Historian William Manchester calls 1932 the "cruelest year." In 1932, America was broke. The Great Depression was a monster playing havoc with the minds and bodies of Americans. Men, ashamed that they weren't able to support their families, thought about suicide. Some did and sociologists made up a new term for it: "altruistic suicide," the killing of oneself so as not to be a burden to the community.

In Key West, Florida, garbage fills the streets because the city can no longer pay its sanitation workers. The wealthy mount machine guns on their roofs; who knew when hungry mobs might form and storm the gates. Henry Ford, always a pacifist, begins to pack a gun. In Massachusetts, a family lives on nothing but lintels for one solid year. Nothing but. One third of all American school children weren't in school that year because there was no money to keep the doors open. So tight was the job market that New York department stores require college degrees for all elevator operators.

In that cruelest year, Americans think as they had never thought before. Famous names such as Upton Sinclair, Clifton Fadiman, and Eskine Caldwell promote Communism. Will Rogers says, "Those rascals in Russia have got mighty good ideas." The governor of Kansas declares, "Even the iron hand of a dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke." "Vanity Fair" demands, "Appoint a Dictator!"

Al Smith thinks that the Constitution ought to be wrapped up and laid on the shelf until the crisis passes. Some write that Russia is "the moral top of the world where the light really never goes out." The Book of the Month Club has as one of its selections The New Russia's Primer.

How odd all that seems to us today. To actually admire Stalin's Russia over America? To roll up the Constitution? That's our national Scripture, our American Bible. Within sixty years of Will Rogers' admiration of the communists, Russia would go bust and the Soviet Union would crumble. We would certainly not see Stalin's and other's murderous regimes as "the moral light at the top of the world."

But we can understand why people made such demands: growling stomachs produce aberrant minds. Economic pain can reduce the renowned to rascals.

Hungry parents of hungry children demanded we mothball the Constitution, just for a while. Just until the crisis passed. When the monster left, we could unroll it; take it off the shelf.

Isn't it the same way for us? When the pressure hits, the temptation comes for us to roll up the Bible and put it on the shelf. When circumstances don't go our way, when there's an economic advantage to be had, when there's an opportunity for retaliation, we can roll the Old Book up and use it as a doorstop, just until normalcy returns. When there's the opportunity for that verbal dig, that audible sigh signifying the registration of disgust, we roll the Bible up and place it on Al Smith's shelf. Under pressure, in fear of hardship, with an opportunity for revenge, or with an opportunity for a word with a tinge of sarcasm, we're quick to speak, quick to anger, and slow to listen as James 1 becomes our doorstop.

With the pressure of weekdays, we mothball the Book, and then we take it out on Sundays, returning it to the shelf on Monday. Unsheathe it for its one day in the sun(day). Sounds like Peter, who when under pressure and in fear of pain, finds his tongue as coarse as any Galilean seaman. Under pressure, Job's wife curses her husband's name and counsels suicide.

Yet under the pressure of extreme hunger, Jesus refuses to turn stones to bread and use His power for self-aggrandizement. Under pressure, Jesus refuses retaliation. Under pressure, Jesus is full of grace and full of truth, One who always turned to the Book.

It seems ludicrous to think of Americans admiring Russia and wanting to imitate her totalitarianism, but some did. It's just as ridiculous to think of a Christian who turns away from the Book to live by some bankrupt substitute.