Hilton Head Island, SC – March 12, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 30: 1-3,8-11; Isaiah 30:12-17
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text - For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. - Isaiah 30:15
What do journalists value more highly, seeing their stories in print or on the air, or in searching out stories about values? What "sells" in journalism, which is to say, what does the American public value in what we watch or read? Do we value values, or do we value sleaze or sex or violence or fluff? Are we drawn to that which is good and lasting and permanent, or do we give ourselves to things which are merely temporary pleasures and are relatively worthless?
For several weeks, the world, the USA, and especially the Low Country of South Carolina was captivated with the Alex Murdaugh trial. Presumably a few people watched every minute of the proceedings on television. It became evident early on that Mr. Murdaugh was a consummate liar, and had been one for many years.
Why is it that so many people are so captivated by crime, sleaze, and bad behavior? There are many answers to that, but the media know that captivation exists. Because most of the media are for-profit businesses, they cater to that ever-abiding interest. Crime, sleaze, and bad behavior sell; sadly, good values don’t sell.
The United States has 5% of the world's population, uses 25% of the world's energy, emits 22% of the world's carbon dioxide, and produces 25% of the - so to speak - gross world product. India has 17% of the world's population, uses 4% of its energy, emits 4% of its carbon dioxide, and produces 2% of its GWP. Obviously those figures imply many different things, but what do they say about the value of American values?
In 1961, 24 American cities had definable criminal gangs. In 1992 there were 187 street gangs. Now our cities and towns have nearly four hundred gangs of young men and boys. James Wilson is professor at UCLA. He had an article in the Wall Street Journal called "How to Teach Better Values in Inner Cities." He said we should have a Marshall Plan for our cities. Our public policies for the cities, he believes, must meet three criteria: They must be directed toward young children, they should have a special emphasis on young males, and they must use a carrot-and-stick approach, because, he says, as long as it is more productive to behave illegally than legally, illegality will rule in the cities. Further, Prof. Wilson insists, law enforcement agencies should use conspiracy statutes against street gangs as they have been used against the Mafia.
However, it is very difficult to attack the problems of the cities, so where do we put our efforts instead? The nation concentrates on the suburbs or on places like Hilton Head Island, because the people who live there respond more appropriately to what government does. But if we continue most to value those folks who are most like us, what happens to the ones who aren't like us? If we don't value the people on the lowest rungs of the social ladder, aren't they bound to go even lower?
Ah, but we have an answer for that, don’t we? We know what we need to overcome the problems of the inner city, indeed of the whole country, and we have known it since Ronald Reagan was president. It is summed up in two words: Family Values. "Family Values" have been our most widely acknowledged and expressed values for over forty years. But what, clearly, does that term mean? Is it some kind of code word for a nuclear family consisting of a working father, a homemaker mother, and 1.7 children in the home? If so, such families represent less than 10% of American households.
It's true. We're all in favor of family values. But defining those values is another matter altogether. In a New Yorker cartoon a little boy comes up to his father with a toy in his hand, wanting his dad to play a game with him. The father is reading his newspaper (probably the cartoon section, unless it is the New York Times, in which case there isn't any, which ought to be illegal). Without looking up, the father says, as though to his telephone voice mail, "Please leave your name and number, and I'll get back to you." Family values; everybody's for them.
Another New Yorker cartoon. It is also about family values, the family of the human race. The Statue of Liberty is standing on her pedestal. In her right hand is her torch, lifted high beside the golden door. In her left hand she holds a giant cellphone, and she is saying, "Well, it all depends. Where are these huddled masses coming from?" What if they should be poor and black and uneducated and Haitian; what then? Do we send them back, or do we at least give them the opportunity to tell their story? Family values.
Everything there ever was which has any value at all is a gift from God. Everyone is a gift from God, so everybody has value. It is imperative, therefore, that if we are to try to be Christians, we must value people over things every time. Not just usually, but always. Further, we need to attempt to determine the relative as well as the absolute value of every individual, and I am not meaning to suggest that is any easy thing to do. If the lifeboat has room for only one more person, and in the water there is a medical researcher who has discovered a cure for rheumatoid arthritis and a little girl of seven whose parents have just drowned, whom do you take aboard? Or do you take both of them aboard? And if there are thirty people in the water, or fifty, or five thousand, and the lifeboat is full, and one is the medical researcher, do you save the scientist? It never happens like that, of course, but if it did, what then?
All values are not of equal value; is that a surprise to anyone? A quarter has value, but a hundred-dollar bill has more value. It is good for all of us to love our neighbors, but it is better for parents always to exhibit unlimited love toward their children. There is great value in supporting government or a community or vocation, but there is more value in supporting family, especially for those who have not been accustomed to doing that. Trying to love everybody is very important, but loving God is the most important love of all. However, if we truly love God, we'll also love everybody. The one follows the other as night follows the day.
Years ago I remember reading about a rapidly-growing post-war movement in Japan called Soka Gokkai. The term means "Value-Creating Society," as I recall. I haven't heard about Soka Gokkai for years, so maybe it worked out as planned. Japan has long maintained societal values which are shared in a remarkably broad fashion, and it has served the Land of the Rising Sun very well. As Americans we may have some questions about some of those values, especially the exclusivity and sense of superiority which seem to characterize many Japanese. With their seeming xenophobia and feeling of cultural supremacy, you can bet they will never have a Statue of Liberty standing at the entrance to Tokyo Harbor. Nevertheless, in contrast to Americans, the Japanese appear to have national values which are agreed on and shared by a far broader percentage of the people than we have in this country. There is a value in values; there really is. Commonly-held values provide glue for a society which, without those values, might threaten to come unstuck. It does not look as though we are very well glued these days, and part of the reason is that we have cast aside old values without discovering or creating new ones at the same time. Even bad values are probably better than no values at all, and we may be afflicted with - to mix Greek and Japanese - A-Soka Gokkai - A Valueless-Creating Society.
