This I Believe

As my father lay dying of a heart attack, we asked if he had any final words for the family. He answered, “My life is my message.” In a very real sense, I can illustrate what I believe by talking about my life, rather than in a profound discussion of philosophy. Born in Japan, where my father helped to found the largest Christian university in the Island Empire, I grew up with a strong faith in Christianity. In college, turning against a life dedicated to fame and fortune, I decided to try and help others. Could I have imagined the wildest Arabian Nights fantasy, it would never have equaled the adventures this decision brought.

First, it led to the presidency of the college YMCA, and then in working my way to Europe in the summer. Next, I spent a period as assistant to Sir Wilfred Grenfell. Here was my ideal: a man who might have amassed a fortune but instead was helping the fishermen on the bleak coast of Labrador, dotting it with hospitals, orphan asylums, schools, and cooperatives. He was one of the happiest men I ever met. When I asked a fisherman what he thought of Grenfell, he replied, “There’ll be more folks as’ll miss the doctor when he dies than’ll miss King George.”

Next, I volunteered to serve prisoners in the First World War. The YMCA sent me to Czaristic Russia. All around me, prisoners were dying by the hundreds, and I was in constant danger of my life; yet, strangely enough, I never enjoyed work more than helping these men who did not have enough to eat, to wear, or to do. We provided athletics, classes, orchestras, medicines, food, and religious services. Little by little, the camps were transformed, and the death toll stopped. Then the Russian Revolution broke, and I was working along 1500 miles of battlefront starting Soldiers Clubs. Again, it was an absorbing experience to watch the birth of a new civilization, even if I could not agree with Communism.

Back in the United States after World War I, and a professor at the Yale Divinity School, I became actively interested in prison conditions and discovered that 44% of the jail population in my state were confined because of a defective environment, rather than because of their own delinquency. This work was followed by a study of labor conditions and a trip to Russia as a correspondent bearing a letter to Stalin from Senator Bora, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In the Second World War, the YMCA asked me to have charge of the prisoner of war camps in Canada. Again I found that helping the prisoners changed their attitudes and transformed the camps.

Fundamentally, in my philosophy, Jesus was right: we cannot cast out Satan by Satan. Over and over again, I have seen that helping the other fellow pays off in terms of his friendship and loyalty. It is irresistible for me to believe, then, that if this philosophy works with individuals, it can be made to work with nations, which are only large collections of individuals. I am willing to bet my life that friendship and invincible goodwill pay in the long run.