The Naked Communist (55 page)

The greatest mistake that is being made in the free world today is the fact that we are mixing iron and clay. We are fighting for freedom but allowing some of our boys and girls to grow up believing in things which turn out to be basic Communistic concepts. Materialism is not Americanism but Communism. Every time we produce a boy or girl who is trained to believe that the universe is the product of accumulated accident, that human beings are only graduate beasts, that there is no such thing as innate right or wrong or that deep spiritual convictions are old-fashioned and unnecessary, then we have caused a casualty among our own ranks in the field of ideological warfare.

Without his ever knowing it, a young American is thereby trained to be a potential Red ally. This is indeed the great secret weapon of Communism.

Now where does an American boy or girl pick up the teachings of materialism? I think I can answer part of that question from a personal experience in an American institution of learning.

I was in my second year -- a sophomore -- and was taking my first course in philosophy. One morning the Professor said: "Now you young people are sufficiently mature so that your minds should be cleansed from the barnacles of superstition which probably accumulated during your youth. When you were children you were told about Santa Claus. Now you know the truth about Santa Claus. When you were children you were told about the stork. Now you know the truth about that." He then stated that he was about to clarify our thinking in another field which had been cluttered up with childhood fairy tales. "Today," he said, "I will tell you where the ideas about God came from and also about religion." All of us sat back to absorb the gems of knowledge we were about to receive.

"Now in the beginning," said the professor, "men worshipped things which they created with their own hands. It was called idolatry. Later, men imagined that there were a great many unseen gods -- a god of war, a god of love, a god of rain, etc., and all these gods required sacrifices in order to keep them happy. Otherwise they showed forth their wrath. Therefore they were frequently called gods of vengeance."

The professor then stated that the Bible is an excellent history of the evolution of religion. He said that it is clear from Bible study that the practice of idolatry prevailed among ancient peoples and that the Hebrews finally rose above it to worship Jehovah as a God of Vengeance. He said the people of Israel made sacrifices to Jehovah to keep him happy.

"Then," he said, "Jesus came along and declared that God was a God of Love possessing the attributes of all the Platonic ultimates. Jesus taught that God was kind, just and forgiving. He taught the higher concepts of the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule."

"Now," he continued, "This is the God men worship today, A God of Love as taught by Jesus. And it is good to go to church and worship this concept of God because it elevates the mind and stimulates the higher senses."

"But," he continued emphatically, "I want you young people to remember this: The idea of God is exactly like other human creations -- like a great symphony someone has written, or a great poem; you don't have to fear God, because we made him up!"

The professor finished by saying, "There is nothing watching over you -- answering your prayers, or directing the human race toward some divine destiny. You young people are on your own."

As the lecture concluded, I looked around at my fellow classmates. On the faces of some there seemed to be an expression of considerable relief. It was as though they were saying "Well, what do you know? Nobody's watching me after all! So that's what God is -- something we made up -- like a great symphony...."

After the class I went to the professor and said, "Doctor, have you ever had an opportunity to read the Old Testament?"

"Well," chuckled the professor, "only parts of it. I never had time to read all of it. But I studied the history and philosophy of the Bible under a well known authority."

The following conversation then took place between the student and the professor. The student told the professor that when he read the Bible he did not find the story in it which the professor said was there. The professor looked puzzled, "What do you mean? What story isn't there?"

"Well," said the student, "the story that religion started out as idolatry, evolved to the worshiping of a God of Vengeance, and then culminated in the worshiping of a God of Love -- as taught by Jesus."

"Tell me," asked the professor, "what did you find in the Bible?

The student said that as far as he was able to determine the nature and identity of God had been taught to men from the very beginning. He said he thought the Bible taught that God had raised up prophets and special witnesses from earliest times and these were each given a scientific experience so that they would know for themselves the nature of God and be able to teach it to the people.

Then he continued, "The second thing I understood the Bible taught is that in the beginning God revealed a pattern for happy living which we call religion. He taught us not to steal, not to lie, not to cheat, to serve our fellow men, to remain morally clean.

"Finally," he concluded, "I thought the Bible said idolatry and heathen religious practices were set up to compete with revealed religion because a large percentage of the people refused to subscribe to the things God had revealed. I thought it said manmade religion came long after God had revealed His will to man and that idolatry was a substitute and degenerate form of worship sponsored by men who reveled in the violation of God's commandments."

The professor looked down at his desk for a moment and then said: "I am afraid you are a little naive. Religion was not revealed, it evolved. Certainly you will have to admit that Jehovah was a typical 'God of Vengeance' who made the people offers sacrifices to keep him happy."

