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[silence] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape presents a message given at the candlelight dinner of the Glendale Council of Parent Teacher Associations on February 7, 1973.

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Dr. Bruce W. Thielman is speaking on the subject "Astronauts of the Heart." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

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Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. [silence]

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It's a real pleasure to be with you this evening. I must confess I feel somewhat intimidated. First, I was told that most talking was a waste of time. [laughter]

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The next suggestion that came through was that everybody that got up was to limit themselves to one word. [laughter] One of the great preachers of our day, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, used to say that a good anthem before preaching was like sharpening your razor before you shave.

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And I listened to those kids tonight and they were so good, and I thought of myself coming after them and felt rather like one who'd had his throat cut. [laughter] They certainly were very accomplished.

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I want to speak to you tonight on a rather serious theme, and I want to approach it perhaps anecdotally, but I think this word of introduction is at least in order that I come to you as a Presbyterian minister,

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and that of necessity is going to color to one degree or another everything I am about to say. Were I to attempt to conceal the philosophical and theological presuppositions which are mine because of my belief, I would not be being honest with you. There would be no authenticity in what I would say.

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I want you to understand then that this is the position from which I speak, and to hope you will hear me in the light of that. I'm aware of the native in darkest Africa who went up to a cannibal butcher shop to purchase his meal for the next day. He said, "What do you have that's special?"

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The butcher said, "Well, we have a special on missionary brains." He said, "Oh, how much do they cost?" He said, "Well, you can get some Lutheran brains for $5 a pound. You can get some Methodist brains for $10 a pound.

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You can get some Presbyterian brains for $45 a pound." The customer looked at him for a moment, and he said, "Now, just a minute." He said, "What difference is there between Presbyterian brains and Methodist brains if there would be such a price differentiation from $10 to $45 a pound?"

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And the butcher looked at him and said, "Well, did you ever stop to think how many Presbyterians you have to kill to get a pound of brains?" So I trust you'll keep that in mind. Like alley cats, some preachers I know enjoy a prowl before midnight,

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and I myself confess that a walk after dark is one of the joys of my life. It's a good time to clean and to clear the conscience. It's a good time to square yourself with yourself. It's a good time to take account of all those daily instances

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in which you fail to be what most people think preachers ought to be. I was on a Minnesota college campus two weeks ago and was enjoying such an ambulatory session with myself. That afternoon it had snowed, silent, deep Minnesota snow.

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In the early evening, the college snow plows had cut canals at strategic points across the campus so that the school looked like some snowy Venice. It was one of those frosty nights when the icy enamel of the trees made the naked branches click upon themselves when the breeze rose.

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And now and then you would come upon a place where the stiffness of the winter wind had cracked the branches' frozen coating and led the trees to shed their crystal shells, shattering and avalanching onto the snow. Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away, you'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

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I had not walked far when the plow's selected path led me before a dormitory. Some rooms were lighted and others not, so that the windowed walls looked like a giant crossword puzzle. I spelled out words appropriate to a college campus, hope and love and future.

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And then my eyes or my ears, I don't exactly remember which, were drawn to the icicles which were clinging to the colonial gables like pendants on old-fashioned chandeliers, like the bangles which fringe antique lamps. Quite an exhibit of the ice's cold crystal art was displayed for the interested to see and to hear,

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for they gave forth faintly tinkling sounds like tiny xylophones when struck by the unseen fingers of the wind. I turned from the building, but not before my eye caught a glimpse of someone. A student was the surmise of the moment, leaving the building and coming down the path

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I had until this moment been enjoying all alone. I will confess that I did not wish to welcome conversation. I had no desire to share the stillness, and so I quickened my pace in the way the plow's path pointed. But he called me. It was not loud or hail or hearty, just a "Sir?"

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But I resented even that. At so perfect a time to talk was tragedy. "Yes," I replied, and there followed the usual pleasantries and introductions. He announced that his name was Sam Short, and that he had been present at the Vesper service which I had preached just a few hours before, and he further suggested that we share our late-night stroll.

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That was not good, of course. It showed he did not often take such walks. But still there was the possibility that he understood how two could walk together and share things without talking. There was this possibility, but it died quickly, for we had not taken a dozen steps when he ruptured the peace of my mind by asking if I would resent

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his making a personal comment about my sermon of earlier that night. I said nothing, and he unjustly assumed that I was giving him my assent, and that I would welcome such a comment. So he gave it, and it was this. "You spoke tonight of God's love for the world and of his concern for everyone that's on it.

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You spoke of his coming to earth in the garb of a Galilean carpenter." I think you used the phrase "God with skin on his face." "And I suppose that what you said had meaning once, but really now, don't you think such an idea is a little provincial for this day and age?"

