I was alone on a long, cross-country automobile trip. To relieve the monotony I turned on the radio and began to listen to some mid-morning broadcasts. I tuned in on one program that amazed me. From the downtown studio of a southern city there was coming out over the airwaves a play-by-play account of a baby show. The master of ceremonies was describing the large crowd of women who had congregated in the studio to take part. One by one he introduced the baby show entrants — which I soon discovered were not babies at all — but cats and dogs dressed up like babies. The best dressed pet was to win the prize.

Oh, they were having a wonderful time! I mean the women were. You never heard such giggling and squealing — as the announcer described each baby’s elaborate ensemble: Persian cats in blue baby bonnets, spaniels in bootees, terriers in long lacy dresses, cats in kimonos, puppies in pajamas.

As I listened to that radio program I began to wonder: How in the world could you get people to act so foolish — go expend such time and effort on profitless endeavor? Here were a bunch of busy housewives who had left their beds unmade, their dishes unwashed, their floors unswept (they said so themselves) to rush downtown to a morning broadcast, with Fido in rompers and Tabby with a diaper on. What in the world would make people act like that? It just didn’t make sense. Then slowly it began to dawn on me.

Why, these women were getting public recognition. One at a time each woman was being singled out, brought to the microphone, invited to tell her name and address, and then the announcer described in glowing terms her handiwork. Yes, the explanation of such a sound and spectacle was just this — these women were experiencing in the midst of their hum-drum household drudgery, in the midst of all their days of unnoticed, unheralded, and unsung service, a brief moment of being lifted up above the crowd and given a wee bit of personal recognition. And they loved it. They ate it up.

Now such contemporary radio programs should be very instructive to us. It has become a bye-word with us, has it not, that the radio and TV folks are certainly on the ball — they know what the public wants? They are not in the business of deciding what programs the public ought to like and then ballyhooing public interest to get a listening audience. Oh, no. The radio and television program producers by clever investigation find out exactly what people want and then build their programs to satisfy just those wants. They have discovered this hunger of the American people for personal recognition: hence the popularity of programs where members of the studio audience are called up on a platform before a microphone to answer a quiz question, to tell about their honeymoon experiences, or to sing a song. And if the kind of public recognition folks seek seems silly beneath the dignity of man, then television is just revealing how poverty stricken our whole culture is in providing worthy personal recognition. And folks will continue to seek to satisfy their souls with such ersatz, foolish substitutes so long as the genuine thing is denied them.

Yes, modern television would instruct us in the real nature of man — lay bare to us personality’s most compelling drives — let us in on the know about what makes man tick.  Down deep in every human heart is this desire — one of the strongest driving powers in personality — this thirst to be recognized — to be singled out for approving notice by one’s fellows.

One day the philosophers were holding a conference to arrive at an adequate definition of man. There they all were, all the wise men, the thinkers, congregated in a circle pondering the question: “What is man?” One philosopher said: “Man is the only animal that can speak.” But somebody brought in a parrot which had sailed the seven seas and could swear in seven languages, proving false that definition of man. Another philosopher said: “Man is the only featherless bi-ped among the animals.” Whereupon one of his colleagues threw a picked chicken into their midst and exploded that definition. And so it went, until finally all the philosophers agreed upon this as an adequate, definitive, definition of man: “Man is the only animal that paints his cheeks.”

By that the philosophers did not mean that man is the only rouge-using animal — though I think he is. They meant that man is the only animal that blushes. And of course, that is the same thing as saying that man is the only animal that feels ashamed of himself. And, of course, that is just putting negatively this positive fact of human nature — man craves and must have the approved recognition of his fellows. When do we blush? Why, when we feel ashamed of ourselves — when we realize that in the presence of other people we have acted dumb, or boorish, and have suddenly won for ourselves from our fellows, instead of the approving recognition we so deeply desire, disapproving recognition. That makes us awfully unhappy. One of the most passionate desires of the human heart is this persistent thirst — to win the approved recognition of one’s fellows.

And so — in a day when modern culture is characterized by mass production and mass movements, when the individual is lost in the crowd, and our manner of life has become so poverty stricken in providing worthwhile ennobling personal recognition that folks have to satisfy their souls with all sorts of silly, foolish substitutes, like dog and cat baby shows to have recognition — we rejoice to see such a service as ours this day, when school and church and home and community combine to give honorable recognition to a fine group of young women who have really done something worthy of recognition. For four years of high school training they have been diligent, industrious and faithful. Now they have achieved the distinction of graduation. We proudly acclaim this notable and worthy accomplishment.

