How Shall We Then Live, Lesson 10, “Final Choices”

There really is only one other alternative left after the Christian consensus is gone, and that is that a single individual or a group will come forth as an elite to give arbitrary absolutes to society.

Now, we mustn't think this is extreme in our thoughts, because many people, many different kind of people, have made suggestions in just exactly this direction, that this, they say, is what must come into our present society, now that the Christian consensus is gone.

One man stands out who said this quite some time ago, and that's John Kenneth Galbraith. He suggested that the intellectuals, and especially the academic world, and especially the scientific world, plus the government, would provide such an elite.

Robert Theobald, at the Second General Assembly of the World Future Society in June 1975, said,.

Quote,.

It's naive to deny the necessity for some kind of competent elite. End of quote. Daniel Bell, who's one of the great thinkers of this particular moment of history, has written a book called The Coming of Post-Industrial Society.

In it, he says, both government and business has become so technical that the technocrats must become an elite to take over. And he says this is what's going to happen if we continue in a straight line from where we now are.

But in it, he gives a most astute warning, a warning that the lack of a rooted moral belief system is the cultural contradiction of the society, the deepest challenge to its survival. Now, what does he mean by that?

Well, he means that in this society that we're saying is just, there it is, some sort of an elite, one kind or another, in which all these men and many other thinkers are talking about today. What he's saying is that how are they going to generate any real absolute?

How are they going to generate any real meaning? How are they going to generate any real ethic? In other words, you could sum up what he's saying, and brilliantly saying, as that in such a society, there is no absolute ethic to accompany the absolute power.

That's exactly what stands ahead of us in this matter of an arbitrary elite taking over and giving arbitrary absolutes to the community. Humanism has found no way to deal with the problem of morals and ethics and values.

And Rousseau's romantic utopian theories led to the violence of the French Revolution and to the guillotine. Now, when we begin to talk about an authoritarian elite, please do not think of the model of Hitler and Stalin.

That would miss the mark completely. What we're facing is something much, much more subtle. Something in which Hitler and Stalin would not provide the model at all. Rather, it's in all probability going to be a manipulative authoritarian elite.

A manipulative authoritarian elite. In episode 6, if you can remember back to episode 6 at the end of that on science, we showed many of the suggested forms of manipulation that have been suggested by various people, and some of which are already in practice.

We spoke of the press reports of Dr. Kessler's suggestion of chemical agents to rid man of aggression. Dr. Cranty's suggestion of using birth controls in the world's drinking supply. Dr. Clark's suggestion that all political leaders should take anti-aggression pills.

Dr. Lee's suggestion that all public officials should take annual psychological tests. And, of course, Skinner's use of reinforcers to modify man's behavior. But there was one that we didn't touch on at that time that really is going to be increasingly important in the days ahead.

And that's the problem of genetic engineering. Francis Crick, who with James Watson discovered the DNA code, has spoken out very strongly in favor of full genetic engineering. Quote, some group of people should decide that some people should have more children and some should have fewer.

You have to decide who is to be born. End of quote. That's only one little part of it, though. Because as you read carefully on further, what you find is the call for a group of people, and he doesn't call it an elite, but it certainly would be the elite, who will determine what kind of people we want genetically in the future.

And then we'll set out genetically to make them. Now, many of the technical breakthroughs have been made. Now, when people believed, indeed, that man was made in God's image, there was a real basis for humanness.

I'm saying humanness, for people being human. But once this is removed, as it has been now so largely removed with the loss of the Christian consensus, there is no reason, once we see people merely as a machine, as not qualitatively different from non-people, non-man, there's no reason why we should not tinker with them.

As a matter of fact, Francis Crick in this article uses that word, tinker. There's no reason why we shouldn't tinker with them, genetically, and there's no reason we shouldn't manipulate them, and there is no reason why we shouldn't control them.

And, of course, we must think of manipulatory possibilities of television. It has its own tremendous possibilities.

Violence broke out again last night, as some young people were prevented from meeting. Late last night, disorder broke out among a small, unruly mob, as our guardians of the peace quietly and efficiently, in spite of extreme provocation, restored order.

It is important that our courts make an example of these hoodlums and hand out the kind of sentences they so richly deserve.

We staged this scene. We filmed it to show that television can tell any story that it wants to tell. In both versions, the action was the same, and the actors did exactly the same things. However, the camera was placed differently, the editor edited differently, and the announcer told a different story.

We would be naive not to realize that what we're seeing is an edited symbol. But the nature of TV is such, we see it with our own eyes, that we naturally look at it as though it were objective truth. For many, what they see on television is more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world.

Let me stress, it is always unfair to say the media does this, or the press does that. There are always individuals, or individual publications, for example, that are not included in the generalization.

