Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210514A
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00:28 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:30 This is the program that's designed 00:32 to bring you interesting and up-to-date 00:35 and thought-provoking news on religious liberty, 00:38 mostly from the United States 00:40 but from around the world. 00:41 ,My name is Lincoln Steed host of this program 00:45 and for 22 years editor of Liberty magazine. 00:49 And I want to share 00:52 some rather introspective thoughts, 00:55 on this program 00:56 because I'm in an introspective moment 01:01 because after all these years, 01:03 I think it's time to put a pause to this program. 01:07 If for no other reason 01:09 that I've put a pause to editing Liberty magazine, 01:12 and whether I go out to pastor it remains to be seen, 01:16 but maybe I've said enough on this program 01:18 and others can carry it on. 01:22 I'd like to share an editorial, 01:24 the last editorial that I wrote for Liberty magazine. 01:27 It was actually in the July/August 21 issue, 01:31 the last issue that I fully assembled, 01:34 and I called it A Small Gap. 01:37 And I would want to talk beyond it, 01:39 but it summarizes sort of 01:41 where I find myself at the moment. 01:43 This is what I wrote. 01:45 A little more than 22 years ago I sat down in a new office, 01:50 at a new desk, 01:52 and pondered what to do next. 01:54 On the desktop were just a few items 01:56 that tied me to this new reality. 01:59 There was a cake-top decoration 02:02 in the style of the Statue of Liberty, 02:04 left over from the farewell with the editorial staff 02:07 at the Review and Herald Publishing Association. 02:10 In a card that came with it, 02:13 an editor friend had noted my possible risk 02:17 in defending religious liberty in a volatile world: 02:20 the thought had perplexed me at the time, 02:23 and, in fact, didn't make much sense till years later, 02:26 walking alone through 02:28 the religious-riot-ravaged streets 02:30 of Ambon City, Indonesia, 02:32 it hit me that there was mortal danger. 02:37 In an incongruously small box on that desk 02:42 was also a little pile of articles, 02:45 some of them were yellowed and marked 02:47 as accepted decades earlier: 02:49 it was my slush file, 02:52 otherwise known as the makings of that first issue 02:55 as editor of Liberty magazine. 02:57 And so it began: 02:59 an editorial journey I had never really anticipated. 03:03 My predecessor, Clifford Goldstein, 03:05 younger than me, 03:06 was about seven years in the job 03:08 before leaving precipitously to take up editorship 03:12 of the Bible study lessons 03:14 for the Seventh-day Adventist world church. 03:16 Ironically, I had been called back from Australia 03:19 about 15 years earlier to coordinate 03:22 editorial and production on those same lessons! 03:26 But Liberty magazine was not on my mind then, 03:30 even if issues of religious freedom were. 03:35 As a young man I had been privileged to travel at a time 03:38 when it was still a bit of an adventure. 03:41 I still remember the escape out of Kabul, Afghanistan. 03:47 We had been stoned on the highways out of the city 03:50 by Muslim youth angry at Christian Westerners, 03:54 and as our plane struggled up a narrow valley 03:57 between towering peaks and crippling turbulence, 04:00 I anxiously monitored 04:02 the huge pile of luggage strapped to the floor 04:06 where the first 20 rows of seats 04:08 usually were in a Boeing 727. 04:11 We made it! 04:12 And in Pakistan I encountered 04:14 the pilot washing his hands in the garden of the hotel 04:17 and I quizzed him about the risks on that flight: 04:21 he spoke cryptically about the wings falling off 04:24 if he'd made a wrong move! 04:27 In Iran things seemed peaceful enough. 04:30 I still remember walking down a Parisian-style boulevard 04:34 and peering through the wrought-iron gates 04:37 of the US embassy, 04:39 later to be the scene of a drawn-out hostage drama. 04:43 But what I remember most clearly 04:45 from the visit to Iran 04:47 was driving hours out of Tehran to meet 04:50 with Seventh-day Adventist Christians 04:52 at a camp meeting convocation. 04:55 Political freedom is relative, 04:58 and they were using what freedoms they had. 05:01 But it was in Communist Bulgaria 05:04 that the importance of religious freedom 05:06 most took root in my psyche. 05:09 At the time Bulgaria was one of the Reddest 05:12 of the Communist states 05:13 and usual host for Warsaw Pact military war games. 05:18 Christians were not so much persecuted there in the active, 05:22 violent ways many in the West imagined, 05:25 but were marginalized and restricted. 05:28 Communist Party membership and advancement in any line 05:31 of employment was denied people of faith. 05:34 Worship was allowed only in proscribed venues 05:38 and for limited times. 05:40 The older faithful were seen 05:42 as irredeemably out of step with socialism, 05:46 but the young were to be kept away 05:49 from this contagion at all costs. 