Samuel W. Williams - "Will God Succeed with Man?" (January 11, 1970)
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| (bright piano music) | 0:03 | |
| (choir singing in foreign language) | 1:14 | |
| - | Let us offer unto God, | 2:04 |
| our unison prayer of confession, | 2:06 | |
| and for pardon. | 2:10 | |
| Let us pray. | 2:13 | |
| Almighty God, | 2:15 | |
| we humbly acknowledged before thee, | 2:17 | |
| that we have sinned, | 2:20 | |
| in thought, word and deed. | 2:22 | |
| By our fault, our own fault, | 2:25 | |
| our own most grievous fault. | 2:29 | |
| Merciful Lord, we confess our sins, | 2:32 | |
| have mercy upon us and help us. | 2:36 | |
| Blot out our many sins and offenses. | 2:40 | |
| Pardon and deliver us | 2:44 | |
| and give grace of amendment to us | 2:46 | |
| and to all thy faithful people. | 2:49 | |
| Make us worthy to offer onto thee glory and Thanksgiving. | 2:53 | |
| Wash away oh Lord, | 2:59 | |
| the foul pollution of our souls | 3:01 | |
| and cleanse us with the water of life | 3:05 | |
| that in all purity and holiness, | 3:08 | |
| we may be accounted worthy to enter thy presence | 3:11 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. | 3:16 | |
| Hear these words of the assurance of pardon, | 3:23 | |
| as they are found in the 103rd Psalms. | 3:28 | |
| As the heaven is high above the earth, | 3:33 | |
| so great is God's mercy | 3:38 | |
| toward them that fear Him. | 3:42 | |
| As far as the east is from the west, | 3:46 | |
| so far have God removed our transgressions from us. | 3:51 | |
| Like as a father pitieth his children, | 3:58 | |
| so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. | 4:02 | |
| Therefore, if we confess our sins, | 4:07 | |
| God is faithful and just | 4:11 | |
| to forgive us our sins | 4:15 | |
| and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. | 4:18 | |
| Be of good courage. | 4:25 | |
| (bright piano music) | 4:32 | |
| (choir singing in foreign language) | 5:08 | |
| - | The scripture is taken from Genesis 6:1-8, | 8:27 |
| "When men began to multiply on the face of the earth | 8:32 | |
| and daughters were born to them. | 8:36 | |
| The sons of God saw that | 8:39 | |
| the daughters of men were attractive | 8:40 | |
| and they married such of them as they chose. | 8:42 | |
| Then the Lord said, | 8:46 | |
| 'My spirit will not abide in man forever | 8:47 | |
| for he is flesh, | 8:50 | |
| but his lifespan shall be 120 years.' | 8:53 | |
| There were giants on the earth in those days. | 8:58 | |
| And also afterward. | 9:00 | |
| When the sons of God had relations | 9:02 | |
| with the daughters of men, | 9:04 | |
| they bore children to them. | 9:06 | |
| These were the mighty men of old, | 9:09 | |
| the men of renown. | 9:11 | |
| And God saw that the wickedness of man, | 9:14 | |
| was great in the earth. | 9:16 | |
| And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart | 9:19 | |
| was only evil continually. | 9:21 | |
| And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth | 9:25 | |
| and it grieved Him to His heart." | 9:28 | |
| (bright piano music) | 9:35 | |
| (choir singing in foreign language) | 9:43 | |
| - | The Lord be with you. | 10:17 |
| - | And with your spirit. | 10:19 |
| - | Let us pray. | 10:20 |
| Let us offer a prayer of Thanksgiving. | 10:28 | |
| Oh God who has commanded us in everything | 10:33 | |
| to give thanks. | 10:38 | |
| We praise thy name for all thy goodness and mercy unto us. | 10:40 | |
| For the way by which thou has led us | 10:46 | |
| and the gifts thou has bestowed. | 10:50 | |
| For the joy thou made us to abound to us | 10:55 | |
| and for the sorrows and trials thou did overrule for good. | 10:59 | |
| We give the thanks. | 11:06 | |
| For the measure of success thou has granted our labors | 11:10 | |
| and the guidance thou has given us | 11:15 | |
| in every path of duty. | 11:18 | |
| We praise thee. | 11:21 | |
| And chiefly at this season we thank thee | 11:24 | |
| for the good gift of Jesus, | 11:28 | |
| the Christ, thy son, our Lord. | 11:30 | |
| Grant that we show our thanks | 11:37 | |
| by walking in his ways, | 11:39 | |
| all the days of our life | 11:42 | |
| for His name's sake. | 11:45 | |
| And let us offer two prayers of intercession. | 11:49 | |
| First for all who need us. | 11:54 | |
| Oh God, who has formed us for fellowship with one another. | 12:00 | |
| We pray for all who need us. | 12:06 | |
| For all who are underfed, starving. | 12:11 | |
