Howard C. Wilkinson - "Has the Bottom Dropped out of Everything?" (June 30, 1968)
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| - | Testing, one, two, three. Testing. | 0:10 |
| - | The necessities of strangers, | 0:15 |
| the helplessness of the weak, | 0:18 | |
| the despondency of the weary, | 0:21 | |
| the failing powers of the aged, | 0:25 | |
| O God draw near to each, | 0:30 | |
| for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 0:33 | |
| O God who has formed us for fellowship with one another, | 0:38 | |
| we pray for all who need us, | 0:43 | |
| for all who are underfed and starving, | 0:47 | |
| for the victims of oppression, injustice, | 0:52 | |
| cruelty, and racial prejudice, | 0:56 | |
| for all who are frustrated, | 1:01 | |
| for the sorely tempted, | 1:04 | |
| and for those who fall, | 1:07 | |
| for little children and youth who are neglected | 1:11 | |
| and have never known what it is to be cared for and loved. | 1:16 | |
| Lord, hear our prayer, | 1:20 | |
| and let our third prayers be those | 1:28 | |
| of supplication for ourselves. | 1:30 | |
| O God who hast made the church a royal priesthood | 1:36 | |
| that we may offer unto thee prayers of supplication, | 1:40 | |
| hear us as we pray for the gifts | 1:45 | |
| of gaiety and freedom and simplicity, | 1:48 | |
| for kindness, generosity, gentleness, | 1:55 | |
| honor, courtesy, and self-control, | 2:00 | |
| for the consecration of the discontent of the young, | 2:07 | |
| for wisdom in the conservatism of the middle-aged, | 2:13 | |
| for resiliency in the obstinacy of the aged. | 2:19 | |
| Help us both to know and to acknowledge | 2:25 | |
| that the standard for man's life | 2:28 | |
| has been shown us in Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 2:31 | |
| O God, author of the world's joy | 2:39 | |
| and bearer of the world's pain, | 2:41 | |
| make us glad that we are alive | 2:45 | |
| and have inherited the world's burden. | 2:48 | |
| Deliver us from the luxury of cheap melancholy | 2:52 | |
| and at the heart of all our trouble and sorrow, | 2:57 | |
| let unconquerable gladness dwell, | 3:01 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 3:05 | |
| And now as our savior Christ hath taught us, | 3:11 | |
| we humbly pray together, saying, | 3:15 | |
| our father who art in heaven, | 3:18 | |
| hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, | 3:22 | |
| thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 3:27 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread | 3:31 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 3:35 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us | 3:37 | |
| and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. | 3:41 | |
| For thine is the kingdom, and the power, | 3:46 | |
| and the glory, forever. | 3:49 | |
| Amen. | 3:53 | |
| - | Three weeks ago, I was enjoying a cup of coffee, | 4:17 |
| in mid-morning, at one of the tables | 4:21 | |
| in Ted Minah's dining halls. | 4:25 | |
| A man whom I knew brought his cup of coffee | 4:29 | |
| and sat down across from me, and we had a conversation | 4:31 | |
| which primed the pump of today's sermon. | 4:37 | |
| The man made a number of statements to me, | 4:41 | |
| and then he asked this question: | 4:44 | |
| "Has the bottom dropped out of everything, Chaplain?" | 4:47 | |
| The context of the question is formed | 4:53 | |
| by the statements which he made to me | 4:55 | |
| before asking the question. | 4:57 | |
| When I returned to my office that morning, | 5:00 | |
| I wrote down his statements as well as I can remember them. | 5:02 | |
| And here they are: | 5:06 | |
| "Chaplain, I am discouraged. | 5:09 | |
| Within the last few years, | 5:12 | |
| three national leaders have been assassinated. | 5:14 | |
| The chaplain of one of America's greatest universities | 5:20 | |
| has been convicted in federal court | 5:24 | |
| on a charge of conspiring | 5:27 | |
| against the government of the United States. | 5:29 | |
| More than 1000 students | 5:36 | |
| and faculty members of Duke University | 5:38 | |
| left their classrooms and dormitories a few weeks ago | 5:40 | |
