Church of the Air August 20, 1960 Issue

Why Men Can Be Free

DeWitt John

[The following Christian Science program of the above title was presented on Sunday, August 14, over the Columbia Broadcasting System "Church of the Air." The speaker was DeWitt John.]

Possibly the most urgent issue confronting mankind is today's demand for greater human freedom. Technologically, we are smashing limitations all around us. We are hurling devices into space that talk back and tell us what they see and feel. We have peered into the deepest part of the ocean, devised computers to do years of work in a moment, and built an industrial system that enables millions of people to live like kings.

Yet the challenge to human freedom was never greater. Totalitarian movements attempt total subjugation of the individual to an all-powerful state. Here at home, we are encountering the compulsions of social and intellectual conformity; the regimenting pressures of big government, big business, big labor; the deadening lethargy of easy living. And who has not struggled to break the shackles of personal weakness—mediocrity, selfishness, futility, boredom, vice perhaps, and disease?

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