Week 22 Sunday
Week 22 Sunday
Divided Loyalties
Matthew 7:15-20; 12:25-26, 33-34
We come now to the ninth major enemy of the fifteen: divided loyalties. This major enemy is akin to the one we have just been discussing—insincerities—and yet it is different. One may be truly sincere and at the same time find within oneself divided loyalties. You may not be covering anything—even from yourself—and yet you may face the fact that you are trying to divide loyalties between mutually exclusive things. Whether the enemy be covered insincerity or honestly divided loyalties, the result is the same: the abilities, the effectiveness, and the happiness of the individual are canceled out. There can be no abundant living with inward division.
And yet divided souls are so prevalent. We believe in God with the top of our minds, but down deep at the bottom we obey something else as the way of life. We live by what Thomas R. Kelly called “straddle arrangements and compromises between our allegiances to the surface level and the divine Center.” Again, he says, “We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us.”*
I sometimes think there’s two of me,
A living soul and a Ph.D.**
A Supreme Court justice said to me as I was about to leave him: “We should discuss this subject for six hours. I am in a dilemma. For three days of the week I am a conscientious objector, and four days of the week I’m not.” And since he believed in majority rule he was an ardent militarist, smothering the conscientious objector, but not quite happy over the murder! There are many of us living on a bare majority—four to three—and with little or no power left over to put into operation the decisions of the majority. How much stronger we would be if we were living unanimously—all our life energies devoted to one great end.
O God, my Lord, I am tired of being worn out by inward conflicts before I get to my problems. I expend so much energy on myself that there is no plus to use in my real problems. I have become the problem. I must be unanimous for you. If you didst ever help me, help me here. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* A Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941), 21, 91.
** Dorothy Minchin-Comm, The Bamboo House (Bloomington, Ind.: Trafford Publishing, 2012), 204.
Week 22 Monday
Divided Loyalties: Man or Menagerie?
Matthew 7:21-29
We continue our study of divided loyalties. A poet says, “I’m not a man; I’m a menagerie, I’m a zoo.” And he expressed what many vaguely feel. To have a menagerie inside one is, to say the least, not a comfortable feeling. And it keeps one worse than busy to have to throw chunks of meat to opposing temperaments to keep them pacified. And yet that is some people’s lifework.
One can see the outer fortunes of Israel go up and down with the inner divided loyalties. “Aaron erected an altar in front of the calf and proclaimed a festival next day for the Eternal” (Exod. 32:5 Moffatt). Worship a calf today and the Eternal tomorrow! Note which was the now and which the “next day”!
The reason for this turning to the near-at-hand, immediate thing is that God becomes vague. “If you lose your freshness in the land and deprave yourselves by carving an idol” (Deut. 4:25 Moffatt). We make local idols, because God is not fresh to us. God fades out, and idols barge in. Then we try to put the two together and reconcile them: “[S]ilver . . . You solemnly devoted to the Eternal as your own gift, to make a carved metal idol” (Judg. 17:3 Moffatt). Devoted to the Eternal to make an idol! That sentence is a transcript of a muddled soul expressing itself in a muddled purpose.
A minister expressed this division when he said, “I’m working in too many directions.” Another put it this way: “I need to be at one with myself.”
On the notice board of a church I saw two announcements that crossed into each other of the morning and evening subjects: The Church at Work Playing Second Fiddle. Not only is this church at work playing second fiddle to something else that is first fiddle and leading the tune, but in our own lives our Christianity is playing second fiddle to something else. Christianity is subordinate, not supreme.
O Christ, in whose life only the authentic notes of eternity could be heard leading the music of your daily living, help me play second fiddle to you and to you alone. For otherwise I shall be out of harmony with the eternal realities. Amen.
