Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210505B
|
00:06 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:09 Before the break, 00:10 I had introduced the last editorial 00:12 I'd written for Liberty Magazine 00:14 and even given you a little of it, 00:15 so I won't repeat all of it, 00:17 but I want to share parts of it. 00:19 I included that story of Bulgaria, 00:23 which you know already, so I'll skip over that. 00:25 But this is what I wrote, called A Small Gap. 00:29 A little more than 22 years ago I sat down in a new office, 00:34 at a new desk, and pondered what to do next. 00:38 On the desktop were just a few items 00:40 that tied me to this new reality. 00:43 There was a cake-top decoration 00:45 in the style of the Statue of Liberty, 00:47 left over from the farewell with editorial staff 00:50 at the late Review 00:51 and Herald Publishing Association 00:53 in Hagerstown, Maryland, where I live by the way. 00:56 In a card that came with it, an editor friend had noted 00:58 my possible risk in defending religious 01:01 liberty in a volatile world: 01:05 the thought perplexed me at the time, 01:08 and did not make much sense till years later, 01:10 walking alone through the religious-riot-ravaged 01:13 streets of Ambon City, Indonesia, 01:16 it hit me that there was indeed mortal danger. 01:20 In an incongruously small box on that desk 01:24 was also a little pile of articles, 01:26 some yellowed and marked as accepted decades earlier: 01:32 my "slush" file this was 01:34 or otherwise known as the makings of my first issue. 01:39 And then I went back and spoke about Bulgaria 01:42 and other travels and ended with this. 01:46 Almost a lifetime back now, 01:49 we crossed much of India by train. 01:52 I will never forget looking out on the fields one morning, 01:56 as the train chugged its way across 01:59 the countryside, 02:02 and seeing outside the window, 02:06 almost shoulder to shoulder humans 02:08 in morning ablutions, dotting the plain 02:12 from trackside to horizon it seemed. 02:16 It was disorienting to my sense of humanity. 02:20 Jesus Christ I read in the Bible was said 02:23 to have looked on the crowds and had pity on them. 02:28 Far easier to depersonalize one's concern and 02:33 transmigrate religious liberty to legislative action, 02:37 court cases, and efforts to protect 02:40 religious organizations. 02:42 I know that we have to fight our own sensibilities 02:47 in standing up for the conscience rights 02:49 of all mankind. 02:50 How easy it is in matters 02:53 of religious liberty to slip into thinking 02:56 that such things do not apply to Untermensch, 02:58 to use the word with deep meaning, 03:01 only to we who understand all of its complexities! 03:06 As though we ever could! 03:08 Back in my Australian homeland, 03:10 with my foreign-born wife, Rosa Delia, 03:12 whom I had met 03:13 while living and studying in the United States, 03:15 those visions and insights seemed dreamlike and distant. 03:20 After all, in a nearly empty lucky country, 03:22 two-hour drive into the country might reveal only 03:26 dusty-road-edge- 03:27 -to-distant-ridge congregations of kangaroos 03:30 and wombats: 03:32 existential emptiness and easy forgetfulness. 03:36 Then in the early hours of the morning, 03:38 there was that call to return to the United States 03:40 for editing responsibilities. 03:42 "Don't go," cautioned my wife, echoing the view of many 03:46 down south, deep south by the way, 03:48 that the United States 03:50 is the eye of a hurricane best avoided. 03:53 And I was conflicted, to be sure. 03:57 "But this is so unexpected," I said to my wife, 04:00 "and the signs of God's leading so clear 04:03 that I must go." 04:05 It may be that I am just 04:08 a small connection in a big plan: 04:12 a single contact I make may complete the chain. 04:16 And so we returned. 04:18 And a few years later I sat 04:20 at that new Liberty editorial desk! 04:24 For most of my formative years 04:26 Roland Hegstad was the editor of Liberty magazine, 04:29 34 years in total for him out of 04:33 about 120 some years for the magazine. 04:38 So for me he will always be Mr. Liberty. 04:42 But, of course, when I think further about it, 04:45 Liberty magazine belongs to none of us, 04:48 editor or reader. 04:51 Religious liberty is as big as humanity 04:54 and everyman's stirrings of conscience. 04:58 It is surely the idA(C)e fixe 05:01 at the center of a gospel proclamation. 05:05 For years 05:07 I have tried to remind Christian audiences 05:09 that fallen mankind has been released 05:13 from millennia of captivity to sin 05:15 by the actions of a Redeemer. 