| For all refugees. | 12:17 | |
| For the victims of oppression, | 12:21 | |
| injustice, cruelty, and racial prejudice. | 12:24 | |
| For all who are frustrated. | 12:33 | |
| For the sorely tempted | 12:37 | |
| and for those who fall. | 12:40 | |
| For little children and youth who are neglected | 12:45 | |
| and have never known what it is to be cared for and loved. | 12:51 | |
| Lord, hear our prayer. | 12:59 | |
| And let us pray for the church. | 13:05 | |
| Oh God, who has built thy church | 13:09 | |
| upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. | 13:11 | |
| Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. | 13:16 | |
| Saved the community of life. | 13:22 | |
| People from cowardly surrender to the world. | 13:24 | |
| From rendering unto Caesar, | 13:29 | |
| what belongs to thee. | 13:32 | |
| From forgetting the eternal gospel, | 13:35 | |
| amid the temporal pressures of our trouble days. | 13:39 | |
| We pray for the unity of the church. | 13:44 | |
| For her fellowship | 13:48 | |
| across embittered lines of race and nation. | 13:50 | |
| For her growth in grace. | 13:56 | |
| For her building in love. | 13:58 | |
| For her enlargement in service. | 14:01 | |
| For her increase in wisdom, | 14:04 | |
| faith, charity, and power. | 14:07 | |
| In the spirit of Jesus, the Christ, | 14:14 | |
| whose church it is. | 14:18 | |
| And let us offer a prayer of supplication for ourselves. | 14:22 | |
| Almighty God, God of our fathers and our God. | 14:28 | |
| We pray thee graciously to lead us | 14:37 | |
| through the uncertainties of this new year | 14:39 | |
| of our roughly pilgrimage. | 14:43 | |
| Protect us from the dangers of the way. | 14:47 | |
| Prepare us for the duties, | 14:52 | |
| the trials, the joys and sorrows | 14:55 | |
| that awaiting us. | 15:00 | |
| And grant that each change the year brings with it, | 15:04 | |
| may bring us nearer to thy self. | 15:08 | |
| Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 15:14 | |
| And now as our savior, Christ has taught us, | 15:19 | |
| we humbly pray together saying: | 15:21 | |
| Our father who art in heaven, | 15:25 | |
| hallowed be thy name, | 15:28 | |
| thy kingdom come. | 15:31 | |
| Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 15:33 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread | 15:38 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses. | 15:41 | |
| As we forgive those who trespass against us. | 15:44 | |
| And lead us not into temptation | 15:48 | |
| but deliver us from evil. | 15:51 | |
| For thine is the kingdom | 15:53 | |
| and the power and the glory forever. | 15:55 | |
| Amen. | 16:00 | |
| - | I think I'm properly adjusted now. | 16:25 |
| I have certain some limitations this morning. | 16:29 | |
| First of all, | 16:33 | |
| I was given some couple instruction, | 16:34 | |
| yesterday evening on how to get harnessed up here. | 16:36 | |
| The second limitation is I'm fenced in, in this pulpit. | 16:42 | |
| The Baptist preacher has to have more room, so. | 16:47 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 16:50 | |
| If I happen to break out of these harnesses, | 16:53 | |
| you understand that the spirit has me. | 16:55 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 16:57 | |
| It is a joy | 17:00 | |
| and a pleasure for me to worship with you this morning. | 17:04 | |
| I have many friends in Durham. | 17:11 | |
| One of my very close and dear friend, | 17:15 | |
| a former student, Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook, | 17:20 | |
| and I regret very much that he cannot be with us today. | 17:25 | |
| Will you bow your heads for just a moment. | 17:32 | |
| Dropped thy still dews of quietness | 17:41 | |
| until all our striving cease | 17:45 | |
| and take from our souls the strain and stress. | 17:49 | |
| And let our ordered lives confess, | 17:54 | |
| the beauty of thy peace, our father, Amen. | 17:58 | |
| Will God succeed with man? | 18:08 | |
| Man is a problem. | 18:20 | |
| He's a problem both to himself and for God. | 18:25 | |
| God created man and freedom. | 18:32 | |
| Freedom is of the essence of man. | 18:37 | |
| I think it was Tolstoy who suggested that | 18:42 | |
| if a man is not free, he is not a man. | 18:46 | |
| The divine expectation is that, | 18:52 | |
| this creature man made in freedom, | 18:55 | |
| would use that freedom responsibly. | 19:00 | |
| And I would like to suggest this morning | 19:05 | |
