Albert Cook Outler - "Fit to be Free" (October 16, 1955)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(choir singing indistinctly) | 0:01 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:11 | |
- | Heavenly father, giver of all good things | 1:19 |
who has taught us that it is more blessed to give | 1:23 | |
than to receive. | 1:26 | |
We dedicate these offerings to the service of thy church, | 1:28 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 1:33 | |
(knocking) | 1:38 | |
(shuffling) | 1:44 | |
- | And some of you will know how heartwarming it is to me | 2:15 |
to revisit this, | 2:19 | |
one of the great collegiate churches in America | 2:23 | |
standing here in the heart of this university | 2:25 | |
where we have so many fond memories and good friends. | 2:31 | |
When I came in the chapel this morning | 2:36 | |
I went to get a report from two of my favorite statues | 2:38 | |
Eruditio on that side and Religio on that side | 2:43 | |
and was much encouraged by what they had to say. | 2:47 | |
They found out that everybody's | 2:52 | |
rather elated over yesterday, but that even more important | 2:54 | |
that as you managed to fulfill one or another | 3:01 | |
of the assignments they give you | 3:06 | |
they still have a full budget | 3:08 | |
of unfinished business to supply. | 3:11 | |
It's a great thing to be here in this university | 3:15 | |
and in these times. | 3:19 | |
My text is the 13th verse of the fifth chapter | 3:23 | |
of St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians. | 3:27 | |
"For you have been called to freedom my brothers, | 3:32 | |
only make sure that your freedom is not an excuse | 3:36 | |
for self-indulgence, | 3:41 | |
instead be eager in love to serve one another." | 3:43 | |
An interesting thing happened in Dallas three weeks ago, | 3:53 | |
President Willis Tate of SMU delivered a speech | 3:57 | |
which made big headlines in the Texas papers. | 4:00 | |
It was I thought a moderate but forthright statement | 4:05 | |
of the meaning of academic freedom and of freedom | 4:09 | |
in a free society and a defense university | 4:14 | |
gets some of its critics. | 4:17 | |
It may seem strange to you all | 4:21 | |
but there are people in our part of the world | 4:23 | |
who think a university ought to stay quiet in its corner, | 4:25 | |
save for its football team | 4:30 | |
or else come forth only as the sanctifier of the status quo. | 4:32 | |
We've been criticized, imagine it | 4:38 | |
for having communist books in our libraries | 4:40 | |
for having visiting lecturer | 4:43 | |
who come under the dire suspicion of being controversial | 4:45 | |
for having a desegregated divinity school | 4:52 | |
and now a law school and presently a graduate school, | 4:55 | |
for holding labor seminars and management institutions, | 4:59 | |
for sponsoring a freedom agenda project | 5:03 | |
and other such things. | 5:06 | |
In reply President Tate said | 5:09 | |
what any good educator would say pointed out | 5:11 | |
that the good university is by very nature | 5:13 | |
of forum and the laboratory where ideas and projects | 5:17 | |
are examined and tested and where truth is served best | 5:21 | |
by being considered conscientiously. | 5:26 | |
Free universities he said are not a luxury | 5:30 | |
in a free society, they are a necessity | 5:33 | |
and there are risks we run, but they are well worth taking. | 5:37 | |
Now the interesting thing is that such a speech made news, | 5:44 | |
made the headlines and gave a great lift of heart | 5:50 | |
to the whole university community. | 5:56 | |
Do you see, freedom is in one sense a commonplace thing | 6:00 | |
that we take for granted, | 6:05 | |
in another sense it is a miracle that has to happen | 6:10 | |
over and over again. | 6:14 | |
It is an inalienable right as we all learned | 6:17 | |
in the fourth grade, but it is a right that must be renewed | 6:20 | |
from generation to generation, from crisis to crisis | 6:25 | |
for freedom is not only a right, it is also an obligation. | 6:30 | |
The first part of freedom so to say is freedom from, | 6:36 | |
from external compulsion, from arbitrary demands | 6:42 | |
and restrictions, from tyranny in its many masks | 6:47 | |
but there's always a second part to freedom. | 6:53 | |
