Henry G. Ruark - "Power, Pride, and Peril" (July 25, 1965)

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-	Our text is the fourth verse of the 11th chapter	0:12
	of the Book of Genesis.	0:17
	"Then they said, 'Come, let us build us ourselves	0:21
	a city and a tower with its top in the heavens,	0:26
	and let us make a name for ourselves	0:32
	lest we be scattered abroad	0:36
	upon the face of the whole earth.'"	0:39
	This story of the Tower of Babel	0:45
	may seem only an simple and artless tale	0:49
	out of a primitive past,	0:56
	but it is, in fact,	1:00
	a profound analysis of man's nature and destiny.	1:02
	We speak often of the progress of civilization	1:10
	as if only time were needed	1:15
	for us to make of this an ideal world.	1:18
	But this ancient story does not speak so,	1:24
	rather there is in it a strange and ominous note.	1:29
	It seems to warn that the more civilized man becomes,	1:36
	the more progress he makes, and the more power he has,	1:42
	the greater the peril in which he stands.	1:48
	This is so because whatever external structures	1:54
	he may contrive,	1:58
	man remains man.	2:01
	And being what he is,	2:08
	his achievements encourage in him	2:11
	a false pride and sense of power.	2:14
	As Charles Kraft put it,	2:19
	"Men no longer say, 'See what God has done for us,'	2:22
	but, 'See what we have achieved for ourselves.'"	2:29
	His pride grows with his power,	2:36
	until he presumes to storm the gate of heaven	2:41
	and become the master of his own destiny.	2:46
	God commanded men to subdue the earth	2:52
	and intended that they should do this as his servants,	2:55
	and in his name.	2:59
	But now man proposes to do this	3:03
	for his own purposes and glory.	3:07
	So they set about to build a tower	3:12
	whose top would reach into heaven saying,	3:16
	"Let us make a name for ourselves."	3:21
	When this happens, we begin to hear between the lines	3:29
	something like laughter from far above.	3:35
	For from the real heaven where God dwells,	3:41
	this tower which men built is so tiny and insignificant	3:46
	that God has to come down to see it.	3:53
	The words of the psalmist fit here,	4:00
	"He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.	4:02
	The Lord shall have them in derision."	4:08
	Even before this, men had had a premonition of the judgment	4:14
	that was to come upon them.	4:18
	They wanted to build a tower to make a name for themselves.	4:21
	They said, "Lest we be scattered abroad	4:26
	upon the face of the whole earth."	4:30
	Before this, the whole earth had one language.	4:35
	The phrase reminds us of the harmony	4:41
	at the dawn of creation	4:44
	when the morning stars sang together,	4:46
	and all the sons of God shouted for joy.	4:50
	The original language	4:56
	was the language of praise to their Maker,	4:57
	and this was what bound them together.	5:01
	But now when they had dismissed God	5:05
	and would enthrone themselves,	5:10
	there came upon them a confusion of tongue	5:14
	so that they no longer understood each other.	5:16
	And this was symbol of the fact	5:24
	that their world was going to pieces.	5:27
	But this was no arbitrary find.	5:34
	No, it was part of the nature of things.	5:38
	When men get rid of God, they lose their center.	5:44
	If a wheel is off center,	5:51
	it will fly to pieces.	5:53
	And the faster it goes,	5:55
	the more swiftly it will disintegrate.	5:57
	So when man's heart is not fixed	6:01
	on it true center, the Creator,	6:04
	men are scattered and alienated one from another.	6:09
	We sometimes say of ourselves and other people,	6:15
	"We just don't speak the same language."	6:20
	By that we do not mean that one speaks English	6:25
	and the other Chinese.	6:30
	Rather, the same words do not mean the same thing to us.	6:33
	There is no basis of understanding between them and us	6:41
	and so no common ground on which we can meet,	6:45
	no ground upon which we can build	6:51
	a truly human life together.	6:54
	Do we not see this now,	6:58
	when one part of the world means one thing	7:01
	by the word democracy,	7:04
