But Men and Women Aren’t Statistics! – Sunday, March 29, 1942
In the many complications of our way of life, there is a marked tendency to look upon the problems of men and women as statistical rather personal. Unless we guard ourselves against it, we are inclined to think of men in terms of classified groups rather than to think of each man as an individual.
As the news of the day breaks upon us, we hear that a hundred thousand are killed or trapped on some far-distant battlefront. Unless we are careful, to us it isn’t a hundred thousand living, breathing, human beings, each with his personality, his ambitions, his family, his rights and his destiny—it’s just a hundred thousand subtracted from the total. The news of the day, with its account of the plight and problems of others, cannot be counted upon to make a lasting impression until it comes home—until it touches us closely, intimately, in our own lives; but, regardless of what impressions the news leaves upon us, the fact is that the world isn’t just two billion people; an army isn’t just five million fighting units; a nation isn’t just a hundred million sales prospects; a city isn’t just a hundred thousand votes. Statistically this may be true, but men and women aren’t statistics.
Men and women are children of God with an eternal destiny and an eternal individualism, and every man, woman and child who walks the face of the earth is an individual problem, even though we find it convenient in impressive reports and in the news of the day and in our great social and economic schemes to reduce them to mere arithmetic. The Lord God has said: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:39)—for “man was in the beginning with God,” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:29) and is in all fundamental respects like Him, and the casualties of the distant battle, or a million starving children, or ten thousand traffic deaths caused by ten thousand drunken drivers aren’t just figures—they are people, even as you and I—each one a child of that God, who is the Father of us all.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, March 29, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the Nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
March 29, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,658