This is freedom for, | 6:57 | |
freedom to think but to think cogently, critically, | 7:01 | |
constructively, freedom to speak, | 7:08 | |
to speak carefully, responsibly, | 7:12 | |
freedom to worship reverently, honestly, | 7:16 | |
freedom for a self-directed life | 7:22 | |
which freely seeks and shares the responsibilities | 7:25 | |
of such a life. | 7:29 | |
America was born with a thirst for liberty. | 7:32 | |
Personal liberties for the common man, | 7:37 | |
political liberty within the frame of the common welfare, | 7:40 | |
economic liberty to seek and to enjoy the fruits | 7:44 | |
of enterprise and good fortune, | 7:48 | |
religious liberty to worship God according to Conscious. | 7:50 | |
Thus when a theological student at Andover in 1832 | 7:56 | |
with the exquisitely prosaic name of Sam Smith | 8:01 | |
sat down to compose a patriotic hymn, | 8:07 | |
they have it somewhat in disuse in our theological schools | 8:11 | |
that might be revived if it could be done well, | 8:16 | |
he spoke naturally of our sweet land of liberty, | 8:20 | |
of sweet freedom saw and of freedom's holy life. | 8:26 | |
For freedom is a holy thing. | 8:34 | |
It is not merely a good thing | 8:38 | |
for those who can win or keep it. | 8:39 | |
It is the life and breath of a whole and healthy | 8:42 | |
and humane society. | 8:48 | |
And freedom is constantly in danger. | 8:52 | |
The cause of freedom is in perpetual risk. | 8:56 | |
Great irony isn't it that after a full century | 9:02 | |
of what Professor HI Fisher called the liberal experiment | 9:05 | |
the cause of liberty in the mid 20th century | 9:10 | |
has been and still is in mortal danger. | 9:13 | |
There are the open enemies of freedom. | 9:19 | |
The totalitarians of various sorts, foreign and domestic, | 9:22 | |
the communists and the fascists and the patriots | 9:28 | |
with bloodshot eyes who see disloyalty | 9:32 | |
in nonconformity and treason in descent. | 9:35 | |
Now it is a fine old American custom | 9:40 | |
to denounce one's opponents, | 9:43 | |
political or theological or otherwise as skulls and horse | 9:45 | |
and fools and natives. | 9:52 | |
And for a man to take Umbridge at such that | 9:55 | |
simply shows that he is too thin skinned for public life. | 9:58 | |
But we have come to a day when it becomes fearfully easy | 10:04 | |
to raise the hue and cry of treason and apostasy | 10:08 | |
and requiring the accused to prove that he is innocent. | 10:13 | |
But freedom has its covert enemies as well. | 10:20 | |
And they are nearer home than we sometimes realize. | 10:23 | |
David Riesman has called our attention | 10:29 | |
to the prevalence in our society | 10:33 | |
of what he calls other directed behavior. | 10:35 | |
Now, most of us would resent any open infringement | 10:39 | |
on our freedom of choice. | 10:44 | |
Yet most of us are readily and happily seduced | 10:48 | |
by the fads and the fashions of our set | 10:53 | |
of our peer groups and our favorite TV shows. | 10:57 | |
And my daughter uses the lipstick and nail polish | 11:02 | |
that is advertised on the $64,000 question | 11:08 | |
and takes a rather dim view of a minister father | 11:12 | |
who prefers Vivaldi to jazz. | 11:15 | |
Proud Texas men are meekly adopting the Ivy League look. | 11:21 | |
(audience laughing) | 11:27 | |
Which may be the last major cultural contribution | 11:30 | |
of the Northeast to American culture. | 11:33 | |
And my 12 year old son having recently recovered | 11:36 | |
from the David Crockett binge | 11:41 | |
now goes marching around the house, | 11:44 | |
yelling Vaughn Monroe's latest evaluation | 11:47 | |
of something about black denim trousers and motorcycle boots | 11:50 | |
and a horse high jacket with an eagle on the back. | 11:55 | |
And he wants a hopped up sickle. | 12:00 | |
Now all of this, I can happily endure as indeed I must. | 12:05 | |
If there were not so many other kinds | 12:10 | |
of critical, unexamined, unfree behavior among people | 12:13 | |
who have or are about to get a printed parchment | 12:22 | |
certifying that they are liberally educated | 12:26 | |
and have earned their citizenship in the company | 12:30 | |
of thoughtful and responsible men and women. | 12:33 | |
