LIVING IN REVOLUTION1
I
THE PREDICAMENT OF HUMAN
INCOMPETENCE
HEN the state of the world goes from bad to worse
over a long period of time, we may be sure that some
revolutionary idea is preparing to break forth. Today we
are in a frame of mind to appreciate the remark of a lad
in school who was asked: “What is the shape of the world?”
He replied: “My father says it is in the worst shape he
has ever seen it.” We are all shocked to find that our
twentieth century, through some colossal incompetence, is
to date the bloodiest century in the entire history of the
human race.
And proceeding according to plan, a volcanic idea is in
eruption throughout the world. After decades of rumbling
beneath the crust of custom, it has become irrepressible. It
is as radical and upsetting as the discovery that the world
was round. By terrible things in universal travail it is try-
ing to get itself understood.
It can be plainly stated in a famous sentence of Dostoiev-
sky: “We were born on purpose to be together.” We were
born in relations, and we stay that way. Our life unfolds
its possibilities not in our isolated independence, but in the
area of relation between us. Where we meet, there creation
happens to us, and correction, and recovery. There we re-
1Rockwell Lectures on Religious Subjects, delivered at the Rice Institute,
January 13, 14, and 15, 1943, by Robert Russell Wicks, D.D., Dean of the
University Chapel, Princeton University.
COPYRIGHT, 1943, THE RICE INSTITUTE
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