Billy Graham |
September 8, 1972
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Billy Graham
Reverend; Founder, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Author, The Jesus Generation; Radio Host, The Hour of Decision
Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests at the head table, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure and privilege for me to be at the Commonwealth Club once again and to have the opportunity of addressing you in this brief time and answering a few questions.
I come first of all with an apology because I have a very deep chest cold that I did not catch in California or I would have been over it by now. I got it in North Carolina, and so I may sound a bit unnatural in what I, in the way I present it anyway. But I want to bring my greetings to the people of the Bay Area. I have been here so many times and have such admiration for the people of this area. But like many of you, I feel a sense of shock at what has happened in Munich and what has happened in the Virgin Islands because it's a symptom of what is happening in our world today. And I want to address myself if I might, to the subject of freedom, and the violence, and law, and the relationship between the three, as it's taking place throughout the world.
Unfortunately, violence has been a part of the human scene since Cain killed Abel just outside the Garden of Eden. There have always been those dreamers and idealists of every generation who believe that violence and war could be eliminated from the human scene. The Hebrew prophets used to warn the people about those that would say "peace, peace" when there is no peace. To some it said, "They speak of peace, but war is in their hearts."
I was at Temple Emmanuel yesterday afternoon at the memorial service. I saw the tears on the part of those that participated in that moving service, remembering those that had died in Munich. And I thought of Munich - a man with an umbrella 35 years ago shouting, "peace in our time," to be followed by the most terrible war in the history of the world.
But the Bible does hold out the prospect that there will come a day when men will turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Isaiah the prophet said, "There will be a day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn of war and violence anymore." But that day has not come. The Bible teaches that it will not come until Messiah, the Prince of Peace comes, and all of mankind is under the rule of a theocracy.
The Apostle James asks the question, "Where do wars and fighting come from?" Then he answered his own question: "They come from your lusts that war in your hearts." The Bible teaches that we are to work for peace, that we are to pray for peace, but there will be no peace permanently as long as lust, greed and hate continue in the human heart. Now I commend President Nixon for his goal and dream of a generation of peace. I'm not very optimistic. I don't see anything in the Bible that would forbid a generation of peace. But Jesus predicted, knowing human nature, that there would be wars and rumors of wars until the end of time.
And even as I speak here at this noon, there are little wars smoldering in various parts of the world. There are hates and greeds in the hearts of men in Ireland where I was a few weeks ago, in Central America, in Central Africa, where the Asians had been pushed out of Uganda, in apartheid being practiced at its extreme. And in Vietnam, and in the Middle East, where armies are already assembling at this hour on the borders of Israel and Syria, and Lebanon. Thus, there will continue to be the need for the police and the soldier to preserve the peace.
There have been and always will be the Hitlers of this world who will want to dominate their fellow man. As Time magazine said a few weeks ago, "man is prone to violence." During human history, freedom has been rare, and it's been precious. It's always had to be defended with words and with the sword. The words of Patrick Henry still ring in our ears, "Give me liberty or give me death!" But it also took the military genius of George Washington and his co-patriots to gain our independence 200 years ago. American democracy has given to man the greatest political freedom that man has ever known. That freedom has always been under attack in every generation, and our generation is no exception.
A quarter of a century ago we all remember, those of us that are old enough, when President Roosevelt stood before the world and announced four freedoms. In that address President Roosevelt said, "Freedom of speech everywhere" - and he emphasized the word "everywhere" - "Freedom of worship everywhere. Freedom from want everywhere. Freedom from fear everywhere."
When we look at our world today we ask ourselves, what happened to those freedoms? The majority of the people of the world live either under a right wing dictatorship or a left wing dictatorship, and the rest of the world is in danger of being ruled by a subtle dictatorship of bureaucracy, including the United States. Every day our news media tells us of demonstrations and pickets and marches and protests and bombings and hijackings and violence. All of which are supposedly designed to gain freedom from some group somewhere. It seems that almost everyone is expressing a desire for freedom. However, freedom is increasingly being misinterpreted and misunderstood in America.
