Alan Walker - "Life Has a Purpose"; Michalson - "Sociological and Psychological Dimensions of Unbelief" (March 5, 1956; March 7, 1956)
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Transcript
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Chairman | Monday, March 5th, 5:45 pm. | 0:07 |
Dinner for graduate students, Men's Graduate Center. | 0:12 | |
Dr. Michalson speaking on some social | 0:16 | |
and psychological dimensions of unbelief. | 0:20 | |
Carl | The chairman, fellow students, | 0:25 |
this thing you read from here is a direct transcript | 0:29 | |
of a little blurb that the public relations office | 0:34 | |
at Drew gets out for occasions like this. | 0:38 | |
It's the first time in my personal history | 0:40 | |
that anybody has ever taken it | 0:43 | |
with this complete seriousness. (laughs) | 0:44 | |
(students laughing) | 0:46 | |
Truth is, as you say, I worked up | 0:54 | |
until I became an associate. (laughs) | 0:57 | |
(students laughing) | 0:58 | |
I worked. | 1:02 | |
The only thing is I, | 1:03 | |
the public relations office doesn't know that two years ago, | 1:06 | |
I became a full professor, | 1:09 | |
this, we must bring this up to date. (laughs) | 1:11 | |
(students laughing) | 1:13 | |
This incidentally, | 1:17 | |
this book to which we refer on Christianity | 1:18 | |
and the existentialists has a chapter in it | 1:20 | |
by J. V. Langmead Casserley | 1:22 | |
on the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, | 1:25 | |
which is enough to commend the book to anybody. | 1:29 | |
Now, | 1:33 | |
I would like to say some things to you | 1:35 | |
that I hope won't sound too prosaic to this learned body. | 1:39 | |
I'm greatly exhilarated to have the privilege of entering | 1:46 | |
into your exalted fellowship here. | 1:53 | |
I'm going to attempt to say some things that may help | 1:59 | |
to relate to several of the different disciplines | 2:05 | |
in which you graduate people are engaged | 2:08 | |
so I will not be including all | 2:11 | |
of your professional concerns, | 2:14 | |
I trust I will be speaking at least | 2:16 | |
to some of your personal and cultural concerns. | 2:19 | |
The 19th century, Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, | 2:27 | |
when he was a young man thought he would like | 2:31 | |
to become a policeman. | 2:35 | |
He thought that the clever crafty wit | 2:39 | |
of the criminal would be a very apt foil for his own wit, | 2:42 | |
until he discovered that the work | 2:47 | |
of the policemen was almost entirely taken up | 2:49 | |
with the petty cares of the people. | 2:52 | |
So then he decided rather he would become a preacher | 2:56 | |
until he made the same discovery about being a preacher. | 3:02 | |
The work of the preacher was almost entirely taken up | 3:04 | |
with the petty cares of the people and this, as he said, | 3:07 | |
he found too loose a ground | 3:11 | |
on which to place the lifting jack of religion. | 3:13 | |
But now that was the 19th century and | 3:19 | |
in the 20th century, | 3:24 | |
it can scarcely be said that the cares | 3:26 | |
of the people that they are petty. | 3:27 | |
In our time, | 3:31 | |
the world has shrunk to the point where whole groups | 3:32 | |
of people rubbed together in the friction | 3:37 | |
that we call injustice | 3:42 | |
and when this friction becomes intense, | 3:44 | |
society breaks out in crime or open war. | 3:47 | |
And surely within our time, | 3:51 | |
the temple of life has become so sped up | 3:53 | |
that in our effort to keep up with it, | 3:57 | |
we fall in the fatigue that is known as neurosis, | 3:59 | |
and when this fatigue becomes acute, | 4:07 | |
we break in serious mental disease, psychosis. | 4:10 | |
Now, some people, | 4:21 | |
when they feel this neurotic tendency coming on, | 4:23 | |
decide that the spatial or temporal conditions | 4:27 | |
of life are too intense for them, | 4:31 | |
they were really made by God to inhabit a garden, | 4:33 | |
society has forced them to live in a metropolis. | 4:37 | |
So to save themselves, | 4:41 | |
they move themselves out into a quiet countryside | 4:43 | |
and the people | 4:47 | |
in the tobacco-odorous Durham you see move out | 4:48 | |
into the quiet hamlet of Duke environment to here. | 4:53 | |
And they make this astonishing discovery | 4:58 | |
that the problem moves with them | 5:03 | |
and that all the ills they were escaping, | 5:06 | |
re-emerge in their midst, even under quieter conditions. | 5:09 | |
Because indeed the trouble with a man is not to be located | 5:17 | |
