Christian integrity and Godly purpose emerge from a never-ending hunger for the Word of God. A Christian should love reading his or her Bible. An example of longing for the Word of God is found in the life of U.S. Army Chaplain Robert Preston Taylor who was captured by the Army of Imperial Japan when the Philippines were invaded during World War 2. Chaplain Taylor, a Southern Baptist pastor before joining the Army, ministered to his fellow prisoners at the hellish Cabanatuan prison camp. Taylor’s fellow prisoners held him in unusually high regard both during and after the war and he was a man remembered for unusual integrity in the most horrific circumstances. Taylor bravely helped smuggle food and medicine into the prison camp.
At one point, a contact within the Philippine underground sent a secret message into Cabanatuan asking Chaplain Taylor if there was anything he wanted for himself. Taylor initially said, “I don’t need anything,” but then he reconsidered and said if a particular underground connection “can get her hands on a Greek New Testament, send me one.” He added, “I had studied Greek and I thought I could refresh myself. Of all things to request in a prison camp!”[i] In the starving heat and brutality of Cabanatuan when Chaplain Taylor could ask for one thing, he asked for a Greek New Testament.
In a cruel plot twist, the Philippine underground was able to find a Greek New Testament and attempted to send it to Chaplain Taylor, but the copy of the Scriptures was intercepted by the Japanese Army’s police and a note was discovered in the front dedicating it to “Chaplain Bob.” As a result, Taylor was imprisoned in the torturous “heat box,” a tiny bamboo cell designed by the prison’s guards to coerce prisoners into giving away crucial information. Chaplain Taylor stayed locked up in the tiny inferno for the entire summer of 1944 and said, “The worst part was not knowing whether it would ever end.” And yet other prisoners were able to get him a copy of the Bible and other literature which he read while locked in the horrid heat box.[ii] Even in the worst conditions possible, Chaplain Robert Taylor continued to hunger for the Word of God. His life of integrity was grounded in his love for the Scriptures. Chaplain Taylor survived the war to become Chief of Chaplains for the U.S. Air Force.
If you were in a prison and given a chance to ask for one thing, what would it be? Like Chaplain Taylor, we must hunger for the Word of God if we desire to live with virtue and integrity. Romans 15:4 says, “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Reading God’s Word gives us the perseverance we need to continue in a life with ethical clarity. I pray God’s Word will overflow into your life and then your life will overflow as an encouragement to others.
[i] Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 199.
[ii] Ibid., 200.