A labor member of the British Parliament said recently in my hearing, "You Americans are too free. You've taken freedom and made license of it." In other words he was saying that we are misusing our freedom.
Freedom includes a positive acceptance of some sort of restraint and limitation. You're free to swing your fists, but you lose your freedom at the point of my nose. We Americans say we are free, but we have thousands of laws that say we are not totally free to act without any restraint whatsoever. We're not free to drive down the highway at 100 miles an hour endangering the lives of others. We are not free to continue to pollute the water and the atmosphere. We are not free to shoot our gun in any direction we want to. We have municipal laws, county laws, state laws, federal laws, by the thousands that indicate we are not totally free. There is no such thing as absolute freedom.
We are not free to do our own thing at any time we want to. We cannot all live like Robinson Crusoe did on an island. In fact most of us wouldn't want to. I don't even like to watch the sunset alone. I like to share it with my wife or some close friend. But somehow a segment of Americans have deluded themselves into believing that they're all Robinson Crusoes. Whether we like it or not, we're all part of a complicated and interrelated social structure.
The American freedom has from its inception been based on law, and this law has been rooted in a faith and a universal moral law given by Almighty God. The real uniqueness of America is that we've done what few nations have dreamed and fewer have attempted. American society has been characterized by two things: freedom and law. The important thing is to balance the freedom and the law, and the delicate balance must be maintained if we are to avoid the collapse of our system. If freedom is unrestrained, license results and this ends in anarchy. If law and order alone prevail, then individual freedom and individuality could be snuffed out. This delicate balance between freedom and law can only be maintained if there's a moral foundation to society on an individual basis. Kick morality out - and morality is based upon religion - kick it out, and you have destroyed the basis of our freedom. But there's a growing philosophy today that rejects every moral and ethical standard. It stands for total secularism and total materialism. One of the intellectual darlings of this philosophy here in California not only advocates total secularism; he advocates the use of narcotics as an expression of total freedom. And total freedom to him means the absence of all restraints.
He seems to be ready to debase, abuse, deface and destroy any person, place, or thing which he feels to be limiting in any way. But more, this crowd wants to remove the very name of God from our national life. They want to take God off our coins. They want to remove the chaplains from the military forces. The goal of the most extremist in this group is total anarchy and the destruction of the American system that has given the world the greatest form of democratic government in history. The result of anarchy is always tyranny and the loss of freedom.
Someone has said that we're qualified for civil liberties in exact proportion to our disposition to put moral chains upon our appetites. Unless these forces are checked soon, our own lusts and passions will ultimately destroy us because democracy is built on moral law.
Harry Reasoner concluded, after his visit to China, that China today is starkly puritanical. Scotty Reston, one of the editors of the New York Times, after a lengthy visit to China wrote several columns on how the Chinese communists have adopted many of the values that we derive from our Judeo-Christian faith while we, he said, are discarding them. In other words, even the communists realize that some form of discipline and moral purity is needed to build and maintain a strong society.
We are told, in China, there is no venereal disease, no drugs, no pornography. You go outside the St. Francis hotel at this moment and you will see sites you won't see in Havana, you won't see in Moscow, you won't see in Peking because they've learned that to build a strong society, they cannot have the type of moral permissiveness which we now are tolerating in this country. Are they right? Can we have moral permissiveness and pollute the minds of our young people and maintain our freedom? No nation in history has; maybe we can. Maybe we can get by with it. But if we do get by with it, the Bible is wrong. History is wrong. I don't think we can get by with it.
But are the Americans who advocate total secular freedom really free? Can they obtain what we call absolute freedom? It's true that they are free to take narcotics, they are free to experiment with uninhibited sex, free to go unwashed and free to dress any way they like, but they remind me of a man in a hospital who because of his illness must be fed through a tube. Having tired of the tube with his discomfort, he tears it from his body and says, "I'm free! Free!" He's only free to die because he's removed himself from his only hope of life. Janis Joplin looked free on television, singing her uninhibited songs, but she was a slave to drugs that killed her.
