The Pulpit Speaks: July 28, 1956

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

And now let us take another look at our general theme, “Facing Up To Life.” As we look this week, we see the Man standing on the hillside saying, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

I know what some people are going to say: “Oh, that was all right for back there in the days of Jesus but it is not worth a dime today.” We live in a day when people have turned the “golden rule” around. It does not read “As you would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them.” The modernists of our day have made it to read, “Do them before they get a chance to do you!”

We find ourselves living in a day when a full grown man or woman can go to a crib and take out a thirty-two-day-old baby and cause the parents all kinds of anguish. We live in a day when parents can toil and sacrifice all that they know how to bring a son or daughter up worthwhile only to learn later that there is some old man or woman waiting in the thickets to offer him a new kind of joy or a new way of life that will destroy all that the parents have tried to teach the child. We live in a world where people have apparently forgotten all about right and wrong, and move and live in a era of expediency. We live in a day when parents throughout the world have thrown up their hands and cried out, “Oh, what’s the use.” We live in a day of mass despondency and disillusionment and people have apparently lost their sight of goals that are worthwhile, and we hear them crying and groping the dark.

But this is not something that has just come about. Back in the days of Jesus, men just could not understand what it was all about. Then Jesus came on the scene and said unto them, “Blessed are ye who are willing to sacrifice hunger and thirst that you might be satisfied within.” We can’t just satisfy ourselves with following the crowd. Too many people I know today have had too little concern for righteousness and, as a result, are being plagued day and night because of an unwillingness to toil for which they know is right. Jesus could have easily said, “Blessed are ye who are filled with moral integrity.” Or “Blessed are ye who know what is right and who are willing to suffer for the right.”

But today there are any number of people who know what is right but are more concerned with the reaction of the masses than with what Jesus would think of their deeds and actions. Our labor laws today were necessary because there were people who knew that exploitation and robbery were not right but they lacked the moral stamina to move out against it. Many of the laws on our statute books today are there because some people lacked the courage to do what they knew was right.

A few years from now someone is going to look at the written record of all of this confusion concerning integration and desegregation and exclaim to themselves, “And you tell me that they were intelligent. There must have been something wrong. Either my definition of intelligence and Christianity is wrong or theirs was wrong. There was something wrong somewhere.”

Today we must seek to iron out the kinks of misunderstanding. The social, moral, economic, and spiritual conflicts of are day are going to destroy all of us. The same godlessness that destroyed Greece, Rome, and countless other great nations is upon us. We have men today who fear nothing. Men have lost their sense of fear; they feel that they have everything under control. We have airplanes with the largest cruising range, the best guided missiles, the most effective radar systems. All in all, we have nothing to worry about.

But while we are rocking ourselves in a pseudo-complacency, our very hearts are being destroyed. While day by day we are becoming materialists, the moral and spiritual growth that should be with us is getting smaller and smaller. Once again the old prophet looks over the conditions of today and tells us to seek the old paths and walk therein. Once again we must realize that our only salvation is wrapped up in the moral and spiritual outlook of the noble men and women of yesteryear.