P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

LAST BUT NOT EASIEST #2

MONOGRAM MANIA

If you're a Humphrey Bogart fan, you won't find this little vignette in the old Navy film, The Caine Mutiny, but it IS in the much more detailed book by the same name, penned back in 1951 by Herman Wouk. Ensign Willie Keith, on board the minesweeper, the Caine, had a lunatic psychopath for a captain, as you might recall: Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg. In fairly short order, all the men on the ship – officers included – were going a little bit nuts. The mutiny on the ship, during the famous typhoon, was actually triggered by a stolen quart of strawberries.

Well, here's another story . . . and it's about an equally simple thing: a coffee mug. Ensign Keith got it in his head that it would be just a terrific thing if he had a monogrammed mug. Maryk didn't have one; Keefer didn't have one. Wouldn't it be great if HE had one? Well, here's the story right from the pages of the book:

"In a few minutes, a monogrammed coffee mug came to seem to him the most wonderful imaginable possession on earth. He could not pay attention to the watch for thinking of the mug. He could see it floating in the air before his eyes. When he was relieved he rushed to the shipfitter's shack, borrowing a small file, and spent several hours gouging ‘WK' into a crockery cup with a jeweler's precision and delicacy, while the dinner hour passed and night fell. He filled the excavated letters with a rich blue paint, and laid the mug tenderly in his desk drawer to dry, cushioned with socks and underwear. When he was wakened at 4 a.m. to go on watch his first thought was of the mug. He took it out of the drawer and sat gloating over it like a girl over a love letter, so he was ten minutes late in relieving, and drew a snarl from the weary Keefer. The following afternoon he brought the cup up to the bridge and casually handed it to the signalman, Urban, asking him to fill it from the radar-shacked Silex. The envious, admiring glances of the sailors filled Willie with pleasure."

Well, so far so good. What a wonderful thing to be the only man on the ship who's got a monogrammed coffee mug with your own initials. But the story takes a nasty turn. Let's go back to the Caine for the ending:

"Next morning, coming on the bridge again with his wonderful cup, Willie was enraged to see Urban drinking out of a mug monogrammed ‘LU' just like his own. He took this as a personal insult. He soon saw that a rash of monogrammed mugs had broken out throughout the ship. The boatswain's mate Winston carried one etched with an insignia in fine Old English lettering, with heraldic flourishes. Willie's monogram was a kindergarten work compared to this, and to a dozen other sailors' cups." And now get this: "He angrily threw his mug into the sea that night."

So you have a mutiny over strawberries, and almost a World War III over a cup that has your initials on it.

We talked yesterday about this commandment that's got a reputation for being easy – or at least for being unimportant. "Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor's." And maybe you don't see where this was happening on the Caine. Although once the other men saw Willie's cup, they immediately had to have one too. But notice the two-way dilemma: it wasn't enough for Ensign Keith to have his own cup with a "WK" on it. He had to have the ONLY one. And for sure it was NOT acceptable for someone else to have a prettier one than his.

I mentioned yesterday Dr. Leonard Felder, who shares some interesting "coveting" stories from his own psychology practice. One of his more high-profile patients happened to be a film director. Now, that sounds like a pretty decent life, a good way to make a living. After all, the director is THE most important person in the whole Hollywood process; he gets the COVETED final spot in the credits. "Directed by . . . So-and-So." But this director, whenever he watched someone ELSE's great film, went to someone ELSE's film premiere, heard Roger Ebert and the other critics rave about someone ELSE's bold style of directing, insights of that OTHER person . . . he just couldn't cope with it. With all his successes, his millions, his own not-too-bad resumé, he couldn't stand to have others have MORE successes. In fact, as he lay there on Dr. Felder's couch, he made this tragic admission:

"Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."

I don't know if, back in the Old Testament, King Saul ever stretched out on a psychiatrist's couch. But in First Samuel chapter 18, he certainly needed a session or two. Because all of Israel was singing the following Top 40 song:

"‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his TENS of thousands."

And this was a big hit. VH-1 was playing it every hour. Kasey Kasem was blanketing the FM charts with it. And King Saul had a conniption fit every time it came on the radio.

Now let's think about it. The song starts out well: "Saul has slain his thousands." Plus Saul had the rather nice job of being king of Israel. You could do a lot worse. But to have David in the "tens of thousands" line and him only killing thousands . . . well, it made him finally want to throw a javelin at this upstart enemy, David. Which, when David is apparently ten times better at javelin-throwing than you are, isn't exactly the best idea in Palestine.

I recall a paragraph from the wonderful book, Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis. To me, he puts his finger right on our weak spot when he writes about pride. Notice:

"It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party," he writes, "that I am so annoyed at someone ELSE being the big noise. . . . What you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident." Then he adds this chilling line: "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man."

So not only do we want to have what our neighbor has, we'd like to have it – and have him NOT have it. In her book, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Ordinary Life, radio personality Laura Schlessinger writes:

"This [Tenth] Commandment involves wanting something at someone else's expense."

The great humorist Art Buchwald once wrote a self-pitying little column about swimming pools – all in fun – called "The Guest Stealers."

"One of the things I had been warned about," he writes, "was that as soon as I had a pool I would be terribly bothered by people who wanted to use it. This, unfortunately, has turned out to be UNtrue." And we say: Untrue? Why does he feel that way? Here's why: "The only real enjoyment in owning a pool is showing it off to less fortunate people than yourself. To make it pay off you have to have guests who admire it, ogle it, and tell you how lucky you are."

It's like Erma Bombeck once prayed: "Lord, if You can't make me thin, then please make all my friends fat."

Well, what does the Bible have to help us with our swimming-pool jealousies and our monogrammed coffee mug phobias? How can we learn to keep our eyes off the other person's prize?

I mentioned how the apostle Paul wrote, perhaps through gritted teeth:

"I have LEARNED to be content whatever the circumstances."

But notice this extra bit of advice, just a few pages over in II Corinthians 12:

"But they, measuring themselves BY themselves, and comparing themselves AMONG themselves, are not wise."

You see, this is ALWAYS the problem in coveting. Looking at someone else and their portfolio. Ensign Willie Keith had a perfectly good coffee mug. In fact, he had a good mug to drink from BEFORE the monogramming craze hit the Caine like a typhoon. And if you want your initials on your own cup, I guess that's not the deadliest evil in the world. But when someone else had their initials on their cup – even in fancier lettering – did that mean the coffee in Willie Keith's cup didn't taste good any longer? Of course not. But he was always LOOKING at those other cups.

Some of us spend our entire careers looking across the campus at someone else's job that looks a bit more glamorous, a bit more in the spotlight. When, if we'd stop and reflect on our knees, we would realize just how rewarding and thrilling OUR job is, OUR God-given role. We wouldn't think it was anything less than perfect . . . unless we look with our peripheral vision at that other person. It's a wonderful thing, metaphorically speaking, to have slain a thousand enemies for the Lord. If someone else has slain his ten thousands, we shouldn't even notice it. Or if we DO notice it, we should rejoice with them because they did it for the same Lord we're serving too. We're fighting under the same banner.

I've never served in the military, but I guess all of us in the Lord's army might follow the same battlefield order that Ensign Willis Seward Keith had such trouble obeying: "Eyes front, soldier!"