Being Right without Being Obnoxious | Eastern North Carolina Now

    One of my favorite Professors at Southeastern Seminary was Dr. John Carlton. He was from Texas and a bachelor. His family was his students. He taught at both Duke and Southeastern. He could crack you up with his quips. He did a lecture on Dr. Martin Luther King's preaching that brought me to tears as no other professor has. He led me in studying all the great preachers of the ages with the end of the course being a paper examining one who became your favorite.

    My paper was on Dr. Leslie D. Weatherhead of England. He became famous during WWII as the British national radio preacher --- as did Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick of the Riverside Church in NYC. It was a time of awful bombing and brutal death as our soldiers went to Europe and Japan to face a horrible enemy. War had become sophisticated and deadly. Machines were so strong a tank could bounce off large shells. The explosives were so massive human bodies were turned into mush at times. It ended with the worst bomb known to mankind, based on atomic research.

    In a blinding flash of light equal to the sun, the first one obliterated Hiroshima and then a second melted Nagasaki. With that horror, the Japanese gave up and came to the end of their obsessive rule of the Far East. They had brutally marched over the Chinese --- as the Germans had over every country surrounding them in Europe. Too many families saw the lone military car come up the driveway with awful news that a loved one would not ever come home.

    In such circumstances, only faith will see us through. We experience that loss in normal life. It was tougher than words can say when my beloved father died from a missed colon cancer that got to his liver. Even through the end was certain; he faced it with a smile of faith. It was just "one of those things."

    Multiply that by thousands killed every day on the battlefield and you begin to appreciate the kind of faith needed to "keep on keeping on" with those left behind. That was the situation to which great preachers of the 30-40's spoke with compassion and wisdom. It was not entertainment as provided today in many churches. It was meeting the horror of untimely death and destruction with faith that God would see us through. . .

    For a while the nation KNEW we could conquer all problems. The Great Depression was ended and security restored to the investor. Savings in a bank were insured nationally up to $250,000. Wall Street and Investment

    Banks were regulated so they could no longer steal with a stroke of a pen and a lying ledger. Honesty was in vogue as never before. Almighty God was on our side and our cause was righteous. Just coming home was proof you had best go to church on Sunday, obey God and praise his name for restoring us.

    I felt the effects as a child of a godly outlook. All my friends went to church and we read the Bible each day when school started. We pledged allegiance to the flag. We prayed the Lord's Prayer without restraint. The Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers always caught the bad guys. Superman could leap a building in a single bound and bullets bounced off him from crooks. All our stories ended with a happy result. The bad got caught, the good were set right, and no one could live in a better place than America the Beautiful . . .

    Then something happened

      • Korea was overrun by the Communist Army and we were at war again. They called it a "conflict," but men were dying and people were tortured. We were scared.

      • Nuclear testing proliferated. Now, Russia had nuclear power as did we. ICBM meant Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The Cold War was on and, as a child in metro Atlanta, I remember the day parents came and picked us all up to go 20 miles down the road for lunch --- as a practice IF a missile were headed for the center of Atlanta.

      • We had the Kennedy / Nixon bombastic campaign. Nixon was the Conservative / JFK was the Progressive; Nixon favored war / Kennedy peace, Nixon was a traditional Protestant / Kennedy the first Catholic candidate for President / it was as rough-and-tumble as any campaign ever. Kennedy won by a hair --- and we didn't have the predicted demise conservatives had promised.

      • Kennedy called on us to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The Peace Corps was an alternative to Military Service. The Cuban Missile Crisis was handled with diplomacy over atomic bombs. Racial issues brought tension, but the Supreme Court ruled that all should be treated equal in educational opportunities. The South begrudgingly bowed to Integration. Dr. Martin Luther King adopted the peaceful protest way of Christ and Gandhi. Tension was great, but only in Alabama and a few strongly divided places were fire hoses, dogs, bombs set off. It was a mostly peaceful change even though it was traumatic for the South.

      • Kennedy was horribly killed in Dallas, Texas

      • Dr. King was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee

      • The Russians launched Sputnik as the first step into space

      • Lyndon Johnson and Congress signed us into war in Vietnam --- most of their children did not go

      • The race to the moon was on as the "great battle" between the US and Russia

      • We were AT CONSTANT WAR without any worldwide massive battles of two previous wars. Preachers still ministered to the families one-by-one who got that awful news a son or daughter was killed in Southeast Asia in a war that would not end . . .

    This was my experience of the 1950-1970 eras of my youth and young adult life. Those who have not experienced it have no clue. My sister, born 12 years after me, has no real clue. It is one thing to read about it in history. It is quite another to experience it in daily news. The day-by-day angst of fear and battle does something to your soul. It has affected me in several ways:

      • I did not like the way returning soldiers were treated and spat upon. Many had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to the point a dropped wrench at work would set off those awful memories of war. Suicides and homelessness were far too frequent.

      • It has taken some 30 years for PTSD to become an accepted mental state for disability. The VA did not recognize Agent Orange as a chemical poisoning material of war. Our development of Round Up is the offshoot of chemical warfare.

      • We thought racial issues were over, but it is now returned in abundance.

      • The Hippies of the 70's are many of today's Conservatives.

      • I did not like the Supreme Court ruling stopping prayer in our schools. It was an accommodation to a woman named Madelyn Mury O'Hare who was an atheist and did not want her son exposed to "forced prayer."

      • We have the sexual identity issue --- now the Courts are involved in force of law vs. the majority in NC voting for a Marriage Amendment saying only heterosexual people can legally be married. Yesterday, Alabama refused to comply in their state.

      • We have a split between the new Congress and the President hitting the news each day.

      • We have another battle between Muslims of the Middle East and those of us who believe in a just society without beheadings and burnings to make people do as told.

    The angst I experienced in the 50-70's is all around us on steroids, it seems. We are not doing so well these days emotionally. Too many of us are reacting with the "Fight or Flight reaction" to Fear. It is a core part of humanity and our primitive survival instincts. When you are driven to this traumatic reaction, studies show the thinking parts of the brain stop functioning in the majority.

    This is the secret of Conservative commentators these days:

      • Make the listener mad

      • Fill the next 20 minutes with outlandish accusations

      • Expect them to follow your every word without thinking for themselves

    Now---here are the questions:

      1. Am I right about the angst that is destroying and making us afraid of everything?

      2. Is there a better way to approach a life of Joy and Peace?

      3. What can you do to prevent your PTSD from years of angst?

      4. How do we solve problems in a progressive manner over regressing to fear and hate?