Saints and Sinners: What this world needs ?
What this world needs …
It’s something we don’t talk much about at this low point in the world’s history when the operative words in our vocabularies are words like cruelty, hatred and suspicion.
Yet without a spirit of reconciliation, both in our personal lives and in our national life, civilization is doomed.
At the end of World War II, Willard Sperry, the dean of Harvard Divinity School, preached a sermon on reconciliation in which he told this story:
“During the war, the little native villages along the coasts of New Guinea were raked by Japanese bombs and reduced to ashes. A year or so after the war, a company of native Christians in the village of Gona met with the priest who had been a prisoner of the Japanese for three years.
“They had raised a sum of money to rebuild their school. At a point during the meeting, one of the church wardens got up and said, ‘I think God would be happy if we sent half of our offerings to the Japanese and used half for our school. We shall then be helping these people who spoiled our country to be better people so that they will be helping ones, not spoiling ones. That is what I think God wants us to do because we are his children.’
“To which the assembly replied, ‘These are good words and we shall do so.'”
Can you imagine this happening anywhere today?
What this world needs …
Albert Schweitzer laid aside distinguished careers in music and theology to study medicine and become a doctor to the natives in darkest Africa. His reverence for life, his hatred of cruelty and his almost childlike tenderness endowed him with a goodness that is in steadily shorter supply in our world:
“When some poor moaning creature is brought to me with an inflamed appendix or strangulated hernia, I lay my hand on his forehead and say, ‘Don’t be afraid. In an hour’s time you will be put to sleep and when you awake you won’t feel any more pain.’
“When the operation is finished, I watch for the sick man’s awakening. Scarcely has he recovered consciousness when he stares about him and exclaims again and again, ‘I’ve no more pain.’ His hand feels for mine and will not let it go.
“The African sun is shining through the coffee bushes into the dark shed as we black and white sit side by side in the room and fell that we experience the meaning of the words, ‘And all ye are brethren.'”
What this world needs …
If we are to preserve the beauty of the Earth (if indeed we are to preserve the Earth), we must become better stewards of this world’s bounty. In his book “Time Wars” (Simon & Schuster, 1988), Jeremy Rifkin recommends that we look at the Iroquois Indians.
“American culture,” he says, “has always been fixed on the present and the near-future. The Iroquois is quite different. As an Iroquois explains the process, ‘We make sure every decision relates to the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come, and that is the basis by which we make decisions in council. We consider: Will this be to the benefit of the seventh generation?'”
How will the “generation to come” grade our stewardship of the environment — global warming, waste dumps, acid rain, careless disregard of our limited natural resources?
What this world needs …
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)