Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 01:2 (Fall 1960)
Article: General Review: Events Viewed in the Light of God’s Word
Author: Herman A. Hoyt

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GJ 1:2 (Fall 60) p. 31

General Review:
Events Viewed in the Light of God’s Word

Herman A. Hoyt

Dean and Professor of New Testament
Grace Theological Seminary

An editorial in the Saturday Review carries an ominous note. It says, “The desensitization of 20th-century man is more than a danger to the common safety… There are some things we have no right to get used to. One…is brutality. The other is the irrational. Both…have now come together and are moving towards a dominant pattern.”

Thinking men and women who have also taken the time to observe the dominant pattern in society across the world cannot help but agree with this editorial. There is an increasing tide of brutality spreading throughout the world, violence in the destructiveness of life and property. There is also a growing mania of irrationality and unthinking action permeating the life and conduct of the masses in every country of the globe. But what is even more appalling is the growing insensitivity to these things. The media for mass communication have made information of this growing tide of brutality and irrationality available to almost everyone. And instead of producing revulsion and reaction against these things, it is desensitizing the people to the point of utter callousness.

What does this “moving towards a dominant pattern” mean? Does it mean that any one of the many movements toward which men have been looking for solution for the ills of society is the answer? Does it mean that the two basic and valued possessions of society in general are moving toward that last great holocaust when lost humanity will have become thoroughly ripe for judgment?

This dominant pattern does mean that civillzation as such is not meeting the need of the hour. Never has there been so much of civilization as today. It has penetrated into the remote parts of the world. It has touched savage tribes in mountain fastness, in jungle growth, in desert separation. Yet life and truth continue to suffer from growing brutality and irrationality.

Democracy is not the solution. For in spite of the fact that this way of government has been spreading across the world, in the very nations where it has existed the longest, as well as the nations to which it has most recently come, life and truth, the basic pillars of all society, continue to retreat in the face of the rising tide of brutality and irrationality.

Ideologies have not met the need in society. Today two great ideologies are joined in battle to the death: communism and capitalism. Each sounds the praises of its way of life as a solution to the needs of society. But in the face of all this the tragic conclusion stands out before all, that insensitivity toward the growing menace of...

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