Recently a Sunday supplement in our Nation’s capital carried excerpts from a sermon entitled “Why I Know There Is A God.” The sermon had been delivered on Layman’s Sunday last year in an Arlington, Virginia, church. It was a message in simple terms of belief in God and in Christian principles. It concluded with the thought that man is placed on earth as a free agent. He is given freedom of choice and only he can make the decision as to whether he will or will not live by the guidelines which Christ followed throughout his days on earth.
The parishioner who delivered that sermon on Laymen’s Sunday was American Astronaut John Glenn. The rugged and unshakable faith expressed in the title by the author of the sermon permeated the whole.
Scarcely more than a month later, in the course of a tour of the United States, Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov reportedly was asked if his journey into space had had any effect upon his philosophy of life. According to the press, the cosmonaut said flatly, “I don’t believe in God.”
The statement was carried in an article under the heading, “Titov Puts Belief in Man Alone.”
Dividing Two Worlds
Perhaps nothing could dramatize more fully the gulf between philosophies of the noncommunist and communist world—the spiritual versus the material—than the words of these spacemen. Nor could any words point up more clearly the truth in the statement attributed to William Penn: “Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
If one is indeed to believe in “Man Alone,” what are the guidelines to be followed except power? Belief in a version of the perfectibility of man through forcible self-assertion led to the Hitlerian holocaust. What can a philosophy which denies God—which depends upon man alone—lead to except an even more terrible holocaust?
Through the ages thinking man has looked out beyond himself. Cicero expressed his thought thus:
There is something in the nature of things which the mind of man, which reason, which human power cannot effect, and certainly that which produces this must be better than man. What can this be but God?
Many years later, the man whose great faith held a tiny army in being at Valley Forge and won for us the freedom we enjoy today asserted his belief that: “It is impossible to govern the world without God.…”
The Inroads Of Atheism
Today, almost half the world is under the tyrannical rule of men who deny God. Here at home, alien forces strive to destroy the faith which forms the foundation of individual freedom. The sickness of secularism permeates large areas of our society. The Ten Commandments are ignored; the teachings of Christ dismissed. To many people, the word principle-fixed, immutable, unchanging—is simply a word and nothing else. Scores of pseudo-sophisticates today imply that it is not possible to adhere to a creed and remain intellectually free. These fervent worshipers of unbelief apparently are unable to comprehend man as a spiritual creature. They have no moral guidelines by which they may steer their own course of action. As a consequence, they are unable to supply effective guidelines for their children. Indeed, there are those who do not wish to expose their children to any training of any type which might be labeled spiritual. Such parents allegedly propose to “let them grow up and make their own choice of religion when they are sixteen or seventeen.” These so-called broadminded individuals have never planted a garden or they would know that a plant cannot grow and flourish until a seed has been germinated and the subsequent shoots are adequately watered, nourished and cultivated.
The spiritual side of the human creature similarly requires care if it is to flourish and develop. The guidelines given the child at the earliest age are vital to his future. Human beings need rules to live by, and self-rule is possible only as self-discipline is practiced. A world without moral disciplines inevitably must degenerate into a world without legal disciplines. When this happens, the word justice becomes a meaningless mockery.
The Empire Of Evil
We are witnessing this degeneration on a world scale as atheistic materialism advances like an icecap, smothering all opposition, destroying freedom, “remaking” the human creature into a soulless “communist man.” We are witnessing this degeneration on a national scale as atheistic materialism expresses itself in lawless terrorism on city streets and rural byways. We cannot ignore the increase in youth crime in the course of the past several years. The problem is not confined to any state or group of states. It is national in scope. Since 1948, police arrests of juveniles have more than doubled, while the population of our young people has increased by less than one half. In the course of this period, arrests of young people have increased six times as fast as arrests of individuals who have reached their eighteenth birthday.
It is true, of course, that these crime figures relate to only three or four per cent of our young people, yet our youth is contributing an ever-increasing portion of the total police arrests in this country. Youths represent 14 per cent of all arrests in the city and 15 per cent of all arrests in rural areas. Young people account for 61 per cent of all auto thefts, 49 per cent of all burglaries, 47 per cent of all larcenies and 26 per cent of all robberies.
Tolerance Of The Illegal
As moral disciplines decline, citizens become more and more willing to condone what may appear to be minor illegalities but which actually feed and keep alive the hydra-headed monster of organized crime. Illegal gambling may seem relatively harmless, yet it, together with prostitution, the sale of narcotics and obscene material, and a variety of rackets, supports a virtual empire of crime. Investigations have revealed that the underworld exerts its sinister influence in astonishing places. Almost every area of American life is touched in some manner by the organized empire of evil. It becomes visible in some instances in the corruption of public officials. It infiltrates labor unions. It buys its way into, or otherwise gains control of, legitimate businesses in numerous fields. Yet the overlords of crime do not look the part. To the uninitiated, many of the leading racketeers appear to lead lives above reproach. Some take part in community projects, help in charity drives, and even may play a role in religious activities. They wear no brand marked “hoodlum” and, unfortunately, scores of private citizens who think of themselves as basically honest continue to support them. This is so because a vast percentage of the money placed daily with illegal gamblers flows into the hands of the criminal overlords. This cash provides the capital by means of which vice, crime and corruption spread in ever-widening circles.
When civilizations die, they do so unobtrusively. The dry rot of spiritual decay sets in and the values which form the binding cement of national greatness become honeycombed and hollow. Cynicism, apathy and self-indulgence weaken the foundations of freedom. Failure to accept full responsibility as citizens in lower echelons of government cannot help but be destructive to self-government. Woodrow Wilson, speaking on Constitutional Government in the United States, touched the heart of the matter:
It is this spontaneity and variety, this independent and irrepressible life of its communities, that has given our system its extraordinary elasticity, which has preserved it from the paralysis which has sooner or later fallen upon every people who have looked to their central government to patronize and nurture them.
Guarding Civilization’S Future
We need to make sure that guidelines which served us so well in creating sturdy, self-respecting, self-reliant and God-fearing citizens in the past are not discarded. We need to follow those guidelines closely and make sure that youthful Americans today understand the necessity of holding to them. Faith and determination formed the solid basis of the great dream out of which grew the house of freedom we live in today. Faith in God formed the foundation of that house. Faith in man transformed the vision into reality.
I do not believe that we can begin too early to instill in America’s children a dedication to the morality and decency which derive from sound Christian training. I believe that such training is a very real antidote to the spiritual indifference which so often results in youthful crime. I repeat what I have said on many occasions: The bulwark of religious training is vital if the line is to be held against the forces of corruption, crime and disloyalty. I believe that men imbued with spiritual values do not betray their country. I believe that children reared in homes in which morality is taught and lived rarely become delinquents.
There are spiritual fountains from which free people draw their strength. The guidelines leading to those fountains must be made available to our children if the spiritual ropes which bind men’s souls in strength and courage and dignity are to hold fast when these same children become men and women.