in space or time, but in what Adler, | 5:20 | |
the psychologist calls the marathon runner in the soul, | 5:24 | |
the sort of thing everybody is familiar with, | 5:30 | |
who has ever driven a car for instance, | 5:32 | |
You're riding along a highway | 5:35 | |
and someone begins to pass you, | 5:38 | |
well, you're not going anywhere, | 5:40 | |
but your foot just automatically goes down | 5:42 | |
on your accelerator, you will not be passed. | 5:44 | |
Or the feeling you get when you look | 5:49 | |
at a list of names, alphabetically arranged, | 5:51 | |
and you wish your name were Anderson, rather than Zep, | 5:54 | |
or you look at the list arranged in order of seniority | 6:00 | |
and you would virtually die to be first. | 6:05 | |
Matter of fact, you'd almost have to. | 6:08 | |
(students laughing) | 6:09 | |
Well, | 6:13 | |
these are the problems, | 6:15 | |
these interior problems | 6:17 | |
of the soul are the problems of unbelief, | 6:19 | |
we will not be superseded | 6:22 | |
and when we pursue this insistence on being ahead | 6:25 | |
to the point where even if we're coming in second, | 6:29 | |
we feel as if we're coming in last, | 6:33 | |
we discover that even God is our competitor, | 6:35 | |
and this is the meaning of unbelief. | 6:40 | |
Now, its these three problems | 6:44 | |
that I'd like to talk about, | 6:46 | |
ad seriatum, injustice, neurosis, and unbelief | 6:50 | |
and attempt to establish some relation | 6:54 | |
between these problems | 6:57 | |
and indicate how unbelief is in some sense | 6:59 | |
at the root of these other sociological | 7:02 | |
and psychological problems. | 7:05 | |
Well, to begin with, injustice | 7:08 | |
or the problem of the alienation of man from man. | 7:10 | |
The person who has helped the Christian church understand | 7:16 | |
this problem, the best I suppose, is Walter Rauschenbusch, | 7:19 | |
a baptist clergyman and professor of church history, | 7:23 | |
who is the father of the social gospel. | 7:27 | |
When he was a small boy, | 7:31 | |
he used summer in upstate New York in a community, | 7:32 | |
a kind of Mennonite community, | 7:35 | |
I think it was Mennonite, some kind of a secretarian group | 7:38 | |
where they had the practice in this farming community. | 7:41 | |
And any time a farmer would bring in pure milk | 7:45 | |
to the creamery and he would have read labels put | 7:47 | |
on his empty milk cans, | 7:53 | |
the silent accusers on the road home | 7:56 | |
like Hawthorne's red letter A, adulterer. | 7:59 | |
He saw this happen to a farmer once | 8:02 | |
and he heard the farmers swear an oath. | 8:04 | |
And the next Sunday, | 8:07 | |
the farmer was brought up before the congregation | 8:08 | |
of his church for possible excommunication. | 8:10 | |
Now, the question is, what were the charges against him? | 8:14 | |
For as Rauschenbusch says, | 8:18 | |
introducing cow dung into the intestines | 8:20 | |
of innocent little babies? | 8:23 | |
No, not that at all, | 8:26 | |
but rather the charges against this farmer were | 8:27 | |
for referring to the damnation of the wicked | 8:31 | |
in an unetiological way. | 8:34 | |
(students giggle) | 8:36 | |
Now it was at a time like this, that Rauschenbusch, | 8:37 | |
even as a boy began to sense the gross disproportion | 8:41 | |
between petty sins of impiety | 8:47 | |
and the larger social abuses. | 8:50 | |
Later, when he was a minister New York City, | 8:53 | |
he used to spend some time every Saturday afternoon, | 8:55 | |
reading the accounts of, | 8:58 | |
newspaper accounts of youth group meetings the next day, | 9:03 | |
and preacher's sermon topics the next day | 9:07 | |
and these, he found to be the prevailing themes | 9:10 | |
that were being treated in the churches of New York City, | 9:13 | |
drinking, smoking, card playing, gambling, theater going. | 9:18 | |
These were the great sins in the capital city | 9:24 | |
of an economic system that | 9:28 | |
at that very moment was breaking the back | 9:30 | |
of an entire class of people. | 9:32 | |
And it was then that Rauschenbusch began | 9:36 | |
to alert the conscience of the church | 9:38 | |
to some of the deeper social abuses. | 9:40 | |
And where did Rauschenbusch get his help? | 9:44 | |
Well, he learned from the eighth century prophets | 9:49 | |
and the teachings of Jesus, but probably principally, | 9:52 | |
it was Karl Marx who helped him | 9:55 | |
to understand the social implications | 9:58 | |
in these prophecies and teachings | 10:00 | |
about the great social abuses, | 10:02 | |