For most of the mindless antics of our time are performed | 12:38 | |
by college graduates. | 12:42 | |
You see, this is the devastating indictment | 12:46 | |
of higher education in America | 12:48 | |
that as the proportion of college graduates rises steadily | 12:51 | |
in our population, the level of political sanity, | 12:54 | |
of racial justice and civic responsibility in our society | 12:57 | |
barely holds its own, if that. | 13:02 | |
Freedom from tyranny does not automatically generate | 13:07 | |
freedom to or for responsible living. | 13:12 | |
I suppose that in your religious emphasis weeks here, | 13:18 | |
you have one of the usual seminars or workshops | 13:21 | |
on courtship and merit. | 13:25 | |
As I remember at this year we're being brought | 13:29 | |
to a high level of scientific precision in these parts, | 13:32 | |
even back in the old days when I was around. | 13:34 | |
And it may be that you have heard of a title | 13:38 | |
now much in favor for such group. | 13:40 | |
Maybe you use the title, | 13:42 | |
it runs in the form of a question, are you fit to be tied? | 13:44 | |
This is an important question for collegiate people | 13:51 | |
who are usually eager to answer, oh yes but definitely, | 13:57 | |
but it also has an opposite number which is equally urgent, | 14:05 | |
both for collegians and for the rest of us, | 14:09 | |
are you fit to be loose? | 14:14 | |
Can society honestly hope that your experience and training | 14:18 | |
in a great university like this will provide you | 14:23 | |
with the habits and the temple of responsible and critical | 14:29 | |
and intelligent freedom? | 14:36 | |
Can we feel confident that you are here acquiring the power | 14:40 | |
of self direction and the wisdom to guide the power | 14:46 | |
you are gaining or are colleges and universities | 14:52 | |
training a generation of youngsters really fit to be free, | 14:56 | |
really ready to add to the strength and substance | 15:01 | |
of a democratic society? | 15:06 | |
Now it is basically wrong to ask of a university | 15:10 | |
that it should brand its students with a common tag | 15:14 | |
that it should arrange or rearrange their prejudices | 15:18 | |
to a party line, glib with similar chivalrous and cliches. | 15:21 | |
Our zeal for the truth is badly misguided | 15:29 | |
when we coerced men into agreement or turned back over | 15:32 | |
and enraged on those who stubbornly resist the true faith | 15:38 | |
as we dispense it. | 15:43 | |
One of the mortal dangers in these days is just this demand | 15:46 | |
that all men in the name of some holy cause or other | 15:50 | |
should suspend and stifle their critical judgements | 15:55 | |
their frank curiosity about both sides | 15:58 | |
of a controversial issue, their impulse to speak up | 16:01 | |
and speak out against the wrong they are given to see. | 16:04 | |
And by the light and conscience they have to judge between | 16:08 | |
the right and the wrong. | 16:12 | |
But if educated dogs and educated men | 16:15 | |
are to exercise their right to freedom more boldly, | 16:18 | |
and our community has been our shame. | 16:23 | |
We must also ask ourselves if our skills and judgment, | 16:27 | |
our learning and wisdom are rooted in | 16:32 | |
a moral and religious understanding of existence | 16:37 | |
which will support us in this courage and determination | 16:41 | |
to breathe free. | 16:46 | |
Are we whose holy life is freedom | 16:49 | |
fit to have and to enjoy the blessings of liberty? | 16:55 | |
Who then is fit to be free? | 17:02 | |
We should have to start negatively. | 17:07 | |
In the first place, it is increasingly clear | 17:09 | |
that the clever predator, whether in wolf | 17:12 | |
or sheep's clothing is not fit to be free. | 17:17 | |
We're learning this the hard way aren't we? | 17:24 | |
Just as if Plato's Republic had never been written | 17:26 | |
and just as if the fate of the bully boys from Julius Caesar | 17:29 | |
to Nicki Takusha had not been told in a thousand ways | 17:33 | |
yet there are still those among us, often BMOC | 17:40 | |
and chain swingers who still believe that justice | 17:46 | |
is nothing more, nor less than the advantage of the stronger | 17:51 | |
or the more clever. | 17:56 | |