Now, of course, the principal purpose of such an occasion is to give recognition to the graduate. But there are two inevitable by-products of such a service. Facing up to this fact in human nature — man’s deep desire for recognition — ought to serve to remind us of two sacred responsibilities of recognition we all share. First, ours in the responsibility to give recognition wherever it is due. We are tickled to death when others single us out and recognize our services as significant, and tell us we have done a good job. That little bit of recognition encourages us to continue in our doing good. Well, our own need of the expressed approval of our fellows ought to teach us that other people need our expressed approval, too.

Recently, I heard a famous Bible teacher lecture on: “The Christ who knows what is in man.” He showed how Jesus was able to help and encourage men to live up to their best and highest possibilities because he knew what was in them. Well, we all ought to know, from our own experience, at least this much that is in our fellow men — how deep a desire each one has to be recognized, singled out for approval, when he or she has done their best and stood fast for right. We ought to be ready to supply that need wherever we can. It is our Christian duty. I know some people who have a perfect genius for it — encouraging tired, timid, despairing, obscure people by giving the recognition of a friendly word of well deserved praise, or just a pat on the back.

But how perverse most of us are! Quick to criticize the faults of our fellows we are so slow to praise when praise and recognition are really in order.

John Watson, during his first pastorate in a small Scotch Highland church, experienced great difficulty in learning to speak without manuscript. Again and again he would forget his sermon and there would be a long awkward silence. He grew so discouraged that he almost gave up the ministry. Then one Sunday morning, after young Watson had forgotten his sermon again, a gaunt Highland elder came to him after the service and said: “When you are not remembering your sermon, just give out a Psalm and we will be singing that while you are taking a rest, for we are all loving you and praying for you.” Dr. Watson became a great preacher, without manuscript, and in after years he said: “I am in the ministry today because of the tenderness and charity of those country folk, those perfect gentlemen and Christians.”

If you see someone stand up to life bravely in the darkness and gloom of bitter discouragements, then let them have the encouragement of hearing from your own mouth words of admiration, recognizing their brave fight. If you find a young person struggling valiantly to down strong temptations and to choose the lonely road of purity and truth, remember you have a Christian responsibility to bolster his strength by going to him and recognizing what he’s doing. If you hear a soft, kind word spoken in reply to angry bitterness, give to that Christian character the recognition due her. We have this responsibility of recognition to give it — to pay it — wherever it is due.

But our responsibility of recognition does not stop here — ours is also the responsibility to choose to shoot for recognition on the highest possible level and help others strive for it. What a difference it makes in our performance of living — what gallery we play to, what recognition we go after. How explain such a ghastly spectacle as housewives at that dog and cat baby-show? Why, folks seeking recognition at a lower level than is worthy of them. One of life’s most important decisions is: What recognition shall I seek? Who am I going to play to please?

Some folks go after recognition at the gang’s low level — living by the rule of life’s lowest common denominator. Such people want and go after the recognized approval of mediocre minds who are always ready to criticize anything a bit different from the mere average of life.

A man in the hotel business once said to me: “Running a church is the easiest job in the world — just like running a hotel. All you have to do is just open up for business and everybody who comes along will tell you how to run it.”

So with your life, you can choose to run it to please the hoi polloi — to satisfy the suggestions of every chance acquaintance. You can run with the pack and hunt with the hounds. You can be ever so careful never to offend the sacred instincts of the herd by being the least bit different, and you will win the recognition of mediocrity.

Some people actually seek the recognition of defeat. Their big play in life is for pity. Therefore they choose the gallery of sympathizers, and seek recognition there. Near my boyhood home in Mississippi is Shiloh battlefield where, on the bluffs above the winding Tennessee River, was waged one of the bloodiest and most strategic battles of the Civil War. An old tradition persists that in the crisis of that battle, which claimed the lives of more Americans than were lost in the whole Revolutionary War, a Federal Captain, seeing his company falter under the steady Confederate fire, turned to the 13 year old drummer boy at his side and said: “Beat a retreat.” But the lad with the drum kept rattling out a “charge,” as though the Captain had never spoken. Time was precious. The Captain’s soldiers were going down under the withering Confederate blast. Angrily, the Captain strode over to the drummer boy and scolded him for his insubordination: “Didn’t you hear me command you to beat a retreat?” “Yes, sir,” stammered the little drummer with tears streaming down his cheeks: “But, sir, I only know how to beat a charge.” The old story runs that at that moment the tide turned, the Federal Company took the position on the last attack, and when the Captain looked to commend his drummer, the boy lay with a bullet through his chest.