for it was Marx who began to call attention | 10:04 | |
to this thing in society that had to be called by him, | 10:08 | |
the alienation of man from man or injustice. | 10:13 | |
Fewer and fewer people were getting richer and richer. | 10:20 | |
More and more people were getting poorer and poorer. | 10:23 | |
Now, said Marx, you can stretch this rubber band | 10:26 | |
of society only so far | 10:29 | |
before it snaps in social revolution. | 10:31 | |
Actually Marx's prophecy didn't come true, | 10:37 | |
the revolution in this country at least did not happen. | 10:41 | |
Thanks to the benevolent administration | 10:45 | |
of the democratic party, | 10:48 | |
never said with a straight face. | 10:49 | |
(everybody laugh) | 10:51 | |
Oh, I mean it profoundly. (laughs) | 10:53 | |
Thanks to this benevolent administration | 10:55 | |
for 25 years of the Marxian prophecy was averted. | 10:57 | |
This doesn't mean Marx wasn't a prophet | 11:01 | |
or a prophet doesn't just predict he, he fore warns | 11:04 | |
and if you do something about the situation, | 11:08 | |
there's no reason why the judgment has to come. | 11:10 | |
At the same time, | 11:15 | |
there's still a lot in the Marxian prophecy that obtains, | 11:16 | |
or it was Karl Marx who reminded us | 11:20 | |
and his disciples are still reminding us | 11:22 | |
that society was meant to be a community | 11:25 | |
and we have made of it, a marketplace. | 11:29 | |
Whole units in society were meant | 11:34 | |
to be built on the basis of the love nexus, | 11:36 | |
but we have chosen rather | 11:40 | |
what William James has called the cash nexus, | 11:41 | |
even such affectional units as the family. | 11:46 | |
I wasn't married two years before my wife insisted | 11:51 | |
on having a brand new automatic washing machine that's $300. | 11:53 | |
Whereas love used to be enough. | 12:00 | |
(everybody laughing) | 12:02 | |
Yep, of course, | 12:07 | |
this Marxian prophecy is a double-edged thing, | 12:08 | |
for Marx has said, | 12:11 | |
the bourgeois man has made of his wife, | 12:13 | |
a mere instrument of production. | 12:17 | |
Now, not so long ago, | 12:22 | |
I was going through a subway in New York City | 12:24 | |
at 4:30 in the afternoon, | 12:29 | |
it's a very bad time to duck down into a New York subway | 12:32 | |
because all New York City is there. | 12:34 | |
And in my effort to get inside one of the subway cars, | 12:38 | |
I had a collision, | 12:43 | |
very unsuccessful about negotiating my way | 12:46 | |
into these cars when there's such a crowd, | 12:48 | |
but I had a collision that left a bruise on my side. | 12:52 | |
I think I could still show you evidence of that bruise | 12:56 | |
and I say it was a lady, | 13:02 | |
a woman who collided with me with her elbow | 13:04 | |
and she got in and left me standing for the next train. | 13:08 | |
(student laughs) | 13:11 | |
I don't blame that lady, that woman. | 13:12 | |
(students laughs) | 13:15 | |
Actually I blamed the subway system | 13:18 | |
because it's utterly stupid | 13:21 | |
of the New York City transportation commission | 13:24 | |
to expect this subway system to bear the brunt | 13:28 | |
of the entire city's traffic in one half hour. | 13:33 | |
If there were any social intelligence | 13:37 | |
in the city administration, | 13:40 | |
they would stagger the hours of dismissal in the offices, | 13:42 | |
or they would widen the doors of the subway. | 13:47 | |
(students laughing) | 13:50 | |
Or they would do as they do in the Paris subway system, | 13:52 | |
the metro, you know, there's this, | 13:55 | |
the French people are famous for their chaotic politics, | 13:57 | |
but at least in Paris, they have a, | 14:00 | |
an orderly situation in the subway. | 14:03 | |
As soon as the train comes into the subway station, | 14:05 | |
a door closes on the entrance to the station | 14:08 | |
so that only the people that are on the platform have | 14:11 | |
to worry about getting into the subway, right? | 14:14 | |
Intelligent. | 14:17 | |
Every, in every social injustice, | 14:19 | |
there's the possibility for remedial activity just | 14:24 | |
through social intelligence. | 14:28 | |
There are socially intelligent ways | 14:29 | |
of reducing social injustice. | 14:31 | |
My way up here, I was in a restaurant | 14:34 | |
where I was very embarrassed | 14:37 | |
by the fact that a cook was arguing with a waitress | 14:39 | |
and they saw me there, | 14:45 | |
they hushed everything up | 14:46 | |
because customers watch your language, that kind of thing. | 14:48 | |