But the mass media can be used by an authoritarian, manipulating government or an elite. The elite gives the arbitrary absolutes, and then not only TV, but all the mass media can be used for manipulation.

And a plot or conspiracy are not needed. All that is needed is that the people in the places of influence, and those who decide what is the news, have in common the modern results of humanism, the modern world view, which we have considered at length in this series.

When the perspective, the world view of the elite, coincides with some of the influential news carriers, it does not have to be all, then either consciously or unconsciously, the media becomes an instrument for manipulation.

The Pressure of Civil Liberties, Affluence, and Social Control

Now, what will all these available manipulatory techniques mean in our own countries? I'm not thinking of communist countries now, countries that have gone totally totalitarian, but in our own countries.

There will be people who will feel uncomfortable with the increased control and increased manipulation. But there's a dilemma here. It's a very profound one. And the dilemma is that many of the people who speak out for civil liberties are also totally committed to the fact that the government has the responsibility to solve every problem.

And there's a natural tension, a torque, in these two things as they think both things. Now, as the pressures increase, and they just overwhelmingly increase as time goes on, at a certain point, where is the line going to be drawn?

Certainly, if they have only the values, the basic values of personal peace and affluency, at a certain point, their disquiet will be totally submerged. The Christian consensus gave us such tremendous freedoms.

Of course, as we've said many times, the basic Christian message is that an individual can be right with God only upon the basis, now, of the work of Christ alone. That's all he needs. And the humanist element has gone out of that.

But it carried with it, of course, many, many secondary things. And one was, one secondary thing was this tremendous range of freedom that we've been talking about. Freedom that didn't lead to chaos. But now listen.

Don't you see that if you can have these titanic freedoms not leading to chaos because of the Christian consensus providing a form,.

If you remove that.

Christian consensus as a form, then the very freedoms which have been such a glory and a wonder that we have had from the Christian consensus, these very freedoms then become the hammer blows to destroy everything and to lead completely to chaos.

In other words, the good thing becomes the poor thing once the consensus, the form, is removed. Now, that's exactly what has occurred. Now, coming and thinking of the United States, we could think of other countries in the Western world, but I'll choose the United States.

From what source might the authoritarian manipulating government come? Most people immediately, of course, think of the administrative side, a president with too much power, but the administrative side isn't the only place to keep your eyes on.

Now, it's true that it's harder to think practically of the congressional side bringing forth such an authoritative government, but it's not unthinkable.

A public official.

Serving on the very highest level in the United States at one point said a very wise thing. What he said was, and I'm quoting,.

Legislative.

Dictatorship is no better than executive tyranny. And he's absolutely right. It isn't a question of from what side of the government.

The authoritarian.

Manipulative government comes. The problem is, it's coming.

The fact that it is,.

The danger is there. And now we come to what I would say is the chief point. With variable sociological law, the court's generating law must not be ruled out as the source of the place from where authoritative manipulating government would come from.

Someone has used the term of the imperial judiciary. It's a very good term in our modern setting. And don't forget that as we talk of the rise of authoritarian government, that the words right and left really lose their meaning in a certain way.

I'm not saying that they don't have a meaning, but you must see something deeper than this. And that is, the right and the left are really only two roads leading to the same end. The problem is not choosing between one or the other.

The problem rests at a more crucial point. And that is the elite, the authoritarianism as such, filling the vacuum which has been left by the loss of the Christian consensus. Filling the vacuum and forcing a form on society so that it will not go into chaos.

This is the real problem. And with most people, the young and the old, committed to apathy, and most of the populations of the various countries being committed to the values of personal peace and affluency, do you think they will stand up at great cost.

Against.

Such a trend? As long as they are promised the affluency and the personal peace, will they not rather give their position up, give up even their liberties, step by step, one after another, as long as they have as the illusion, even the illusion, of personal peace and affluency?

The weak humanistic ideals have not been able to provide a base which is needed. Let us remember what humanism is. It's man demanding to begin autonomously from himself, and turning away completely from anything God might have to say.

And this kind of humanism, this humanism, was not able to provide in the past, in the present, nor will it in the future, a support strong enough for society that will still give us freedoms. It's not able to.

Do you remember in the first episode the little Roman bridge? And as I stood there on that Roman bridge, I pointed out that these little humpback Roman bridges over many of the rivers of Europe have stood safely for two millennia as horses, mules,.

Cows,.

Wagons, people went over them. But if you drove a modern truck over them,.

The bridge would break.

Now that's exactly where the humanist ideals take us. As long as the pressures are not there, it may seem to be really saying something, and saying something rather nice. But as the pressures increase, that's a very different situation.

And don't forget the pressures are increasing. I can name just a certain number of them. You might think of more. But the ones I'm going to mention are not something for the future. They're already upon us, and these pressures are building up month after month, year after year.