	and another part means something quite different?	7:07
	When humanity loses its center in its Creator,	7:12
	centrifugal forces begin to work, to operate,	7:17
	and thrust them apart from each other.	7:21
	Jacob Burckhardt said of Napoleon	7:29
	that he was the personification of the absence of guarantee.	7:32
	That is to say he had no ultimate loyalty beyond himself,	7:40
	no central conviction that he would not violate.	7:48
	So he could not be depended on.	7:55
	A treaty for him was simply something to use	7:57
	for his own advantage,	8:01
	or to tear it up if it did not serve his interests.	8:04
	And Helmut Thielicke, a German scholar and preacher,	8:10
	says that the real cause of the disaster of Germany	8:14
	in the 1930s and 40s was	8:18
	that Adolf Hitler was the same kind of man.	8:21
	Do we not see this closer at home?	8:28
	During my boyhood,	8:33
	I often heard it said of my grandfather who was a merchant,	8:35
	that his word was his bond.	8:41
	That is, he could be counted on to fulfill his obligations	8:46
	regardless of legal loopholes,	8:52
	or loss to himself,	8:55
	because he had within him a sense of honor	8:57
	that he would not violate.	9:02
	Is this not the real cause of corruption	9:06
	in commerce or government?	9:09
	That some men are governed not by honor,	9:12
	but by their own financial or political advantage.	9:16
	Or to put it positively,	9:22
	why do so many marriages endure	9:25
	in these days of easy divorce?	9:29
	It is not because of an accidental compatibility	9:34
	that makes them happy and joyful all the time together.	9:39
	Rather it is because a man and a woman	9:46
	have committed themselves to each other with a dedication	9:49
	that no dysplasia or difficulty could bring them to deny.	9:57
	Does not this ancient tale describe	10:06
	what is actually happening in our world?	10:08
	Man stands now at the pinnacle of his power.	10:14
	In the physical sense,	10:18
	he is really reaching into the heavens.	10:19
	He has developed the tools, not only to subdue this earth,	10:24
	but perhaps to explore and exploit other worlds as well.	10:29
	He has discovered means of communication	10:37
	which we're hardly dreamt of a half century ago,	10:40
	so that what happens this morning	10:44
	in the far corners of the earth,	10:46
	we can hear and see tonight.	10:49
	Yet spiritually, the a world is not drawn closer together,	10:54
	but thrust further and further apart.	10:59
	Thus in the very moment	11:04
	when mankind has achieved such astonishing things,	11:07
	men are lost in confusion and filled with fear.	11:13
	It is the fear of man himself.	11:22
	That being what he is,	11:26
	he may use this incredible power to destroy mankind	11:29
	from the face of the earth.	11:36
	The danger is not in the power.	11:41
	As Frank Laubach has pointed out,	11:45
	"A nuclear bomb can neither make itself nor explode itself,	11:48
	the danger is in the mind and heart of man."	11:57
	Is there then any answer to our human plight?	12:08
	Turn to the opening verses of the next chapter of Genesis.	12:15
	There we are told that the Lord said to Abram,	12:23
	"Go out from your country to the land that I will show you,	12:28
	and I will bless you and make your name great."	12:35
	This is history.	12:44
	The name Babel probably comes from the fact	12:47
	that the tower was built in a land once called Babylon.	12:50
	The truth is that no single name	12:58
	of those who built that tower now is known.	13:01
	And Babylon has long since been a vanished empire	13:07
	with only archeological remains to witness the fact	13:12
	that it once existed.	13:18
	But the name Abraham is today familiar	13:22
	in millions of households.	13:27
	It is so significant in human history	13:32
	and in present human thought	13:36
	that the secular magazine "Life"	13:40
	devoted a major section of a special issue last December	13:42
	to telling his story and discussing what it means to mankind	13:48
	in the modern world.	13:55
	This is not because Abraham was such a good or great man.	13:59
	The clue is rather in the fact that Paul noted,	14:06
	"Abraham believed God,	14:12
