Howard C. Wilkinson - "When Light Is Darkness" (May 19, 1963)

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	(soft music)	0:09
	(music tempo rises)	0:29
	♪ Praise God from Whom all blessings flow ♪	0:41
	♪ Praise Him all creatures here below ♪	0:49
	♪ Praise Him above ye heavenly host ♪	0:56
	♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪	1:05
	♪ Amen ♪	1:16
-	Almighty God, from whose bounty we have all received,	1:24
	accept this offering of thy people.	1:30
	And so follow it with thy blessing	1:33
	that it may promote peace and goodwill among men,	1:36
	and to advance thy kingdom	1:40
	through Jesus Christ our Savior, amen.	1:42
	(soft music)	1:47
	I am a little bit surprised at the number of students	2:14
	who have come to the university service of worship today.	2:17
	In spite of the fact that final examinations	2:21
	are in full bloom.	2:24
	I do not know whether this means that you are strong	2:26
	and have not been overwhelmed by your exams,	2:29
	or whether it means that you have been overwhelmed	2:32
	and have come here seeking divine aid	2:34
	for the rest of the distance.	2:36
	Whatever the explanation, I'm glad you have come.	2:39
	The text of the sermon this morning	2:44
	is Matthew 6:22 and 23.	2:46
	The words of our Lord Jesus Christ.	2:51
	"The eye is the lamp of the body.	2:55
	So if your eye is sound,	3:00
	your whole body will be full of light.	3:03
	But if your eye is not sound,	3:06
	your whole body will be full of darkness.	3:09
	If therefore the light that is in you is darkness,	3:12
	how great is that darkness?"	3:18
	This is a very strange teaching, isn't it?	3:23
	On the face of it, it appears to be nonsense.	3:27
	If anyone else, besides our Lord had given us this teaching,	3:31
	we would dismiss the teaching without any further thought.	3:35
	Knowing as we do, however,	3:40
	that Christ very often packed profound truth	3:42
	into strange and paradoxical statements,	3:45
	it certainly is worth our while	3:48
	to take a look at this rather odd statement.	3:51
	"The eye is the lamp of the body.	3:56
	If therefore your eye is sound,	4:01
	your whole body will be full of light.	4:04
	But if your eye is not sound,	4:07
	your whole body will be full of darkness.	4:11
	If therefore the light that is in you is darkness,	4:15
	how great is that darkness?"	4:21
	We may be helped to understand	4:26
	this strange teaching of Christ	4:29
	if we will approach it in three steps.	4:31
	I would like for us to stand on the first step	4:36
	and look at this teaching and see in focus,	4:39
	an implied truth in it.	4:43
	Which is that when man finds himself in darkness	4:46
	and seeks light, not every switch	4:52
	which he flips turns on light.	4:57
	When man finds himself confronted by a problem,	5:03
	not everything which he does in response	5:10
	to that problem situation becomes a solution to the problem.	5:14
	Perhaps the most convincing and tragic illustration	5:22
	of this truth could be taken from the headlines	5:25
	of any day's newspaper.	5:28
	Today's, yesterday's, tomorrow's.	5:30
	When the diplomats and ministers of the various nations	5:35
	of the world meet to discuss the problems	5:38
	of international relations,	5:41
	they always are mindful of the fact	5:45
	that mankind today stands	5:50
	on the brink of utter annihilation.	5:53
	And that the success or failure of their negotiations	5:57
	will have some bearing upon the possibility	6:02
	of the annihilation of the human race.	6:07
	Now, how did we get in that situation?	6:11
	Why is it that we find ourselves in this fix today?	6:14
	How did it happen?	6:20
	Well, it happened this way.	6:22
	We in the United States wanted to develop a weapon	6:25
	that would be a more deterring weapon,	6:31
	than the best one of our enemies.	6:36
	Which they developed as a deterrent	6:39
	against our last best one.	6:43
	Which we developed as a threat or deterrent	6:46
	against the last previous best weapon of our enemy,	6:50
	which in turn, well, you know how the tennis game goes.	6:55
	Now, what started this gruesome tennis game	7:00
	of international relations	7:04
	in which Russia, the United States, England, France,	7:07
	the other nations, began this spiraling process	7:11
	of developing a worst weapon than the other	7:16
	and he in turn a worst weapon than that.	7:19
	Strangely enough, it all began	7:24
	because people like you and me,	7:27
	people like the Russians, the French and the Germans,	7:31
	found themselves possessed of a desire to live in peace.	7:35
	To be free from anxiety,	7:42
	to be rid of the threat of attack from without.	7:46
	And so finding ourselves confronted by the problem	7:51
	of living at peace, we could solve that problem	7:55
	by creating a situation as a human race,	8:00
