Some people know just what to do, even when there is little time to think about it. Somehow, the right course of action comes instantly from inside. To be that kind of person in a crisis takes years of being that kind of person in everyday life. Liviu Librescu was that kind of person.
Liviu Librescu was born in 1930 to a Jewish-Romanian family. As a boy, he experienced the Nazi occupation of Romania, where he and all his family were put in Nazi labor camps. Librescu survived the labor camps and returned to his homeland to study aerospace engineering. A brilliant student, he earned a PhD in 1969.
Librescu worked for the Bucharest Institute of Applied Mechanics, but in the early 70s, he fell out of favor with the government for not supporting the communist party. When he requested permission to emigrate to Israel, he was fired from his position. After a great deal of controversy and struggle, he was given permission to emigrate to Israel in 1978.
In Israel, Librescu taught and did research at Tel Aviv University from 1979 to 1986. In 1985, he took a one-year sabbatical to teach in America at Virginia Tech University. After the one year, he stayed on to hold a permanent teaching position at Virginia Tech in the Engineering Department. Dr. Librescu was known to be a great teacher and was respected by all his students and colleagues.
On April 16, 2007, Dr. Librescu was teaching a class in room 204 of the Engineering Building at Virginia Tech. When he heard gun shots in the building he went to hold the door and instructed his students to vacate the classroom through the windows. Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho was on a killing rampage. When he got to Dr. Librescu’s room he could not get in, so he opened fire through the door. As Dr. Librescu’s students scrambled to get out the windows, he sustained five gunshot wounds, the last one in the head killing him. All of Dr. Librescu’s 23 students, except one, were able to escape from the room.
In the aftermath of that tragic day, all those who knew him praised Liviu Librescu for his heroism. They also recounted how he was a great teacher and human being. His students that day gave him credit for saving their lives. Liviu demonstrated the highest qualities of self-sacrifice. He considered the needs of others over his own.
True Self Denial
In this respect, Liviu Librescu is a wonderful picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for others who could not save themselves. But Jesus not only sacrificed himself, he called all his followers to do likewise. In Mark 8:34, Jesus made this demand on would-be disciples: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Self-denial is radically others-oriented. It takes the eyes off oneself so that the focus is on the needs of others. The one who wants to follow Jesus is committing himself to a lifetime of becoming more like Jesus. This is not an easy calling; we need God’s help to be successful. But if we are so self-centered that we are insensitive to what’s going on in the life of another human being, then we render ourselves incapable of doing them any good. On the other hand, we must be careful about self-denial because it can subtly become a form of pride. Historically, some forms of self-denial were so self-oriented that they would be laughable if they were not so sad. People subjected themselves to many kinds of self-privation for personal objectives. The whole point of self-denial is to serve others without any thought of yourself.
Self-denial is easy to talk about or write about; it is much harder to do. For humans, who are by nature self-focused, accomplishing self-denial requires a reorientation to a higher good. The reorientation process is often excruciating. We go kicking and screaming into discipleship.
In the context of Jesus’ radical challenge to discipleship in Mark 8, he gives a clear indication of what he means by self-denial. Jesus calls his followers to lose themselves, and even their lives, for the sake of the gospel, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). The motivation reaches much higher than our own self-interests. It reaches into the core of who we are and who we want to become. We are followers of Jesus, and we want to become like him.
Exhibiting self-denial in a self-absorbed culture is like rowing upstream in the rapids. It is not easily done. So often, the culture penetrates our values and hearts more than our values and hearts penetrate the culture. But as our Lord said, “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). We need not despair, we have the Lord with us and the Spirit inside us to empower us. We just need a few who are willing to struggle upstream, for years maybe, until the crisis arrives and the radical self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ can be demonstrated. In the meantime, do the next small thing and let God decide how big to make it.