Now that that sort of thing doesn't have to obtain, | 14:53 | |
I mean, this is an elementary sociological thing. | 14:55 | |
I've seen social engineers go into a place like this | 14:58 | |
and completely size up the situation in an instant | 15:02 | |
and have a wall built | 15:05 | |
between the kitchen and the dining room | 15:07 | |
so waitresses never have to come and touch with cooks. | 15:09 | |
Just write out the order on a slip | 15:12 | |
and put it through a slot in the wall | 15:15 | |
and where there is no social contact, | 15:17 | |
there is no social friction. | 15:18 | |
I say there are socially intelligent ways | 15:20 | |
of handling social injustice. | 15:24 | |
But about this woman, | 15:28 | |
I recall that she jabbed me with a force, | 15:31 | |
all out of proportion to the requirement | 15:36 | |
for getting her into the subway, | 15:38 | |
(students laughing) | 15:40 | |
which leads me to suspect upon analyzing this situation | 15:42 | |
that not all the problem was in the situation, | 15:45 | |
but some of the problem was in the woman | 15:49 | |
and it's at this point | 15:54 | |
that another great prophet has helped us understand some | 15:56 | |
of the dimensions of the human problem, | 15:59 | |
Sigmund Freud, who has suggested, | 16:02 | |
that in all injustice, there is some neurosis. | 16:04 | |
In all alienation of man against man, | 16:10 | |
there is some alienation of man against himself. | 16:12 | |
Father comes home from work at night, he's all tired out, | 16:18 | |
he's had a bad day at the office, | 16:21 | |
a little boy meets him at the door, | 16:22 | |
he sweeps the little kid aside and strides | 16:25 | |
into the dining room and orders his supper, | 16:27 | |
"Why isn't it ready?" | 16:28 | |
I act this out with feeling, | 16:31 | |
it's because I know about these things. | 16:32 | |
But why does he do that? | 16:34 | |
Because he hates a little boys? | 16:36 | |
No, he hates himself. | 16:39 | |
And he projects himself into the little boy | 16:42 | |
where he can strike at himself. | 16:44 | |
Or a political demagogue attempts | 16:48 | |
to eradicate a whole race of people, why? | 16:51 | |
He hates Jews? | 16:53 | |
No, he hates himself. | 16:55 | |
Fantastic as it may seem, | 16:57 | |
the only way he can adequately deal with himself is | 16:59 | |
to project himself into that race of people | 17:02 | |
and strike at himself there. | 17:05 | |
Now this is what Freud helped us to understand, | 17:08 | |
you remember, | 17:10 | |
his picture of the human personality as the iceberg, | 17:11 | |
where just a little peak of consciousness juts out | 17:15 | |
above the surface of the water and the rest, | 17:18 | |
the great subconscious element | 17:22 | |
of the personality underneath. | 17:24 | |
And there is a law in the conscious | 17:28 | |
and the law in the unconscious | 17:30 | |
and these two laws are at war with each other. | 17:31 | |
Two laws warring in our members, | 17:34 | |
two conflicting desires | 17:36 | |
so that when a man wants | 17:39 | |
to pull himself together for some wholesome activity, | 17:40 | |
he doesn't have the interior mobility, | 17:44 | |
every effort to do something wholesome | 17:47 | |
just breaks him apart. | 17:49 | |
You people know about these things | 17:52 | |
because the truth of the matter is | 17:54 | |
at your particular stage in life, | 17:56 | |
you're going through all three of the situations | 17:57 | |
in which a person is most likely to break down. | 18:02 | |
Formal education which requires your whole concentration | 18:08 | |
and if you're not whole, then the effort | 18:14 | |
to pursue formal education simply illustrates | 18:16 | |
your brokenness. | 18:19 | |
Vocation. | 18:23 | |
You're just beginning to move | 18:25 | |
into your vocational, your professional life, | 18:26 | |
but the, but here is where a man | 18:29 | |
or a woman gives his whole life away to one job. | 18:31 | |
Fantastic, if you're not whole, | 18:34 | |
the demands of this vocation illustrates your brokeness. | 18:36 | |
Marriage. | 18:40 | |
A person gives himself wholly to another person, | 18:42 | |
but if he's not whole, then the demands | 18:44 | |
of the marriage relation just illustrate the brokenness. | 18:47 | |
Now, when Freud talked this way, | 18:53 | |
the people said | 18:59 | |
that actually what Freud was doing was try to, | 19:01 | |
trying to size everybody up in terms | 19:04 | |
of the few abnormal cases that came to his medical office. | 19:06 | |