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Now you would think a query like that would have nettled me enough to have made prompt and precise reply, but that was not the case. I was not ready to sacrifice silence to suit the inquisitorial fancies of a cynical sophomore. So I only answered, "How so?" "Well," he replied, "I'm a candidate for the Bachelor of Science degree here,

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and my primary interest is in the field of astronomy. Now I'm sure you're aware of the fact that science believes, is totally convinced, that there is life on other planets. And if this is so, how does a conception of a God so interested in only our little planet

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fit a universe as peopled as ours is? I mean, is it reasonable to assume that God, if there is a God, would send his son, if he had a son, to a puny little planet like this?" Now I wonder if you've ever had the compulsion to drown someone in snow.

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Have you ever wanted to let a person's hot air melt a sufficient number of snowflakes so that you could immerse him or her in the water until... Or have you ever wanted to beat someone over the head with a four-foot icicle? But no, spiritual emphasis-weak speakers are to be models of Christian deportment

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and are to ooze congeniality. So I answered him, but with an edge on my voice, which his later conversation showed he utterly failed to notice. "Mr. Short," I said, "had I thought my remarks tonight to be provincial,

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I would not have made them. And I must confess that it astonishes me that a science student at a fine school like this would ask the question you have asked. In the first place, I'm not so sure that science is totally convinced

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that there is life on other planets. Since scientists' opinions change with the weather, and since I haven't read today's newspaper and so cannot be sure of what science believes today, I won't say that science believes all planets, or some planets, or no planets

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are inhabited by living beings. I will simply say that the whole matter is irrelevant insofar as the Christian faith is concerned." "But how can that be?" he interrupted. "If there are beings on other planets, by what right does Christianity claim

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that the God of all planets sent his son to this particular planet? Isn't that a little bit arrogant?" There seemed to be no escape, and so I answered. "No, it is not arrogant.

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In the first place, you have just admitted by this question that there may not be life on other planets, and if this is so, it's altogether logical to expect God to send his son to the only planet where life is, to this planet. But let's take your hypothesis and assume that there is life in other worlds.

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Such a belief does not imply that this life on other worlds, these beings, have rational souls. Suppose they are not able to distinguish right from wrong, either for themselves or for others. Suppose these beings consist only of the physical and not at all of the spiritual. If this is the case, if these beings have no souls,

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why would God have been interested in them in terms of salvation? They would be as animal life on this planet. Why would he send them the gift of his son? They would not be able to appreciate him or to make use of him.

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If there is life on other planets, it may be only physical life, and therefore that God should send his son to us here on Earth, where life has a spiritual dimension, is an altogether logical deduction." "Okay, okay," Sam commented.

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"But suppose this distant planetary people does have spiritual understanding. Suppose they do have souls. Well, if that's the case, then we have to ask if these souls are stained," I answered. Have they, to use the classical Christian term, sinned?

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Are these beings in what we call the fallen state? Christians believe that God came to Earth precisely because the people of Earth were unable to come to him, because of their own evil. Now, if these other planetary beings have not sinned,

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and are thus are able to go to God without reference to his son, why should his son be sent to them? You claim that Christians are colossally conceited when they suggest that God would suffer on a cross on their behalf. You couldn't be farther from the truth.

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The Christian does not affirm his conceit when he claims God has made sacrifice for him. He affirms his debased state. Christianity is the testimony that God came to Earth not because of our merits, but because of our demerits. Not because of our superiority, but because of our inferiority, because of our depravity.

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If Earthlings were worthy of redemption, we would not have needed to have been redeemed. God came here not because we were worth his coming, but precisely because we weren't worth his coming. He came to make us worthy. We needed him desperately.

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Now, if creatures on other planets have not sinned, then they have no need of God's sacrifice and his son, and therefore it's entirely logical and not at all arrogant to believe that God sent his son to this Earth out of response to our particular hurt.

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"But suppose they have sinned," Sam commented. "Well, now," I replied, "you are getting ever deeper into a morass of hypothesis. First, you assume without proof that there is life on other planets. Second, you are assuming without proof that this life has a spiritual dimension.

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Now, you are assuming third and again without proof that these creatures have stained their purity with some kind of wrongdoing. All right? Let's grant your last hypothesis. Let's assume these beings have need of God's love.

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Why then can't we assume that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ here on Earth was on their behalf as well as on our own? After all, all of science is predicated on the truth that all things in the universe are interrelated and are causal factors of one another.

