Transcript: The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence

Video Transcript – Unit 09 - Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace Affluence (Dr. Francis Schaeffer)

Modern man's humanistic thought has come down in many, many forms, until at a certain point of history, now we put it in the

early 1960s, people heard the same message coming out from from absolutely every side, where they read from the book of

philosophy, or they went into the Art Museum, or they listened to music, or they read a modern novel, or they went to the

philosophic cinema, it was always the same. And that is that, on the humanistic basis, reason, leads to despair, to know

answers, and people should try to find answers in the area of non reason. It has brought people to the place where there

were no fixed values whatsoever, these were completely gone. And the great majority of people had come to the place where

they had only two horrendous values, absolutely horrible values, personal peace, and a flots. Now, because I'm going to use

these terms over and over again, in this episode, let me define them carefully. And I'd urge you, please listen with care. As I

use the term personal peace, I mean, I want to be left alone. And I don't care what happens to the man across the street, or

across the world. I want my own lifestyle, to be undisturbed, regardless of what it will mean even to my own children, and

grandchildren. And that's what I mean by personal peace. Affluence means things, things, things, always more things, and

success seen as an abundance of things.

In the early 60s, a whole generation had been injected by the teaching, that reason leads only to pessimism in the area of a

meaningful life. of any values. Students have been hearing this from the professors for a long, long time. A matter of fact, that

was a generation that had never been taught anything else. But there was an inconsistency here because most of these

professors who taught that life had no meaning. And there were no fixed values. They didn't live that way. They were living in

the memory of the past. But we should not have been surprised. There is a certain point of time, one generation would act

really act upon what they had been taught. The students looked around them. And they saw these two horrible values of

personal peace and fluency being on every side, and they revolted. That revolution was Berkeley 1964. Looking back into

that, which is now past history, we don't understand where we are today, unless we take a moment to understand the flow

through Berkeley of 1964. They really wanted to escape the two values of personal peace in the affluency and they did it in

two different ways. First of all, came the drug scene, the hippie scene. And we we've already seen in a previous episode, that

Aldous Huxley said that as reason does not humanistic reason doesn't give meaning to life. We can find objective truth, give

drugs to well people, in order that they might try to find truth inside of their own head. The hippie world followed this and they

followed it very explicitly. It was an ideology to them. Let's not make any mistake back in those days. It was really an

ideology. They really believed in it. They really believed that if you could just take and put drugs into the drinking water, LSD

and of drinking water of the reservoirs of the cities of the world. You had enough people turned on, that civilizations problems

would decide. They believed it with all their heart. About the same time at Berkeley, there rose a second element in this

attempt to escape these two terrible values of personal peace and affluency. This was the Free Speech Movement. At first,

the Free Speech Movement on Sproul Plaza was neither left nor right. It was simply a desire to demand that they have a right

to have freedom to have political rallies on Sproul Plaza. Quickly it slipped into the new left following Mark Kuza. Mark Kuza

is a German philosopher, a Marxist, and at that time, he was teaching at San Diego. This spread over the whole world we can

think for example, the Paris riots in 1968. Here they are seeking freedom from these two values, they had the right analysis,

let me say that as somebody who was older, they had the right analysis. This was where our society was with just two terrible

values of personal peace and fluency. But the tragedy was, they tried the wrong solutions. The drug culture came it was

height Woodstock, at the festival, there in 1969.

At anathema in 1969, there was another festival, and the Hells Angels who were hired to police the ground, killed at least one

man and the Rolling Stone magazine came out and quoted someone after that is saying, We've lost our Age of Innocence.

The drug culture was finished, completely finished after the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, which ended so ugly in such an

ugly fashion, in Europe. After that drug taking change, mind you, not less people taking drugs, unhappily, but no longer taking

them as an ideology. The unhappy thing is probably more people are taking drugs, and taking them at a younger age. But

drug taking as an ideology was absolutely done. The new left went the same way gradually ground down. It brought forth

naturally, violence, violence in the United States, violence in Europe, and the idealistic young people really didn't like the

violence that it just reasonably naturally brought forth. In 1970, the radical students bombed the University of Wisconsin lab

building killing a graduate student. Bombs continued to be planted in the United States, and a small hardcore of radicals

continues to exist. But the violence of the new left climaxing and the bombing of this laboratory building made most young

people in the United States no longer see the new left as a whole. So here the students were, and they had tried to escape

these two awful values of personal peace and affluency. And now they're two hopes, the new left and the drug thing was

gone. What were they left? They were left with apathy. apathy. Many, many people were so glad when the universities

quieted down at that time. And in one way, it's dead quiet down. But I could have wept and I didn't weep, as I met these

young people after this. All I had left was apathy. They had tried to escape their parents poor values, or society's poor values,

and they're going around in circles come back and ended one inch lower. And now, apathy rule with them. And what was left,

the two values of personal peace and the affluency now ruled Supreme, turning away from the United States, a dominant,

strong minority in Europe, and a majority of students, for example, as in South America and other parts of the world, they turn

to a new leap into the area of non reason. And that is they committed themselves the Marxist Leninist or the Mayist line. Why

is this a new kind of leap into the area of non reason as utopian in a bad sense, as the old drug leap? Well, I'll tell you why.