05:18 We are free, we have freedom, 05:22 no one can take that from us. 05:26 The Bible says in the words of Jesus, 05:28 "I have set before you an open door 05:32 that no man can shut." 05:34 That's how the Bible puts it. 05:36 And during the time with Liberty 05:37 I have seen the religious world warp 05:39 and narrow religious freedom 05:42 into an entitlement to restrict others. 05:46 And during that time 05:47 I have seen a narrowing of even the secular concept 05:51 of liberty. 05:54 After the towers down of 2001, 05:56 an article in Le Monde magazine in France 05:59 commented on the realism of the moment. 06:02 More than real, it said: symbolic! 06:06 As I remember, the author wrote that quote, 06:08 "We have reached the point 06:10 where the very idea of freedom, 06:12 itself relatively recent and new, 06:15 is in the process of being replaced by its polar opposite, 06:19 that of a terror of security." 06:22 And so, enhanced interrogations, 06:24 unitary visions of executive power, 06:26 impromptu prayer sessions by insurgents 06:29 in the House chamber, a voice, 06:31 a choice rather of isolation over worship during a pandemic. 06:35 What next? 06:36 God only knows, try reading Revelation. 06:40 So where is my place within all of this? 06:43 This editorial is from my last issue 06:47 of Liberty magazine as editor, last as editor before retiring. 06:53 I daren't apply to myself General MacArthur's 06:55 self-pitying epilogue after being fired 06:58 for wanting to drop the atomic bomb in China. 07:00 "Old soldiers don't die, he said, they just fade away." 07:06 Of course we fade away, 07:08 like the grass, according to the Bible, 07:11 but our actions can endure. 07:13 Instead, I'd like to invoke 07:15 a Russian folk song of wartime loss. 07:18 I always find a deep sadness and melancholy 07:23 in Russian song and literature. 07:25 As a young man of the Vietnam War era, 07:28 I was deeply affected by reading 07:30 Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. 07:33 The song I'm quoting from is called Cranes: 07:37 I loved it best sung by the late baritone, 07:40 Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. 07:43 The lines of that song that I think admit me now 07:47 are these: 07:49 "Flying in the fog at the end of the day, 07:53 and in those ranks there is a small gap: 07:58 Maybe this is the place for me." 08:03 You know, I don't think it's just because 08:07 I'm a Seventh-day Adventist 08:09 Bible believing prophecy inclined Christian. 08:13 I think it's staring us in the face. 08:16 As the Bible itself says that 08:17 the world is waxing old like a garment. 08:21 I think it's clear that things are winding down. 08:25 The old controversies are reaching fever pitch. 08:28 The old certainties are crumbling, 08:31 certainly in the United States, democratic norms 08:35 are not so sacrosanct anymore. 08:39 We are facing a moment of truth. 08:42 Each of us needs to decide 08:44 how we're going to comport ourselves 08:46 in what is being called the last great crisis. 08:50 Will we argue not just for civil liberties 08:54 in the West, we think that that's what we're about. 08:57 But will we argue for religious liberties 09:00 for our rights before God, 09:02 for our rights to explain God to our fellows? 09:05 Will we maintain our integrity, no matter what happens? 09:08 Remember, Lucifer in heaven about Job says, 09:12 one of his friends actually said, 09:14 "Will you still maintain your integrity? 09:16 "Of course, 09:18 we need to be faithful to the end 09:22 to that last stroke of the pen, the end of the game. 09:29 Retirement can mean 09:30 different things to different people. 09:32 And in my threatening to my wife, at least, 09:34 I've suggested that I might spend 09:36 more time listening to compact discs. 09:38 I have 5,000 of them, 09:40 disorganizedly stored in the basement. 09:43 So I started listening to them the other day, 09:45 practicing for soon to begin retirement 09:49 and fell upon Frank Sinatra singing 09:54 songs of yesteryear and the waning year 09:58 and September song and the one that got me 10:00 was Yesterday when I was young. 10:04 And in reality no matter what age we are, 10:07 yesterday is when we were young. 10:09 As the Bible says 1,000 years is a day with the Lord. 10:14 Time is fleeting for all of us. 10:16 We just don't notice it, till we're a little older. 10:19 What we need to do is look ahead 10:21 to the eternity of bliss promise for all of us 10:24 if we're faithful, if we're true, 10:26 if we catch the imagination of being one 10:29 with the Creator of all things, 10:31 Jesus Christ. 10:33 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2021-09-20