05:53 I was with my family and my father 05:55 was not allowed to preach 05:56 in that Adventist Church in Sofia, the capital, 06:00 but his work with the government 06:01 on anti-drug education meant 06:03 that he was a guest of the authorities 06:05 and so they allowed him to bring greetings 06:08 to the somber congregations... 06:10 congregants. 06:11 All I noted clutching, contraband, handwritten 06:15 or typewriter carbon copied Bible study lessons. 06:20 Those greetings, went on for more than an hour, 06:23 with extended Bible texts and allusions. 06:26 It was rather sermon-like I thought. 06:30 After it was over, we met in the side room 06:33 with the translator and his sad eyed daughter. 06:36 She was not much younger than me at that time 06:39 so she had my attention. 06:42 She's a good daughter, her father, rather said, 06:45 "She comes to church every week, 06:47 rather than school as the government requires 06:50 but pray for us," 06:51 he asked with tears in his eyes, 06:53 "They are going to take her away from us 06:56 because she would rather come to church than go to school." 07:01 In that instant, I understood what was at stake 07:04 with conscience and religious liberty. 07:07 Later on that same trip, almost a lifetime back now, 07:12 we crossed much of India by train. 07:15 I will never forget 07:17 looking at on the fields one morning, 07:19 as the train chugged across the countryside 07:22 and seeing humans almost shoulder to shoulder, 07:26 in morning ablutions, 07:28 dotting the plain from trackside to far horizon. 07:32 It was disorienting to my sense of humanity. 07:37 Jesus Christ was said to have looked on the crowds 07:40 and had pity on them. 07:42 Far easier to depersonalized one's concern 07:45 and transmigrate religious liberty 07:48 to legislative action, 07:50 court cases, 07:53 and efforts to protect religious congregations 07:56 and organizations. 07:58 I know we have to fight our own sensibilities 08:02 in standing up for the conscience rights 08:05 of all humanity. 08:06 How easy it is in matters of religious liberty 08:09 to slip into thinking 08:11 that does not apply to Untermensch. 08:15 That's the German word for the under men. 08:17 Untermensch, 08:19 only to we who understand all of its complexities, 08:23 as though we ever could. 08:26 Back in my Australian homeland and with my foreign born wife, 08:29 Rosa Delia, 08:30 whom I had met while living and studying 08:32 in the United States. 08:33 Those visions and insights seemed dreamlike. 08:37 After all, in a nearly empty lucky country, 08:42 a two-hour drive into the country might reveal 08:44 only dusty-road-edge -to-distant-ridge congregants 08:49 of kangaroos and wombats: 08:51 nothing but existential emptiness 08:54 and easy forgetfulness. 08:56 Then in the early hours of the morning: 08:59 a call to return to the United States 09:01 for editing responsibilities. 09:06 "Don't go," cautioned my wife, 09:08 echoing the view of many that the United States 09:11 is the eye of a hurricane best avoided. 09:14 I was conflicted, to be sure. 09:17 But this is so unexpected, 09:19 and the signs of God's leading so clear. 09:21 No time here to enlarge 09:23 on that amazing part of the story, 09:25 that I must go, I said. 09:27 "It may be 09:28 that I am just a small connection 09:31 in a big plan: 09:33 a single contact I make may complete the chain." 09:38 And so we returned. 09:40 And a few years later 09:41 I sat at the Liberty editorial desk! 09:44 For most of my formative years 09:46 Roland Hegstad was the editor of Liberty magazine, 09:50 34 years in total for him. 09:52 So for me he will always be Mr. Liberty. 09:55 But, of course, Liberty magazine, 09:58 and indeed I can divert and say 10:00 this program belongs to none of us, 10:03 editor or reader or viewer. 10:06 Religious liberty is as big as humanity 10:10 and everyman's stirrings of conscience. 10:13 It is surely the idA(C)e fixe 10:16 at the center of a gospel proclamation. 10:20 For years I have tried to remind Christian audiences 10:23 that fallen humanity has been released 10:27 from millennia of captivity to sin 10:29 by the actions of a Redeemer. 10:31 We are free, we have freedom, no one can take that from us. 10:37 As Revelation 3:8 says, 10:39 "I have set before you an open door, 10:42 and no one can shut it." 10:44 That's how the Bible puts it. 10:47 And during the time with Liberty, 10:49 I have seen the religious world warp 10:51 and narrow religious liberty, religious freedom 10:56 into an entitlement to restrict others. 11:00 And during that time I have seen a narrowing 11:03 of even the secular concept of liberty, 11:06 concept of freedom. 11:08 After the towers went down in 2001, 11:12 an article in Le Monde magazine in France 11:15 commented on the realism of the moment. 11:18 But more than real, it said: symbolic! 11:22 As I remember, the author wrote that 11:25 "We have reached the point 11:27 where the very idea of freedom, 11:30 itself relatively recent and new, 11:33 is in the process of being replaced by its polar opposite, 11:38 that of a terror of security." 