| to make severe demands of the administration | 5:44 | |
| and the trustees, and even worse things have happened | 5:46 | |
| at a score of other universities. | 5:50 | |
| A sexual revolution is going on, | 5:56 | |
| which threatens to sweep away every vestige of decency | 5:59 | |
| and to undermine all of the religious principles | 6:03 | |
| of sexual conduct. | 6:07 | |
| Has the bottom dropped out of everything, Chaplain?" | 6:11 | |
| This was his list of things | 6:17 | |
| which are disturbingly wrong with our nation today. | 6:19 | |
| If I had been talking with a different person, | 6:24 | |
| he probably would've mentioned | 6:27 | |
| an alternate category of woes. | 6:28 | |
| You can select your own roster of calamities this morning. | 6:32 | |
| Are you upset by inflation? | 6:37 | |
| Do steadily increasing taxes give you ulcers? | 6:40 | |
| Are you alarmed because the Supreme Court has decided | 6:45 | |
| that now, after 200 years, it is un-American | 6:48 | |
| to say a prayer in a public school? | 6:52 | |
| Does it give you nightmares to think of the rise | 6:56 | |
| in the use of mind-altering drugs? | 6:59 | |
| Billy Graham made his own list | 7:05 | |
| of things badly wrong with our civilization | 7:07 | |
| and announced at the San Antonio Hemisfair, | 7:09 | |
| two weeks ago on June 16th, | 7:12 | |
| that the world would very soon come to an end. | 7:15 | |
| He said, and this is a direct quote, | 7:19 | |
| "Everybody knows it. Everybody feels it. | 7:22 | |
| It's in the air." | 7:26 | |
| Graham went on to say, "This cosmos is going | 7:29 | |
| to come to an end by a gigantic convulsion." | 7:32 | |
| Well, a great many people are concerned | 7:36 | |
| with the aggregate number of events | 7:39 | |
| and trends which alarm them. | 7:40 | |
| Different things, of course, alarm different people. | 7:44 | |
| If we were to review the list given | 7:48 | |
| by my companion at morning coffee, | 7:50 | |
| you probably would think that he was an irate alumnus | 7:52 | |
| paying his first visit to the campus in 40 years. | 7:56 | |
| Or perhaps you would think he was | 8:01 | |
| one of the more conservative members | 8:02 | |
| of our board of trustees, or at least | 8:04 | |
| one of the older members of the Duke administration. | 8:08 | |
| But it is not so. | 8:13 | |
| Instead, my questioner | 8:15 | |
| was an undergraduate student of Duke University, | 8:17 | |
| with a 3.0 average, handsome, well-liked on campus, | 8:21 | |
| well-informed on current events and issues, | 8:27 | |
| friendly, responsible, but disturbed. | 8:31 | |
| He is a splendid young man who shows no sign | 8:37 | |
| of abandoning his own high principles, | 8:39 | |
| but who wonders if almost everyone else | 8:42 | |
| has not abandoned theirs. | 8:45 | |
| Now I shall not tell you his name, but it could be Elijah. | 8:49 | |
| You will recall how, in this morning's scripture lesson, | 8:55 | |
| Elijah stood at the mouth of the cave and wailed, | 8:58 | |
| "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. | 9:01 | |
| For the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, | 9:05 | |
| thrown down thy altars, | 9:08 | |
| and slain thy prophets with the sword. | 9:10 | |
| And I, even I only, am left." | 9:12 | |
| And the Lord said to him, | 9:18 | |
| "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. | 9:20 | |
| I will leave 7,000 in Israel, | 9:24 | |
| all the knees that have not bowed to Baal." | 9:28 | |
| Well, you see, just as the ancient Elijah | 9:33 | |
| could not see the 7,000 faithful Israelites in his day, | 9:35 | |
| and therefore thought he was the only faithful one left, | 9:40 | |
| so my Trinity College summer school friend | 9:44 | |
| was looking at the problems rather than at the resources, | 9:46 | |
| and he wondered if the bottom | 9:50 | |
| had not dropped out of everything. | 9:51 | |
| Well, one of the problems which my young friend had, | 9:55 | |
| and which a great many other sincere people have, | 9:57 | |
| is that he did not see contemporary dilemmas | 10:00 | |
| in the light of history. | 10:03 | |