Now, in order to scotch that rumor, | 19:11 | |
Freud wrote a little book, | 19:13 | |
which you can pick up at the news stands | 19:14 | |
for 30 cents paper binding now. | 19:16 | |
The psychopathology of everyday life in which he showed | 19:20 | |
that there are in each of us, | 19:24 | |
however normal we think we are, | 19:26 | |
there are in each of us, | 19:28 | |
the ingredients for the development of neurotic symptoms. | 19:30 | |
He virtually said, there is none good, no, not one. | 19:35 | |
And he picked such, | 19:41 | |
some such cases as these things that happen to us daily | 19:42 | |
that illustrate a kind of a structure in our personality, | 19:45 | |
which when carried | 19:48 | |
to certain extremes can break us inwardly. | 19:49 | |
For instance, innocent little things like loss of memory. | 19:52 | |
Now, why do you forget things? | 19:58 | |
For once, I was walking along the street | 20:01 | |
in New York City with my wife shortly after we were married | 20:02 | |
and I ran into an old girlfriend, | 20:05 | |
that's the girl all the way from Minneapolis, | 20:08 | |
you wouldn't have expected, not, | 20:10 | |
and I had introduced my wife to her | 20:12 | |
and I couldn't remember her name. | 20:15 | |
Why? | 20:20 | |
Well, the suddenness of it or the embarrassment of it, | 20:21 | |
or maybe I was tired. | 20:25 | |
These are all plausible, but they're not profound. | 20:28 | |
How would you expect me to remember in one moment, | 20:32 | |
what for two years I had been trying to forget. | 20:35 | |
There are two logs warring in our members | 20:40 | |
so that when we try to pull ourselves together | 20:43 | |
for some kind of whole activity, | 20:46 | |
we're immobilized inwardly, ambushed from within. | 20:49 | |
This civil war inside, | 20:54 | |
this war between the states of our consciousness, | 20:57 | |
we become the victims of it, | 21:02 | |
or take it an illustration of the slip of the tongue. | 21:05 | |
Why do you say things sometimes that you don't really intend | 21:10 | |
to as if you had no control over your tongue? | 21:13 | |
You see, my mother-in-law was visiting with us | 21:16 | |
and in a kindly effort to be conciliatory, | 21:19 | |
I said to her, | 21:25 | |
"Maryanne, isn't it a shame we don't live closer apart?" | 21:26 | |
(students laughing) | 21:30 | |
Now, what did I mean? | 21:33 | |
Well, in a sense, | 21:35 | |
I meant both with two laws warring in my members. | 21:36 | |
Sometimes this turns out more beautifully of course, | 21:44 | |
as you may know about Otto Rank's studies | 21:47 | |
of Shakespeare's famous slips of the tongue, | 21:50 | |
from a psychotherapeutic standpoint, | 21:54 | |
the instance in the Merchant of Venice, for instance, | 21:56 | |
when Portia wants to communicate to Bassanio | 21:58 | |
in the presence of the casks, | 22:02 | |
that it matters to her that he choose the right cask. | 22:04 | |
So she says to him, | 22:08 | |
one half of me is yours and the other half yours or mine, | 22:10 | |
I mean, but if mine then yours, so I am all yours. | 22:14 | |
It's beautiful but it illustrates the brokenness | 22:20 | |
in our personality, which says we are not always in control, | 22:23 | |
we are often the victims of our own personality structure | 22:27 | |
of the laws warring within our members. | 22:32 | |
A woman weeps interminably at the funeral | 22:36 | |
of her husband, why? | 22:38 | |
Because she is so sorry he is dead? | 22:41 | |
Not necessarily. | 22:43 | |
It may well be as the late Joshua Liebman said, | 22:44 | |
because she is so sorry, she is so glad he is dead. | 22:47 | |
I don't mean to be grim here | 22:51 | |
but this is something that has to be reckoned with. | 22:53 | |
A soldier leaves an important battle station | 22:58 | |
under the heat of battle. | 23:02 | |
Why? | 23:03 | |
Well, the commanding officer says he's a coward | 23:04 | |
and wants to discipline him. | 23:07 | |
The medical officer said, says he's got battle fatigue | 23:09 | |
and wants to hospitalize him. | 23:13 | |
Who is right? | 23:14 | |
They're both right in a way. | 23:16 | |
Or as Dostoevsky has said, | 23:19 | |
a man goes crazy on purpose as a defense | 23:22 | |
against intolerable circumstances. | 23:26 | |
Now, since then, battle fatigue is a form of neurosis. | 23:30 | |
You may not think you know about this kind of thing. | 23:36 | |
Why do you sleep in class? | 23:38 | |
Hey, I stayed up too late the night before. | 23:41 | |
That's a superficial reason. | 23:43 | |