	and it was reckoned to him for righteousness."	14:16
	That is to say,	14:23
	it was nothing special about the man himself.	14:24
	The Bible is the most realistic book in the world.	14:29
	And I would say this is true in comparison	14:37
	with all of the realism in novels	14:39
	that we have had in recent years.	14:42
	The Bible portrays human nature as it is.	14:46
	So it describes Abraham as a primitive sheepherder,	14:50
	and tells of some things he did	14:56
	which seem to us quite contemptible.	14:59
	But for all his faults,	15:06
	it is recorded of him that he trusted God	15:09
	and in the crucial choices of his life	15:15
	tried to obey God's commands.	15:19
	Abraham did not make a name for himself.	15:25
	It was not his own achievement,	15:29
	but something given him by another.	15:31
	It was because of his faith	15:38
	that God made his name great.	15:41
	In his book on the Outer Banks of North Carolina,	15:49
	David Stick tells of an interesting phenomenon.	15:54
	Records show that over the years,	15:59
	the inlets along the banks are constantly shifting,	16:03
	sometimes closing and reopening	16:08
	or sometimes being replaced by other inlets elsewhere.	16:11
	But through all these changes,	16:17
	there is an almost imperceptible but steady movement	16:21
	of the inlets to the south.	16:27
	This is because the prevailing currents	16:33
	of the ocean at that point,	16:37
	deposit sand on the northern banks of the inlets,	16:40
	while the vast volume of water flowing down from the uplands	16:45
	into the sounds and seeking outlet	16:50
	tend to cut away the Southern shore.	16:55
	Along the coast, when one buys waterfront property,	17:01
	the line is defined at the water's edge.	17:07
	Thus, if one invest in land	17:14
	on the southern side of an inlet,	17:17
	his property will be slowly eaten away.	17:21
	But if he buys on the northern shore,	17:27
	his property will steadily appreciate	17:31
	in extent and value.	17:35
	Our story out of Genesis reminds us	17:41
	that there is a current in history	17:44
	which can best be described as the will of God.	17:48
	Indeed, I know no other way to describe it.	17:55
	This will is not always easily discernible,	18:01
	and often it seems to be thwarted or even non-existent.	18:06
	But when men stand against it,	18:14
	they are swept away like the sands	18:17
	that are washed into the sea.	18:22
	If, though, they discern this movement in history	18:27
	and seek to align themselves with it,	18:33
	human life prospers	18:39
	in the deepest and finest and most enduring sense.	18:42
	This is something I think of what Paul meant when he said	18:50
	that Abraham believed God,	18:55
	and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.	19:00
	And this is the only true greatness	19:07
	that is possible to us men	19:11
	who are of the earth.	19:16
	O Almighty God,	19:30
	who has created and has governed the world	19:32
	and they that dwell therein,	19:38
	grant that what we have said with our lips,	19:42
	we may believe in our hearts,	19:47
	and what we believe in our hearts,	19:51
	we may practice in our lives	19:54
	through the grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord.	19:58
	Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly	20:04
	above all that we ask or think,	20:08
	according to the power that worketh in us,	20:12
	unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus	20:16
	throughout all ages,	20:22
	world without end.	20:25

Item Info

Title:

Henry G. Ruark - "Power, Pride, and Peril" (July 25, 1965)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4kw5ck3t

Date:

July 25, 1965

Speaker:

Ruark, Henry G.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0300
ref5805_h34
uachapelsermaud
duke:627958
dcrau002299
ark:/87924/r4kw5ck3t
dbdc8073-49a6-4fe8-b83e-b16e8299d105

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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

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Henry G. Ruark - "Power, Pride, and Peril" (July 25, 1965)

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