SEVEN IDEAS

 

I would like to offer you seven ideas!

That’s all I want to do!

If you fall asleep during one of them, there are six remaining! If you fall asleep during five, maybe you’ll get two ideas!

But I want to just give you seven ideas culled from one human’s life that I think can be very powerful in the way you live your lives when you leave this institution.

In no order of importance:

One: The Greatest Struggle Is with Yourself
The greatest struggle in your life is not with society… it is with yourself! We are taught that we are victims of a society that is sexist, racist, ageist, anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, anti-Hispanic, anti-woman, anti-old, anti-young — anti just about everyone. The temptation is therefore overwhelming to see your problems and challenges in life as being with America and not with yourself.

Please understand: In this society, your greatest challenge is you… and if you can make you better, you will make this society better. Please don’t buy the rhetoric that the external is the problem. In a free and affluent country like this, we are the problem.

Two: Trust Your Common Sense
Mark Twain was right when he said, “Common sense isn’t common.” Nevertheless, please use this great gift of God, your common sense, when, outside of the natural sciences, you hear the words, “studies show,” and you find that the studies show the opposite of what common sense suggests.

As someone who is twice your age, who has been on radio fifteen years, and has debated these issues daily for fifteen years, may I tell you that I have never once come across a valid study that contravened common sense.

Nearly always studies either substantiate common sense or they are wrong. That is a general rule of life. That doesn’t mean, don’t take studies seriously. It means take common sense most seriously.

Three: Race is Unimportant

Remember that, and you will never, ever, for one scintilla of a moment, have a racist belief. If you divide humanity between black and non-black, white and non-white, brown and non-brown, yellow and non-yellow, you are, by definition, racist. If you divide the world simply between decent people and indecent people, you can’t be a racist because every race has good and bad members. If you divide by moral rather than racial terms, you are liberated from even the possibility of ingesting the toxin of racism.

Graduates, in this race-intoxicated society, please know that as countercultural, as politically incorrect as it is, race is trivial. Race means nothing. The color of a human’s skin is as trivial as the color of a human’s hair. That is not today’s politically correct belief. But it is the belief rooted in every sacred tradition from the East to the West — including my Judaism and your Christianity. God does not know the color of skin. God knows the character of a human heart. Period.

Four: Don’t Leave Your Values at Home
Whatever you do in your professional life, don’t leave your values at home when you go to work.

Most people in my profession are decent people — who leave their decent values at home when they go to work. At work, they produce a lot of garbage, garbage that many of them don’t want their own children to see. But they produce it because the gods of ratings demand it.

You have to determine, when you walk out of your home, what god you will worship. And that is tough. It is tough to keep your integrity at work.

If you become a lawyer, it is tough. It is tough not to fool around with a courtroom in order to win a case. It is hard not to fiddle a little bit with the truth, though not really tell a lie, in order to win for your client. It is hard in business to be honest and not make a false claim for your product.

It will be tough for you. It is easy to succeed. It’s tough to succeed with your integrity intact.

Five: Beware of Bad Ideas
We are living in the last three years of the bloodiest, meanest, cruelest, most torturous and barbaric century in the history of human life. Please never assume that moral progress is inevitable. This century is the century of gas chambers and gulags. This is the century of totalitarianism, red and brown.

Do you know why most evil takes place? Not because people are bad, but because they have bad ideas… Be careful to avoid bad ideas!

I’ll give you a quick way to measure if an idea is good. Ask two questions:

Does this make people kinder?

Does this hold people morally accountable?

 Nazism could not answer that it makes people kinder. Communism could not answer that it holds people morally accountable; all you had to do was hasten the revolution.

I don’t know of an improvement over Leviticus 19:18. “Love your neighbor as yourself. I am God.” No new idea has supplanted that one.

Six: Behavior Matters More than Intentions
That you mean to do good or that you are sincere doesn’t mean a thing to the other six billion people on earth. The only thing that matters to all of us is how you act. God cares about your heart, but the rest of humanity cares about your behavior. Saying “I want good to be done” but not doing any good; crying for the poor, but not giving charity or hiring a poor person — none of your good intentions mean a thing.

And on the other side, having selfish intentions and doing good is okay. It’s better to have good intentions, but if good comes out of what’s selfish, that is what counts. The good that is done, not intended, is what matters.

Seven: Religion is the True Counterculture
People think counterculture is dressing weird, or having every possible part of the body pierced. That’s not counterculture. If you do this, I’m not commenting on whether you should or not. But don’t think for a moment that this is taking a stand for some counterculture or that it takes guts.

Yes, it takes guts and even sometimes the loss of a job, though that has never been involved, thank God, in my life. But that’s counterculture.

When you can say, “No, I’m sorry; as tempting as that is [whatever that may be], I cannot do it,” others respect you, and you will respect you. When you know to whom you are accountable and you ultimately march to the beat of a higher drummer, you lead a more peaceful life.

The temptation to do what everybody else does is enormous, yet it is a guarantor of unhappiness, not just a guarantor of doing the wrong thing. Be true to your faith. It will ultimately work.

May God bless and guard over you!

May God shine His countenance lovingly upon you… nd may He give you a peaceful life!