"That is another thing," the student replied. "The Bible does not say that the sacrifices in the Old Testament were to make God happy. It says that they were for the benefit of the people -- a teaching device. Or, as Paul says, they were a 'school master.' It says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and that he was as much a God of Love in the Old Testament as he was in the New Testament."

"I'm afraid I will have to challenge that," said the professor. "I think every authority would have to agree that sacrifices in the Old Testament were simply to make Jehovah happy."

The student asked, "Would you like to hear what Jehovah himself said about sacrifices, and what they represented in the Old Testament?" The professor agreed, so a copy of the Bible was secured from the library. It was opened to the first chapter of Isaiah and the professor and student read the following verses together.

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs, or of he goats.... Bring me no more vain oblations.... ('If these sacrifices were not successful in making better people then they apparently were in vain,' commented the student.) When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when you make your many prayers I will not hear: your hands are full of blood!"

Then the student asked the professor if he thought the next two or three verses reflected the personality of a so-called God of Vengeance or a God of Love:

"Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doing from before mine eyes! Cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool, If ye are willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." (Isaiah 1:11-19.)

The professor was silent for a moment, and so the sophomore gained the courage to ask the final, crucial question. "Professor, am I wrong in concluding that these passages reflect the same spirit as the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule? Am I wrong in concluding that God has always been a God of Love?"

The professor took the Bible, placed a card in the first chapter of Isaiah and said, "Have the librarian transfer this book to me."

The student appreciated his professor's willingness to re-evaluate what he had been teaching. And he also appreciated something else -- a mother and father, Sunday School teachers and others who had encouraged him to get acquainted with the Bible. They did not tell him what he had to believe out of the Bible; they just wanted him to get acquainted with it. He was glad that he had read it sufficiently so that when someone misrepresented what it said he was able to draw his own conclusions.

Now students who come home from a lecture such as the one I have just described are frequently an enigma to their parents. A boy may come home from a philosophy class, sit down to dinner with his family and say, "Dad, are we monoists or dualists?" His father is likely to look quizzically at the boy and say, "Son, eat your soup."

Frequently parents are unaware that their son or daughter may be coming to grips with important philosophical problems. Of course, some parents are deeply confused themselves about the fundamental values of life and therefore they find it difficult to give much assistance to their children when they first meet the challenge of materialism.

I think my professor was sincere. He was teaching what he had been taught. He was teaching materialism because he had come to believe it was true. I am sure he would have been shocked if someone had told him that in the process of teaching materialism he was also laying the foundation for one of the most important concepts in Communism. If George Washington had been sitting in that class he would have said, "Professor, I think you are wrong." Jefferson would have said, "You are wrong." And Lincoln would have said, "You are wrong."

Those men established this country on the premise that there is a Divine Intelligence guiding human destiny, a God in whom we can trust. They believed the Bible and the testimony of the witnesses who said that if we follow the principles taught by the prophets, we would find happiness in them. The founding fathers had such great confidence in the way of life described in the scriptures that they built the framework of the American Government and the principles for happy living which it guarantees, on the precepts and teachings of the Bible.

The disclosures of Igor Gouzenko in the Canadian spy case taught us that freedom is not insured by atomic bombs alone. As long as we are teaching materialism to our boys and girls we stand in danger of having them grow up to be vulnerable targets in the East-West war of ideologies.

I have already quoted to you a statement by the former Commissioner of Education in the Soviet Union indicating that they despise Christian principles because "Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the revolution." In fact the Communist leaders have indicated time and again that our greatest strength in resisting their efforts to conquer our minds with dialectical materialism is our belief and understanding of the Judaic-Christian code.

About three years ago I was invited to speak to a convention on the West Coast. During the discussion it was pointed out that one of the things which the followers of Marx despise about the American culture is the Judaic-Christian code. So I asked the members of the convention, "What is this thing we have which frightens Communists; someone tell us what the Judaic-Christian code contains." There was a long pause. No one wanted to suggest a definition for this part of America's strength. Finally an elderly gentleman in the back of the auditorium raised his hand, "Well," he said, "I'm not sure I know what the Judaic-Christian code is, but I do know this -- if they're scared of it, I'm for it!

In this brief discussion there is not sufficient time to treat the entire Judaic-Christian code, but perhaps we can cover part of it. The Judaic code, for example, is built primarily around the Ten Commandments. Let us discuss each one of them briefly and see if we car, discover what there about them that would frighten a Communist.

In the first commandment God simply asks mankind to recognize Him as the Creator and Master Architect of the universe. He wants us to understand that the remarkable planet on which we live is not the result of accumulated accident. The pleasant environment which we enjoy is not the product of fortuitous happenstance. Nor is it the result of ceaseless motion among the forces of nature. He wants us to know that all of this is a product of design and careful engineering; that it is built on a system of law and order; that He rules in the heavens and that all things are moving toward purposeful goals.