10/21/51

Scripture: Isaiah 65: 17-25

Text: Isaiah 65: 17; “.... Behold, I create .... a new earth.”

God is at work in your heart, prompting you to be a person of integrity, magnanimity, and high purpose. In your best moments you know this to be true in your life, as I know it in mine. There is within us an urge toward that which is right, and a protest against that which it wrong.

And God is at work in our world, for it is His world. All is not right with this world. Indeed, there is much that is grievously and desperately wrong with it. But there is the divine Spirit within it persuading toward righteousness, protesting our corporate perversity. And there are millions who believe in His Spirit and seek to be workers with Him.

Perhaps this, as much as any known factor, is the basis of a hope for workable world order, and our determined effort to bring it about. Multitudes long for, and pray for, peace -- not just the absence of or cessation of warfare, but the kind of peace in which people can be builders of good life. Let no despair or fear blot out our remembrance that multitudes of people long for peace, work for it, believe in it.

Today is World Order Sunday, and the coming week is United Nations Week. A great many folk will be thinking today, during their worship, of God at work, not only in their personal lives, but throughout the earth. And we will especially remember during the week, our common stake in, and endeavor through, the United Nations. It was a good purpose that brought the United Nations into being. God has work to do through the United Nations, and is there at work with His mighty urge toward peace, health, justice and freedom.

The United Nations is not, at present, some gigantic police force. Probably it were better if the United Nations organization did have more police power than it has, if there be sufficient agreement among the nations to back up, fully, such power.

(A) But in the realm of persuasion, the United Nations has accomplished a great deal. In one year, (1) war in Kashmir, between Indian and Pakistan, was ended; (2) armed conflict in Palestine ceased under the skillful persuasion of Count Bernadotte and Dr. Ralph Bunche; boundaries between Israel and Jordan were set; Jerusalem was made into an international territory; and Israel was received as the 59th member of the United Nations; (3) in Indonesia, at the behest of the United Nations, Dutch and Indonesian soldiers ceased firing and Indonesians were permitted to return to their capital out of which Dutch soldiers had driven them; a UN commission was set to mediating the remaining differences.

These things were accomplished not by military force, nor even by police force, but by the power of moral persuasion. A Berlin deadlock was broken and foreign ministers of the countries concerned resumed conferences. More recently, armed conflict has broken out in the Far East. It has been met, not with unilateral action, but by the cooperating force of the United Nations, backed by the approval of a clear majority of the members.

These and other accomplishments of the UN have demonstrated the worth of international cooperation in such a venture. As an organization, the UN is not perfect. Much of its imperfection is due to deep differences between nations that think as we do and nations that follow Soviet thinking. At San Francisco, when the UN Charter was being formed, both the USA and Russia were unwilling to subordinate these two countries completely to international authority. Both wished to write the power of veto into the charter. It appears that Russia has since abused the right of veto. And yet the Security Council has operated with considerable success on a number of matters requiring the rule of unanimity in critical periods. Anything better would depend on closer agreement in thinking, anyway.

Our world still lives in great uncertainty. There are serious tensions in numerous parts of the world. And show of strength seems to demand show of strength to achieve any hope of mutual respect between the great powers. And yet the very necessity for such, and the differences of opinion and policy between Russia and the USA, and the nations that line up on each side, make continued inclusion in the UN all the more necessary.

(B) Of course the UN is not confined to concern over military matters or political strategy. Such things as disease germs know no boundaries. So what advances good health in far away countries protects our health too. Our concern for sufferers, in Asia and Africa, from malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, typhus and other forms of bodily plague is expressed partly through the UN’s World Health Organization. Through this agency, typhus vaccine can be sent promptly from Washington, or any other source of available supply, to Afghanistan or any other place of epidemic outbreak.

Citizens of countries other than our own, as well as our own, can be trained to recognize infectious diseases, provide safe water supply, get rid of breeding places for flies and mosquitoes, vaccinate against smallpox and typhoid, give first aid to the injured, and so on. In Europe, millions of children have been given preventative treatment against tuberculosis. Malaria control programs have gone on in India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Thailand. All of this is an international expression of the spirit of the Son of God who said: “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” [Matthew 25: 40].

(C) With an eye on justice in living standards, the UN has helped to bring an answer to the prayer taught by Jesus: “Give us our daily bread.” [Matthew 6:11]. Through cooperative effort, food production has reached somewhere near pre-war level. But the world’s population has increased 200 million since 1940. So the Economic and Social Council has set into motion a program of technical assistance to help any country that wants help in developing its agriculture and industry in such a way as to lift the living standard of an entire population.