The first is the dilemma of economic breakdown, centered in what seems to be the impossibility to control inflation. And economists everywhere are writing on the fact that we haven't found a solution to the control of inflation.

And if it continues, it will lead in country after country to economic breakdown. We can think of political terrorism and indiscriminate terrorism as it is spread over the world. This brings a tremendous pressure on people.

Just a tremendous pressure. And perhaps the greatest of all, the threat of war with the imperialistic, expansionist, communist countries toward the West. And add to this the fear of atomic war. Just a tremendous pressure to give up anything.

Give up absolutely anything, if we could just save our peace and affluency. And then there is the shortage of food in the world, and other natural resources. And this brings with it the fact that there almost certainly is going to be a redistribution of wealth in the world, and a redistribution of power.

And this is a tremendous pressure. And any of these pressures as they're growing, and as they will certainly continue to grow, people with merely the values of personal peace and affluency would give up anything in the light of these pressures.

Especially if in the days of our own day, as in the days of Augustus back in the Roman Empire, the things were brought in, the changes were brought in, while seeming to keep the outward forms of constitutionality.

And with the growth of these pressures, modern man with his apathy, and with his desire for personal peace will crush, just like that little Roman bridge would crush, under the weight of a ten-ton truck.

It's just where we are. Now, what are the alternatives? Well, in the natural flow of things, there would seem to be only two. One, an imposed order, and we spent a long time in this episode, and looking back into other episodes, about the possibility of this imposed order.

Or, in the.

Natural flow of things, just one other alternative. And that is that our society would affirm the base that gave us the form and freedoms in the first place. That is a return to God's revelation in the Bible, and as he has revealed himself in Christ.

This was the base that gave us the forms and the freedoms. And it would seem as though these are the only two alternatives. Imposed order, or our society affirming the base that gave us the form and freedoms in the first place.

Christianity as Truth, Not Mere Social Utility

But I want to say something as a warning immediately. Christianity cannot be accepted merely as a means to an end, sociologically. It cannot be accepted merely as a superior utilitarianism. Christianity is truth, and it demands a commitment to that truth.

It means there is an infinite God who is there, and he has created all things. Things are not a product of chance. This infinite personal God has created the heavens and the earth. He has created the space-time continuum.

It means the acceptance of Christ as Savior and as Lord. And when we accept him as Lord, it means that we come to live under the absolutes, the moral absolutes, which the Bible gives. Even if it sets us apart, as it did the early Christians, from the surrounding culture.

In this place, there are morals. There are values. There is meaning. And very specifically, there's meaning for man in this place. But we must understand that what is involved here is truth. Not a truth which is a leap into an area of non-reason, but a truth that gives us a unity of all knowledge and all of life.

And then this alternative means that the people who have this base influence the surrounding consensus, regardless of the cause. Just as the early church in the days of the Roman Empire, they spoke out regardless of the cause.

It means we have a responsibility before God, once we have this base, to influence society across its whole spectrum and the whole spectrum of life. And happily, and this is important to think about, Christians do not need to be in a majority in order to influence the consensus.

There was a Jew who was a Christian.

Who wrote a book.

To the Romans in about the year 60. He had previously talked to the thinking people in Greece near the Acropolis at Mars Hill. And what did he say to the people of his generation, the thinking people?

He said, your worldview does not explain the existence of the universe or its form. And it does not explain the uniqueness of man. Your thought form does not explain those things. And yet, you refuse.

You suppress.

That which does give an answer to both the existence of the universe and its form and the uniqueness of man. Let me quote from the letter which he wrote. The retribution of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Because that which is known is evident within them. And here he's talking about the unique manishness of man. Man is different from non-man. Because that which is known of God is evident within.

Them.

For God made it plain to them. For the invisible things of him, since the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are made. And here he's talking about the universe and its form.

For the invisible things of him, since the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity, so that they are without.

Excuse.

He says that the universe and its form and the uniqueness of man speak without conflict, giving the same message that the Bible gives in greater detail. And we must say to the humanist man of our own day the same thing as he said to the thinkers of his day.

Humanist man, demanding to begin autonomously from himself, has no answer for the existence of the universe and its form, or for the uniqueness of man. And yet they reject the answer that really gives an answer.

That this God exists, and he's not been silent, but has spoken in the Bible and through Christ, has indeed as a central message that people may approach freely to God on the basis of the work of Christ.

But it carries many other things with it. And for this series of studies to which we are now coming to a close, the most important thing is to remember those titanic freedoms which it has given to us, without these freedoms leading to chaos.

And this is our hope for the future. It is either this, or an imposed.

Order.

People act upon the basis of what they think. The problem is not outward things. The problem is having the right worldview and acting upon it. The worldview that gives men and women the truth of what is.