Thus (indistinct) thus Machiavelli, thus Hitler and Stalin | 17:59 | |
and Mao Tse-tung and all the sawdust Caesars | 18:05 | |
in politics and business and the military | 18:08 | |
and the army, the Navy, the church and the state. | 18:12 | |
It is an ancient lie but a perennially plausible one, | 18:17 | |
even more plausible now that the modern creditor, | 18:20 | |
the Madison Avenue man has the immense and available power | 18:23 | |
of mass communication and propaganda accessible. | 18:28 | |
But any man whose concern is chiefly his own advancement | 18:33 | |
may acquire some of the trappings of education | 18:37 | |
and learn some devilishly useful things about sheep sharing | 18:41 | |
but he will never be an educated man. | 18:46 | |
And if education serves mainly to increase the scope | 18:50 | |
and cleverness of aggressive living, | 18:54 | |
then education will have served to open the floodgate | 18:57 | |
to barbarism. | 19:01 | |
The educated pillager is not fit to be free | 19:03 | |
for his freedom is a menace to freedom itself. | 19:07 | |
Second, it is painfully clear that the cultivated parasite | 19:12 | |
is not fit to be free. | 19:15 | |
Though it is thought commonplace | 19:17 | |
that each generation has to learn it for itself. | 19:19 | |
Education and technology have given us a broader base | 19:23 | |
of economic prosperity than any generation in human history. | 19:26 | |
And yet there are all too many among us | 19:30 | |
who are more concerned to live richly | 19:33 | |
off the good things supplied by a rich country | 19:35 | |
than to find good causes worth discipline, devotion, | 19:39 | |
and sacrificial living. | 19:43 | |
Now you would think me stuffy if I invaded | 19:47 | |
against suburbia Americana with its flashy cars | 19:49 | |
and social callousness and country club universities, | 19:55 | |
its smartly groomed and feather headed cyber rights, | 19:59 | |
its suspicion of eggheads and its boy scout Christianity. | 20:03 | |
And so I will refrain for I too live in a suburb | 20:09 | |
of a very fashionable city and my children are clamoring | 20:13 | |
for a new car and their unanimous choice | 20:16 | |
is bright red and cream. | 20:19 | |
A nation can afford, a nation like ours | 20:24 | |
can afford a small fraction of high fashioned drones | 20:26 | |
and drifters, but not many. | 20:30 | |
And these must be offset by a larger number | 20:33 | |
of gifted and trained and privileged men and women | 20:36 | |
eager to give more to the world than they take from it. | 20:41 | |
The sophisticated parasite is not really fit to be free | 20:46 | |
for his freedom saps the substance of freedom | 20:49 | |
in our society and in our world. | 20:52 | |
In the third place the uncultivated specialist or technician | 20:55 | |
is not really fit to be free. | 21:01 | |
A technological society must have technicians | 21:05 | |
and we need more and better ones than we have. | 21:08 | |
We need more engineers, more scientists | 21:11 | |
more professional and business experts. | 21:14 | |
And we need them more highly trained | 21:17 | |
capable of manning the frontiers of their respective fields | 21:19 | |
and pushing them back. | 21:23 | |
But the specialist who is not also trained to think, | 21:26 | |
to judge and to act wisely in the broad human issues of life | 21:29 | |
with the resources of arts and letters of philosophy | 21:34 | |
and religion is still a highly specialized barbarian. | 21:38 | |
He can do his own job but he cannot be a whole person | 21:45 | |
fully responsive to and responsible for the basic values | 21:49 | |
of a sane society. | 21:54 | |
The uneducated expert is not fit to be free | 21:56 | |
for he will not be able to judge wisely | 21:59 | |
of the goals and uses of his freedom. | 22:02 | |
Who then is fit to be free if the predator, | 22:07 | |
the parasite, the merely learned, the merely brave are not? | 22:10 | |
Now here I wish I had a really dramatic answer, | 22:16 | |
but I haven't. | 22:20 | |
My only claim part is that it's true. | 22:22 | |
Only the good are fit to be free. | 22:26 | |
Well, before your tension sags | 22:32 | |
in the face of this dread bare anti climax. | 22:34 | |
Let me rush on to say what I mean by goodness | 22:38 | |