	which has placed the nations of the world	8:03
	in the greatest paralleling and anxiety,	8:05
	which we have known since the beginning of time.	8:09
	Not everything which mankind does when he is confronted	8:13
	by a problem, is a solution to that problem.	8:16
	Not every switch we turn on when we find ourselves	8:22
	in darkness, is in fact light.	8:25
	All right, now let's move to a second step	8:31
	and take another look at this teaching of Christ.	8:33
	And we will focus our attention upon a truth	8:37
	which is embedded in this teaching,	8:41
	which is that sometimes,	8:44
	when we are confronted by a problem,	8:47
	the scheme which we devised to solve that problem,	8:51
	becomes the origin of a new problem.	8:55
	Sometimes when we are confronted by a disease,	9:01
	the medicine which we take as a cure for that disease,	9:04
	has in it the seeds of a new disease.	9:09
	Sometimes the light which we turn on to illuminate	9:14
	our darkness, is worse than the original darkness.	9:18
	A few summers ago, my family went to the beach	9:25
	for a two weeks vacation.	9:27
	The evening we arrived at the beach,	9:31
	my son complained of some itching and swelling of his hands.	9:34
	When I looked at them,	9:38
	I saw some blisters there and it was apparent	9:39
	that before we had left Durham,	9:42
	he had encountered some poison ivy.	9:43
	Well, we were gonna take care	9:46
	of that situation very quickly and easily.	9:47
	We went down to the drugstore,	9:50
	asked the druggist what he had	9:51
	that was good for poison ivy.	9:53
	He promptly gave us some soap from the shelf and he said,	9:55
	"Just rub this on, wash your hands in this.	9:58
	And this will put the poison ivy under control."	10:02
	We took the soap and went home.	10:06
	I got up quite a good lather and washed his hands	10:09
	in this soapy lather.	10:14
	Then we all retired in the confident assurance,	10:18
	that with the rising of the sun the next morning	10:20
	we would be commencing a glorious vacation.	10:23
	But strangely the next morning,	10:28
	not only were his hands more swollen and itching worse,	10:31
	but my hands were swollen and were itching.	10:36
	And I came to the conclusion that this must be	10:40
	because I had rubbed off some of the poison ivy juice	10:42
	from his hands onto mine as I was washing his hands.	10:45
	And so I decided that what we needed	10:48
	was more frequent applications of this soapy solution.	10:50
	And so for the next several days,	10:55
	he and I lived in an almost literal leather continuously.	10:57
	Now, to our surprise, not only did we not get better,	11:03
	we got dramatically and painfully worse	11:09
	until our hands were badly swollen and very painful.	11:12
	At this stage, we consulted the doctor.	11:17
	Who told us that this soap contained a certain ingredient	11:19
	to which many people were violently allergic	11:23
	and we were two of those people.	11:26
	And he said we might still be able to enjoy	11:29
	part of our vacation if we would take Cortisone	11:31
	to overcome the effects of this ingredient in the soap.	11:35
	And so he gave us Cortisone to take by mouth.	11:39
	After a few days of taking the Cortisone,	11:44
	our hands improved a great deal.	11:46
	Now, whether this cured the poison ivy	11:50
	is not known because it got lost in a worst problem.	11:54
	It occurred to me after we'd been taking the Cortisone	11:58
	for several days to inquire	12:00
	if the prolonged use of Cortisone	12:02
	might bring on any additional problems.	12:05
	The doctor said that some people who have taken Cortisone	12:09
	over a period of some days find that	12:12
	pockets of tuberculosis germs,	12:15
	which nature has sealed off in the lungs	12:17
	are released into the body and the patient gets TB.	12:19
	And that some people who have taken Cortisone	12:23
	over a period of time have required psychiatric treatments.	12:26
	We decided, therefore,	12:31
	to be content with the ailments we had,	12:32
	we stopped taking the Cortisone, our hands improved enough	12:35
	so that by the end of the two weeks	12:40
	we were able to help a little bit with the packing	12:42
	to return home at the end of our glorious vacation.	12:45
	Now, I mentioned this this morning,	12:49
	not to give advice on how to avoid becoming involved	12:51
	in the Ivy league or to recite family reminiscences,	12:56
	but to point out that Jesus was saying in this teaching	13:01
	that sometimes that which we use,	13:05
	that which we take into our bodies, into our souls,	13:10
	in the name of a cure, in the name of light,	13:15
	in the name of an answer, in the name of a solution	13:18
	to our problems, occasionally maybe not simply no light,	13:22
	no solution, no cure,	13:28
	but maybe the origin of far worse conditions	13:30
	than we previously had.	13:33