It's simply because everywhere where Marxist Leninism has come to power, it has always meant oppression, always. These

young people just close their eyes to them. They close their eyes the fact that oppression is a part of the communistic

system. No one has pointed this out more towards his emphasis, as he's brought it into the Western world in his writings and

lectures, and he has said that 15 million inmates of prison camps existed at one time in Saudi Russia. He has said that from

the communist revolution in Russia until only 1959 66 million people died for political reasons. So everywhere one looks in

the communist world, it always brings forth internal oppression. But we must never forget it also brings forth external

oppression, we can think of various things. But the thing which quickly comes to our mind is Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. I

was living in Switzerland in November 4, 1956 when the Russian tanks moved into Hungary and at that particular time, I had

a radio with a shortwave band all day long. I listened to the Hungarian students speaking in English sometime broken English

sometime good English, hoping the external world would listen. I was marked by that day, I'll never forget it. Never. Those

voices pleading for help.

The newspapers rally after they've carried a picture of a beautiful, open faced, lovely girl called Ilan troth. The picture is a

picture of Ilan troth on trial for her life, because of her part, in trying to stand against the external oppression. That Marxist

Leninism naturally brings with it. She was hanged on July 1957. Marxist Leninism, is a leap. So for another reason, we've

been a more basic one than the one I've given. It's found Foundation, its philosophy is materialism. Now all through this

series, we shown that humanism man beginning from himself, cannot generate any real values or meaning or any real dignity

to man. And here is a system that is built completely unconsciously and totally on materialism. There is no place for the

dignity of man in a materialistic system, so called communism with the human face of that some of the thinkers in communist

control country's approach played for and some outside of communist control countries have also played for it isn't possible.

It just isn't possible on the basis of materialism. And yet, strangely enough, the young people and older ones in non

communist countries are caught by the idealistic Marxism Leninism. The reason is, is that there's so much talk of dignity,

dignity of man and be treated better. Where does this come from on a materialistic base? It doesn't, you will know what it is,

I'll tell you. There's only one way to understand idealistic utopian Marxism, and that is that it's a Christian heresy. Idealist

utopian communism simply reaches over takes these words, which could never be produced out of materialistic philosophy,

brings them back uses them separated from the natural results of their own possession, and in doing so, catches these who

are caught by idealistic Marxian Leninism. But when Marxian Leninism comes to power, it's a different story. It's always

oppression, and the will of the majority suddenly has no meaning. Not only does the dignity of the individual cease to exist,

but the will of the majority has no meaning either. Now, we must understand there are two streams of Leninism and Marxism,

there must be kept separate, and we must see these two streams clearly. The first is the idealistic, utopian stream. These

usually young people, though sometimes older, who have leapt into the area of non reason to accept Marxian Leninism.

That's one stream. The second stream is the hardcore, Orthodox Communist Party members in various countries outside of

the Communist bloc. We find that the danger is that people who have only the two values of personal peace and affluency,

they seem to be promised peace and affluency by communism. Nobody knows what great majorities of these people will do.

Nobody knows. More than that, we must see there's a danger in that these two streams of the idealistic Marxist Leninism and

the hard core Marxism Leninism Orthodox party could flow together in a country at a given moment of history and create a

situation that would be forever irreversible. And that is a very real danger. The United States has also its marks very much

upon it, and no more so in any area than the area of the generation of arbitrary law. I want to talk about arbitrary law, at some

length, actually, man demanded to be autonomous from God and God's revelation. And what this has resulted in is relativity

not only in personal and public morals, but in law as law.

The nature which men try to build their lawn, as we remember back in one of the previous episodes, just is not sufficient for

the simple reason that nature is both cruel and non cruel. And as such, you cannot build a stable system of law on nature.

And what we're left with, with the in like humanist flow today in the United States is purely variable, sociological law. Now by

sociological, what I mean, is law that is merely based on what some group decides, is good for society at a given moment,

the man who opened the door for this, perhaps more than anyone else, was Oliver Wendell Holmes. And he wrote in a letter,

I'll quote him exactly. The ultimate question is, what did the dominant forces of the community want? And do they want it hard

enough to disregard whatever, inhibitions stand in the way? This was Oliver Wendell Holmes, quite a few years ago. And

really what it amounts to is purely variable law. Much modern law is not consistent with the law that has preceded it. And as a

matter of fact, we must say that the Constitution of the United States today can be made to say almost anything on the basis

of sociological variable law. Now, we must understand that law today is not just variable law, but that the courts are actually

making law. They're not only interpreting the law that the legislative is made, but they actually generate law. Now, everybody

knows who knows anything. All about these things that arbitrary law dominates completely in communist countries.