and where I believe its source to lie. | 22:42 | |
By the good man fit to be free I do not mean the nice, | 22:46 | |
the sweet, the unoffended. | 22:51 | |
I do not mean the fellow who accepts the canons | 22:54 | |
of respectability and calls that Christianity. | 22:56 | |
I do not mean the pious, the utopian, the sentimentalist, | 23:00 | |
the duke for fair promises and false hope | 23:04 | |
will sucker who is bait for the predator | 23:09 | |
and host to the parasite. | 23:12 | |
The good man fit to be free is a man who has come | 23:15 | |
to love the truth and to live by it | 23:20 | |
who has learned to know the world he lives in | 23:23 | |
through the disciplines of the sciences | 23:27 | |
and to know himself and his fellows | 23:30 | |
by the wisdom of the humanities. | 23:32 | |
He is a person who has acquired something | 23:36 | |
of the gift of detachment and disinterestedness | 23:39 | |
in estimating his own concerns and commitments. | 23:42 | |
He is a man who has some constant vital devotion | 23:46 | |
to a cause greater and higher and more worthy than himself. | 23:50 | |
He is a man who's learning has loosed him | 23:57 | |
or is in the process of losing him from his prejudices. | 24:00 | |
And his habits of prejudgment | 24:05 | |
and his imitated or borrowed notions brought from home | 24:08 | |
and custom in society. | 24:12 | |
He is a man whose courage lifts him above the fear | 24:15 | |
of the crowd and compels him to a creative maladjustment | 24:18 | |
in our society. | 24:23 | |
He is a man whose intelligence is the instrument of his love | 24:26 | |
whose love and faith are grounded in his confidence | 24:30 | |
and trust in the power of the truth and the good. | 24:33 | |
The good man belongs to a family, to a class, to a race, | 24:39 | |
to a land and to a nation. | 24:43 | |
And he loves and serves them all. | 24:45 | |
But he knows that each of these is a lesser value | 24:47 | |
that must be brought to and submitted to the judgment | 24:52 | |
of the truth and righteousness that stands above each one | 24:58 | |
and binds them all into the greater good. | 25:03 | |
The good man is one who's morality does not flow | 25:07 | |
from the fear of the law or the ploddage of his neighbors | 25:10 | |
but comes from a steady assurance | 25:17 | |
in the right and a deep love of it beyond mere calculation. | 25:20 | |
I have here described the good man. | 25:26 | |
It is also a description of an educated man. | 25:29 | |
And this is what education is for, | 25:32 | |
to furnish the nation and the nations | 25:35 | |
with men and women of this spirit | 25:37 | |
and this heart and this mind | 25:39 | |
for they will be free and they will be fit to be free. | 25:41 | |
For with them, freedom will be a living thing | 25:45 | |
which begets freedom for others and binds free men | 25:48 | |
to the good. | 25:53 | |
Now where shall we turn to seek and find such goodness? | 25:56 | |
In our own hearts, in our own width and will and wisdom. | 26:00 | |
in the power we have to make out of ourselves | 26:07 | |
what we desire to be? | 26:11 | |
I don't suppose it would be irreverent to say | 26:16 | |
are you kidding? | 26:18 | |
Where then shall we look for the source of freedom | 26:21 | |
for we cannot find it in ourselves. | 26:28 | |
And here, the Christian gospel has a word, | 26:32 | |
a word of judgment, a word of repent, a word of hope. | 26:34 | |
It tells us that our freedom is a gift from God, | 26:42 | |
is a project of God's creative and redemptive endeavor | 26:49 | |
in his world. | 26:53 | |
It tells us of God's holy imperative that his children | 26:55 | |
love each other mutually and himself supremely. | 26:59 | |
It tells us that freedom is finite and always coils back | 27:03 | |
upon itself in futility and sin unless we use it freely | 27:08 | |
and faithfully in the service of righteousness. | 27:15 | |
The gospel calls us to an honest look at our sins, | 27:21 | |
our shortcomings, and our insufficiency. | 27:25 | |
And calls us to see the manifold signs and words | 27:31 | |
of demonstration, of the extravagant love | 27:38 | |
and goodness of God, who in Christ Jesus | 27:41 | |
reveals his love and is reconciling us to himself. | 27:44 | |
