The Fearless Individual                                                        8/11/46

 

Scripture:  John 21: 15-22

 

Text:  John 21: 22;  “What is that to thee?  Follow thou me.”

 

We are often reminded that, although we have tremendous mechanical, industrial and commercial advantages over our predecessors, we are in danger of ruining ourselves through moral ignorance of how to use these advantages.  It is sometimes said that our civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.  And that, if education is to win the race, our educational forces must produce a high type of fearless individual to help manipulate and control the wheels of present day society.  That puts it mildly!  And it expresses the solution only partially.  The race with catastrophe is not by schools alone, but by all organizations of people, and individual persons who believe in democracy.

 

In the early years of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson wanted men whom he could trust to handle wisely the country’s affairs abroad.  He selected Walter Hines Page as ambassador to England and sent him to the court of St. James with the simple instruction: “Be yourself.”  On behalf of the nation, the President trusted this man to keep his head clear and his feet on the ground in the excitable, emotional, and deceiving days of that War.

 

It was a time when people easily became mob-minded, ready to fight anything and to hate anything.  In such times, there was need of an independent thinker who could see all sides of a question and come to a fearless and independent conclusion.

 

That is the sort of fearless individual about whom I wish to talk.  Jesus particularly desired that his followers should be like that.  When Peter showed signs of wanting to know what everybody else thought and did, and particularly what John was going to do, Jesus quietly rebuked him with these words: “What is that to thee?  Follow thou me.”  Some have thought of that as a command of the Master.  It does not seem so to me.  Jesus has always ruled not by orders but by invitation and persuasion - by the giving of ourselves to him. 

 

Of course we ought to distinguish the constructive individual from the perverted individual.  It is one thing to consider yourself a separate individual and a law unto yourself.  It is quite another thing to think of yourself as an individual part of something greater than yourself.

 

If you should see a little brass screw at the curb of the street where you have parked your car, you might scarcely notice it nor take the trouble to pick it up.  But if your car were stalled with carburetor trouble and you saw lying on the pavement a brass screw that regulated your carburetor, the screw would seem very important to you.  As an individual old screw it might be worthless.  But as an individual part of your car it would be valuable indeed, and you would hasten to pick it up, glad for the saving in money, time and trouble.  So it is with the importance of an individual life.

 

In connection with this subject we are reminded of the talk of personal liberty and individual freedom.  There is a difference between license to do wrong and liberty to do right; and between the cheap freedom to do nothing and the precious freedom to do something great.  No man has the ethical right to use his freedom for selfish ends at the expense of others.  The only true freedom is freedom to do right.  What men need is not liberty for laziness or for perversity, but liberty for constructive effort, for going ahead, for righteousness.

 

The usefulness or value of an individual depends on his connection with something more important than his own private desires.  For, apart from a connection with some important enterprise, an individual loses his own value.

 

There was a woman who kept an old-fashioned wayside inn on a road used by tourists and vacationists.  She had taken over its management after the death of her husband.  She used to talk to the guests about her trouble, and tell them a little about her late husband.  One evening she wanted to show a group of guests a picture of him.  She led them into a room where hung a large photograph of a stout gentleman.  Pointing to it, she said briefly, “Two hundred and twenty pounds.”  Well, what did that tell them about her husband?  Even after you have learned his weight in pounds and appearance [longitude and latitude] you have no way of valuing a man as an individual.  O, you might draw one or two relatively insignificant conclusions such as the assumption that this man could not have run very fast!  We always want to know what people are connected with, what they belong to; what they do and say and think, before we can make an estimate of them.

 

The difference between a happy individual and a miserable individual often lies in his connections.  If he has no important connections with some movement, with the doings of other people, and tries to live unto himself, and for himself, he is likely to be unhappy and very incomplete.  Happiness lies in being connected with something important, something worthwhile, in doing something in and for an enterprise.

 

Long and elaborate preparations were made for the first telephone conversation between New York and San Francisco.  Every operator at a switchboard, and every man watching lines in an open country knew that his part was important and knew that if any mishap occurred on his division during the attempt at that conversation, the effort would be a failure.  Each individual along that long connection was important and knew his importance.

 

Twenty minutes before the hour appointed for the conversation to take place, one chief operator discovered that there was a break somewhere in his section.  By quick and heroic efforts, he secured a new connection down through Pittsburgh, across Pennsylvania, and back again to the main line, just as the speaker in New York picked up his phone to talk.

 

Proving your worth, demonstrating your value like that, in some important connection, is real happiness.  When a person feels that he is no good to anybody and is not needed for any important connection, he encounters the bitterest mood we know.

 

Robert Russell Wicks suggested that there are three regular stages through which we pass on the way to becoming a real individual.  (1)  First, there may be a stage in which we assert ourselves.  We make way for our desires against any barriers which frustrate us.  (2)  Then there is the stage when we become sick of ourselves.  Merely to assert our own desires, merely to get our own way, grows unsatisfying.  The more fiercely we assert our selfishness, the less contented we are with ourselves.  (3)  Then we come to the stage when we forget ourselves; we want something big enough to absorb all our abilities and lift us out of ourselves and give us release in worthwhile occupation.