| that God has been disappointed in this. | 19:07 | |
| Man has not yet learned to use freedom responsibly. | 19:11 | |
| And I'm not so sure that he ever will. | 19:18 | |
| I would suspect that God has discovered | 19:22 | |
| that His greatest era in creation | 19:28 | |
| was to make man and the freedom. | 19:31 | |
| Now to act responsibly, | 19:38 | |
| first one needs to know, | 19:41 | |
| how to way and to consider alternatives | 19:45 | |
| and then to decide to make up his mind. | 19:47 | |
| It was Paul Tillich, I think who said that, | 19:51 | |
| the three dimensions of freedom are: | 19:54 | |
| deciding or deliberating | 19:56 | |
| and deciding and answering. | 19:58 | |
| This business of deciding is tremendously important. | 20:04 | |
| I like sometimes to use an illustration such as this, | 20:09 | |
| a courting young man. | 20:12 | |
| And I suppose some of you young fellows do some of that. | 20:13 | |
| While you are in the stage of, | 20:18 | |
| the early stages of courting, | 20:21 | |
| you are up against the problem of considering. | 20:24 | |
| There is Yvonne and Yvette and Mary and Susie and Karen. | 20:29 | |
| Now under our system you can't marry all of those, | 20:36 | |
| but you have them under consideration. | 20:43 | |
| And you've got to look at them and weigh them. | 20:47 | |
| The word deliberate, | 20:51 | |
| the Latin root means to weigh, to balance. | 20:52 | |
| Now the real problem comes | 20:57 | |
| when you get to the point | 21:00 | |
| that you've got to decide among those five | 21:03 | |
| and the word decide the Latin root means to cut off | 21:09 | |
| and brethren, that's an awful moment, isn't it? | 21:14 | |
| When you've got to start eliminating. | 21:17 | |
| And that's the hard time. | 21:21 | |
| I recall when I got married, | 21:23 | |
| everything was all right | 21:25 | |
| until the day I placed the engagement ring on her finger. | 21:26 | |
| And frankly my friend, brethren especially, | 21:33 | |
| I got nervous and shaky and it was just terrible | 21:36 | |
| because when I put that ring on her finger, | 21:39 | |
| I realized I cut off all the others. | 21:44 | |
| And there it was, I was stuck. | 21:50 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 21:53 | |
| Some of you know Howard Thurman | 21:57 | |
| and I'll give you Howard Thurman's definition of hell. | 22:00 | |
| He says, hell is something like this. | 22:04 | |
| If you were at a dance party | 22:06 | |
| and you had to dance throughout eternity | 22:10 | |
| with one uninteresting sister. | 22:15 | |
| Just think what that would be. | 22:19 | |
| Having to dance throughout eternity with one lady | 22:21 | |
| that's not interesting. | 22:24 | |
| That's hell. | 22:25 | |
| So there I was having made that decision. | 22:28 | |
| Now, once the decision has been made, | 22:30 | |
| the next thing comes, | 22:32 | |
| and this too is really rough | 22:33 | |
| because you now must and so for having made that decision. | 22:39 | |
| You are responsible. | 22:44 | |
| There is a song that Negroes sing, | 22:48 | |
| Jesus walked that lonesome valley. | 22:51 | |
| Had to walk it by Himself. | 22:53 | |
| There was nobody else who can walk it for Him. | 22:55 | |
| Deciding leads us to having to answer. | 22:57 | |
| Now I'm suggesting that God made man, | 23:01 | |
| hoping that he would know how to do these things, | 23:04 | |
| or we even learn. | 23:06 | |
| But I declare he hasn't done much with it. | 23:08 | |
| Now all responsible action involves the doing of justice. | 23:12 | |
| He has shown the old man, | 23:17 | |
| what you should do, | 23:18 | |
| love mercy and do justly and walk humbly with God. | 23:19 | |
| Only free men can do justice. | 23:22 | |
| And if justice is not done, | 23:25 | |
| freedom is impossible. | 23:26 | |
| What is it that must be done? | 23:32 | |
| And by whom such that man will become good and kind | 23:34 | |
| and loving and just? | 23:38 | |
| We all know that man is not loving. | 23:42 | |
| He's not kind, he's not good. | 23:44 | |
| And he's not just. | 23:46 | |
| Now whether or not man can become good | 23:48 | |
| and kind and loving and just is another question. | 23:51 | |
| If we seek to answer the question, we are raising, | 23:56 | |
| we must first understand | 23:58 | |
| that we are not raising an ordinary question. | 23:59 | |
| In asking this question, | 24:04 | |
| can man become good and just and kind and loving. | 24:06 | |
