The Human Race On Trial by Maxie Dunnam

My files are flowing over with magazine and newspaper articles, cartoons, and photos. Unfortunately, I have not found a good “keeping” and “retrieval” system that is not too time costly for the reflections I prize.

Yet, I saw it and I can’t forget it…a cartoon that depicted an older couple, obviously rich and retired, sitting in their posh living room. The lady was reading, her husband looking out the window with a smile on his face. One gathers that he has just shared with her his latest dream for retirement activity. Frowning, she looks up from her book and says: “With strikes, campus unrest, the communist take-over, air pollution on the rise, hippie protest, and immorality rampant, it doesn’t strike me as the time to start a butterfly collection!” 

As we move into this twenty-first century we need to reflect on this wise claim that has been made: the twentieth century has put the human race on trial for its life. 

It is difficult not to believe that. The institutions upon which we have become dependent, around which our lives have been ordered–education, business, medical services, the penal system, organized religion, government–have each in some way been gradually revealed as inadequate, a few of them perhaps beyond renewal and repair. In any case, they have not been equal to their promise; they cannot fill the longing in us. 

We are dissatisfied with things as they are. And while dissatisfaction is as old as the human race, and every period of history is unique in its own fashion, I believe we have reached a crucial moment in human civilization. Atomic bombs are not just more powerful weaponry. Electronic computers are not just more complex adding machines. Neil Armstrong was more than a latter-day Columbus setting foot on the moon. 

Dare I even think it? Maxie Dunnam is not just another old man becoming 90, seeking to make a redemptive difference in a needy world. What can I do? What must I do? What will I do?