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We live in a universe, not a multiverse. And so, if this is true, then Paul Tillich was far within the mark when he wrote in his Systematic Theology that the interdependence of everything with everything else in the totality of being

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includes a participation of nature in history and demands a participation of the whole universe in salvation. If everything that exists is interrelated, then Christ, what he is, what he did, and what he does is related to everything. That is, indeed, to other worlds as well as to our own.

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So if you have to ask me, Sam, to assume the existence of fallen spiritual creatures on other planets even to permit this discussion we're having, then I am certainly justified in asking you to admit the possibility that the cross on earth was the creator's cure for all the universe.

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And let me just mention one other possibility. Could it not be that the Son of God has been incarnate on other worlds as well as our own? This is surely a possibility if all of your hypotheses are possibilities. There was about 30 seconds of beautiful silence.

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You could only hear the squeak of the frozen snow beneath our feet. And then Sam had this to say. "You are suggesting to me that God's love shown here was for all of creation. That means, I suppose, that you look upon us earthlings as some kind of interplanetary messengers

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or missionaries called to the task of spreading the news of this event to every star." Well, Sam, I responded, "Quite frankly, I hadn't thought much about that, but it's a valid idea." If the creator worked here an act of love intended for his entire creation, then it would be our task to take it to every star, to use your poetic phrase.

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And that gives me very real concern. For if we are intended to be the instruments by which the gospel is taken to waiting worlds, if we are to go to other worlds with this message, then I'm desperately afraid that we are not ready to go.

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For we both know what we do to strangers. Our civilization has made a practice out of cheating and corrupting every other race with which we have come in contact. Even in animate nature, we turn into dust bowls and slag heaps. I wonder if we are ready to be ambassadors to new worlds.

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If we meet beings weaker than ourselves, well, then ask the black man or the red man to tell about what we will do to them. And if we meet beings stronger than ourselves, then we will probably be and quite properly be destroyed.

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I am not, you see, overly impressed with man or with man's accomplishments. I sometimes feel, in fact, that the vast astronomical distances which surround us may very well be God's quarantine precautions to keep us from polluting the universe. Sam, you are just the type of young fellow who will be likely to be among those who go to these other worlds,

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if in fact we ever do make such a journey. What will be your spirit and your attitude when you go? What is the greatest adventure to you? To go to the moon and explore the rings of Saturn?

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Or is it to understand the heart and the soul of a man and to turn away from wrath and destruction and toward creativeness and brotherly love? I put that question very thoughtfully, and as I asked it, I took Sam's arm and I stopped him and I looked him right straight in the eye.

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And he answered me very thoughtfully. "You know," he said, "it's probably true. We likely will be on Mars before we've learned how to live on Earth. So I guess we will take our weaknesses with us wherever we go."

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And that means, I interrupted, that you as a man preparing for life in this world and in tomorrow's world must be interested not only in facts but also in faith, not only in science but in brotherhood. For too long a time, my friend, too many have argued that science and faith are irreconcilable enemies,

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totally different disciplines with no common ground. And such a suggestion is asinine on the face of it. Science is the child of religion. The schools, the institutions in which science is making its most astounding strides

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were founded more times than not by Christian churches who wanted men and women to be trained to seek and to know the truth. But more basic than that, where did science get its notion that matter is precious? It got the notion from the Christian faith,

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which alone, of all the world's major belief systems, exalts the value of the material. Where did science get the notion that we live in a universe and that all things are interrelated? That idea is rooted and grounded philosophically when traced to its source in the Christian concept that there is one God

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and that all things come from him. And again, whence came the idea so basic to science that time is linear, that it proceeds along a road of purposeful change. Once again, the mother load is the Christian faith.

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And notice this also. Fundamental to both Christian belief and science is faith. Let's get off this kick about religion being a faith and science being a fact. William James of Harvard said that science's principle of uniformity in nature

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is an act of believing faith. Aldous Huxley says that the cosmic order is rational, and rational has always been my faith. Ladd, the great scientist at Yale, affirms that the rankest agnostic is shot through with faith.

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And he goes on to say, and I learned these words a long time ago, "You cannot save science and destroy faith. You can't sit on the limb of the tree while you tear it up by the roots." So science owes an awesome debt to faith and to the Christian faith in particular.

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And the Christian faith also owes an awesome debt to science. For the greatest enemy of faith is always ignorant superstition. And the greatest enemy of ignorant superstition is science. There is on both sides a mutual indebtedness then which should be honored and held high.

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San interjected, "You know, you sound like you're preaching a sermon, but I guess that shouldn't be too surprising since that's your business." But I'm still not convinced. "Because this mutual indebtedness that you're talking about is really a thing of the past,

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and the faith science and religion share can be and usually is a matter of great debate." "Well," I answered, "I won't accept either of those ideas. The indebtedness is not only in the past, and the understanding of faith is not always a matter of debate. But rather than defending these ideas, let me instead point to the major reason why science and Christianity or faith need to get married.