The UN has sponsored conferences on conservation and utilization of resources. Knowledge of the pond fish culture of India and other oriental countries is spreading to other protein-starved areas. Research in synthetic methods of good production goes on. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization is constantly teaching the nations of the world better methods of producing, transporting, and storing food. Also it helps to reduce the terrific loss from rodents which destroy enough food to feed 100 million people each year.

The United Nations organization has significant accomplishments then, in the struggle for peace, for health, for justice, and accomplishment in food distribution and in other ways.

(D) But people need, and many passionately desire, not just health, food and peace, but freedom. This Jesus also recognized when he proclaimed his purpose, in his first sermon at Nazareth, “to preach deliverance to captives and to set at liberty them that are bruised.” [Luke 4: 18]. So we Christian folk also take some satisfaction in the UN’s Trusteeship Council, which gives international supervision to nine underdeveloped territories in Asia and Africa. The view is to protect their interest and hasten the time when they can sustain themselves as independent nations. This is an earnest endeavor to do something constructively different from the exploitation of Colonial days.

Many of us have examined, and rejoiced in, the Declaration of Human Rights which the General Assembly adopted more than two years ago. It begins: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” It then goes on to declare the individual’s right to political freedom; freedom of movement; freedom of asylum from persecution; freedom to own property, to join a labor union; and his right to adequate education and a standard of living sufficient for health and the well-being of self and family. Now the UN has since been considering how most effectively to interpret and implement this Declaration of Human Rights.

The United Nations has made a difference to millions of people. It has brought a measure of hope and some enrichment of life. It helps in the struggle to build a world of peace, health, justice and freedom. Such a world would be closer to the Kingdom of God.

But of course, organization is not enough. The organization of a police force in Wisconsin Rapids is not enough. If our city is to be a good community, there must be a great will of its people for clean, orderly, good living, of which the police organization is but one expression. If a majority of the people in this town, or even any significant group of people, clearly wanted a corrupt, disorganized evil-flaunting town, the police force would be corrupted into uselessness in a few months’ time.

The only solid basis of workable world organization and order is the good will, the righteous purpose, the other-than-selfish intention of great masses of people --- whole nations of them. The great contribution of Christianity to world order is a steady belief in the absolute moral order of the universe. Other religions have strong moral concepts, but none so consistent as those of the Christian religion. This moral law includes treating others as one would want to be treated; loving neighbor as one’s self; decent dealings between individuals and nations --- standards that are far in advance of mere “social expediency.”

In the realm of fair dealing, I may turn aside long enough to remark that I do not think our president’s appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican, announced this morning, comes under the heading of fair play. The appointment comes, apparently by deliberate design, too late for Senate confirmation. Its diplomatic exchange gives one religious group an unfairly preferred position in relation to our government. It is not an open-handed move, and I think it is, in the long run, a disservice to world order.

Now to get back to the United Nations. The UN is a place where moral judgments of the world can be recorded. It is really not so very much more than that; but it is that. It is not a world government but it is a means of reaching for common understandings and of moving in line with our moral judgments.

There is no real possibility of workable world government without substantial agreement on what is right. Before any organization can be effective, there must be substantial agreement in the desire for right. The effectiveness of our world order, our world organization, depends altogether on the moral integrity, the moral authority, the moral force that must precede it and reflect it. The great institutions and movements of our own history in this nation, have been molded chiefly by Christian belief. Our Christian belief in right must now be our chief contribution to world order. And if that be a reality, we shall not grudge the necessary instruments of its expression.

As individuals, we can have a powerful influence here. John Foster Dulles has pointed out that although one person in some 140 million does not seem to carry much weight, nevertheless if one individual is clearly the sponsor of a moral principle his influence is enormous!

We believe that Christianity reflects the moral law with the greatest clarity. Insofar as our admittedly sick Western civilization has a religion, that religion is Christianity. And Christianity is the only large-scale faith fired with a strong missionary impulse.

Mrs. Kingdon and I have just attended, this past week, the Mid-West Regional meeting of our own Missions Council. That meeting and others like it, underline one of the most important hopes for world order -- the study, the understanding, the active expression, the missionary outreach of our Christian faith in cooperation with all other believers of every nation.

For any kind of world order, we need organization-- specifically the United Nations Organization. But we need more than organization. We must have, and express, a great faith in the right.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 21, 1951.