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124 Chapter Seventeen IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING I’ve wanted to become a preacher for a long time. Because I have something I want to say. I want to preach against hate. hate of race for race, class for class, Christian against Jew. this hatred, it’s the real cause of this war. If we want to stop wars, we’ve got to destroy hatred first. As far as acting is concerned, I am finished with motion pictures. I don’t want to act any more. But of course . . . I might consider going in for some sort of movie production. It is a field I know. It might be possible that I could bring my kind of message to people through that medium. If I could, but it depends on how things work out.1 After over a year of service in the Pacific, which he spent administering to the sick and injured soldiers and civilians, Lew gave this statement. But though he was absolutely certain of his religious convictions, Lew was not speaking of any conventional religious sect. He had not “belonged ” to any church since he had gone with his mother to her Congregationalist church as a child. Lew had come to his own beliefs by reading religious texts, studying the Bible, along with other books of comparative religions, spiritualism, and philosophy, especially the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Carl Jung. Through this study, Lew had developed his own strong religious convictions, though they had offered him remarkably little inner peace or contentment in life. Lew’s focus on a higher power seemed to have left him terrified of committing any wrongs in life or having any vices, so fearful was he of being punished in the afterlife for the sins of vanity and excess. Lew had never been one to openly converse with people about religion, not wanting to appear to be lecturing others, but he was so haunted by these inner thoughts of “a higher power” and “the afterlife” that he began seeking out individuals in his unit with whom he could talk. But, in spite of the ever-present threat of death on the battlefield, Lew’s colleagues In seArCh oF somethIng 125 didn’t seem to share his interest in deep spiritual exploration and he was unable to engage any of his fellow soldiers in the theological discussion and study he craved. However, while he was stationed in the Philippines, in a neighboring unit he found a minister named Paul Yinger. They arranged a time to meet and, upon their meeting, Lew began openly discussing his religious convictions, which were shockingly different from Paul’s own. Lew and Paul debated their theological differences on all aspects of religion and philosophy in page after page of mail correspondence. Yinger believed the root of Lew’s anguish was his close interpretation of religious text and belief they would provide the path, rather than accepting them as little more than an individual’s interpretation. He wrote to Lew, “Religion in our time is almost as full of rank superstition and ignorance as at any earlier time. I do not grant that the interpretation which the various writers of the New Testament give of the life and witness of Jesus must be accepted as final for me.”2 Paul also felt that Lew was fixated on the idea of eternal life and it was only causing him anxiety. He felt it was an example of the selfish belief that the universe and God focused on the human race. In a letter to Lew, Yinger wrote: “The meaning of life” and the importance of eternal life are a form of idolatry. In making the assertion I do not take the presumptive attitude that my own view is free from the pride which is the foundation of idolatry. Reinhold Niebuhr makes a pertinent comment in this regard. He says: “The ending of our life would not threaten us if we had not falsely made ourselves the center of life’s meaning .” Our fear of death, “the sting of death,” is based on our pride. For when man makes himself the center of life he cannot bear the thought of extinction or the frustration of his hope of fulfillment. There is wisdom and comfort in the thought that the fulfillment of the individual’s and the society’s life cannot be found in time. But when we begin to ease our infinite longing for fulfillment by overconsideration of the possibility...

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