God and Culture . . .

REVERENCE FOR LIFE

One of the most impressive things that Ouida and I have laid our eyes upon lately is The Schweitzer Album, which we have been reading to each other with utter delight. It is a portrait of “the 13th apostle” in words and pictures by Erica Anderson, a dear woman who admired Schweitzer so much that she collected 33,000 pictures of him and his work, many of which she took herself in faraway Lambarene. In this volume she passes along 170 pictures that she likes best, 27 of which are in color. Apart from the magnificence of the subject, one is made to marvel at the techniques of modern photography and publication.

The picture we found most significant we are passing along to you on our front cover, one reason being its influence on Schweitzer when a youth. It is the work of Bartholdi, the sculptor who did the Statue of Liberty. It graced the town square in Colmar, France when Schweitzer was a boy, and he was so touched by it that whenever his parents were near Colmar, he would beg them to take him by to see once more the melancholy African Negro. Later during his student years he often returned to it, meditating on the cruelty of the white man to the black. It no doubt influenced his decision to go to Africa as a medical missionary in an effort to redeem the white man for his sins against his black brother.

Miss Anderson emphasizes the Christ-centeredness of Schweitzer’s life and thought, even if he did not believe in the deity of Christ. Hardly any man of our time has exemplified the spirit of Jesus as has Albert Schweitzer, and that is why some number him with the apostles. Even though he was a doctor of theology as well as of music and medicine, his theology was simple. “A Christian is one who has the spirit of Christ. This is the only theology,” he tells us. He has meditated upon the life of Jesus as few have, and it was he who gave us The Quest for the Historical Jesus. And yet the profoundest lesson he learned from Jesus was one he admired for its simple beauty: He who would find his life must lose it.

Other highlights from his thought, selected by Miss Anderson, reveal the essential Christian character of his philosophy.

“Everyone must work to live, but the purpose of life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others. Only then have we ourselves become true human beings.”

“Among friends, when someone is angry at you, always leave the door open for reconciliation.”

“As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious.”

To a godchild he wrote:

“Read for yourself in the New Testament; do not give it up as long as you live, for in this you will learn what the spirit of Jesus is. The wonderful sayings will light you on your way. And hold to the Church! Do not let Sunday be taken from you, either through sports activities or through anything else. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan. And when you get lost in life, know that the road of return to God is always open.”

There is a letter he wrote to a U. S. Navy lieutenant, who was on his way to Korea, disillusioned with life. He writes:

“I believe that there is reason for hope. Hope is there like a small band of light on the sky before the sunrise. There begins to stir in the world a new spirit, a spirit of humanity. The terrible thing was that we fell into inhumanity without knowing it . . . The spirit teaches us the great truth that we men must come to love, that is to have reverence for life, to true humanity.”

The reference to “reverence for life” is basic to all of Schweitzer’s thought, and it is surely one of the great ideas to emerge from modern thought. Life was itself a mystery to him, and he admitted that there is no way to explain it. It must rather be lived, and always with awe and reverence. We must never hurt others, and we should kill only under compulsion of absolute necessity. Each wounding or killing is a guilt we impose upon ourselves. We must move into a true and deep relationship with other beings, including insects and animals. Happiness comes through helping other creatures. We are endowed with the faculty of sharing the life of others, in their joys and fears and grief; and it is this endowment that should direct our behavior.

This explains good and evil. Good is preserving life, all life, and reverencing it since it is of God. Evil is destroying life, injuring it, or thwarting its full flowering.

So serious does Schweitzer take all this that he actually will not harm a flea. If a fly is in the room, he will free it, not kill it. He will trap a mosquito in his hand and turn it outdoors. When anyone complains that this is only being cranky, he points out that anything that has life is to be reverenced, and no life, however insignificant, is to be taken lightly. His concern in Lambarene was not only for the natives whose minds and bodies he sought to heal in his brush hospital, but also for the animals that would venture into camp, wounded or diseased. One letter in this book reveals his concern for a baby gorilla that he was raising.

Experimentation with animals was therefore a problem in Schweitzer’s view. In his own laboratory he made a rule that no animal’s life was to be taken for experimental purpose unless absolutely necessary. He also insisted that an animal’s suffering should be reduced as much as possible, and he thought it a crime to withhold an anesthetic just because one is in a hurry.

Ouida and I concluded from all this that if we could instill in our children even a tithing of Schweitzer’s idea of reverence for life, we would measurably add meaning to their concept of life. Reverence for animals. Reverence for themselves. Reverence for other people. We are all part of the life that is in God, and who is the giver of all life. Surely if a child is taught to reverence even the life of a bug, rather than to stomp the life out of it as he is inclined to do, his reverence for man and God will be even greater. A child who is taught to cherish the life of a bird is less likely to grow up killing men and cursing God.

In this issue of our journal our principal articles are about Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King, Jr. It so happens that they were both recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is probably the greatest honor that man bestows upon man. It is noteworthy that with both of these men there was reverence for life that transcends race, color, creed. They were truly men of the world. The love of God did something important to their lives.—the Editor