	Jesus was talking here about	13:37
	what Buttrick calls the optic nerve of the soul.	13:39
	That is to say that within our minds and hearts,	13:43
	through which light allegedly comes,	13:47
	and if what we take into our souls through this optic nerve	13:51
	is not light but darkness, is not a cure but a new disease,	13:57
	then this darkness, this new disease	14:03
	becomes compounded in its destructiveness	14:06
	because we look upon it as light, as a solution,	14:10
	as an answer, as a cure,	14:13
	and it is the opening of new problems.	14:17
	Now, it is very important that we understand	14:23
	the process by which this happens.	14:27
	That this can happen in the process	14:29
	of allegedly getting light.	14:32
	A few years ago, the United States cooperated	14:36
	with other nations in the world,	14:39
	in the observance of what was called	14:41
	the International Geophysical Year.	14:42
	Since the International Geophysical Year has ended,	14:47
	a number of our scientists have been evaluating	14:50
	and assessing the significance of the data	14:53
	that was collected during that year.	14:57
	I have recently been quite interested to read the reports	15:00
	of three of our leading scientists who participated in	15:03
	and directed the observance of this IGY.	15:06
	Dr. William Don, who was the chief United States scientist	15:13
	in the Atlantic Island Observatory's Program	15:17
	during that year has written a report.	15:19
	Dr. Joseph Kaplan,	15:22
	who was chairman of the United States National Committee	15:23
	for the International Geophysical Year has written a report.	15:26
	And Dr. Maurice Hughley,	15:30
	who was president of the American Geophysical Union	15:32
	at that time, has written.	15:34
	Something which all three of these men	15:37
	have mentioned is a very great significance	15:39
	in connection with what we are discussing now.	15:42
	They report that we have learned in this IGY,	15:46
	that the Earth is becoming progressively warmer.	15:53
	That during the last seven years,	15:59
	the average temperature of the Earth	16:01
	has been 10 degrees warmer than previously.	16:04
	Now, for some of you who do not like extremely cold weather,	16:10
	this may seem to be good news.	16:12
	But these three scientists caution us	16:16
	against becoming overly optimistic about this.	16:19
	Because they say, "This very warming trend of the Earth	16:22
	is bringing on a new ice age."	16:28
	And that as a result of the warming trend,	16:31
	the Northern half of the world will eventually	16:37
	come to be covered by a heavy coat of ice and snow,	16:42
	which will require 11,000 years to melt after it happens.	16:47
	They say that we may begin making preparations for this	16:54
	because it will be here in another 6 or 8,000 years.	16:57
	Now, they explain the process by which this is happening.	17:02
	This warming trend is melting the glaciers and the ice packs	17:08
	of Norway, Sweden, the Arctic area,	17:15
	they say that when it continues that all of the glaciers	17:21
	and ice of Alaska will be melted.	17:26
	Of course, every true Texan knows	17:30
	that when all this melting takes place,	17:32
	Texas will again be the largest state in the union.	17:34
	But this was not a part of the report	17:38
	of these three scientists, it was added by an editor.	17:40
	The point being that when all this frozen water is melted,	17:44
	and runs down into the ocean,	17:49
	it will raise the level of the ocean enough	17:50
	so that the warm waters of the Gulf stream	17:53
	will be able to pass over the shallows	17:55
	between Greenland and Norway.	17:58
	And the warm waters of the Gulf stream	18:02
	will flow into the Arctic ocean,	18:04
	under the Arctic ice cap, and will melt it.	18:07
	Making out of the Arctic ice cap, an ocean of water	18:10
	and the cold winds blowing from the North Pole to Canada	18:15
	and the United States will be heavily laden with moisture.	18:18
	They will dump snow and sleet and ice upon all of Canada	18:23
	and as far south as St. Louis in the United States.	18:29
	And when this process has been completed,	18:32
	we will have a new ice age.	18:35
	And this is a result of the warming trend now going on.	18:37
	So that the process of want is bringing on	18:47
	a new ice age.	18:52
	Now, Jesus said that the effort to get light	18:54
	in through the optic nerve of the soul,	19:00
	through the eye into the body,	19:03
	if it brings in darkness instead of light,	19:04
	will bring in a greater darkness than we had before.	19:08
	Pastoral counselors are saying more and more	19:13
	that the great problem with which individuals	19:16
	are being confronted that leads them to counselors,	19:19
	is the problem of personal insecurity.	19:23
	A great sense of insecurity.	19:26