| In asking that we are inquiring into the very nature of man. | 24:10 | |
| In a sense, we are trying to find out ourselves. | 24:15 | |
| Something about who we are. | 24:17 | |
| It is a search for our real, our true self. | 24:20 | |
| In a word, the search for our identity. | 24:24 | |
| Perhaps we can get a start on our inquiry. | 24:28 | |
| We begin first with what the Bible has to say. | 24:32 | |
| In the book of Genesis, | 24:35 | |
| we noticed one account of a man to be the following. | 24:36 | |
| God created man in His own image. | 24:42 | |
| Without struggling too hard with the idea of image, | 24:46 | |
| I think it is reasonably safe to suggest | 24:49 | |
| that the image is something good. | 24:53 | |
| And Genesis 1:31, we read, | 24:58 | |
| "God looked at everything that he had made | 25:00 | |
| and found it very pleasing." | 25:03 | |
| Yay, very good. | 25:05 | |
| But when we move away | 25:08 | |
| from this initial satisfaction on God's part | 25:09 | |
| with His own hand to work, | 25:13 | |
| that is when God had a chance to see man acting on his own. | 25:16 | |
| God then expressed regret | 25:21 | |
| of having created man. | 25:24 | |
| He became very sorry that He did it. | 25:27 | |
| The experiment was not, or is not working out. | 25:30 | |
| All of the, not all, | 25:35 | |
| but most of the theologians were the contrary, | 25:36 | |
| not withstanding, | 25:39 | |
| I wish to contend that God created man was an experiment. | 25:40 | |
| God's creation of man was an experiment. | 25:43 | |
| And I would like to suggest | 25:47 | |
| that the experiment is not working out so well. | 25:48 | |
| The Bible gives as the cause. | 25:54 | |
| That is the reason for God's being disappointed with man, | 25:56 | |
| is man's wickedness. | 26:01 | |
| When God saw how great was man's wickedness on the earth | 26:03 | |
| and how every scheme that his mind devised | 26:07 | |
| was nothing but evil all the time. | 26:11 | |
| God was sorry | 26:14 | |
| that he had made man on the earth. | 26:16 | |
| And there was sorrow in God's heart. | 26:19 | |
| The meaning is clear. | 26:23 | |
| God did not create man to sin i.e. to do wickedly. | 26:26 | |
| It was not God's intention to create a doer of wicked deeds. | 26:33 | |
| God had in mind something higher for man. | 26:39 | |
| God expected man to be the doer of good thing. | 26:42 | |
| One who would take fine actions. | 26:49 | |
| Man however is not found doing this. | 26:52 | |
| Every scheme God said, | 26:56 | |
| man comes up with is evil all the time. | 26:59 | |
| God thought man would fulfill God's expectation for Him | 27:03 | |
| if He created him free. | 27:08 | |
| That experiment has not yet established the truth | 27:11 | |
| of that assumption. | 27:14 | |
| One psychoanalyst has dared to suggest | 27:16 | |
| that man is a disease in the air. | 27:19 | |
| I've never delivered a sermon on that. | 27:25 | |
| I've been tempted to. | 27:28 | |
| And every time I read the book | 27:29 | |
| in which this idea is expressed, | 27:32 | |
| I can never move beyond that chapter. | 27:34 | |
| Man is a disease in the air. | 27:37 | |
| And so far as I can see, | 27:44 | |
| God has not yet been able to | 27:45 | |
| come up with an effective antibiotic for man's disease. | 27:47 | |
| They told me I had just a certain amount of time up here. | 27:54 | |
| So I'm gonna have to leave off some of the things, | 27:56 | |
| the Holy Spirit telling me to say, but, | 27:59 | |
| God hasn't been able to find | 28:03 | |
| an effective antibiotic for man's disease. | 28:05 | |
| I should like to deal with the notion that Jesus | 28:08 | |
| is that effective antibiotic | 28:11 | |
| but I'm not so sure that He is. | 28:13 | |
| A lot of Christian theologians wish to suggest that He is. | 28:19 | |
| But I do not see that Jesus had done very much | 28:21 | |
| to curing man of this disease. | 28:25 | |
| And particularly has he not done very much | 28:31 | |
| to church Christians. | 28:34 | |
| I just saw in Atlanta on Thursday, | 28:40 | |
| an exhibition of a failure | 28:43 | |
| and the moral insipidness of church Christians. | 28:45 | |
| The Atlanta Christian Council, | 28:49 | |
| confronted now with the kinds of problems we face | 28:52 | |
| with all over the country, | 28:55 | |
| on school desegregation came up with an innocuous, | 28:56 | |
| morally insipid resolution. | 29:00 | |
| And I wish to God, | 29:03 | |
