When I was a young man, in Amherst College, and wrestling with transition into adulthood, independence, and purpose, I saw a striking movie, part of a film series being shown on campus. It was called, “Dieu a Besoin des Hommes” (God Needs Men).
Released in France on 4 October 1950, the film was described by Bosley Crowther of The New York Times on 27 March 1951 as:
[A] provocative drama of poignant conflicts in the realm of religious belief . . . a French film of rare and simple beauty . . . the inhabitants of a tiny, wind-scoured island off the Breton coast . . . have lost their priest and his services because of their persistence in doing wrong— they wreck ships and plunder the victims for meager gains . . .
[They] persuade one of their fishermen, [the sacristan,] to be their priest. . .
It considers the private struggle which goes on within the mind and the soul of this man, torn between his sense of his own shortcomings and recognition of his people’s desperate needs. . . .
What then stuck in my memory of the impact of seeing the film was summed up by the title: “God needs men” to work for Him.
I was a younger than average sophomore that year, still wrestling with the experience of living away from home and family.
As a native New Yorker who grew up in the then predominantly Catholic-Jewish world of the Bronx, my encounter with one of the then best bastions of the “WASP” world had been a kind of culture shock.
Happily, since I was bright enough to hold my own intellectually, what I perceived as a negative and critical examination of many of the underpinnings of my traditional values and beliefs led me to look at them with new eyes. It was a painful, but good experience,
There were other factors at play influencing the shaping of my life in those college years, but “God needs men” was the haunting provocation that seemed to summarize them.
During high school days, although I was a top student in my class, I had no clear sense of purpose. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” was a frustrating question to which I never had an answer.
My father was a self-made businessman who had worked his way up from a relatively poor family to a position of moderate security and means. Naturally, he had some thought that his son might well follow in his footsteps. It’s strange, but that was a future that did not attract me at all.
I always was interested in science, though, and in seeking a college to attend I was attracted by a collaborative project of Amherst College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology: two years at Amherst, then three at M.I.T. leading to an undergraduate degree from both.
My patient parents were supportive no matter what, but neither they nor any family member I knew of had gone to college, so it was hard for them to advise me.
Anyway, off I went to Amherst with the general plan of majoring in Physics and going on to M.I.T.—and with a growing thought of a career in Nuclear Physics.
Amherst prided itself that “We’re here to teach you how to think, not what to think.”
I was learning how to think. I did learn to respect that there are many legitimate points of view to every issue. I understood the necessity of sound, critical thinking.
And, I realized that “God needs men.”
27 September 2020