	Now, what do people do when they feel insecure?	19:30
	They seek security wherever they can find it.	19:33
	And those who find that security in God	19:35
	find a security which is lasting.	19:37
	But those who find their security, their sense of security	19:41
	fulfilled in a bank account, in a big paycheck,	19:44
	a large house, a beautiful car, or a beautiful body,	19:48
	are finding a kind of security which the world can give	19:54
	but which at last the world can also take away.	19:57
	And we know instinctively	20:01
	that if our security is insecurity,	20:02
	we have laid the foundation for a greater insecurity	20:05
	in our hearts and lives.	20:08
	And there are many people today	20:11
	who seem to have outer security,	20:13
	who have a knowing sense of inner insecurity,	20:16
	because as Jesus said, paraphrasing him,	20:18
	"If the security that is in you is insecurity,	20:21
	how great is that insecurity?"	20:24
	Now then taking the third step,	20:30
	we are in position to look directly at the truth	20:34
	which Jesus gave in this teaching.	20:38
	Which is that he himself is the light of the world.	20:41
	He said, "I am the light of the world.	20:47
	If you abide in me, you will not be in darkness	20:50
	but you will walk in light."	20:53
	Jesus Christ is the genuine cure.	20:57
	He does not have in him the seeds of a new disease.	21:02
	He is the true solution to the biting problems of mankind.	21:06
	And if we take his solution,	21:12
	we do not find that we are appropriating new problems.	21:15
	To understand something of how this works,	21:22
	we should hear the way George Bernard Shaw has put it.	21:24
	The later years of his life,	21:28
	a correspondent asked Shaw to explain why it was	21:30
	he began to write plays.	21:33
	Shaw said, "As a young man I felt two things.	21:36
	First, that I knew what the solution to the social evils	21:40
	and ills of mankind is.	21:47
	And number two, I felt a burning desire	21:51
	to help provide that solution.	21:55
	I felt that it was my obligation to provide the answers	21:59
	to the great vexing problems of mankind's questions."	22:04
	So he said, "It occurred to me that the best way	22:09
	to get over to people, these solutions and these answers,	22:11
	was to incorporate them in plays, and so I wrote plays."	22:15
	"The reason for this," he said was,	22:21
	"That doctors had told me	22:22
	that if you wanted to give a patient medicine,	22:26
	you needed to sugar coat the medicine.	22:28
	So I put the solution in drama."	22:30
	But he said, "At the end of my life,	22:35
	I must now admit reluctantly that I failed miserably.	22:37
	Because, " he said, "The people came to my plays,	22:42
	they licked off the sugar coating and threw away the pill.	22:46
	And the worst part about it was," he said	22:52
	"that when they quoted my witticisms,	22:54
	they thought they were quoting the solution	22:58
	to the problems of the world.	23:01
	And that," he said, "Was worse	23:04
	than if they had left my plays entirely alone.	23:06
	Because if they had not thought	23:10
	that in quoting the witticisms, they were quoting the cures.	23:15
	They at least would have been open minded enough	23:19
	to look for the cures to society."	23:22
	And he was a very disillusioned man	23:25
	because his audiences had settled for the sugar coating	23:28
	and had thrown away the medicine.	23:32
	Now it is very important, it seems to me,	23:35
	that the students of Duke University	23:37
	at this point take a straight look	23:39
	at the university education,	23:42
	which you are engaged in obtaining.	23:44
	Some of you, two weeks from now will be obtaining a degree	23:47
	from this university and will be, as you say,	23:52
	going out into life.	23:55
	What does this university education mean to you?	23:58
	What will it be?	24:02
	Will it be light or will it be darkness?	24:04
	Will it be a sugar coat or will it be the medicine?	24:08
	The college education in the United States,	24:15
	has from the very beginning of our colleges,	24:19
	been thought of as light, as enlightenment,	24:23
	as a cure for the social diseases,	24:28
	as an answer to the great problems of mankind.	24:31
	And we have said, "Let us send our young people to college	24:35
	and to the university, they will be coming enlightened.	24:38
	They will be wise people.	24:41
	They will be people not simply who will know	24:44
	how properly to conjugate a verb	24:46
	or how to add and subtract in mathematics.	24:48
	But beyond all that, they will be wise people,	24:52
	who will know what to do when there is a racial problem.	24:56
	Who will know what to do about the problem of poverty.	24:59
	Who will know what to do about political issues.	25:02
	They will not simply be people who will be skilled,	25:07
	who will have factual information,	25:10