| And it is because his problem | 10:06 | |
| is the problem which many people have, | 10:08 | |
| that I have chosen to speak on his question this morning. | 10:11 | |
| Even if we were to assume that the present picture | 10:16 | |
| is just as dark as he painted it to be, | 10:19 | |
| a glance at history would put | 10:23 | |
| an altogether different interpretation | 10:25 | |
| on the present scene from the one he was giving it. | 10:27 | |
| If we were to look at the problems he brought up, | 10:32 | |
| and even if we were to understand them | 10:34 | |
| in the terminology he used, | 10:35 | |
| we would not have to conclude that now, finally, | 10:39 | |
| the bottom has dropped out of everything. | 10:41 | |
| Listen to this statement: | 10:45 | |
| "Youth is disintegrating. | 10:48 | |
| The youngsters of the land | 10:51 | |
| have a disrespect for their elders | 10:53 | |
| and a contempt for authority in every form. | 10:55 | |
| Vandalism is rife and crime of all kinds | 10:59 | |
| is rampant among our young people. | 11:03 | |
| The nation is in peril." | 11:05 | |
| Who do you think spoke those alarming words? | 11:09 | |
| They were spoken by a discouraged Egyptian priest, | 11:16 | |
| about 2000 years before Christ. | 11:19 | |
| Listen to these words: | 11:23 | |
| "Children today love luxury. | 11:26 | |
| They have bad manners, a contempt for authority, | 11:28 | |
| a disrespect for their elders, | 11:31 | |
| and they like to talk instead of work. | 11:32 | |
| They contradict their parents, they chatter before company, | 11:35 | |
| they gobble up the best at the table | 11:37 | |
| and they tyrannize their teachers." | 11:39 | |
| Who said that? | 11:42 | |
| Well, before I tell you who did, | 11:46 | |
| let me report to you that on last Tuesday, | 11:48 | |
| I read those words to a gentle lady | 11:52 | |
| who works over in the union building. | 11:54 | |
| And I asked her the same question, who said that? | 11:57 | |
| You know what she said? | 12:01 | |
| "Chaplain, I don't know who said it, but whoever he was, | 12:04 | |
| he surely knew what he was talking about." | 12:07 | |
| She was astonished when I told her | 12:12 | |
| that those words were spoken by Socrates in ancient Greece. | 12:13 | |
| In fact, she was so astonished | 12:18 | |
| that she was not ready to accept their ancient origin | 12:22 | |
| until I showed her the reference | 12:26 | |
| on page 64 of Roul Tunley's book, | 12:28 | |
| entitled "Kids, Crime, and Chaos". | 12:31 | |
| Now the only point I am focusing on just at the moment | 12:36 | |
| is that events and trends which disturb or alarm us | 12:40 | |
| generally have their parallels in history. | 12:45 | |
| So if we are to view them in historical perspective, | 12:49 | |
| we shall be able to learn enough from them to be wise, | 12:53 | |
| but we shall avoid learning too much from them. | 12:57 | |
| You may recall Mark Twain's cat, | 13:02 | |
| concerning whom the famous writer reported | 13:04 | |
| that the cat sat down on a hot stone in the backyard. | 13:07 | |
| Mark Twain said that it would've been an ideal situation | 13:12 | |
| if the cat had learned from this experience | 13:14 | |
| not to sit down on hot stones. | 13:17 | |
| But the cat learned too much from the experience, he said. | 13:20 | |
| He would never again sit down on any stone at all. | 13:23 | |
| This is often our human problem | 13:29 | |
| when we're confronted by things that we do not like. | 13:32 | |
| We learn too much from the confrontation. | 13:36 | |
| We learn some things indeed that are not true. | 13:40 | |
| Without probing the experience with searching questions, | 13:44 | |
| we tend to give in to a fatalistic mood of despair. | 13:48 | |
| Just because one stone was hot, | 13:55 | |
| it does not follow that all stones are hot | 13:57 | |
| and always will be. | 13:59 | |
| Just because some people in Elijah's day | 14:02 | |
| had forsaken Jehovah's covenant, had thrown down his altars, | 14:04 | |
| and had butchered the prophets with the sword, | 14:08 | |
| it did not necessarily follow that every knee in Israel | 14:12 | |