 

Perhaps the society in which we live today is going through the same process.  We have been through a long period of assertion and emancipation which began back in the middle ages.  There has been the slow and repetitious winning of freedom from autocratic political authority, from slavery, from ignorance, from dictation.  Women have been freed in much of the world to live their own life.  And people in our recent history asserted themselves and took their rights to the limit until the tragedy of a world war, and then a great depression, and then another world war, overtook us all.  After World War I, we were in a disillusioned mood.  Literature was cynical and pessimistic, and debunking seemed its greatest mission.  We were made to feel like scum on an insignificant planet.  But we have quickly grown tired of that mood.  We hope and believe that we are facing a period of great possibilities.  But we are also faced with great anxiety lest we be morally inadequate to handle the great powers now available for aught but destruction.  The world is desperate for faithful, fearless individuals - not just a few but such overwhelming numbers as can make democracy work.  Such fearless individuals will have to take for their motto the one that is inscribed over the doorway of a great Scotch University.  “They say.  What do they say?  Let them say.”  Not in contempt of others, but in the attempt to be where truth lies.

 

The first requirement for the fearless individual is a fresh sense of God.  Many peoples’ belief in God has gone stale.  Though it may make them respectable in a way, it is merely conventional and without any punch or power.  Stale belief is always powerless.

 

Two years ago, when Ronald Bridges, a layman, became moderator of the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches, he spoke briefly to the Council then meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Before speaking to the Council, he asked those present to pray with him.  And the thing I remember better than the speech is that prayer.  You Congregational folk may remember seeing the words of the prayer printed in our church calendar of June 16th.

 

            Almighty God our Father, we are respectable people gathered here.  Forgive us.

 

            We are men of rectitude and good standing in our communities.  Forgive us.

 

            Fill us, engulf us, sweep us away with the tides of thy spirit, that we may live in righteousness.  .........

 

            Forgive us, Lord, when we are stupid and insist on doing that in thy name which is not thy work.  ......

 

And Mr. Bridges continued briefly in that vein, which was startlingly intelligent, humble and sincere.  Men need a constantly refreshed sense of God!!

 

A man like Professor Einstein has a belief that is not powerless.  His idea of religion might not be adequate (neither is yours or mine complete), but it is good enough and goes far enough to make him fearless.  [His comment about the church in Europe.]  He is not afraid of what the crowd thinks.  It doesn’t matter to him what they say.  He knows, for instance, that most people will not understand his most profound theories for years to come.

 

The more you can attach your individuality to the power of God, the less you will fear others or be dominated by the crowd.

 

I have said that the first requisite for the fearless individual is a vital and fresh sense of God.  His second requisite is a belief in the certainty of his own influence.  Everything that any individual does, counts.  You are responsible for your influence.

 

One of the commonest excuses for dodging responsibility is expressed in the saying, “O, no one will notice what I do.”  Your influence is going to be thrown someplace.  It will affect others and it will also affect yourself.  It affects yourself in the formation of your own habits.  You can’t avoid putting your influence somewhere any more than you can avoid putting your weight on one foot or the other or both.  Students and teachers have seen in school that kind of person who throws all of his influence and work into some activity that makes school spirit and accomplishment.  They have also seen the student who says, “O, I can’t be bothered with that.  I want my own good time.  Let the class president and those guys do the work.”  The trouble is that that influence is really detrimental to the school and to the individual himself.

 

You have seen the citizen who expects someone else to see that the government makes laws and enforces them on other people while he seeks special privilege, and disregards the law.  The influence of such people is a detriment to themselves and a burden to others.  They are like spoiled children who expect other people to keep the nursery comfortable while they strew their toys around.

 

In this day when fashions and fads and much of radio and press tend to make all of us alike, in tastes, in dress, in desires, even in our thinking, the world needs preeminently men and women who will not be blindly led, who will think for themselves, and act fearlessly upon their convictions.

 

[This is roughly where the first version ended; it was a graduation sermon, and ended with an exhortation to the graduating class members to be themselves.

 

Now if some of the things I have been saying this morning may have sounded like comfortable, harmless, unexciting theory, let me remind you that there is a practical point for everyone in this room today who is 21 years or older, and for everyone who is younger than that who yet expects to become one day an intelligent voting citizen.  There will be an election this week.  And the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune has very rightly been stressing the vital importance of forming opinions on issues, making a choice of candidates for office and voting.  That is the only safeguard for the democratic way of living.

 

The fathers who founded the colonies which preceded the Union did not agree in many ways, but they expressed their choices with vigor.  That vigor is not optional in a democracy.  It is necessary and vital in a democracy.  The fact that Fascism and the Nazi rule have been dealt a knockout blow in warfare does not in any way mean that democratic government is now free of danger.  Democracy has everlastingly to prove that free, liberal education is better than party-controlled propaganda; that the gains of living can be equitably distributed; that private initiative, private judgment, and private property can and will serve all the citizenry better than state control, dictated judgment and communal property; that the individual’s rights and possessions can be and are consecrated to more than selfish concerns; that the worship of God brings a power of spirit greater than the power of the arm.

 

In our country it is a Christian duty to be informed and to vote as a fearless individual person.  This has not been an electioneering sermon.  But it has been applied as an election sermon, for have not Protestant Christians, with their traditional personal freedom before God, a particular stake in the democratic ways which make that freedom a true liberty?  Here, as elsewhere, privilege and duty go inseparably hand in hand.

 

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Dates and places delivered:

 

            Wailuku Union Church, May 31, 1931

            Kahului Union Church, June 28, 1931

            Paia Hawaiian Church, January 31, 1932

            Kahului Union Church, February 5, 1933

            Puunene Japanese Church, February 12, 1933

            Paia Japanese Church, February 12, 1933

            Puunene Hawaiian Church, May 26, 1935

            Wananalua Church, Hana, June 16, 1935

            Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, December 6, 1936 AM

            Wisconsin Rapids, August 11, 1946 (summer union service).