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And this reason is based totally on the present, and it isn't open to any suggestion that it's a matter of the past." I asked you a few minutes ago, Sam, what you thought the greatest adventure was, to explore Saturn's rings or to straighten the affairs of men's heart. You didn't answer the question.

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So let me answer it for you. No one stands in greater awe of and with greater gratitude to the accomplishments of science than I. But what have these accomplishments made for us? They have made for us a world which is a hell.

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And that is not only my opinion. I heard a Ph.D. from Cal Tech say that Ph.D. stood for phenomenally dumb. And when I asked him why he so deprecated his attainments, he answered, "Because I know all about atomic fallout, but nothing about people fallout."

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And this same man said later in our conversation that thanks to science, we now have the inventions to destroy each other, and only God can keep us from the intentions to destroy each other. [garbled audio] That science has created...

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I heard Arthur Taylor Compton, the Nobel Science Prize winner, affirm that science has created a world in which Christianity is not an optional, but an imperative. I've read these words of Charles Lindbergh. "I've seen the science I worshipped and the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to serve,

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while the life-saving miracles of medicine are being perverted to the murderous ends of biological warfare." And I watched on television as General Omar Bradley almost sobbed the words, "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants we know more about killing than we do about living." Now, Sam, let's you and I face something tonight, very plainly.

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There's no one to see us, there's no one to hear us. No friends, no foes, just the two of us, and in a minute or two we'll go our separate ways, and we will very likely never meet again. So let's look at something.

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We thought that we, the 20th century American, were in some way a special edition of humanity. But we were different from all the generations that went before. We didn't know that in our Anglo-Saxon tongue "Hallowed be thy name" and "Heil Hitler" come from the same language root.

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We didn't know that there could be human roasting ovens and quicklime pits and mass graves in Poland and panzer divisions cutting like razors across the throat of mankind. We didn't know that a chaplain could see something on Iwo Jima that he still won't tell his family about, though he'll tell them about anything else in the world he's ever seen.

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We didn't know that we were part of a society which could plaster a picture of a pinup girl on the incredible atomic weapon that seared the life from a hundred thousand people in Hiroshima in less than one minute. We didn't know about the blood with which we'd irrigate Korea, or that behind the mushroom clouds of our new power to destroy would rise a red Kremlin

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like a grinning skull of doom, like sick religion's revenge for having been so long neglected. We didn't know that the explosive potential of China's fantastic population could ever threaten to engulf all Asia with a Marxism filtered through almond eyes turned cold and merciless. We didn't know that yellow could ever mean red.

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We didn't know the peace-loving Buddha could ever spawn the shock troops of human tortures. We didn't know that we'd ever see the day when the confident American of the easygoing conscience would talk wearily of our loss of national purpose and national integrity, and informed men, informed men, Sam, would argue heatedly the timetables

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as to whether we'd reach the stars or destroy the world first. We didn't know the little island of Cuba in our backyard could be turned overnight into an arsenal pained at our heads. We didn't know a president could be assassinated today, a senator shot down the prime of life, a governor crippled and placed into a wheelchair for the rest of his days

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with a sequel so sick that the whole rest of the world would look at us in disbelief and say, "Could this happen in America?" We didn't know the Civil War wasn't over, not even in the North and the East, and certainly not in our hearts.

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We didn't know that this business of racial and color difference is so deep in the primitive core of man's self-centeredness that you can't touch it by some sudden rush of sweet reasonableness, and heaven help you if you're so naive as to expect to, because you can't possibly predict the panic of the reaction among the most sophisticated of us

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when that primitive core is threatened. We didn't know that. But now we know. Now we know that we're not some special edition of the human story,

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that there never was anything very special about us. We're the same old story. We belong to all the heaven-storming generations of mankind, and the chaos that we decry is at work within us,

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and the havoc we deplore is native to us. And we're all guilty. We're all guilty, whether it's big or little, global or local, whether it's a union that operates under criminals with brass-knuckled justice

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or the proponent of some distorted view of American politics who no longer says, "I disagree with you," but howls instead, "If you disagree with me, you're a traitor and not an American," whether it's the drag race on the highway that mangles a child

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or the chilling surge of violent crime that surges along our streets at night. It's all a vast and writhing projection of the mighty contradiction in which we're caught, that the good we want to do is so often what we won't do, and the wrong we despise is exactly what we do.

