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WORLD WAR III OVER A QUART OF STRAWBERRIES

It was a Navy minesweeping ship, in hostile waters at the very height of World War II. And the captain was in a dither, about to launch a full-scale investigation. Thievery was happening aboard the ship, and now the skipper was outlining his comprehensive strategy to expose the guilty party.

Well, if you’re not familiar with this story, the captain’s plan had four parts to it. First of all, every man on board the ship — and there were a whole lot of them — was to write out a sworn-under-oath statement about his whereabouts on the night in question, 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m., have two fellow crewmen substantiate and sign the statement, and have all statements turned in by 1700 hours.

Secondly, because the skipper was convinced someone on board had an illegal key he had made, every single key on board the ship was to be tagged with the owner’s name, and turned in to the executive officer. Third, to make sure all keys were accounted for — and Steve, the exec, was guessing there might be 2,000 of them scattered about the ship — the officers were to conduct a thorough search of the ship: stem to stern. And this was a huge minesweeper, remember.

Fourth, to guarantee that the offending sailor didn’t have the key hidden in his shoe, every single man on board was to be strip-searched.

Does all this sound simple? Well, executive officer Steve Maryk didn’t think it was simple. He didn’t think it had a ghost of a chance of working. “Captain,” he said, “even if there is such a bootleg key on board, the guy who made it will just toss it overboard. Or hide it. There are a million places on this huge ship where we couldn’t find a key if we looked for fifty years.”

But . . . Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg insisted that he could find the key and that his men were to get started on Plan One, Plan Two, Plan Three, and Plan Four to uncover that key and restore the U.S.S. Caine to a state of law and order.

Well, it’s one of the great naval tales of all time, told so compellingly by the novelist Herman Wouk, of course. And many of you have enjoyed the film where Humphrey Bogart rolled his little steel balls in his hand while the typhoon struck, and then later as Barney Greenwald relentlessly exposed him as a paranoid, mentally unfit captain who deserved to be replaced during “The Caine Mutiny.”

But what does this story of keys and storms and Navy Article 184 have to do with our radio topic this week: grudges and revenge? Certainly the men on board the Caine were simmering with hatred for the captain; they thought endlessly about ways to get rid of “Old Yellowstain,” including tossing him overboard on a moonless night. We’ve used slices of this story before to illustrate various spiritual truths, but today I don’t want to think about the resentment of Willie Keith and Maryk and Keefer and the others. The spiritual principle for us to consider today is simply this: We often hold a grudge in some area where we are vastly overreacting to the situation.

Now, why do I say that? And what does this have to do with the search for the key on board the Caine? Well, if you know the original story, you recall that Humphrey Bogart was willing to turn the entire boat upside down, during a time of war, with bullets flying through the air and enemy subs lurking all around them in the dark green water . . . and he wanted to search for an allegedly missing key . . . because of one missing quart of strawberries.

That’s it. One quart of strawberries gone. And Queeg decided someone had stolen the strawberries, so someone had to have a key, and he was going to find that key, and so, Maryk, call the men on deck and strip-search them, and scour this entire minesweeper from the boiler room to the crow’s nest, and stop all of World War II to find this key because there’s got to be a key . . . because a quart of strawberries is gone. A quart of strawberries.

The upshot is this: don’t invest in a million-dollar grudge campaign over a fifty-cent problem. There on the Caine, Maryk said to Queeg as he was issuing his insane orders: “Sir, let me ask you, with due respect, is it worth doing all this to the crew for a quart of strawberries?”

Even Jesus tried to teach His followers the importance of keeping a healthy perspective about things. In His famous Sermon on the Mount, which you can find beginning in Matthew chapter five, He gives this counsel, which we’re borrowing from the Clear Word paraphrase:

“Why are you so picky with your brother when you probably have bigger faults than he has?”

You might recall the King James metaphor about the mote, or tiny splinter, in your neighbor’s eye, which you kindly volunteer to help him with . . . while there’s a huge two by four in your own.

“How do you expect to help him,” Jesus asks, “when you can’t even see your own mistakes?”

Going again to our second Bible around here, the Reader’s Digest, the January 2000 issue had this inspired gem from a Georges Courteline:

“If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything one permits in oneself, life would be unbearable.”

And in some of Jesus’ parables, we’re reminded again to bear in mind this quart of strawberries. Someone else where you works gets five talents handed to them, while you get only two, or maybe even just one. And Christ, in that famous parable, essentially says: “Don’t worry about it. Just be faithful with the two or the one.” You work the whole, hot, sweaty day for a paycheck, and someone else works just one hour — in the shadiest part of the field, and in the coolest twilight hour — and gets paid exactly as much as you. What does Jesus say? “Don’t worry about it.” Peter finds out that at the end of life he’s going to die a martyr’s death . . . even death on the cross. So, of course, he pipes right up and asks Jesus, “Lord, what about John? You know the future — what’s going to happen to him?” What does Jesus say? “Don’t worry about it.”

And friend, that’s really it. Don’t worry about it! Because if you’re vertical with God, if you have a saved, born-again relationship with the Savior of the universe, and are going to live a few billion years in a heavenly mansion, don’t most problems here below shrink down until they’re on the level of a quart of strawberries? I mean, really?

I mentioned the other day that we get so angry sometimes about our dilemmas, our grudges. And then we read a book like Dead Man Walking, where people endured unbelievable injustices. Their own kids raped, dismembered, killed. And it helps us to keep our own resentments in perspective. Jesus is telling us here: “Friend, when you stack up all of life’s hurts against the centrality of the Cross, they’re going to lose their magnitude.”

Here at the Voice of Prophecy we have employees whose kids are slogging away in college. One of them, a nice, born-again Christian girl, is attending Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo. Her parents were delighted when she ended up being assigned with another Christian young lady. But — as new roommates, randomly assigned roommates sometimes do — there were adjustments as they tried to learn to get along, to adapt to the other person’s quirks, the other person’s chosen bedtimes, etc. And when the other girl, kind of on her own, invited several friends over to the dorm room for a weekly Bible study group — and didn’t consult her roommate — well, there was some tension. Strange kids in my room? Sitting on my bed? Maybe borrowing a pencil out of my desk drawer without permission? You should have asked first, don’t you think? That kind of thing, and for a couple of days, the grudge kind of sat there between them.

Now, this was certainly a speck-of-sawdust bit of hurt, maybe just a quart, or a pint, or a spoonful of strawberries. Not worth World War III; that’s for sure.

And then, just a day or two after this tiny Caine Mutiny skirmish, the second girl got a phone call from home. There’d been a plane crash. Two of her very good friends had been in that plane. Now one was seriously injured, the other one dead.

And just like that . . . the paradigm in that Cal Poly dorm room was different. A close friend was dead! This girl was grieving! Her sister in Christ – grieving! With that in mind, was it really worth it to worry about a couple of kids being in your room and mussing up the bedspread on your bed while they had a little Bible study group? Was it worth it to fight about that, when this was the time to close ranks and fight the common enemy?

Here’s a closing word of Scripture from that second Bible again: Reader’s Digest, the May 1999 issue. This comes from a William James; notice:

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

Listen, friend, don’t overlook the Cross. Overlook the rest.