Did you know you always have choices?
Regardless of what is going on around you, you are free if you know you can choose.
Picture yourself in a dark, dank prison. A guard is holding a gun to your head and threatening to pull the trigger if you don’t tell him where your friends are. Are you terrified? Do you feel like a helpless victim? You are not a helpless victim if you stay centered and make choices.
What choices do you have in this difficult situation?
You can silently pray for wisdom and courage. You certainly have the choice of telling the guard where your friends are, hoping he will spare your life, but how likely is it this desperate man will spare your life once he has the information he wants? Even if he does, will you be able to live with yourself for the rest of your days, knowing that you betrayed your friends and perhaps contributed to their deaths?
You can try to engage him in conversation and develop some kind of personal rapport. You can ask him questions. What is it he needs? Does he need food or water or shelter? Does his family need these things? Is there something you can do for him, short of betraying your friends? Does this sound like “Resist not evil, but turn the other cheek”? Yes, it does, and you can’t imagine how effective it is until you’ve used it.
You can remain silent and passively resistant, putting the burden on him for the next decision. Will he pull the trigger and destroy his only source of information? Probably not.
If you are physically strong, you may be able to trip him, punch him, grab the gun, scratch his eyes out, and physically release yourself. Only you can evaluate your likelihood of success if you make this choice.
Do you have any doubt that your body will some day physically become totally non-functional; that some day your body will die?
If you accept the fact that your body is going to die, what values are you willing to die for? The very values you’re willing to die for are the same values you must live for, every moment of every day. If you make choices to live for those values, when your body does die, however that happens, you will be spiritually free.