| except Elijah's had bowed to Baal. | 14:15 | |
| Indeed, God pointed out that there were 7,000 other people | 14:21 | |
| who were making the scene in righteousness. | 14:25 | |
| But what we need to do is to use our God-given minds | 14:30 | |
| and think about the experiences which upset us. | 14:33 | |
| Often we shall find elements, of course, | 14:38 | |
| which represent loss. | 14:40 | |
| And just as often, we seem to discover significant gains | 14:43 | |
| which are woven into the fabric of the same experience. | 14:48 | |
| So let us examine one by one | 14:53 | |
| the woes which my student friend listed | 14:56 | |
| to see what wisdom we can glean concerning them. | 14:58 | |
| Now don't worry about this exposure of my friend's words, | 15:03 | |
| because he and I have discussed these items in detail, | 15:08 | |
| and he is entirely willing | 15:11 | |
| that they should be used in this way today. | 15:13 | |
| First, he mentioned the assassination | 15:17 | |
| of three national leaders | 15:20 | |
| within the space of only a few years. | 15:21 | |
| Obviously this is bad. | 15:26 | |
| What is bad about it is that John F. Kennedy, | 15:28 | |
| Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy are dead, | 15:31 | |
| and that the world has been deprived of their leadership. | 15:35 | |
| A second bad aspect is that a lone assassin | 15:40 | |
| was able in three instances | 15:43 | |
| to veto the leadership choice of a vast throng of people. | 15:45 | |
| Even if history subsequently shows | 15:52 | |
| that one or more of the killers had accomplices, | 15:54 | |
| the number will still be infinitesimally small. | 15:58 | |
| Beyond these two tragic aspects, what more should we say? | 16:03 | |
| That there is a sickness in the soul of our people | 16:09 | |
| which rose up and slew these men? | 16:11 | |
| No, I think not. | 16:15 | |
| John F. Kennedy had been elected | 16:19 | |
| President of the United States by a majority of the voters. | 16:21 | |
| The people of our land had shown | 16:26 | |
| that they were very proud of him. | 16:27 | |
| As for Martin Luther King, | 16:32 | |
| he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, | 16:34 | |
| and while he lived, he had been honored in America | 16:37 | |
| as no courageous prophet has ever before | 16:40 | |
| been honored by our people. | 16:43 | |
| On the day of his burial in the city of Atlanta, | 16:46 | |
| the official estimate was that 500,000 people | 16:49 | |
| moved through the streets of the city, | 16:54 | |
| from the place of his funeral to the place of his interment. | 16:56 | |
| I was personally present and I can testify | 17:00 | |
| that I have never witnessed such an outpouring | 17:03 | |
| of loyalty and affection in my life, | 17:06 | |
| from all types of people, from every corner of the nation | 17:09 | |
| and from all sections of the earth. | 17:13 | |
| As for Robert Kennedy, his death is so recent | 17:17 | |
| that we can all remember how he led | 17:19 | |
| in the preferential polls, | 17:22 | |
| how he was celebrated in the news media, | 17:24 | |
| and how he was idolized by millions of our citizens. | 17:26 | |
| No, I think we're learning too much from the assassinations | 17:31 | |
| if we learned that the masses of people | 17:34 | |
| wished these three leaders to be dead, | 17:36 | |
| or that a general sickness within us rose up and slew them. | 17:41 | |
| What we have to say is that three or more individuals | 17:46 | |
| wished these leaders to be dead. | 17:49 | |
| This does not mean that history | 17:52 | |
| has suddenly started swinging on its hinges, | 17:54 | |
| for it has always been true | 17:58 | |
| that even the most popular leaders of men | 17:59 | |
| have had to be on guard against the lurking assassin. | 18:02 | |
| Kings have always had their palace guards. | 18:06 | |
| Every commanding general has had his personal bodyguard, | 18:10 | |
| not to protect him from the army's enemy, | 18:14 | |
| but from the assassin within his own army. | 18:17 | |
| Certainly we need to discover a more effective way | 18:21 | |
| to protect our leaders from the assassin | 18:24 | |
