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Show Choose The Best! Lesson for October 30, 1949 TT HURT Isaiah's patriotism, and his religion too, to see how fast his country was going down hill. Most of the troubles Isaiah saw are with us today. Wealthy women spending more and more -on them- ! selves; leaders who are irresponsible, self-seeking and incompetent; in-competent; poverty unprevented and uncared-for; drunkenness drunk-enness high and low. Isaiah, and j other prophets as I 1 is- H wen, saw in tne sin and drunkenness of Dr- Forcman the times the sign and symbol of national decay. To the careless, the selfish and the wild, to those who were "leaders" but were leading in the wrong direction, di-rection, Isaiah kept saying, in many different ways, Choose the best! e The Prophets' Successors rpHERE WAS A TIME when the church put most of her preaching preach-ing emphasis on individual religion: Get right with God! was the cry. The church of today has not by any means given up. her emphasis on personal religion, but we are learning learn-ing from the prophets what social righteousness means. The church in our time is the logical and actual successor to the prophet's work. The church is doing more than ever to awaken the conscience con-science of society, in fact the church itself, has a duty to be the conscience of society. One of the problems about which our nation needs to be waked up is one that Isaiah and Jeremiah Jere-miah faced, only we have it in a more desperate form. We call it alcoholism; they called it by an uglier, more suitable word: drunkenness. Even in those days drinking was a problem; it cut down the national health, wealth and wisdom. Nowadays it is worse because of two factors. One is the higher percentage of alcohol in beverages bev-erages such as whiskey, unknown in those days. The other factor is advertising. Where Drunkards Start AGAINST ALL THIS the church must keep saying and persuading persuad-ing people, Choose the Best! But it does comapartively little good to say this to the confirmed alcoholic. It makes more sense to say it to young people. For the sad feature of alcoholism is that it begins in the high schools. The Yale School of Alcohol Studies Stud-ies has collected evidence indicating indica-ting that two-thirds of all alcoholics begin drinking habits in the early high school years. , A recent Gallup poll shows the ' greatest percentage of drinkers to be in the age group 21 to 39. Today, it is estimated, there are four million alcohol addicts or excessive drinkers who are in more or less constant con-stant trouble with their families fami-lies and employers. Drunkenness costs industry in America no less than one billion dollars a year, and has a lot to do with the break-up of homes and with crime generally. Allied Youth SOMETHING is being done to stop this, which you should know about. There is a movement known as Allied Youth, a national educational organization working in high schools all over the country. Its work is positive, not negative. It is not trying to pass laws or to bring back prohibition. What it does try to do and it is succeeding remarkably re-markably well in many places is to give young people a way of life that will enable them to meet social pressure for drinking without loss of "face." Every Allied Youth post in a school has three aims: 1. To meet the social and recreational needs of young people. Every New Year's Eve, for instance, when millions of Americans are getting sickly drunk, more than 6,000 young people gather in Detroit for the biggest dry party in America, sponsored by Allied Youth. 2. To establish within the school a fellowship of young people who do not think it is necessary to drink to be smart. Such a group can change the attitude of an entire school. 3. To build a solid foundation of education for. total abstinence. Essentially, Es-sentially, Allied Youth is saying to young people everywhere, "Choose the Best!" (Information about Allied Youth can be had by writing Allied Youth, 1709 M. Street N.W., Washington, D. C.) (Copyright by the International Coun-'11 Coun-'11 of Religious Education on behalf of 10 Protestant denominations. Released iy WNU Features. |