| churches will stop passing resolutions. | 29:04 | |
| If they can't do any more than pass resolution | 29:09 | |
| they ought to stop, shut up. | 29:11 | |
| But they did good Christians in Atlanta. | 29:15 | |
| Sorry to waste time with passing resolution. | 29:16 | |
| And you know, what they asked for? | 29:22 | |
| They want the church of today to pray. | 29:24 | |
| And what do they want to pray for? | 29:27 | |
| That the Lord would help them find | 29:29 | |
| a solution to our problem. | 29:31 | |
| Well, they don't need to pray | 29:35 | |
| to find that solution, | 29:37 | |
| is right before them? | 29:38 | |
| It's just clear as the news on our faces, | 29:39 | |
| but yet they wanna pray. | 29:42 | |
| Then the resolution is that they want the pastors | 29:44 | |
| to offer pastoral counseling to the children. | 29:46 | |
| And our governor gave them pastoral counseling | 29:51 | |
| the other day. | 29:53 | |
| He said, violate the law. | 29:54 | |
| There's been, I don't think any cure for man's disease. | 30:00 | |
| Now let me try quickly | 30:05 | |
| to say a word about man's evil action. | 30:07 | |
| And I should like to mention three big problems, | 30:10 | |
| which confront us. | 30:14 | |
| And all three of them are the results, | 30:17 | |
| the consequence of man's evil behavior. | 30:19 | |
| Well, I stopped for a moment and think, | 30:24 | |
| how can anybody justify war as a civilized action? | 30:35 | |
| How can anybody justify war as a civilized action? | 30:46 | |
| Let me put this another way. | 30:50 | |
| Can you make a case | 30:53 | |
| for civilized human beings making war upon themselves? | 30:57 | |
| Since my high school days, | 31:08 | |
| I have not committed any poems to memory, | 31:10 | |
| but I wish to goodness, | 31:12 | |
| I could remember this one about the monkey, | 31:13 | |
| have you ever heard that one, | 31:16 | |
| about the monkey saying that, | 31:17 | |
| people call him cousin to man or something like that? | 31:20 | |
| And when the monkeys got to thinking about that, | 31:24 | |
| he said, "Oh, but God, that's a terrible slam on us | 31:26 | |
| to say that we are related to man | 31:31 | |
| because we don't do any of the dirty things, | 31:33 | |
| men do to each other. | 31:36 | |
| And one is we don't go around using our intellects | 31:38 | |
| to try to devise means to exterminate monkeys." | 31:42 | |
| And this is precisely what men do. | 31:46 | |
| I grew up in Arkansas | 31:49 | |
| and there was a dirty statement, | 31:51 | |
| we would make about one another. | 31:52 | |
| We would say you are a low down dirty dog. | 31:54 | |
| You ever heard that one? | 31:57 | |
| We would call people that when were really mad at them. | 31:58 | |
| Call them a low down dirty dog. | 32:00 | |
| Well, that's an insult to the dog. | 32:02 | |
| (congregation murmurs) | 32:05 | |
| Because it is absolutely impossible | 32:07 | |
| for a dog to be as low down and as dirty as a man. | 32:10 | |
| He doesn't have the brains to be. | 32:15 | |
| It takes an extraordinary set of brains | 32:19 | |
| to be able to devise the cruelty, | 32:23 | |
| the inhumanity, the meanness, | 32:26 | |
| the cussedness that man can do. | 32:28 | |
| And I've had a lot of dogs | 32:30 | |
| and not one has ever did anything like that. | 32:32 | |
| Matter of fact, I had one dog that I was so, | 32:36 | |
| I loved Jim. | 32:38 | |
| My daddy wanted to whip me one day. | 32:40 | |
| And Jim thought that was not a good thing my dad to do. | 32:44 | |
| So he bit him. | 32:46 | |
| (congregation murmurs) | 32:47 | |
| And that was a great bite too, | 32:48 | |
| because my daddy turned on Jim | 32:51 | |
| and rather than getting on me, you see. | 32:53 | |
| And my dog stayed mad two weeks about that. | 32:55 | |
| Couldn't anybody go to him but me. | 32:57 | |
| Man is a disease in this earth. | 33:02 | |
| And was one expression of that disease. | 33:05 | |
| I need not talk about economic and social oppression, | 33:08 | |
| institutionalized poverty | 33:13 | |
| and pollution of the total environment, | 33:15 | |
| are expressions of man's disease. | 33:17 | |
| Racism is the other one. | 33:25 | |
| It was Kierkegaard who said that, | 33:31 | |
| the big job in this century | 33:34 | |
| is to try to make Christians out of Christians. | 33:36 | |
| I wish to goodness we could. | 33:39 | |
| In my moments of deep despair and pessimism, | 33:41 | |
| I even dare to suggest | 33:45 | |