It is the Christian gospel, which invites us to a fellowship | 27:52 | |
of men depending on God, rather than themselves | 27:57 | |
for the light and the grace and the leading | 28:05 | |
to build a good society in which men can be free | 28:10 | |
and freely good. | 28:13 | |
Thus, the gospel stirs in our hearts, | 28:16 | |
the inner impulses of spontaneous gratitude to God | 28:19 | |
whose grace is the power of our goodness, | 28:24 | |
whose service is our perfect freedom. | 28:29 | |
For inner freedom and true moralities spring up together. | 28:33 | |
And they spring from the hall but they are called out | 28:36 | |
by our response in faith to God, | 28:40 | |
the God who meets us in Jesus Christ | 28:44 | |
whose grace is our salvation, | 28:47 | |
whose righteous and loving will is the structure | 28:50 | |
of our freedom. | 28:54 | |
Here in your college days, you have a great privilege | 28:56 | |
and an opportunity to find your own stance in life | 29:00 | |
to discover life's vital center, to learn to distinguish | 29:03 | |
between the true and the false norms of freedom. | 29:08 | |
Are you finding here these inner impulses | 29:12 | |
to be a good person springing up from within | 29:17 | |
so that your standards of self discipline, freedom | 29:22 | |
come not from your peer groups, | 29:25 | |
but from your inner conscience and intelligence | 29:28 | |
and humble faith, | 29:34 | |
are you discovering that the courage to be free | 29:37 | |
is the courage to be good? | 29:43 | |
And the courage to be good is the courage to be free | 29:47 | |
for our courage comes from God who in Jesus Christ | 29:53 | |
sets us free from the law and claims us for the life | 30:00 | |
of righteousness. | 30:06 | |
Are you fit to be free? | 30:09 | |
Your answer to this must depend on your own response | 30:12 | |
to the rich privileges and opportunities which you have | 30:16 | |
in these days and in this place | 30:19 | |
for here you can develop every dawning insight | 30:22 | |
into this mystery and wonder of Christian freedom. | 30:26 | |
Here within and beyond the educational process itself. | 30:30 | |
You can come to know that truth is in order to goodness | 30:34 | |
that only goodness fits a man | 30:42 | |
for fully free and human living. | 30:45 | |
And you can come to know the meaning and the promise | 30:49 | |
that we shall know the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. | 30:52 | |
And this truth shall make us free, not for ourselves alone | 30:58 | |
cause that's not true freedom, | 31:06 | |
but free among and for our fellows and all God's children, | 31:08 | |
all God's children since it is his manifest goodwill | 31:18 | |
that all men shall come to know and to love him. | 31:23 | |
And in this knowledge and love be blessed forever more. | 31:30 | |
But you've been called to freedom my brothers, | 31:38 | |
only be sure not to let your freedom be an excuse | 31:43 | |
for self indulge instead be willing in love | 31:47 | |
to serve one another for the whole moral law | 31:54 | |
is summed up in one word. | 31:58 | |
You shall love your neighbor, that is any man | 32:00 | |
in need of what you can offer as yourself. | 32:03 | |
Let us pray. | 32:09 | |
Almighty God in knowledge of whom standards our eternal life | 32:17 | |
who services our perfect freedom, | 32:20 | |
call us ever and again to face up to the meaning | 32:24 | |
of thy gift of freedom to us | 32:27 | |
and thy claim upon our wills freely to love and serve thee | 32:29 | |
and thy kingdom not only with our lips, but in our lives. | 32:34 | |
And these great days of crisis, decision and opportunity | 32:39 | |
give us the courage and the-- | 32:43 |
- | Feelings about the efficacy of blind faith. | 0:03 |
It is not an easy thing to take up once again | 0:07 | |
the sins that we have cast so prematurely upon Jesus. | 0:10 | |
But if the struggle seems impossible, | 0:16 | |
if the going seems beyond our strength, | 0:19 | |
we can remember that while it was written, | 0:24 | |
"I was sent only to the lost sheep | 0:26 | |
of the household of Israel." | 0:28 | |
It has also been written, | 0:31 | |
"God, from these stones, | 0:34 | |
can raise up children unto Abraham." | 0:38 | |
Let us pray. | 0:44 |