I talked to a group of students down in Florida recently. They were waving their red flags and had a big picture of Mao-Tse-Tung and I stopped, near Fort Pierce. They said, we believe that Mao-Tse-Tung has the greatest form of government in the world. We are for Mao-Tse-Tung. I said all right, I'll accept that premise. But if Mao-Tse-Tung's form of government comes to America, you're going to have to take a bath, you're going to have to shave your beard, you're going to have to go to work, and you're going to have to become religious! And one of the young fellas scratched his head and said, "We hadn't thought about that."
You see, God has established a moral law in our universe. Freedom can only exist where there is moral restraint. Wherever we look in our society we see that men are in danger of losing their freedom. In many of our cities, the people are frightened in the midst of what is supposed to be a free society. In New York City, there are five murders a day. Five people a day are killed on the streets of New York. More people are killed in New York City, in the last four months, by murder than all of Northern Ireland in three years. Where are the demonstrators? Where are the protestors? And what is happening in New York is happening in many of our major cities in America.
In addition to that, there is an attempted suicide every minute in America. Every minute! The greatest killer of university students, take all causes put together and the greatest killer of university students today is suicide. Why are our young people at the most beautiful campuses in the world committing suicide in greater numbers than any students anywhere in the world except Sweden? Why? Is there something in our way of life that we're not giving them? Millions of other Americans are afraid to walk the street at night.
Someone asked me what I thought America's greatest problem was and I answered, "loneliness, from the letters I get." I get an average of 5 to 10 thousand letters a day. And the greatest problem in those letters is loneliness. I talked to a university Dean recently standing on the corner, a crossroads, at the university, and I said, "What is your greatest problem?" And he thought a moment and he said, "Emptiness." You see without a faith to believe, we may be physically free and psychologically and spiritually, we're in danger of becoming slaves. And in time we will be softened up for the kill because we turned to substitutes. We turned to 15 million sleeping pills every night. We turned to millions of tranquilizers and pep-up pills in the day. And we turn to alcohol by the gallons.
Substitute religions! Substitute props! To exist in our so-called free society, we are becoming slaves to pills. Someone has said men are slaves because freedom is difficult and slavery is easy. History is filled with illustrations of entire nations sinking into slavery because they would not pay the price that true freedom demands. This was the lure that Hitler used. He came to a people who felt frustrated and divided. He pledged to them security if they would give him their souls. This has happened over and over again in history.
I saw a cartoon the other day where a man and his wife and children were walking down an American city street. They were looking through an archway that said, "Eastern Europe." Written under that was another sign that said, "Law and order, peace, and security." In the cartoon the husband was saying to his wife, "Looks good, doesn't it?" There will come a time, if anarchy prevails, that dictatorship will look good if it promises law and order and security.
During the past few weeks, I've been thinking about the awesome power of the computer, which records, notes, and comments on every dimension of our lives. I've also thought about the power of television to make us buy, sell, or think or do whatever it wants us to do. And put the computer and television together and in the next few years a small, handful of men could control our way of life.
Yes, true freedom is fragile and costly. It's costs the blood of tens of thousands of Americans for 200 years. It must constantly be defended and protected by work and faith, and even by blood. But don't let anyone tell you that America is finished, or that it's too late.
We must deface problems and difficulties and dangers throughout our history. Washington faced them at Valley Forge. Benjamin Franklin had given up in despair that a constitution could be agreed on at the Constitutional Convention. Lincoln gave up many times; I don't know what the psychiatrist would say about him. I'm sure he couldn't have run for a second term because he was so depressed. Before the days of shock treatment, he would have probably been taken off. In my judgment, in spite of the euphoria of a temporary peace and a growing economic prosperity, we in America are facing total peril. This peril comes from moral decadence within, and from a group of radical anarchists that would like to take over this country and the growing military might of enemies without. The very survival of the American way of life is again at stake.