| if we could just eliminate Christians out of the world, | 33:46 | |
| we could probably build a good world. | 33:48 | |
| Did you ever thought that the worst wars, | 33:56 | |
| the meanest kinds of institutions | 33:59 | |
| that mankind have suffered in the world, | 34:01 | |
| have been built by Christians? | 34:02 | |
| Did you ever stop to think about that. | 34:05 | |
| The meanest things we are now doing to mankind | 34:08 | |
| are been done by Christians. | 34:10 | |
| And I suppose the worst thing in the world, | 34:17 | |
| is that we got a lot of good folks around. | 34:19 | |
| If we could just eliminate the world of good people, | 34:21 | |
| we might be able to do something. | 34:23 | |
| Good people are so good they're good for nothing. | 34:25 | |
| Some sociologists have said | 34:32 | |
| that the 20th century has confronted our society | 34:32 | |
| with unprecedented progress | 34:36 | |
| and unprecedented problems. | 34:38 | |
| Economic and scientific and technological advances | 34:39 | |
| have brought material abundance, | 34:42 | |
| improved health standards | 34:44 | |
| and the phenomenal ability to control nature | 34:46 | |
| and turn it to mans uses. | 34:48 | |
| Existing however alongside all of this wealth | 34:52 | |
| and mastery over nature | 34:55 | |
| are continuing states of international warfare and tension, | 34:58 | |
| persistent poverty and despair among millions | 35:03 | |
| and the growing in ability of many to control | 35:08 | |
| the social and political processes | 35:11 | |
| that so significantly affect their lives. | 35:14 | |
| What a contradiction. | 35:18 | |
| I'm convinced that we shall never find, | 35:21 | |
| solution to our problems | 35:24 | |
| until we are willing to reexamine | 35:25 | |
| and remodel our existing values and institutions. | 35:29 | |
| This is one of the usefulness of these young radicals. | 35:37 | |
| I'm not so sure they gonna succeed, | 35:46 | |
| but at least they are challenging us and making us see, | 35:49 | |
| that we need to re-examine | 35:52 | |
| and remodel our existing values and institutions. | 35:54 | |
| It is this I fear that man is unwilling to do. | 36:02 | |
| I do not think that we are prepared to replace profit | 36:06 | |
| as the supreme value with persons as the highest value. | 36:10 | |
| We do everything with the view to profits. | 36:16 | |
| Persons are important in so far only | 36:20 | |
| as they are useful in profit-making. | 36:23 | |
| Our society is schizophrenic at this point. | 36:28 | |
| But on the one hand, | 36:33 | |
| we talk so glibly about human dignity | 36:34 | |
| and the democratic process, | 36:36 | |
| yet our actions belie, all our talk. | 36:38 | |
| I was visiting in Virginia one summer near Norfolk. | 36:44 | |
| There was a wreck on the highway. | 36:49 | |
| An automobile ran into a man riding a mule. | 36:51 | |
| When the state patrol came to investigate the accident, | 36:57 | |
| they charged the driver | 37:01 | |
| with destroying private property | 37:04 | |
| because he killed the mule. | 37:06 | |
| The man was badly injured, | 37:08 | |
| but there was no charge | 37:12 | |
| about anything wrong happening to the man. | 37:14 | |
| They were concerned | 37:18 | |
| that private property had been destroyed. | 37:19 | |
| And one of my visits back home, | 37:22 | |
| when I was in college, | 37:26 | |
| I lived in Arkansas in the Delta area, | 37:27 | |
| and I would take the train | 37:31 | |
| from Memphis down to McGee Oakland. | 37:33 | |
| So on that took us through a good section | 37:35 | |
| of the Mississippi Delta. | 37:38 | |
| And on one of these trips I said to one of the train men, | 37:41 | |
| as I looked out on a plantation and saw, | 37:44 | |
| a barn with electric lights in it. | 37:47 | |
| I understood what was out there, | 37:50 | |
| but I wanted to see how he would react. | 37:51 | |
| So I said to him, | 37:52 | |
| what house is that out there | 37:54 | |
| with the electric lights in it | 37:56 | |
| and it's painted and has a good tin roof on it? | 37:57 | |
| He said, that's the barn where they keep the mules. | 38:00 | |
| I said, "Oh, keep mules in that house? | 38:03 | |
| That's fine for the mules." | 38:05 | |
| I said, "Well now tell me, I see a rundown shack, | 38:07 | |
| just a little distance from the barn | 38:10 | |
| which is lighted with electricity. | 38:12 | |
| What's kept there hay or something? | 38:14 | |
