The Burden of Modern Civilization – Sunday, October 07, 1984
The burden of modern civilization is not, as many have supposed, that wealth is ill-distributed, or that social welfare has been neglected. It is rather the very real possibility that civilization has become an obstacle to the simple faith of honest souls.
Skepticism and cynicism are the products of an age which relies too much on itself.
Like the transatlantic balloonist who throws his instruments of navigation overboard to stay aloft, we too are discarding, one by one, the means of human progress: our ideals, our simplicity, our childlike faith in faith itself.
The laws, institutions and technology of civilization have no life of their own; they are only symbols, representatives of our faith in goodness and justice. If faith dissolves, the symbols will crumble. Belief is so necessary to our social existence that, without it, we must fall into the bondage of despotism or the chaos of anarchy.
And what is this faith which is the foundation of all civilization? —The simple belief that the Sermon on the Mount is as scientific a formula as the equation for splitting the atom.
—The conviction that it is sweet and dignified to love one’s family, or to shed tears over the loss of a friend, and that he who rules his own spirit is greater than he who rules a city.
—It is to have a spirit untainted by false sophistication, to still believe that honesty is the best policy, that virtue is its own reward, that charity never faileth.
—All of this and more, vanishing elements of man’s faith, placed on the endangered species list by an age which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
This faith of simple hearts cannot be marketed in the mass media, produced in the laboratory or fabricated in the factory. It can be neither produced nor purchased. It is a product of spontaneous combustion—rising instantaneously in hearts where the good is accomplished, where beauty is served, where truth is spoken.
When the decades turn to eons
And the sun has turned to ash
When the idols of modern civilization
Become dim recollections of man’s primeval past
And, time has measured out the better part
The crowning achievement of humanity will be
—The childlike faith of an honest heart.
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October 07, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,877