toward the summit of human achievements.
If you're ever looking for an Everest primer, may I suggest the book of Philippians? It's written by a guy named Paul, a man who had a viciously competitive spirit of his own, as evidenced by his early life. He was an ambitious, driven man, relentless in his pursuit and persecution of Christians. Then, of course, he was converted, and we now have this letter to the Philippians.
It's filled with counsel and advice and great truth in this very area of pride versus resting in Christ. In chapter one, he talks about who it is that accomplishes great things in our lives. Notice - here's verse six:

"Being confident of this, that HE who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

Notice that it's Jesus who works in my life and in your life. Our accomplishments, our achievements . . . they're up to Him. He'll bring us to completion; He'll get us to the summits of any mountains He wants us to climb.
A bit later in chapter one, Paul acknowledges that there sure are a lot of preachers out there. Some preaching this, some preaching that. Some are good; some are selfish. Some preach truth; some are probably misguided. Certainly a few of them were probably preaching in competition with Paul, stealing his audiences and his best lines, plagiarizing his sermons. But he writes in verse 18:

"What does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice."

Just three verses after that, Paul gives perhaps the most clear and ringing testimony about what drives him. Is it pride? The desire to shout out his achievements from the top of the world's tallest mountain? Notice these seven words:

"For to me, to live is Christ."

In fact, he goes on from there, after saying, "To live is Christ," and adds this: "And to die is gain." Basically he's sharing this testimony: "If I live, and Jesus is honored, fine! And frankly, if I die, and He is honored by that, that's fine too. It's really okay with me - whatever honors His name." Friend, do you see what this kind of mindset, this kind of life philosophy, does to pride? It eradicates it. It takes away that wrenching Everest decision, where everything you've got, everything you are, is invested in that identity: "I'm an Everest summiteer." Paul says instead: "No, for to me, to live is CHRIST. That's my identity! And Christ actually makes Himself responsible for what I achieve in life. Whatever headlines I achieve, through His power, they belong to Him. The glory and the accolades all go to Him."
Before we close, I simply must send you one page over to Philippians chapter two, where the most thrilling, pride-destroying story in all this universe's history is recorded. Even Jesus Christ Himself, Paul writes, humbled Himself. Even though He was God, He didn't grab onto that; He didn't cling to that lofty, mountaintop identity. Instead, He made Himself nothing, becoming a man, becoming a servant. He "(quote) became obedient to death," the Bible says, "even death on a cross."

Friend, as we close, please don't get me wrong. There are Christians who climb Everest. There are Christians who achieve great things. There are Christians who flop down in their tent at Camp Four, utterly exhausted and tired and worn-out from making it to the top of the world's highest mountain, whether it's Jomolungma (Everest) or the pinnacle of some other human achievement. It's not wrong to try hard to do great things. But for the believer, the IDENTITY is never found in those headlines, in those mountaintop moments. The identity is found instead here in Philippians 1:21:

"For to me, to live is Christ."

Tell me, have you worn yourself out on some mountain trying to get a medal? Trying to get to be a super-Christian? "Come unto Me," Jesus says. "You want an identity to boast about? I have one for you: 'Son of God.' 'Daughter of God.' Come unto Me, and I'll give you rest."