11:42 And so, enhanced interrogations, 11:45 unitary visions of executive power, 11:48 impromptu prayer sessions by insurgents 11:51 in the US House chamber, 11:53 a choice of isolation over worship 11:56 during a pandemic. 11:57 What next? 11:59 God only knows. 12:00 Well, try reading the Book of Revelation. 12:03 So where is my place within all of this? 12:07 This in the editorial is to be my last issue 12:11 as editor before retiring. 12:13 I dare not apply to myself 12:15 General MacArthur's self-pitying epilogue, 12:17 when he was fired by the way. 12:20 This is off text by the president 12:24 for wanting to drop 50 atomic bombs 12:27 on China. 12:28 Thank God, the president fired them. 12:31 But this is what MacArthur said in his own epilogue, he says, 12:35 "Old soldiers never die." 12:37 In fact he said this before Congress as I remember. 12:39 "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away," he said. 12:43 Well, of course we fade away, like the grass, 12:47 according to the Bible, but our actions can endure. 12:52 Instead, for my last thought, 12:54 I'd like to invoke a Russian folk song 12:57 of wartime loss. 12:59 It's worth remembering that Russia lost... 13:02 The figure varies, but at least 20 13:04 and as many as 60 million people 13:06 in World War II, massive loss. 13:08 It was actually the cause of what we used to laugh 13:11 at when I was a kid that make fun of Russia 13:13 with all the women's sweeping the streets. 13:16 Nothing to do with communism, there were just not enough men. 13:20 I always find a deep sadness and melancholy in Russian song 13:24 and literature. 13:25 As a young man of the Vietnam War era, 13:29 I was deeply affected by reading 13:31 Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. 13:34 The song I want to refer to is called Cranes. 13:39 I loved it best sung by the late 13:40 Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. 13:44 And I would recommend it to people 13:46 but the lines that I'd like to lead to, 13:50 maybe I should explain it on this program, 13:52 which I did in my editorial. 13:55 The writer of the song was drawing a parallel, 13:57 between the absent fellows 14:00 who had fought in that great war 14:02 and died and that was, 14:03 you know, just a loss all across the land, 14:05 but they defended their freedom. 14:08 And they were drawing a parallel 14:09 between that real situation and in the evening mist, 14:13 a flotilla, for one of the better word, of cranes. 14:17 There's tall gangly birds, when they fly out, 14:20 they stretch out straight and the wings slowly beating, 14:23 flying goes like through the mist in formation. 14:27 And the lines of that song I say that admit me now are: 14:32 flying in the fog at the end of the day. 14:36 And in those ranks there is a small gap, 14:39 maybe that is the place for me. 14:45 Again, the figure that I picked up from my wife 14:48 and I believe in it truly. 14:50 None of us can know if we're a Moses, 14:53 Daniel or a small bit player. 14:57 I had not even mentioned by name in the Bible, 14:59 but I'm quite certain as there's a God. 15:03 Of course, the Bible says, 15:04 "He that comes to God must first believe that He is..." 15:09 But I'll presume that we believe 15:10 that God exists if there's a God. 15:13 If He has any interest in human affairs, 15:15 which He stated He does, we'll all play a part. 15:19 And we can't know in this life, and these times, 15:24 and in this way, we can't know what part we play. 15:26 But we have to believe that we're part of a whole, 15:30 that we're part of a great movement 15:31 that we're part of a great charter 15:34 and for Seventh-day Adventist, this is three angels' messages. 15:38 Those viewers that have seen an Adventist Church 15:41 might have noticed that in the past, 15:44 at least three little figures, three angels, 15:47 but those are just figures for you and I 15:50 and anyone that wants to join with us 15:52 proclaiming the message for this time. 15:55 But if one or two people keep silent, 15:57 the voice is softer for that 16:00 and it's louder and louder the more people get involved. 16:03 And I feel privileged to have been a part of Liberty magazine 16:06 and this program for quite a few years. 16:09 Not 34 as my predecessor, 16:12 you can't live up to the past in every case. 16:14 And even if I were 35 years, 16:16 there might be someone if time goes on 16:18 who would be 30, 40 years. 16:20 We don't measure it that way, 16:22 but certainly, longer than I probably was due. 16:27 I've been able to speak for religious liberty, 16:29 and I know that the need is greater than ever 16:32 before for somebody. 16:33 The next link in the chain, 16:35 the next crane flying in the mist 16:38 because we are at the end of the day 16:39 to make their voice heard, 16:42 to play their small part. 16:44 Let's take a short break and I'll be back 16:46 to finish this program. |
Revised 2021-12-16