| who would nullify the people's choice, | 18:26 | |
| but we contribute nothing constructive | 18:30 | |
| when we go on to judge the majority | 18:32 | |
| by the guilt or the sickness of the few. | 18:34 | |
| The bottom hasn't dropped out of everything yet. | 18:39 | |
| Second, my coffee companion was distressed and depressed | 18:45 | |
| because the chaplain of one | 18:49 | |
| of America's greatest universities | 18:51 | |
| has been convicted in federal court | 18:54 | |
| on a charge of conspiring against the government | 18:56 | |
| of the United States. | 18:58 | |
| He said it would not be so distressing | 19:01 | |
| were it to have been a representative of the lunatic fringe. | 19:04 | |
| But a Presbyterian minister, | 19:10 | |
| who came from one of the honored families of the church | 19:12 | |
| and of the university, | 19:15 | |
| who had been chosen as chaplain by a great institution, | 19:18 | |
| that was disturbing. | 19:22 | |
| It was upsetting because one assumes the Christian religion | 19:25 | |
| and its spokesmen will be in support of law and order, | 19:29 | |
| and will be loyal to the government of a democracy | 19:33 | |
| and not conspire against it. | 19:36 | |
| The assumption also has been that the university, | 19:40 | |
| like Christianity, supports the government of a republic. | 19:43 | |
| When, therefore a federal court | 19:48 | |
| found a great university's chaplain guilty of conspiracy, | 19:50 | |
| the head of my student friend began to swim. | 19:55 | |
| What do we learn from this? What does wisdom teach? | 20:01 | |
| I have read thousands of inches of type | 20:07 | |
| about the trial of the Yale chaplain, | 20:12 | |
| and so have many of you. | 20:15 | |
| The verdict has been rendered and the case is under appeal. | 20:18 | |
| Now is not the time and here is not the place | 20:24 | |
| to retry this case. | 20:27 | |
| Certain things, however, can be stated with assurance. | 20:30 | |
| While in a dictatorship or in an oligarchy, | 20:35 | |
| it may often be the Christian duty of men | 20:39 | |
| to break the law of the land, to defy the government, | 20:42 | |
| and to seek its overthrow, | 20:47 | |
| it becomes the Christian to acknowledge gratefully | 20:50 | |
| the difference between government by the few | 20:54 | |
| and government by the majority. | 20:58 | |
| But Government by the majority, | 21:01 | |
| no less than government by the few, | 21:05 | |
| must govern by law. | 21:08 | |
| Law is meaningless if it is not obeyed. | 21:12 | |
| Order is impossible without this obedience to law. | 21:16 | |
| Contrary to what some emotionally unstable people believe, | 21:22 | |
| there absolutely cannot be progress without civil order. | 21:26 | |
| Steps toward progress in an atmosphere of civil disorder | 21:33 | |
| will go forward by one and will slip backward by five. | 21:36 | |
| This means that majority law is always a package deal. | 21:43 | |
| Personally, I am interested in the national parks, | 21:50 | |
| but I'm not interested in some of the other things | 21:53 | |
| which I am taxed to support. | 21:55 | |
| I would willingly pay taxes to support the parks, | 21:58 | |
| but I would prefer not to pay taxes | 22:01 | |
| to support governmental activities I don't like. | 22:03 | |
| But this is not an option open to me. | 22:07 | |
| I can vote against it, speak out against it, | 22:12 | |
| demonstrate peacefully against it, | 22:15 | |
| protest against it with all my resources, | 22:17 | |
| but if in the end I cannot persuade | 22:21 | |
| the majority to vote my way, | 22:23 | |
| I have to be governed by the decision of the majority. | 22:25 | |
| This, the federal court ruled, | 22:30 | |
| the Yale chaplain had not been willing to do. | 22:33 | |
| A devout churchman, Dr. Erwin Griswold, | 22:38 | |
| recently Dean of the Harvard Law School | 22:42 | |
| and now Solicitor General of the United States, | 22:44 | |
| was quoted last month as follows: | 22:46 | |
| "One who contemplates civil disobedience | 22:50 | |
| out of moral conviction | 22:53 | |
| should not be surprised and must not be bitter | 22:55 | |