You sleep because there is such a thing as neurotic sleep, | 23:45 | |
you choose to sleep as a defense | 23:50 | |
against intolerable circumstances. | 23:52 | |
(students laughing) | 23:54 | |
Now, | 24:01 | |
this basic immobility in the personality expresses itself | 24:04 | |
in aggressiveness toward others. | 24:09 | |
This alienation within expresses itself in an instability | 24:12 | |
through which we fall against others | 24:17 | |
in aggressiveness and injustice. | 24:20 | |
But what is it that accounts for the neurosis | 24:23 | |
or the inability to be whole? | 24:26 | |
We get a very important clue to this | 24:29 | |
in Jesus, double command. | 24:33 | |
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God | 24:38 | |
with thy whole heart, soul, mind, and strength | 24:41 | |
and thy neighbor as thyself. | 24:44 | |
You get that chain relationship? | 24:46 | |
As Dostoevsky says again, you do not love God, | 24:50 | |
you do not believe in God or Christ, | 24:54 | |
therefore you are so eaten up with pride | 24:56 | |
that you will probably end by devouring one another. | 25:00 | |
Get that chain reaction? | 25:04 | |
If you have fallen away from God, | 25:07 | |
chances are you will fall apart inside | 25:09 | |
and then fall against your fellow man. | 25:11 | |
If you have fallen away from God in unbelief, | 25:15 | |
chances are you will fall apart inside in neurosis, | 25:18 | |
and then you will fall against your fellow man in injustice. | 25:21 | |
These are the sociological | 25:28 | |
and psychological ingredients in unbelief. | 25:29 | |
Now let me just briefly, | 25:34 | |
when I'm through with this, | 25:36 | |
I understand you'd like to have a time of discussion. | 25:37 | |
Let me give you a short analysis | 25:41 | |
of unbelief in this setting. | 25:43 | |
What is the nature of unbelief that it contributes | 25:47 | |
to this kind of psychological | 25:50 | |
and sociological instability and aggressiveness? | 25:52 | |
I give you one simple formula. | 25:58 | |
Well, come to think of it, it's not so simple, | 26:00 | |
it's kind of complex, | 26:02 | |
but I hope to break it up into three simple parts | 26:03 | |
and analyze each of these parts. | 26:06 | |
There is at the root of our lives an anxiety | 26:10 | |
to secure our existence. | 26:16 | |
Now this is the meaning of unbelief. | 26:21 | |
Now, let me talk about the three elements in this, | 26:25 | |
the root of our life for instance. | 26:27 | |
This is what we have | 26:29 | |
and this is what faith deals with, | 26:31 | |
the hidden root of our life, | 26:34 | |
the image of God in man, | 26:36 | |
the responsibility ingredient in the human nature | 26:39 | |
that says man's life is incomplete apart | 26:42 | |
from a transparent relationship with God. | 26:45 | |
If we do not deal with this, | 26:49 | |
we are not dealing with our being as men. | 26:51 | |
I once saw a dancer who was able | 26:56 | |
to put her forearms like this on a table | 26:59 | |
and so skillfully arch her spine | 27:03 | |
that she could bring her feet down. | 27:05 | |
I tell you this, not to confess the places I frequent, | 27:07 | |
but there's a real point here, | 27:11 | |
(students laughing) | ||
she could bring her feet down before her eyes | 27:13 | |
and dangle her feet in front of her eyes. | 27:17 | |
And now when I watched her do this, | 27:20 | |
I noticed that from the way she looked at her feet, | 27:23 | |
she had the, she communicated the sensation | 27:25 | |
that she was thinking she was contemplating herself | 27:29 | |
in her feet. | 27:33 | |
And isn't this what happens in culture at large? | 27:36 | |
Don't we look at our great feets and say, oh. | 27:39 | |
(students laughing) | 27:42 | |
Don't we look at our great cultural, social achievements | 27:44 | |
and contemplate ourselves there | 27:49 | |
in our technological society, | 27:52 | |
in our asthetic accomplishments | 27:54 | |
and neglecting all the while the hidden root | 27:57 | |
that binds us in responsibility to God, | 28:00 | |
the group that really constitutes us who we are. | 28:04 | |
I was in, you delineated some of the places I been at | 28:08 | |
for religious emphasis weeks. | 28:12 | |
Well, I'll tell you one, | 28:13 | |
I was at the University of Georgia last fall, | 28:14 | |
and down there, they did what they do at many other places, | 28:17 | |
they made me go from class to class talking | 28:19 | |
about the religious perspectives | 28:22 | |
in these various academic fields. | 28:27 | |
And one day they sent me to horticulture one | 28:30 | |
