While Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Eisenhower continue their talks at Camp David, the nation continues to puzzle over the problem of what the Russian Premier’s visit to the United States will accomplish. Will Mr. Khrushchev go home impressed with American power and American goodwill? Will we convert the Chief Communist to a more friendly attitude toward capitalism, or will he convert many Americans to a more easy-going attitude of co-existence with communism? What will be the effect of this visit on the rest of the non-communist world — win them more closely or alienate them more decisively from U. S. friendship? What will be the influence of Mr. Khrushchev’s coming on the forth-coming presidential election? The answers to all these and many more nagging questions we are now asking are not presently at hand. Only the future will reveal them.

But this is sure — this much is now apparent to us all: Mr. Khrushchev is a committed man, solidly sold on his cause of communism. However, one might interpret his controversial remark: “We will bury you,” surely this much of his meaning is clear — Mr. Khrushchev was expressing his implicit belief in the ultimate victory of the communist cause and predicting that communism is destined to bury whatever remnants are left of world capitalism.

Furthermore, I’m sure that the most disturbing result of Mr. Khrushchev’s visit for every thinking American is the clear cut contrast between the cock-sure Khrushchev and the uncertain average American. Remarkably coincident with Mr. Khrushchev’s visit was the publication last week of a very thoughtful and scholarly book on U. S. Foreign policy by Max Ways bearing the title: Beyond Survival. Mr. Way’s thesis is roughly this: U.S. Foreign policy is doomed to lose ground to the communists in the realm of politics, economics, and military affairs. The fault lies not with the policy makers, but with the American people, because the U. S. has no wide ranging sense of purpose. “Since the end of World War I, the principal aim of U. S. Foreign policy,” says Ways, “has been to ensure the nation’s survival . . . Today the U. S. is up against an enemy with a purpose, a plan, and even a sort of public philosophy that aims far beyond their mere survival to the kind of world the enemy wants.” (Time magazine — September 21, 1959)

The United States, then, suffers for want of a reason for being, beyond mere survival. The same emptiness of purpose echoing from the soul of our people is voiced in the contemporary Broadway play, Look Back in Anger, where one young character says: “There aren’t any good, brave causes left.”

And David Riesman, with his associates, in a penetrating sociological study of the modern American scene, come out with the conclusion that we have passed from a time and a society when the goals of human effort were production and achievement and creativity, to a form of life where the ultimate goal of existence is to be a greater and greater consumer of an ever widening flood of manufactured goods and gadgets.

Now all of this is pretty terrible, not because it reveals that we might not survive, but because it vividly indicates that we are not now really alive. Human nature is such that it cannot reach the heights of grandeur of which it is capable without a cause to which it can give itself. Survival never has been enough, and never will be enough, to satisfy the soul of man.

David, the shepherd boy, on the eve of his remarkable exploit which forever wrote large his name on Israel’s roll of heroes, began by asking: “Is there not a cause?”

David had come to the battlefield where his older brothers were soldiers. He had just come to run an errand — bring some cookies from home. There he heard those awesome tales about the giant Goliath. There he sensed the fear and defeat which paralyzed Israel’s warriors. His own littleness and weakness were apparent to him and further impressed upon him by his older brothers’ scorn. “But is there not a cause?” asked David. Was there not the honor of Israel, the freedom of their people about to be enslaved, and the glory of Israel’s God, the Lord Jehovah — were not these values in the balance? Yes, this was a cause great and noble and worthwhile, and David would make himself expendable, hazarding his all, which seemed all too small for the sake of that cause, and by his act David entered into imperishable glory and led his people to glory.

St. John tells us about the mysterious visit of that party of Greeks who came during the last crucial week of Jesus’ life and announced to Andrew and Philip: “Sirs, we would see Jesus.” What did they want — these Greeks who came to see Jesus? The evangelist certainly intends to indicate that this is just the vanguard of the innumerable multitude of all the nations and peoples and tribes and tongues of the earth which will be coming to Him. But there seems also to be a more practical and immediate purpose in their coming.

Are they not bearing an invitation to the famous teacher of truth, now hard-pressed by His enemies at home, to come away to the liberal atmosphere of Athens where new, radical ideas will be tolerantly entertained and He may there live out his days in security and quiet discussion? For a man who knows the steel ring of His enemies are forging about Him, who sees clearly the shadow of a cross athwart His pathway tomorrow, it was an inviting suggestion. Is not survival always all-important?

That Jesus entertained the notion of going with the Greeks, seems to be revealed by His words: “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from his hour. But for this cause came I to this hour. Father, glorify Thy name . . . Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit . . . And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

For Jesus there was a cause more imperative than survival or comfort, obedience to the Father’s will which concerned redemption of a lost world. So, He sent the Greeks away and steadfastly set His face toward the cross.

William Temple says: “Even if the cross had had no results, it would still be His glory. That His body should die was no defeat. Defeat for Him must have taken the form of cursing His enemies or sinking into self-concern.”

The eternal spiritual values of the Kingdom of God, allegiance to that cause, obedience to the Father’s will unto death, glorified, and continue to glorify Jesus Christ.

Arnold Toynbee says that his reading of history teaches him that in the ancient Roman world prior to the coming of the Christian martyrs, no class of citizens had the zest for life that the Roman soldiers did. Their dedication of themselves, even to the laying down of their lives, for the sake of the empire, gave to them a zest for life unequaled in Roman society, until there appeared the Christian martyrs who out-stripped the Roman soldiers not only in courage, but in Christ-like love, and imperishable faith.

Is there not a cause we can find worth living and dying for? For want of a cause, men perish of emptiness in the midst of unprecedented plenty. For want of a cause, men and women, who have been everywhere and done everything, commit suicide with overdoses of sleeping pills in order to escape the boredom of their uncommitted lives. For want of a cause, comfort hungry Americans delude their own souls into believing that the most important thing in the universe is the survival of their way of life.

A successful businessman, who in his youth had been expelled from a certain university for fighting, was invited back years later to give the commencement address. “I was thrown out of this university once,” he said, “for being a fighter. Now you invite me back because I am still a fighter. But now I know what I am fighting for.”

The church of Jesus Christ embodies a cause worth fighting for. The church calls you to expend your all in the saving campaign begun at Calvary and continuing to this very moment. The church calls you to take part in her teaching ministry of gospel truth — to fight off seductive siren voices luring you and your family away from church for weekend pleasure jaunts, to fight off the laziness that is your constant enemy to study and preparation. The church calls you to renew your loyalty to the cause of Christ, which begins with signing a card pledging your attendance at church for one month but moves much farther to the pledging up to the hilt of all your resources of mind and soul and body in the only values that will outlast the earth, sun, moon, and stars.

“Is there not a cause for you?”