| if a criminal conviction ensues, | 22:59 | |
| and he must accept the fact that organized society | 23:03 | |
| cannot endure on any other basis. | 23:06 | |
| His hope is that he may aid in getting the law changed. | 23:10 | |
| But if he does not succeed in that, | 23:15 | |
| he cannot complain if the law is applied to him." | 23:17 | |
| End of quote. | 23:23 | |
| Yet the fact that the Yale chaplain | 23:26 | |
| has had the law applied to him | 23:27 | |
| is not an indication that the bottom has dropped out | 23:29 | |
| of the universe, or the Church, or even of Yale University. | 23:31 | |
| Chaplain Coffin did not enterprise to break the law of men. | 23:37 | |
| He enterprised to obey the law of God. | 23:43 | |
| It turned out that his effort to be obedient to God | 23:50 | |
| had as a byproduct the effect of his being disobedient | 23:54 | |
| to the American government. | 23:58 | |
| And as he sought to increase the certainty | 24:01 | |
| of his obedience to God, | 24:04 | |
| he decreased the certainty of his obedience to man's law. | 24:06 | |
| And however much we may criticize him for this, | 24:13 | |
| we must acknowledge at the same time | 24:18 | |
| that the stuff of his legal conviction | 24:20 | |
| is very much like this stuff of the Old Testament prophets | 24:24 | |
| and the New Testament martyrs. | 24:29 | |
| So, has the bottom dropped out of everything? | 24:32 | |
| I think it has not. | 24:37 | |
| Well, the third distress of my undergraduate friend | 24:42 | |
| was the recent Duke vigil, | 24:45 | |
| about which literal volumes have been and will be written. | 24:47 | |
| Time does not now permit me to attempt even a brief summary. | 24:54 | |
| I shall limit my remarks to a few sample statements | 25:00 | |
| of the kind I think should characterize | 25:04 | |
| a wise analysis of any disturbing and cataclysmic event. | 25:06 | |
| First, there was good reporting of the vigil | 25:13 | |
| and bad reporting of it. | 25:16 | |
| Some people in America therefore made up their minds | 25:18 | |
| on the basis of the bad reporting they read | 25:21 | |
| and some on the basis of the good reporting they read, | 25:24 | |
| and this accounts were different opinions, in part. | 25:26 | |
| Second, even as members of the church | 25:30 | |
| join the church for varying reasons, | 25:34 | |
| some better than others, | 25:37 | |
| so students and faculty joined the vigil | 25:39 | |
| for strangely different reasons. | 25:43 | |
| Some were motivated by a desire to help their fellow man. | 25:46 | |
| Some thought it was a different kind of game to play. | 25:50 | |
| Some were aware of the economic realities under discussion. | 25:54 | |
| Some were not. | 25:59 | |
| Some believed moral passion | 26:01 | |
| was a sufficient antidote for fiscal ignorance. | 26:03 | |
| For instance, since the vigil was successful | 26:08 | |
| in elevating the wages of our dining hall employees, | 26:12 | |
| it had to follow that the price of meals | 26:17 | |
| would be increased to pay the new wage, how else? | 26:19 | |
| Some vigil members knew this | 26:24 | |
| and gladly pay the increased price. | 26:26 | |
| Other vigil members grumbled as soon as the price went up | 26:30 | |
| and began to eat downtown at the greasy spoon, | 26:34 | |
| where wages in the kitchen are lower than at Duke. | 26:38 | |
| Third, I think it cannot be overly accented | 26:43 | |
| that the goals of the Duke vigil were the most lofty staging | 26:47 | |
| of the perennial tension between child and parent | 26:53 | |
| which could be imagined. | 26:57 | |
| Though other factors were present, | 27:00 | |
| the vigil was essentially a student versus authority affair. | 27:03 | |
| It was son versus father. | 27:09 | |
| It was a moral field of battle | 27:13 | |
| on which could be continued the age-old struggle | 27:15 | |
| between parent types and young people types. | 27:18 | |
| Indeed, sometimes the middle-aged alumnus | 27:24 | |
| who gives a verbal scorching | 27:29 | |
| to the university administration | 27:32 | |
| because of student protests on campus | 27:34 | |
