The Eternal Challenge – Sunday, January 15, 1984
It seems to be an ironic age we live in. We have harnessed the power of the sun, but we cannot clear the rain from the windows of the world. We are learning so much about outer space and so little about inner needs.
We have put men on the moon and sent satellites toward the stars, but we have yet to bring peace to our own planet.
Perhaps in our pursuit of peace and justice we should adopt the principles and procedures we use in science.
Albert Einstein spent a lifetime studying and pondering the nature of the universe. He distilled his findings into an elegantly simple mathematical statement, “E equals mc squared”; energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared.1
A child could learn to say that and recite it in a matter of minutes. Yet tucked within that small equation are the principles that have helped unlock the energy of the atom and restructure our understanding of the universe. Einstein’s laws of physics have been the basis for many of the spectacular scientific and technological advances of our century.
But it is not by babbling recitations and incantations of “E equals mc squared” that this progress has been made. Scientists, engineers and technicians have taken the principles embodied in that equation and applied them to the problems they faced. And they have been successful.
In the world of manners and morals, of ethics and values there are also simply stated but profound principles. They, too, can be easily memorized and endlessly tossed off in conversation, sermons and preachments. And when they are, they have as little effect as repeating E equals mc squared has on the material world.
But when these principles of human relations are applied in our lives, they change our world more profoundly than even Einstein changed the universe.
The basis of these principles is simply this, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…(and) Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”2 As Jesus said, “On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.”3
When we begin to understand and apply these principles in the same measure, we have used the principles of science, we will begin to solve the most important problems we face; the problems of attaining peace and brotherhood.
1 Martin Gardner, Relativity for the Million, The MacMillan Company New York, 1962 pg. 64
2 New Testament, Matthew 22:37,39
3 Ibid, verse 40
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January 18, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,839