As prophets go --- and many people wish they would go --- far away ---, Isaiah was a peculiar mixture of characteristics. He was at once an optimist and a pessimist, an encourager and a nag, an avuncular appreciator and a nattering nabob of negativism. When he wrote the thirtieth chapter of his prophecy, Isaiah was all of the above. He was feeling grouchy and good at the same time. So he said what the problem was; "They are a rebellious people, faithless children, children who will not hear the instructions of the Lord; who say to the seers, 'Do not see,' and to the prophets, 'Prophesy not what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions.'" In political campaigns, especially presidential ones (and we’re already in the early stages of one), we hear far more smooth stuff and enticing illusions from both parties than are safe to swallow. Isaiah also said what the solution was: "In returning to God and in finding your rest in Him you will be saved; in quietness and sober reflection, in trust in the Holy One of Israel: that's where you'll find your strength."
You want values? That's where to look! Don't look around; look inward, and in particular, look up! If we look around ourselves, if we listen to what’s going around, we may become lost. Horizonal values, good as they may be, will never suffice; vertical values work best. The anchor of the ship of state has come unstuck, not because human beings can offer no hope to one another, not because we have evil or inept leaders (many of them are good people who are doing their best), not because the Supreme Court has eroded our spiritual foundations by some of their politicized decisions, but because for so long we have kidded ourselves into believing that we are a nation under God. Millions of Americans -- Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, agnostics, atheists, or whatever -- are under God, but the nation isn't, nor can it ever be. Trying to make an entire country into a religious unity is as dangerous as it is dubious, but if more of us individually perceived ourselves to be “under God,” more of us collectively would be under Him. And then we'd do better. None of us can improve the values of the entire society, but each of us can improve our own values. We can more consciously and conscientiously value what is truly valuable, and at the highest of that list is God. If you and I do better at valuing our relationship with God, we will do all we can do for the whole nation.
If we valued God as we should it would make a difference right here in this community. If Hilton Head got better, it would give hope to Beaufort County and mainland South Carolina and the entire United States of America, because most of the rest of the world thinks we're pretty far down the tubes here anyway; you don't have to travel far or talk to too many people to know that. "But if they got better," they'd say about us out here on this seaside sandpile, "certainly we could get better too, because we're better and finer and more genuine than all those phony chubby felines from Hilton Head anyhow!" Don't look first for better values in Joe Biden or Kevin McCarthy or Chuck Schumer; we need to search first for better values in ourselves. They are not the problem; you and I are the problem.
An English journalist named Charles Bremner was posted in the United States for six years. During that time he hurled numerous unrelenting barbs at us in his columns back home, but now that he is back home, he wrote, "America is as much as ever the land of hope and the extraordinarily good life. America still offers its people a better crack than anywhere else at those much-derided points from its original prospectus: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And further, "America's troubles are of a kind that less fortunate peoples might wish they suffered." And he's right. For all our difficulties, of which we have more than enough, there is much to be said for our nation and its values. Maybe outsiders can see it better than we ourselves can; after all, the Haitians who have fled Haiti aren't headed for Cuba or Nicaragua.
William J. Doherty is a sociologist whose emphasis is on the family. He wrote and article in Psychology Today in which he addressed a new ethic in America which he calls “the Pluralistic Family.” This ethic is emphasizing commitment, a renewed commitment of spouses to one another and of parents to children and children to parents. There are fewer dysfunctional families, he says. There are also signs of greater care for one another within families, he says. He believes that families are seeing themselves within the context of their communities, that they are not isolated, and they realize that the family can be no healthier than the community, nor can the community be healthier than its families. There is, says Dr. Doherty, a new sense of equality between men and women, which is long overdue. Furthermore, he says, parents are beginning to give children only as much influence in family life as they are able to handle. We are seeing new value in family diversity, that the stereotypical nuclear family is a statistical minority, but that all kinds of families with every conceivable head of the household can offer health and wholeness to everyone in the house.
A story is circulating in Ukraine about two Russian pessimists who were living in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine before the war started a year ago. Many Ukrainians had mixed feelings about all the Russians in the eastern part of their country. The first Russian pessimist said to the other Russian pessimist, "Life is dull and repetitive." The other responded, "I think life is full of surprises. You think it can't get any worse, and then somehow it does." They shook their heads and parted. Now, a year later, they met again on a bombed-out street. The second man says to the first, "So what do you think of life now, compared with what you thought back then?" "Oh," says the first man, "back then? Those were the good old days!"
No matter how bad things appear to be, they can always get better. Pessimism in a time such as this is not productive, and only makes things worse. In the end, Isaiah and all the other prophets knew that. As a people, we are starting once again to value values. You can't do it for everyone, but you can do it for you. So do what you can to promote this new American trend, which is not really new and certainly is not distinctly American. It is as old as God, and good values are His gift to the coming generation.
Values: when they're in, we're in!