	but people who will have wisdom."	25:13
	But at last we in the 20th century	25:16
	have learned how to lick off the sugar coating	25:18
	of a fatter paycheck that comes from a college education	25:21
	and to throw away the medicine.	25:25
	We have learned how to get the skills,	25:27
	the factual information, and to leave wisdom aside.	25:29
	Now, what is it that I'm saying?	25:35
	Well, I'm saying this,	25:37
	that out of the first 120 institutions of higher learning	25:39
	that were founded in the United States of America,	25:43
	more than 100, more than 100 out of 120	25:46
	were founded in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ	25:52
	and for the glory of God.	25:55
	And for 150 years in America,	25:58
	higher education was understood	26:01
	by our people as Christian higher education.	26:03
	And the graduates of those institutions were expected	26:07
	not simply, to know facts about chemistry,	26:09
	but they were expected to be people	26:13
	who had the wisdom of Christ.	26:14
	Who understood their factual education	26:17
	in terms of the meaning of life,	26:21
	the origin of life and the destiny of life,	26:23
	as given in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.	26:26
	And so a college education, a university education,	26:30
	got a good name and was understood to be light.	26:34
	And the optic nerve of our civilization	26:39
	was the one through which education from our colleges	26:43
	and universities came into the soul of our nation.	26:48
	College was that optic nerve.	26:52
	But if through that optic nerve comes darkness	26:56
	instead of light, how great will that darkness be?	27:01
	It will be great because our nation will expect	27:07
	what comes from our colleges and universities to be light.	27:12
	But if through them, darkness comes,	27:15
	it will be a great darkness.	27:19
	Somebody may say,	27:23
	"Are you suggesting here that there's some kind of a thing	27:24
	known as Christian chemistry or Baptist biology	27:27
	or Methodist mathematics, Presbyterian physics?"	27:30
	Not at all.	27:35
	There is no Christian chemistry,	27:37
	but there is such a thing as a Christian chemist.	27:39
	And there is such a thing as an unchristian chemist.	27:43
	There is such a thing as a person being an educated man	27:48
	within the context of motives that lead him	27:55
	to use his education for the welfare of mankind	28:00
	rather than for selfish aggrandizement.	28:03
	And if a person is simply coming to college	28:07
	to get a college education	28:10
	in order that he may have a fatter paycheck,	28:12
	in order that he may minister more successfully	28:15
	to his selfishness,	28:18
	then the light that is in him is not only darkness,	28:20
	it is a very great darkness.	28:24
	Enlightened selfishness is more destructive	28:27
	than ignorant selfish.	28:30
	Educated meanness is far more destructive in the world	28:32
	than uneducated meanness.	28:36
	And it makes a difference whether a man splits the Adam	28:38
	in order to fashion a weapon that will kill	28:42
	eight million men, women, and children,	28:45
	or whether he splits the Adam	28:47
	in order that he might be able to learn how to cure cancer.	28:48
	It makes a vast deal of difference.	28:53
	What we use our college education for.	28:56
	And those of you who are about to complete	28:59
	your university education here at Duke,	29:01
	should seriously ask yourselves the question,	29:04
	"Am I simply ministering to my selfishness,	29:07
	or am I preparing myself to be a part of the solution	29:12
	of the world's great problems?"	29:16
	Is the light that is in me going to be darkness or light?	29:19
	If it is going to be darkness,	29:26
	it will be a greater darkness,	29:27
	than if you had never come to the university.	29:29
	May God grant that the university in light,	29:33
	that isn't all of you, maybe the light of Christ.	29:38
	In order that you may be a part of the world's answer,	29:43
	a part of the world's cure.	29:49
	And with Christ, a part of the world's light.	29:52
	Oh God, the author of light,	30:01
	grant that all darkness in our hearts might be driven out	30:04
	by the light of Christ.	30:08
	And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ	30:10
	be with you all.	30:12
	(soft music)	30:21

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "When Light Is Darkness" (May 19, 1963)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r47h1jn79

Date:

May 19, 1963

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0228
ref5661_e39
uachapelsermaud
duke:628245
dcrau002234
ark:/87924/r47h1jn79
87ca35db-c06e-4d9d-812d-f4bcdad65700

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "When Light Is Darkness" (May 19, 1963)

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