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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 1, 1983
PAGE 12
"In American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual
human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's crea
ture. That is, freedom was given to the individual condition
ally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsi
bility." But now, he said, "all such limitations were eroded
everywhere in the West" with "total emancipation from the moral
heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of
mercy and sacrifice."
He said "destructive and irresponsible freedom [note I Pet. 2:16]
has been granted boundless space, leaving society defenseless
against decadence, such as misuse of liberty for moral violence
against young people" in films of pornography, crime and horror.
"The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to ex
cess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has
grown dimmer and dimmer," he said. "It is time, in the West, to
defend not so much human rights as human obligations. We have
placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find
out that we are being deprived of our most precious possession:
2.£!. spiritual life. It is trampled _£Y the party mob in the East,
.Q.Y the commercial� in the West."
The trend has reached a peak in the world, he said, bringing it to
a "harsh spiritual crisis and� political impasse. All the cele
brated technological achievements of progress, including the con
quest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral
poverty•••• Only moral criteria can help the west against commu
nism's well-planned world strategy. There are no other crite
ria."
Communist aggression creeps ever closer to America's shores. But the blind
secular guides of contemporary society, coupled with godless ministers,
fail to grasp the "morality connection" between the threat without and the
rot within.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau