A Glass Darkly

Transcript (Download)

When I was a child, I speak as a child.

When I was a child, I understood as a child.

I thought as a child.

If I was God, I'd make this a better world for everybody.

In the Bible, he said all men are equal, and I think that's the truth.

I would like to create the world with the peoples all good, and there would be no weapons and no one could get killed.

If there was peace, I think it would be a lot better.

If there might be another world, God says it's going to be another world, you know, in the Bible.

If there's going to be another world, it might be better because there won't be no work, no nothing, just peace.

I wouldn't mind having Michael.

He planned it in his dream.

I would like to be God because I don't know what I would do.

I'm lucky I ain't stuck with being God.

When I became a man, I put away childish things.

Paul's is a church in the inner city whose members, many of them, have moved to the suburbs.

There is a group who is very concerned about the people of the community that so many of them do not know Christ as their Savior.

They embarked upon this venture not as social work, but as mission work, to carry the gospel of Christ far and wide.

You can walk down any one of these streets and get mugged, raped.

If you want dope, you can go right up here on Division and Wood Street, I guess it was, or Damon.

There was a drug store and this guy made fake prescriptions so people could get jollies off or whatever it was.

There's prostitution here and almost anything else that you could possibly think of.

This neighborhood is changing.

It was originally, I think, Norwegian and it went to the German and Polish and now Spanish, Puerto Rican, Negro.

It's kind of seeping in and it's really a funny neighborhood because you still have your sections like Evergreen and Schiller along Hoyne there.

It's still Polish, Polish background.

Over on Concord Place, one side of the street is Puerto Rican, the other side is Polish.

There's this area of fear.

One boy wouldn't even talk to us.

I couldn't see a better name for our church, for the work that we're doing right now at St.

Paul because he had to be the greatest missionary converter for the Christian church.

I knocked on the door and this girl, she had a blind, she said, who are you? And I said, well, we're from St.

Paul's over on North Avenue and we were wondering if you had any children here that would like to go to Sunday school.

And she was a little scared.

She thought Louis and Louis is what, six, four or something, and myself.

And she thought, wow.

I'm going to go to the church.

I'm going to go to the church.

It has taken the children and given them something they were looking for.

It has given them something that their mind has been searching for.

It's given them a God, a loving God, a merciful God.

The world I would make would have just one nationality.

I don't know what nationality it would be, but there would just be one kind of people because people make too much out of it.

I like the world where everybody got their own mind.

They think what they want.

If the average people and low people and the high people, they understand each other, they don't think they're better than nobody else.

I would like to just look down over the people that I created.

And I would like to see how beautiful it is.

Small churches, big churches, rich churches, poor churches, they hear about the work that we're doing.

And they send clothes, books, anything that we can use, money.

They sponsor kids at camp.

Everything, you know, they're just all out for it.

It's really something.

The world I would make would have just one nationality.

The world I would make would have just one nationality.

Paul's is a church which intends to stay where it is.

It intends to serve the community, to constantly proclaim to them the word of God, to show these people that there is hope.

For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.

I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abide with faith, hope, charity, these three.

But the greatest of these is charity.

Date Of Production

circa 1967

Abstract

Sponsored film made for the Inner City Missionary Committee of Chicago Area. The narrator, a young member of St. Paul's Ev. Lutheran Church at 2215 W North Ave in the West Town/Wicker Park neighborhood, describes the demographic changes that have come to the neighborhood in recent years and why he thinks it is important for the church to perform outreach to inner city youth.

Format

16mm

Extent

500 feet

Color

Color

Sound

Optical

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Answer Print

Genre

Sponsored

Form

Short

Subject

Christianity
Children
City and town life
City churches

Related Collections

Sue and Marv Gold Collection

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago ➜ West Town

Sponsor/client

Inner City Mission Committee of Chicago Area

Main Credits

Film Design, Inc. (is production company)

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