There are some folks who condition their souls to play for sympathy — that’s the recognition they want, go out for and get. How do they get it? By beating a retreat — by crying aloud their defeat — by whining of how foully the world has used them. But thank God there are some souls who only know how to beat an attack on life. They may go down, but it is with head up and colors flying.

But the top-flight level of recognition we all have the opportunity to choose to shoot for is the recognition and approval of Almighty God himself. We need recognized approval of our fellow men — but we need more the recognition that we are approved of God. Augustine said: “Thou has made us for Thyself, God, and our weary souls are restless, ‘till we find our rest in Thee.” Our Christian revelation is that even the secret unknown acts of the most obscure man or woman are never forgotten, but are all counted of enduring significance by our God. One day they will each be made known, evaluated, rewarded, and the proper recognition given, when the Eternal sits on the great white throne counting anything and everything done unto one of the least of His children as done unto God Himself.

But in the meantime, part of the Christian program of life (as Lloyd Douglass made out so credibly in The Magnificent Obsession) is that our accomplishments, services, feats, must remain anonymous, unrecognized, unpraised, unrewarded. We must do them, then forget about them. We must not even let our left hand know what our right hand does. And a part of the process of this quiet, unpretentious service of man to the glory of God, is that in us there will be developed a certain beauty of spirit and a power of patience.

Does this mean then that we must learn to be satisfied with no recognition, and deny this deep human urge for recognized approval? No, but rather that we must learn to look up to a gallery just a bit higher and by the eye of faith receive that highest recognition in the court of heaven, the silent nod of Eternal God, and be satisfied with that.

Does this seem strange and unreal to us? ’Tis no stranger than that recorded fact of the high school boy who pitched his best game of baseball on the Saturday afternoon after his blind father died, because, the lad said, it was the first game his father had ever seen him pitch.

Yes, and by the same token, the very best performances in playing this game of life are invariably turned in by those who live in the faith that a Heavenly Father sees, and who have this single purpose of winning His approved recognition.

“Your life is hid with Christ in God,” cries Paul. What does the Apostle mean? That the secret center and meaning of his life is with God as revealed through Jesus Christ — that the recognition and approval he values — the gallery he is playing to — is up there, and Paul doesn’t care how the heathen howl and his enemies rant, he keeps going down the line for that Christ, that Lord.

Joan of Arc, in that dramatic passage from Shaw’s play, having been cast out and betrayed by the leaders of church and state in France, tells where she has always looked for approval and recognition in her life. “Yes, I am alone on earth,” says Joan to those traitorous men, “I have always been alone. My father told my brothers to drown me if I would not stay to mind his sheep while France was bleeding to death: France might perish if only our lambs were safe. I thought France would have friends at the court of the king of France; and I find only wolves fighting for pieces of her poor torn body. I thought God would have friends everywhere, because He is the friend of everyone; and in my innocence I believed that you who now cast me out would be like strong towers to keep harm from me. But I am wiser now; and nobody is any the worse for being wiser. Do not think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone; and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God? I see now that the loneliness of God is His strength; what would He be if He listened to your jealous little counsels? Well, my loneliness shall be my strength too: it is better to be alone with God; His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength I will dare, and dare, and dare, until I die.”

From the beautiful and fitting recognition of this commencement occasion you graduates go out into the world to take your several places. Are you going to fit your conduct to suit the crowd that makes the biggest noise, or are you a candidate for that well known recognition of doing it because everybody’s doing it, or, will you seek the approval and recognition of Him who in the silence of eternity, through the stillness of your own soul, gives you His nod of acclaim?

• Scripture Reference: Hebrews 12:1-6 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Encouragement; Recognition; 637 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: Choir Recognition Sunday • First Preached: 5/15/1949 • Last Preached: 4/10/1967 • Rating: 2 • Book/Author References: The Magnificent Obsession, Lloyd Douglass