But what most people don't realize is that on the humans flow, arbitrary law has swept over into the Western world, as well,

for like us an illustration. Consider the human fetus, the unborn baby. In January 1973, the United States Supreme Court

passed the abortion law. Professor Witherspoon of the University of Texas School of Law writes, the court held that the

unborn child is not a person within the meaning of the 14th amendment, so as to strip all unborn children of all constitutional

protection for their lives, liberty and property. This ruling by the United States Supreme Court is a totally arbitrary absolute.

First of all, it is arbitrary medically. This book was put out with the cooperation of many noted scientists in this field, including

some from the United States. It was to inform the British public it favors abortion. However, it says that the question as to

when human life begins is an open question. It, abortion, can be carried out before the fetus becomes viable. Although when

that is, isn't itself an arguable point. It further states that a biologist might say that human life started at the moment of

fertilization when the sperm and the oven merge. The arbitrariness medically of the Supreme Court decision is underlined by

the fact that the destruction of the fetus is accepted in abortion. And yet questions are raised as to whether it is right to

fertilize an ovum outside of the womb that is in the laboratory because then it would only live for a few days. This points up

the problem that if such a fertilized ovum were successfully implanted in the womb, that it would have the full genetic

potential for becoming a human being. What does this make the five and a half month old aborted baby to be? Because it too

has the full genetic potential for becoming a human being. Justice white of the Supreme Court, in his dissent concerning the

abortion law said that it is an exercise of raw judicial power and in Provident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial

review. Upon this arbitrary ruling medically and legally, the abortion laws of almost every state of the union, were set aside.

Most people accepted this law, even though it was arbitrary, medically and legally, because it was considered sociologically

helpful. Why would we not accept laws curtailing human freedom? If these were considered sociologically helpful, what we're

left with is sociological law. And that is all and nobody knows where it will end. By this Supreme Court ruling, the unborn child

is considered not to be a person. In our own day, there's been a great outcry and quite properly that in the past, the black

slave was viewed as a non person, but now by this arbitrary absolute brought in on the humanist flow. Millions of unborn

children of every color skin are declared by law to be non persons.

Now, a question has to be asked in the day when there are no fixed values, Why could not be aged? The incurably ill, the

insane, and other classes of persons equally arbitrarily, be declared to be non person on the basis of arbitrary law, if the

courts thought that it was sociologically helpful in a day, like our own once unthinkable today, might not prove and probably

will not prove unsinkable in a very, very few years. Now, let's move on a bit. As the current Christian consensus dies, as the

basis of our culture, society does not really have many basis upon which it has the possibility of building one is that

everybody would simply do their own thing. And this has the technical name of hedonism means everybody would do what

they want to do. But the simple fact is that it is not possible to build a society on everybody doing what they want to do, we

could think of a single man living on a desert island, he can do anything he wants to do, and within the form of the universe.

But when two men are on the desert island, and they have to have interrelationship, it is no longer possible for every man to

do what he wants to do. I often think of the illustration of two men trying to do their own thing, regardless of what anybody

else thinks, meeting on a narrow bridge. And as they meet on the narrow bridge, something has to happen.

They both can't do their own thing. Everybody understands, you can't build a society on people doing what they want to do

on hedonism. All right, then hedonism is a theoretical basis for society after the Christian consensus has gone. But if it's not

possible, what are the possibilities are there? Well, there's the possibility of the total dominance of the 51% vote. Now

remember, it was Christianity, the Reformation Christianity in the north of Europe that brought forth the forms and freedoms

that we have the 51% vote, but I'm talking about 51% vote after there is no absolute by which to judge the 51% vote. There

was a time in the days when the Christian culture was more dominant, when the lone individual could stand up of the Bible in

his hand and say, You're up, even though the majority has voted the other way. But as the Christian consensus is gone, then

there is no absolute by which to judge the 51% then this is a very, very different situation. I'll give you a sense that I wish you

would memorized, if there was no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute. The heart of the humanists thinking

is making the individual man and then mankind, the center of all things, his own measure of making him autonomous. If we're

going to live in escaped death, not only death individually in the sense of the judgment of God, but death, in our culture, in

our political life, in our present life, we must turn from that humanist way of making man autonomous, and we must put the

creator at the center of all things. The greatest of all wickedness is putting any created thing in the place of the Creator. And

when we turn from this, our feet are turned from the paths of Death to the paths of Life.