| is simply venting upon the university | 27:38 | |
| his own rage and frustration, | 27:41 | |
| which had built up during years of tension | 27:44 | |
| between himself and his own children. | 27:46 | |
| The curious thing, the ironical thing, | 27:50 | |
| is that the other side of the coin | 27:53 | |
| is very much like this one, | 27:56 | |
| in that psychiatrists inform us that it often is true | 27:59 | |
| that when students seek to clobber | 28:05 | |
| a university administration and make protests against it, | 28:07 | |
| they're giving vent to the frustrations they have built up | 28:11 | |
| against their own parents through the years. | 28:14 | |
| And thus you can see that the university authorities | 28:18 | |
| are often made to be the whipping boys | 28:21 | |
| by both sides of the parent-child tension. | 28:24 | |
| Parents scold the university for being unable to control | 28:29 | |
| sons or daughters they couldn't control at home, | 28:34 | |
| and sons and daughters rebel | 28:38 | |
| against in loco parentis types at college | 28:40 | |
| who look like the fathers and mothers | 28:43 | |
| against whom they rebelled at home. | 28:46 | |
| Well, if the Duke vigil means that the bottom is out, | 28:52 | |
| at least it hasn't just now dropped out. | 28:56 | |
| It dropped out a long time ago. | 28:59 | |
| Last, let's take a couple of minutes | 29:05 | |
| to look at the final woe my coffee companion mentioned. | 29:10 | |
| He is a young man of high moral principles, | 29:16 | |
| and he was dismayed at what he understood | 29:20 | |
| the present sexual revolution to mean. | 29:23 | |
| He had the impression that the sexual revolution | 29:28 | |
| was sweeping away every remnant of decency | 29:32 | |
| and undermining all of the religious principles | 29:37 | |
| of sexual conduct. | 29:39 | |
| Was he right? | 29:41 | |
| Perhaps the first thing we should do | 29:45 | |
| is simply to list the elements | 29:47 | |
| which compose the sexual revolution. | 29:49 | |
| As I understand it, the elements are as follows. | 29:53 | |
| First, the general diffusion | 29:56 | |
| of Freudian insights concerning sex | 29:59 | |
| throughout the population, and particularly among students. | 30:03 | |
| Words like id and libido are as common as guitar and pizza. | 30:08 | |
| Second, The proliferation of devices and drugs | 30:15 | |
| designed to prevent conception. | 30:20 | |
| Third, the multiplying of surveys, questionnaires, | 30:24 | |
| and scientific observation of sexual behavior. | 30:28 | |
| Fourth, immoral sexual behavior | 30:32 | |
| which previously would've been secret to you | 30:36 | |
| now is openly known, and in some cases even paraded. | 30:39 | |
| Fifth and last, theological fads relating to sex | 30:44 | |
| have encouraged some people to believe | 30:49 | |
| there no longer are valid religious principles | 30:52 | |
| governing sexual behavior. | 30:56 | |
| These ingredients compose what is commonly referred to | 30:59 | |
| as the sexual revolution. | 31:03 | |
| Do they together mean that the bottom has dropped out | 31:06 | |
| of sexual decency, that promiscuity has taken over? | 31:09 | |
| I personally do not think so. | 31:15 | |
| Let us examine some of these ingredients. | 31:18 | |
| The diffusion of Freudian sexual insights | 31:22 | |
| is a wholesome corrective | 31:27 | |
| to the unhealthy Victorian concepts | 31:30 | |
| which too long were identified with Christian sex ethics. | 31:35 | |
| These insights do not call for promiscuity at all, | 31:40 | |
| and one who is fully educated in Freudian literature | 31:46 | |
| may cheerfully support the principle of premarital chastity | 31:49 | |
| and postmarital fidelity. | 31:54 | |
| Second, expert testimony indicates | 31:58 | |
| that the proliferation of contraceptive devices | 32:02 | |
| has neither increased fornication and adultery | 32:06 | |
| nor reduced the rate of illegitimate pregnancies. | 32:11 | |
| Both of these conclusions came as a distinct surprise to me | 32:17 | |
| recently when I made a study of this. | 32:21 | |
| Although sex is far more discussed now | 32:25 | |