(students laughing) | 28:33 | |
and I had | ||
to give the religious perspectives | 28:35 | |
for horticulture one. | 28:37 | |
And as I was tromping up and down the hall | 28:38 | |
in the horticulture building, | 28:40 | |
trying to figure out what I'd say, | 28:42 | |
I noticed a great long bulletin board, | 28:44 | |
almost the length of the hall, | 28:46 | |
down there in the University of Georgia | 28:48 | |
and on it was every grass that grows in Georgia | 28:50 | |
but the interesting thing was that there were no roots | 28:54 | |
on any of these grasses and this possibly, | 28:57 | |
it seemed to be a basic misrepresentation | 29:00 | |
because of, a grass should have everything, | 29:02 | |
seeds, stem, and root, | 29:05 | |
but here they put the roots. | 29:07 | |
But the more I looked that board, | 29:09 | |
I noticed that at the very center of the display, | 29:10 | |
a quotation from the Book of Deuteronomy, | 29:14 | |
which said, it is the Lord who gives the grass. | 29:16 | |
Well, that's the root. | 29:20 | |
And this is what we mean, | 29:23 | |
by the image of God in man, | 29:25 | |
our life is constituted by him. | 29:27 | |
He is the hidden root of our life | 29:29 | |
and unless we openly acknowledge his being, | 29:32 | |
then we are living at less than our privilege | 29:36 | |
and responsibility as men. | 29:39 | |
Well, there is at the root of our lives an anxiety | 29:43 | |
to secure our existence. | 29:47 | |
Existence, it's the second word. | 29:53 | |
This is what we are, an existence. | 29:55 | |
God does not exist. | 29:59 | |
Is that blasphemy? | 30:03 | |
No, God does not exist, | 30:05 | |
as Kierkegaard says, God is eternal. | 30:07 | |
Animals don't exist. | 30:10 | |
They say, to say that one exists, | 30:13 | |
is to say that he reaches beyond himself. | 30:16 | |
(speaking in foreign language) | 30:21 | |
to stand beyond. | ||
Animals don't reach beyond themselves | 30:25 | |
because in the opaqueness of their impulses, they can't. | 30:27 | |
God doesn't reach beyond himself | 30:32 | |
because there is no one beyond him to whom to reach. | 30:34 | |
But man is a being who exists, he reaches beyond himself. | 30:37 | |
He is a being who depends upon a being other than himself. | 30:42 | |
Now this is what we say | 30:48 | |
in the Christian doctrine of creation, | 30:49 | |
God has made us ex nihilo out of nothing. | 30:51 | |
So you'll see by ourselves, we are nothing, | 30:55 | |
we have to reach beyond ourselves | 30:58 | |
for sources of our authenticity | 31:00 | |
so that this little equation that was given originally | 31:04 | |
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | 31:08 | |
and appears again in William Temple | 31:09 | |
is the mathematics of the religious life. | 31:12 | |
Man minus God equals nothing. | 31:16 | |
God minus man equals God. | 31:22 | |
But man minus God equals nothing. | 31:25 | |
We are, as the Indian proverb says, but skin about a wind. | 31:29 | |
And if God were to withdraw his creative breadth, | 31:34 | |
we would be nothing. | 31:38 | |
Now this is what we won't settle for, | 31:42 | |
we will not be nothing. | 31:44 | |
And this is why there is | 31:46 | |
at the root of our lives an anxiety | 31:49 | |
to secure our existence, | 31:52 | |
to make our way on our own basis, | 31:53 | |
we will not confess our nothingness | 31:56 | |
and live a life of dependence upon God. | 31:58 | |
So we make our way, | 32:01 | |
we refuse to be as Adam, a steward, | 32:02 | |
we want to be a proprietor. | 32:07 | |
We refuse to be as Adam, a gardener, | 32:09 | |
we want to be manufacturers. | 32:13 | |
So we leap very high in our own imagination | 32:15 | |
like a ballet dancer will leap very high into the air | 32:19 | |
and we would like to perpetuate the illusion | 32:23 | |
that we are not just a man | 32:27 | |
but something that transcends humanity. | 32:28 | |
Or we are like as Kierkegaard says, | 32:32 | |
that the orchestra leader, he waves his arms wildly | 32:33 | |
and as he hears the beautiful music, | 32:37 | |
he likes to perpetuate the illusion | 32:39 | |
that he is not just directing the music, | 32:41 | |
but he is creating it. | 32:43 | |
We leap very high into, in our own imaginations | 32:45 | |
until our heads tend to trade an atmosphere | 32:49 | |
that is uncongenial to our lungs | 32:54 | |
and we dizzy, and we spin, and we fall, | 32:56 | |
and we throw out our arms to break our fall | 33:01 | |
and in that moment, we crush others beneath us. | 33:04 | |
Get this chain reaction? | 33:08 | |
