On ike Ccimpus
Place
Stand
My wife and I have just
one child, a son, whom
we sent off to college
this year for his
freshman year. It’s been
a traumatic time in the Stacy house this
fall, Mom and Dad dealing with the
“empty nest syndrome,” and son
experiencing the long-sought freedom
from parental control and authority that
had, in his view, too long stifled his
creativity and independence. A few
weeks had passed and Cheryl
and I were beginning to adjust
pretty well to the quiet again
when the phone rang. It was our
son at college.
“What are you guys doing
this weekend?”
“Oh, we’re here. No special
plans.”
“Well I thought I ‘d come
home this weekend and check
up on you guys,”
“Are you sure you want to do
that? I mean, don’t you have late
classes on Friday?”
“Well, I just thought I’d
come home and check up on
you.”
“Well, son, you always know
you’re welcome. Don’t you need
to study this weekend?”
“I’ll bring some books home.
I just thought I’d see how you
guys are doing!”
“O.K. When will you come?”
“Well. It’ll be late Friday
after my classes. Tell Mom not
to wait dinner on me. It’ll be
late."
"All right. Be careful.”
Friday night late, comes in,
throws down a laundry bag full
of dirty clothes, flops into bed.
Next morning; “Well, I see
you haven’t done anything to
my old room. Same ole spread,
same colors and all. I figured
you’d changed it by now.”
Sits down to breakfast. Dad has the
blessing: “For this and all thy bounty we
are grateful, O Lord. Amen.”
“Same ole blessing, huh Dad? Yeah,
same ole prayer!”
Starts eating. “Pancakes, huh Mom?
We always did have pancakes on
Saturday morning. Boy I remember
that.”
Looks at the dishwasher. “Dad, why
don’t you buy Mom a new dishwasher?
That ole dishwasher’s been here since the Civil War!
Same ole dishwasher.”
Now why did the kid come home? What’s all that
about? I mean, wasn’t he the one who was just
bustin’ to get out on his own? He came home to the
same ole things to have the double pleasure of
complaining about it, and because he knew that
whatever else might be changing in his world, there
was one place in the world where he would not be
ambushed, where he would find things predictable in
place—the bedspread, the dishwasher, the pancakes.
Dad’s prayer—some place to stand while he weighs
and thinks and chooses and decides.
Because it’s tough out there, especially for college
students! Things are changing so fast; everything
they though was nailed down is coming loose; it can
Founders Day Address
by
Dr. R. Wayne Stacy
scare you to death!
Sometimes, in the fall, I walk over to N. C,
State’s campus just to get a look at the entering
freshmen. Boy, it’s a sight! I saw this one student the
other day wearing spiked heels about three inches
high, a little leather skirt that looked like it was
made out of a postage stamp, with orange hair pulled
up in a spike, and I though to myself: “Boy, isn’t he
something!”
It’s tough out there! Everybody needs a place to
stand.
Do you know who Archimedes was? Is that a
name you know? Archimedes was a 3rd century
Greek philosopher, physicist, mathematician, who
said that if he had a lever long enough and a place to
stand he could move the earth! Of course, of course,
having a place to stand is precisely the problem,
isn’t it? Where, on earth, do you stand in order to
move the earth with a lever? And so, philosophers
and theologians refer to this quest for a “place to
stand” as an “Archimedian Perspective,” somewhere
outside the vicissitudes of life and the winds of
change—solid ground, if you will—where I can view
things as they really are and weight and obs;rve and
choose and decide.
In my judgment, this is the biggest crisis facing
our society today—a place to stand.
Things are changing so fast, the ground keeps
shifting under our feet with such rapidity, that it’s
difficult to stand in one place long enough to come to
a considered, reasoned decision about anything! And
while that has implications for virtually all of
American life, I want to say a word to you today
about the impact that this lack of “perspective” is
having on values and morality.
Have you noticed that suddenly everybody is
talking about “values” these days? It’s the hottest
topic in America right now. When there’s a major
election everybody running for office, whether its for
senator or dog catcher, is running on a platform of
“basic values.”
William Bennett has edited a best seller entitled
The Book of V irtues in which he argues that America
is suffering the consequences of a generation of
people who, morally speaking, have no “place to
stand”aX least in part because we’ve quit teaching
values. Someone, he says, sold us a bill of goods that
values could only be caught not taught, and so we
quit teaching them, and the result has been the
development of a generation of moral illiterates!
The answer, says Bennett, is to return to the teaching
of values to our children, values like the ten “classic ”
values he enumerates in his book, honesty, self-
discipline, responsibility, courage, and the like —
what theologians used to call “cadinal virtues." He
illustrates them by means of a collection of classic
stories that we all used to be taught but which, by
and large, are no longer taught in school.
William Kilpatrick, of Boston University, has
written a disturbing challenge to public education as
it relates to the teaching of values called Why Johnny
Can't Tell Right From Wtong: Moral Illiteracy and
the Case for Character Education Stephen Carter’s
best seller, The Culture of Disbelief, calls for the re-
empowerment of people of faith in American life.
And now he’s planning a new book series on
“character,” including entries on “Integrity,”
Continued on Next Page
Noted Baptist leader, author
delivers Founders Day address
Dr. R. Wayne Stacy, pastor of Raleigh’s First
Baptist Church, was the keynote speaker for the
annual Founders Day convocation on Tuesday,
Oct. 11. The annual observance, commemorat-
E. Vincent Tilson,
vice president for
development (left),
reviews the
convocation
program with Dr.
Stacy (center), while
D. B. Franklin Lowe,
Jr., vice president
for academic affairs,
looks on. Tilson
introduced Dr Stacy
as the speaker for
the annual
Founders Day
program.
ing the institution’s founding in 1848, was held
in Turner Auditorium of McDowell Columns
building.
Stacy, a native of Florida and well known as
a Baptist leader, received his undergraduate
degree from Palm Beach Atlantic College. He
was awarded his masters and doctoral degrees
by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Louisville, Ky. He has completed post-doctoral
work at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati,
Ohio, and the Jerusalem Center for Biblical
Studies in Israel.
He has held teaching positions at several
institutions including the Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary. Stacy assumed his
current pastorate in Raleigh after serving several
churches in Rorida and Missouri.
Stacy’s denominational service as a Bible
study leader, speaker and teacher has been
extensive. He has conducted study clinics for a
number of years for Baptist associations in
Rorida, Missouri, Kansas, and Georgia.
In 1983, Dr. Stacy was selected to deliver the
Hulburt Preaching Lectures at MacMaster
University Divinity College in Ontario, Canada.
In 1992, he was chosen for a similar honor to
deliver the Preston Lectures in Biblical Studies
at Meredith College in Raleigh,
The author of several books, Stacy has been
a frequent contributor to the “Pulpit Digest,”
“The Biblical Illustrator” and other religious
publications.
PAGE 8 — CHOWAN TODAY. December 1994