This I Believe

I believe that that youth is lucky who has parents who are acquainted with God. I grew up in a modest, self-respecting, Puritan-like home in a democratic Midwest. My god-fearing father, a small contracting carpenter, was continuously an elder in the Presbyterian Church from his very early manhood to the time of this death at 94 years of age. Father’s God, in keeping with Dutch Hagenau tradition, was a just, stern, Holy Spirit. Mother’s God was a friend, and Mother’s outstanding characteristic was her love of people.

My early youth was spent in a community of independent, patriotic people where class distinctions were at a minimum, where love of country was high, where the idealistic impulses of youth were encouraged. My young manhood was spent in directing YMCA religious work, in teaching grade school and, later, in a state university, and in the ministry. For 32 years, I have been in social work, centering on children overseas and at home, during which time I have seen people starving, homeless, suffering from neglect or from mere lack of incentive and of opportunity, or indeed from the injustices of their fellow man; and yet, experience has taught me that the good and the bad are to be found in every human institution, as well as in every human heart.

I have lived through the periods of two great wars and a third partial one; through the inception and growth of the radio, motion picture, and television; and through the conquest of the air. The world has grown smaller and seemingly more complex and confusing, but only because we see its workings more clearly and not, I believe, because it is growing worse in the evolution of mankind from the primitive to the civilized state. Historical perspective makes me feel that the world is growing better, not worse.

I believe that the idea of God, the Supreme Spirit, is far more all-inclusive than the Hebraic concept, high as that is, from an ethical point of view; wider than the western churches in their formulations, conceive it to be. It must take into consideration the great Eastern religions. It may include many noble concepts which have their sources in the so-called “secular” world, but which have been left out of the creeds of the churches.

It seems to me that the most inspiring and the freshest interpretations of a Supreme Being that have come in the past century have risen in the fields of science, education, arts, music, literature, nature, philanthropy, and social service. I believe that I, as a man, can continuously commune with God and subject myself confidently to His leadership, and that in so doing I may obtain not only inner poise, stability, serenity, and balance, but that I can most usefully serve the world and myself in whatever knick of life I find myself.