| He said, "Oh no, that's where the farm workers live." | 38:16 | |
| I said, this is strange to me. | 38:22 | |
| I don't understand why the mules have a better house | 38:23 | |
| than the people have. | 38:26 | |
| He said, "Oh, that's easy. | 38:28 | |
| A good team of mules will cost you $500, | 38:31 | |
| but you can get a field hand for $1.5 a day." | 38:35 | |
| This is our society. | 38:40 | |
| Man is a disease in the earth. | 38:47 | |
| Let me say a word about racism | 38:53 | |
| and I will not burden you with that | 38:56 | |
| because I suppose in this university center | 38:59 | |
| and in this chapel great preaching and goes on | 39:03 | |
| on that subject. | 39:07 | |
| And I do not need to inform you further on that. | 39:08 | |
| But I was awfully dismayed | 39:14 | |
| when I left the city of Atlanta yesterday. | 39:15 | |
| It was after 16 years, | 39:20 | |
| the federal courts have said to our city and to the state | 39:22 | |
| that you've got now to do what the law says. | 39:27 | |
| You've gotta obey the constitution. | 39:29 | |
| Some of us have been pleading with our school board | 39:32 | |
| to go ahead and do this. | 39:34 | |
| It is much better to make the decision yourself | 39:37 | |
| than to be forced to do it. | 39:39 | |
| But they wouldn't do it. | 39:41 | |
| Now that they are being required by the courts to do it, | 39:43 | |
| everybody's nervous and frustrated. | 39:47 | |
| And we hear arguments like this, | 39:53 | |
| which I don't understand. | 39:54 | |
| We need a little more time. | 39:57 | |
| Let us work this out. | 39:58 | |
| But my God, the courts told you 16 years ago to work it out. | 40:01 | |
| The human situation said to you 300 years ago, work it out. | 40:07 | |
| And now after all of this time, you begin to say, | 40:11 | |
| let us work it out. | 40:14 | |
| Now that the truth is that nothing | 40:16 | |
| in terms of human dignity has been done by this nation | 40:18 | |
| vis-à-vis the Negroes except by force. | 40:22 | |
| The institution of slavery as damnably as it was, | 40:25 | |
| the Christians in this country could not resolve the problem | 40:29 | |
| until we had to find a wall over it. | 40:32 | |
| And that was a shame. | 40:33 | |
| And then we instituted segregation as another way | 40:37 | |
| to try to maintain the status quo | 40:39 | |
| and now we're saying, | 40:41 | |
| you must do away with that. | 40:41 | |
| And there are those who are say, | 40:42 | |
| let us have time and we will work it out, | 40:44 | |
| which means we shall never do it. | 40:46 | |
| Will God succeed with man? I doubt it. | 40:51 | |
| Well what about young folks? | 40:54 | |
| The newer radical. | 40:55 | |
| I just bought a book the other day on the new radicals | 40:57 | |
| of Stokely Carmichael and a whole a lot of other folks. | 41:00 | |
| Well, the reason that I doubt them is | 41:04 | |
| that they're gonna keep on getting old. | 41:10 | |
| Now they are radical because they are not yet 30 | 41:14 | |
| but by the time they get to be 30 and then get a job, | 41:18 | |
| they're gonna become establishment oriented to. | 41:23 | |
| So they don't get this job done in the next five years, | 41:27 | |
| we'll have to look to a new group | 41:31 | |
| and then they will do the same thing. | 41:33 | |
| The Negroes have a spiritual, which they sing, | 41:38 | |
| and I'm sure you heard it. | 41:40 | |
| My Lord is gonna move this wicked race | 41:42 | |
| and raise him up a nation that will obey. | 41:46 | |
| Now if you look at history a little bit, | 41:51 | |
| you will see that God has been doing that. | 41:55 | |
| Moving, destroying, | 41:58 | |
| having crumbled civilization after civilization. | 42:02 | |
| The history of man on this earth | 42:08 | |
| is strong with wrecked civilizations. | 42:09 | |
| And every one of them is wrecked on the moral question. | 42:13 | |
| This one is going to wreck itself on the moral question. | 42:20 | |
| And the question is still open. | 42:28 | |
| Whether or not this being who calls himself homo-sapien, | 42:30 | |
| is ever going to be able to on this earth, | 42:36 | |
| to build what God expected him to build, | 42:39 | |
| namely the Kingdom of God. | 42:42 | |
| And God looked and saw that everything man did was evil. | 42:47 | |
| Every scheme he came up | 42:54 | |
| and God repented that he had made man. | 42:57 | |
| I think God is gonna have to decide after a while | 43:03 | |
| that His kingdom, His kingdom, | 43:08 | |