| than it was when Grandmother was a teenager, | 32:28 | |
| the rate of fornication and adultery | 32:32 | |
| is almost identical now to what it was then. | 32:35 | |
| And in spite of contraceptives, pregnancies out of wedlock | 32:42 | |
| occur at about the same rate as before. | 32:47 | |
| The chief difference between then and now is that back then, | 32:51 | |
| they thought they might get pregnant and did, | 32:54 | |
| whereas now they're sure they won't get pregnant, but do. | 32:58 | |
| Last, the theological fad of situation ethics | 33:04 | |
| has been interpreted by many students to mean | 33:10 | |
| that there are no valid Christian principles left | 33:13 | |
| that govern sexual behavior, | 33:17 | |
| that everything is a matter of subjective, personal choice, | 33:20 | |
| depending upon how one feels about another. | 33:25 | |
| Well of course, in such a confused state, | 33:30 | |
| some have understandably made mistakes, | 33:32 | |
| and it is to be hoped that this confusion | 33:36 | |
| will soon be replaced by clearer guidelines, | 33:39 | |
| and we look here to our colleagues whose discipline it is | 33:44 | |
| to give leadership in the theology of ethics. | 33:49 | |
| However, it does not seem to me | 33:54 | |
| that the sexual revolution as a whole | 33:55 | |
| indicates that the bottom has dropped out | 33:58 | |
| of our sexual morals. | 34:00 | |
| Actually, the sexual revolution may bring us | 34:02 | |
| to a needed substitution of New Testament sexual ethics | 34:06 | |
| for an outmoded Victorian platform, which was consistent | 34:12 | |
| neither with the New Testament nor human nature. | 34:17 | |
| Now, what is being called for this morning in this sermon | 34:23 | |
| is not a Pollyanna attitude which refuses to acknowledge | 34:27 | |
| that the world has any problems at all, | 34:31 | |
| or that if we will only look at them, | 34:35 | |
| we'll see that they aren't the problems they seem to be. | 34:37 | |
| But what we're calling for | 34:42 | |
| is an attitude of thoughtful examination, | 34:43 | |
| which interprets current trends in historical perspective | 34:47 | |
| and which insists on basic Christian values | 34:52 | |
| in all of our human dilemmas. | 34:57 | |
| And if we can have grace enough | 35:01 | |
| to maintain such an attitude, | 35:03 | |
| we will avoid the overcompensation of Mark Twain's cat | 35:05 | |
| and avoid the despondency of an Elijah. | 35:11 | |
| Perhaps we can even be wiser than Socrates, | 35:15 | |
| for we shall have the benefit | 35:18 | |
| of hindsight as well as foresight | 35:20 | |
| to a degree which he could not have. | 35:24 | |
| Let us pray. | 35:28 | |
| Almighty God, our heavenly father, | 35:30 | |
| we thank thee that thou has called us seriously | 35:35 | |
| to witnessing and to living in a day | 35:39 | |
| where choices are important and where values are dependable, | 35:43 | |
| in a world where Christ is alive. | 35:50 | |
| We pray that He may walk with us as we live for His glory, | 35:56 | |
| and in His name, amen. | 36:01 | |
| (grand organ music) | 36:08 | |
| (grand choral music) | 36:34 | |
| (contemplative organ music) | 38:31 | |
| (joyous choral music) | 39:28 | |
| (grand organ music) | 41:55 | |
| (grand choral music) | 42:24 | |
| - | Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, | 42:59 |
| our silver and our gold, | 43:02 | |
| the symbol of ourselves to be a reasonable, | 43:05 | |
| holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee | 43:10 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 43:15 | |
| Amen. | 43:18 | |
| And unto God's gracious mercy and protection | 43:21 | |
| do we commit you. | 43:25 | |
| May the blessing of God come upon you abundantly. | 43:27 | |
| May it keep you strong and tranquil | 43:31 | |
| in the truth of His promises through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 43:35 | |
| (organ chord) | 43:42 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 43:46 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 43:51 | |
| (bell tolling) | 44:03 | |
| (grand organ music) | 44:16 | |
| (churchgoers chattering) | 45:11 |