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And that, sayem, if you'll pardon the expression, is what we call sin. It's the gone wrongness of life. So let you and I admit that at the least, science has given us a world in which we buy things from another which we do not want

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at prices we cannot afford, on terms we cannot meet, because of advertising we do not really believe. We've got fluorescent bulbs, but our hearts are very shadowed. We understand the mind as never before, and yet our mental institutions have never been so crowded.

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We've developed scores of improved means to unimproved ends. This is what we've won. And at the most, well, science has conquered the air, so now we talk about living underground.

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It started to master the smallest element of life, the atom, and so it's led us to the place where we can destroy all of life. And let me repeat it again. I yield to no one in my praise of the accomplishments of science,

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but I'm honest enough to admit what more and more scientists admit, that the greatest adventure before man is in his own heart. It's not finding a bomb, but a blessing. It's not mastering space, but mastering self.

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It's not a matter of rockets, but of rosaries. It's not a matter of heart attacks, but of heartbreaks. It's prayer, not physics. It's faith and fact, not fact alone.

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It's what a professor of physics at NYU said. I've come to three conclusions. The first is that salvation is not to be found in science. The second is that we must have a moral revival.

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And the third is that we can have no moral revival without a living religion. But when I read that, Sam, I remembered some words that Galilean Carpenter, you were talking about, uttered a long time ago. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

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So you tell me, Sam, what will be the great adventure for you? Well, he answered, "I don't know. I don't know. I just want to be a man who..." That's good enough, Sam. It's good enough to be a man.

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But remember that no man is permitted to be merely a scientist or merely a preacher or merely a teacher or merely an administrator or merely an athlete. A man must be a man.

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And that includes a heart as well as a mind. It includes a soul and the human spirit. Take a scientist's son and conceal his identity and then describe him scientifically to his father.

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List his chemical constituents. Describe him biologically, eugenically, psychologically. Give his weight and his blood count. Chart out your description.

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And then ask the scientist's father as scientist who you've been describing. He won't be able to identify him. But speak to that scientist as a man about his son

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and he will know him in an instant. So be a man, Sam. And if you will, be a man who's given to science. But be a man dedicated and committed first

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to that which makes manhood grand. To love and to brotherhood and to goodness and to decency and to a meaningful faith in God. You are made of the dust of the ground, Sam.

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But there's some stardust in you too. And that stardust is what makes you a man. A complete man. And that's the greatest adventure of all.

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Well, here's where I head back to my dorm, Sam said. I'm glad to have shared this walk. Thanks, and it's been a pleasure to meet you. Well, the pleasure has been mine, Sam.

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I call you friend. I hope you won't mind that. But there's one last thing I have to say to you before I say goodnight.

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You know, I despise it when people talk as if the greatest compliment that God can receive is when some scientist believes in him. But still I'm led to point out that 20 years ago

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only 11% of the scientists who were listed in Who's Who were Christians. And today, 66% of the scientists who are listed in Who's Who are Christians.

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That's one of the reasons that I don't hesitate to praise science and the scientists. For more and more, science is showing us what kind of world this is,

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and more and more scientists are, by their faith, thank God, showing us what this world ought to be. "Well, right now, my religion," Sam said, "is just the golden rule."

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Oh, well, Sam, what would you think if I said to you that my astronomy was only twinkle, twinkle, little star? There's a lot more to Christianity than the golden rule, Sam. That's only the barest beginning.

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Well, here's where I get off, he said. And we shook hands and parted. And I walked on alone, thinking, when he said, "Here's where I get off,"

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did he mean, did he mean that perhaps tonight, for the first time, he thought about getting on? I've come to the place now where I met my own footprints in the snow.

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That's one of the wonderful things about walking in the snow. You can meet yourself there. I walked on looking at my footprints and wondering. The chimes in the chapel tower started to ring twelve,

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and I looked up to the tower, and beyond the tower to the sky. It was crystal clear. And I thought, the galaxies, the planets, and the stars, why, they're not but the scintillating sets

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in the rings on the fingers of God. The next morning, on my return flight to Los Angeles, I read these words in the newspaper. Quote, "Dr. Werner von Braun,

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speaking at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, said, 'While through science, man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, through religion and belief,

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he seeks to control the forces of nature within him.' I cut out the article and sent it to Sam." I don't know if these remarks have been appropriate, but at least they've been honest.

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What I'm saying to you as parents, administrators, educators, what I'm saying to you is, what I'm pleading for, begging for, if you will, is homes, schools, and churches,

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which give us what we need the most. Not just Apollo journeys, but spacemen of the human spirit. I'm asking for astronauts of the heart,

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for it is only in them that the world will find its hopes fulfilled. Thank you. [inaudible]