| can never come on this earth | 43:12 | |
| with this creature, man. | 43:16 | |
| God is gonna have a look around in this universe | 43:19 | |
| and try to find another instrument | 43:23 | |
| to do His will. | 43:28 | |
| You prayed before I got up to preach. | 43:32 | |
| Our father who art in heaven, | 43:35 | |
| hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. | 43:37 | |
| Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. | 43:40 | |
| You are to always stop, | 43:49 | |
| when you get there with this prayer | 43:52 | |
| because there is no commitment of mans part | 43:57 | |
| to have the will of God done in this earth. | 44:06 | |
| Let me tell the story that's old, | 44:13 | |
| but it makes the point I wanna make now. | 44:15 | |
| The hawk and the hen, | 44:20 | |
| run down the street one morning early | 44:22 | |
| and they saw a restaurant | 44:26 | |
| which offered ham and eggs for breakfast. | 44:27 | |
| And the hen said to the hawk, | 44:30 | |
| let's go in and make our contribution to this breakfast. | 44:31 | |
| And the hawk said to the hen, | 44:36 | |
| "That's easy for you to say. | 44:37 | |
| The cost for you it is only the commitment." | 44:40 | |
| I'm sorry, "It's only a contribution | 44:45 | |
| but for me, the hawk, it's total commitment." | 44:46 | |
| I would like to suggest to you as I close now | 44:52 | |
| that man, if he ever is going to do the will of God in earth | 44:55 | |
| has to be like the hawk. | 45:03 | |
| It must be it's total commitment. | 45:08 | |
| All we've got now is the hen. | 45:12 | |
| We make our little contribution, | 45:17 | |
| here and there. | 45:19 | |
| I wish I had time to talk to you | 45:23 | |
| about the insipid, contribution we make. | 45:25 | |
| We have the Baptist, | 45:28 | |
| some sort of National Baptist Youth something, | 45:30 | |
| another to come to Atlanta the other day, | 45:33 | |
| whites and Negroes together. | 45:36 | |
| They had a great time, those Baptist did. | 45:37 | |
| And you know what they thought they would do | 45:40 | |
| to prove that, | 45:42 | |
| to make that witness to Jesus. | 45:44 | |
| They went over into one of the slum areas of our city | 45:46 | |
| and racked up some trash and painted a few fences. | 45:49 | |
| And they went back and had a good inner feeling, | 45:53 | |
| that we really cleansed our spirits. | 45:57 | |
| Well, that was a really an insult and a disgrace. | 46:00 | |
| What in the world all these young people to be doing | 46:05 | |
| instead of running around on the slump sweeping up trash. | 46:06 | |
| Seeing to it that the system reproduces slums are changed. | 46:10 | |
| They ought to be trying to change | 46:15 | |
| the value orientation of the society | 46:16 | |
| so that people whom we call to, | 46:19 | |
| will not be pulled to force the common deed | 46:21 | |
| to here undo the total economic process of this nation. | 46:23 | |
| And here they are running around raking up trash. | 46:26 | |
| And so many of you in this room | 46:31 | |
| feel that you are doing God's service | 46:33 | |
| when you send some clothes over some place | 46:35 | |
| or move into a community and paint some fences | 46:38 | |
| and pack up a one or two fillings on a fence. | 46:40 | |
| This is insulting and nauseating to God, Almighty. | 46:45 | |
| No wonder God said, I'm sorry | 46:50 | |
| that I ever made man | 46:53 | |
| and told him loose up on the earth. | 46:55 | |
| My God, it's going to move this wicked race. | 46:59 | |
| And raise Him up a nation that will obey. | 47:06 | |
| That's another one that I close with, this one. | 47:09 | |
| If men, says another spiritual, | 47:13 | |
| do not praise God and do His will, | 47:17 | |
| He's going to make the rocks cry out and sing His praises. | 47:21 | |
| God, if He can't make it with us, | 47:29 | |
| will turn. | 47:36 | |
| Find some other instrument | 47:38 | |
| to do His will in the earth. | 47:41 | |
| Let us pray. | 47:42 | |
| Forgive us our father for our sins. | 47:47 | |
| For our pride and severed will. | 47:52 | |
| Our stubbornness, our unwillingness | 47:55 | |
| to commit ourselves to the doing of thy will in this earth. | 47:59 | |
| Hear our prayer. | 48:05 | |
| Well, we pray in the name of Jesus | 48:07 | |
| who tried to show us the way, Amen. | 48:11 | |
| (bright piano music) | 48:18 | |
| (choir singing in foreign language) | 49:10 |
Item Info
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