You fall away from God, | 33:10 | |
chances are you dizzy and spin, and fall apart inside, | 33:12 | |
and then you fall against your fellow man. | 33:16 | |
Think of the profound ethical implications | 33:20 | |
in this chain reaction. | 33:23 | |
Two merchants | 33:26 | |
on the same street corner, | 33:30 | |
on how one merchant doesn't seem to be able to exist | 33:31 | |
without the economic murder of the other. | 33:34 | |
Or two brothers | 33:38 | |
in the same family. | 33:43 | |
You get a letter from your brother. | 33:45 | |
He says to you, | 33:48 | |
I've just been made a vice president of my company. | 33:49 | |
Just for one moment, you're having sharps dab of envy | 33:55 | |
and then you're, | 33:59 | |
you've regained your equanimity | 34:01 | |
and you sit down and you write him a letter | 34:02 | |
of congratulations and you mean it. | 34:04 | |
The question is, how should you forget that instance? | 34:06 | |
Or two nations in the same hemisphere | 34:13 | |
or two hemispheres in the same universe or two races | 34:18 | |
or two business interests, labor management. | 34:24 | |
My friends, there is a law and a gospel in life. | 34:29 | |
There is a law that says life cannot be well lived | 34:34 | |
on the basis of self sufficiency. | 34:37 | |
And there is a gospel that says, | 34:42 | |
God is continually reaching his hand into our life | 34:45 | |
to reconcile us to himself | 34:50 | |
so that through spiritual faith, | 34:54 | |
we are given psychological health | 34:58 | |
and through psychological health, | 35:01 | |
we contribute to social peace. | 35:02 | |
You may feel that my analysis has been incomplete | 35:08 | |
and maybe a little over pessimistic. | 35:13 | |
My personal feeling about it is | 35:17 | |
that 90% of therapy is proper diagnosis. | 35:19 | |
And I feel a little about what I've said, | 35:28 | |
I feel a little like what Francis Thompson, | 35:33 | |
a Catholic poet must've meant | 35:37 | |
when he said of this kind of groom, | 35:39 | |
is not this groom shade | 35:44 | |
of God's hand outstretched caressingly? | 35:47 | |
Well, Mr. Chairman that's end of the analysis. | 35:58 | |
Chairman | All right. | 36:02 |
With this conclusion, | 36:04 | |
the group remained for a discussion for about 45 minutes | 36:06 | |
and then the group was dismissed. | 36:10 | |
- | Testing, testing, testing. | 40:53 |
1, 2, 3, 4, testing. | 40:55 | |
Testing, testing, | 41:07 | |
testing, testing. | 41:09 | |
1, 2, 3, 4, testing. | 41:11 | |
Professor | Oh, I hate that interrupt this, | 44:28 |
but we all ran of time and some folks | 44:29 | |
that may have other things they need to get to. | 44:31 | |
I'm sure that Dr. Michalson would be glad | 44:35 | |
to continue this discussion | 44:36 | |
after the... | 44:39 | |
Carl | Speak for yourself. | |
(everybody laughs) | 44:40 | |
Professor | If he's not too busy and if he is, | 44:44 |
I'll let him beat his own retreat there, elsewhere. | 44:46 | |
(everybody laughing) | 44:47 | |
I want to thank you all again for being here | 44:50 | |
and express our appreciation in entirety | 44:51 | |
to Dr. Michalson for a very interesting | 44:53 | |
and stimulating discussion. | 44:55 | |
Thank you, sir. | 44:57 | |
Testing, testing, testing. | 55:46 | |
1, 2, 3, 4, testing. | 55:48 | |
(bright piano music) | 1:00:41 | |
(piano music drowns out speaker) | 1:00:42 | |
- | So that's how you work it. | 1:00:53 |
- | That's how you get the two hours. | 1:00:54 |
This is hour going one way and hour going back another. | 1:00:57 | |
(piano music drowns out speaker) | 1:01:00 | |
- | You got (indistinct) to work there. | 1:01:08 |
- | I don't know a thing about it. | 1:01:10 |
(bright piano music) | 1:01:11 | |
It's a lot easier to push it. | 1:01:13 | |
(bright piano music) | 1:01:14 | |
(piano music drowns out speaker) | 1:01:16 | |
This has to go there. | 1:01:18 | |
- | Right. | |
(bright piano music) | 1:01:20 | |
Yes. | 1:01:23 | |
(bright piano music) | ||
(piano music drowns out speakers) | 1:01:31 | |
- | I am still four feet away talking in a normal tone, | 1:01:42 |
and the volume is at halfway base | 1:01:49 | |
where I think it sounds best | 1:01:57 | |
and the treble... | 1:02:01 | |
I'm still here. | 1:02:12 | |
I think we just put the treble halfway | 1:02:15 | |
and see how it sounds. | 1:02:17 | |
The record level. (laughs) | 1:02:20 | |
I think it's all right. | 1:02:25 | |
So we are running it back. | 1:02:26 | |
Cut it off, man. | 1:02:27 | |
Run it back. | 1:02:28 | |
Good bye. | 1:02:30 |