We have a glorious and wonderful history. My first loyalty is to the Christ that I serve. But the apostle Paul was proud that he was a Jew. He also proudly claimed his Roman citizenship. I make no apology for being American. Never before in history has a people accomplished so much, given so much, and asked so little. Never have I been so proud of America as I was when I was in Ireland, and I saw President Nixon in that little Baptist church in Moscow singing, "What a friend I have in Jesus." When his communist host didn't want him to go, and he went anyway. He went to tell the whole world that we're a nation under God. And we mean to keep it that way.
As the San Francisco editor has reminded us, four times in this century we have fought and bled and died for freedom. We have provided the overwhelming majority of our people with luxuries that were beyond the dreams of kings and princes a hundred years ago. Despite all the critics, we have done more to bring dignity, equality, and opportunity to minority groups than any other generation has ever done in the history of the world. We now have the strongest Civil Rights bills on our books in history. Today, the average Black American young person has a greater chance, per capita, of going to college and universities than any country in Europe. The American dream has come true.
For millions, there is still a great deal of work to be done. There are still challenges to be met. There are still hopes to be realized. There are still goals to be attained. However, they are not going to be attained by those who are ringing their hands and crying pessimism and despair. They are not going to be attained by the dropouts and the copouts. They are going to be attained by men and women who believe in God and believe in the future of America.
Jesus Christ said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Jesus Christ demands that we surrender everything to him, and then we are spiritually free. The same is true in the political realm. True freedom is expensive. Our spiritual freedom cost the blood of Jesus Christ. Our political freedom has costs the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of Americans for 200 years. In The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe wrote these words:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Whether we like to admit it or not, there is a gathering storm of moral decadence in the country that threatens our survival. But at this critical point of American history, I am asking you not to curse the dark. Jesus said, "Let your light so shine." The light that we have to give to the world is a moral and spiritual light. Let's light a candle. In England, in the 16th century, two martyrs were bound at the stake and they were going to be burned for their faith.
One of them said to the other, "Cheer up. Let's light a candle that will send a glow around the world and never be extinguished in England today." I believe that it's of paramount importance that the moral and spiritual values that our forefathers had must be rekindled, revived, and even improved on, and that they become the beacon lights to guide our nation through this perilous period.
Two months ago, we had 100,000 students in Dallas, Texas, sponsored by Campus Crusade, at what was called, Explo '72. These students poured into Dallas from all over America, thousands of them from California. They carried Bibles; they sang Christian songs; they shouted to the older generation, "We have found a spiritual experience and a purpose and a meaning for our lives. We've learned that man cannot live by bread alone. There must be moral and spiritual values. There must be spiritual disciplines if we are to find fulfillment in our lives." They are saying to us, "We don't want your materialism alone. We don't want your high standard of living alone. We don't want your swimming pools and Cadillacs alone. We want something more out of life, and we're finding it in a spiritual experience." And thousands of young people are joining them. In this town on Monday, I talked to 2,500 Lutheran young people. They had their fingers in the air one way, one way, and they were saying to the clergy that were sitting there, "We want a real experience with God. We want something that lasts, something that satisfies, something that fulfills, something that maybe we're not even getting in our churches."
As I stood there on that last Saturday afternoon in Dallas, and there were 200,000 young people that had come in for the Jesus Musical Festival primarily to hear Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash, (but it was my privilege to speak to them) [laughs]. I had a great hope well up in my heart for the future of America. Never in American history had there been so many students gathered for a religious meeting. So let's don't spend our time cursing the darkness. Let's light a candle. Let's light a candle that will banish moral and spiritual blight. Let's light a candle that will guide a new generation into tomorrow. Let's light a candle that will roll back racism and social injustice in our country. Let's light a candle that will put prayer and Bible reading back in our schools.
Let's light a candle to warn our enemies that we will die so that our children and grandchildren can have freedom if we have to. Let's light a candle that by God's grace will never be put out. God has promised,
If my people, which are called by name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways. Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.
Every person here today, 800 of us, could go out on the streets of San Francisco, with a spiritual and moral candle burning. We could change Northern California. Thank you, God bless you.
Generously funded by:
Tom Campbell
Dee Dee Myers