Week 22 Tuesday
Conscious and Subconscious Minds at War
Romans 7:15-24
Most Christians experience what I have been talking about concerning divided loyalties, even after being converted. That this experience called conversion brings a great amount of unity into life is obvious. The life forces are gathered up around a single loyalty to Christ. Life has a new center around which to revolve. But all the life forces and affections are not gathered up around Christ. There are some that do not bend the knee and accept this new allegiance.
This residue of recalcitrance is variously named. Some call it “original sin,” others “remains of depravity,” “the old man,” “another law working in my members.” Psychology would probably explain it as “the driving urges in the subconscious mind.” These three driving urges—self, sex, and the herd—have a long history and are strong and clamorous. They are used to having their way; they have had their way for a long time. And now into the conscious mind is introduced and built up through conversion a new loyalty—loyalty to Christ and his kingdom. Intelligence, feeling, and will bend the knee to him. But down underneath in the subconscious mind are subjects that are subdued but not surrendered. They drive for their fulfillment apart from these new loyalties. They obey, but moodily. They now and then go on a rampage to break into freedom from this new Overlord. Sometimes they are just sullen, but more often there is a definite tension. There is a sense of inner strain. The soul is not relaxed and at ease with itself. Religion is not the natural expression of the whole being, but the forced will of a portion of it. Duty, rather than spontaneity, is the key word. The soul, instead of being poised, is pursued—so pursued, sometimes, that, like the wild duck in the hunting season, it cannot rest to feed. Religion is not release; it is tension, a ding-dong, see-saw battle.
The subconscious mind has not been converted. It is at war with the conscious mind.
O God, my gracious Lord, is this the best that you can do? Is religion to bring me no more than tensions and conflicts? Can I not be released and poised and spontaneous? I cannot bear within my bosom this constant conflict. Bid it cease and bid me be free. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 22 Wednesday
Can the Subconscious Be Redeemed?
Romans 6:22; 7:24–8:10
The new life is introduced in conversion, but is not fully regnant. Someone said, “Being a Presbyterian may not save you from sinning, but it will take the joy out of it.” That is just the difficulty in many partly changed lives; the joy of sinning is gone, but the fact of sinning is not. To indulge in joyless sinning is no joy! We have just enough religion to make us miserable by our sinning, and not enough to make us masterful by our Savior.
Where is the snag? Is this the best that Christianity can bring? Some modern theologians frankly say yes. And, moreover, this sense of guilt burden and consequent penitence is held up as the ideal. One theologian quoted the story of a monk, one hundred years of age, in a monastery in Palestine muttering with every breath, “Lord, have mercy on us”; and the theologian added, “I hope with my last breath I’ll say that.”
I hope I won’t! I hope I’ll say, “My Lord and my God.” I don’t want the emphasis to be upon my guilt, but upon God’s goodness, not upon me at all, but upon God. Suppose a child should go around continually in the home muttering, “Father, Mother, have mercy on me.” That attitude would just as effectively block the relationships between parents and child as sin would. The attitude of penitence has to come, and come decisively; but it should lead us out of penitence into pardon, and that pardon leads us to fellowship, and that fellowship into joy. The gift of God has been accepted!
Even after that pardon and fellowship have come, there remain the unchanged instincts in the subconscious. Can they be redeemed? Can salvation extend to the subconscious mind? Or is sitting on the lid the best we can do? We know that Christianity unites individuals; can it unite humankind? Can the conscious mind and the subconscious both come under one sway, and redemption and work united for common ends? That is one of the most important questions we can ask regarding human redemption.
O God, have you been balked in your processes of redemption? At the threshold of the subconscious are you turned back, baffled and defeated? Is there no cleansing for these depths? Must I go through life with this ghastly contradiction at the center of my being? How can I believe that and still believe in you? I cannot. Help me. Amen.
Week 22 Thursday
The Holy Spirit Works in the Subconscious
John 14:25-26; 15:26; 16:7-14
We come now to the question: Can the whole nature be changed, conscious and subconscious? If so, how? The answer is that Christianity provides for this deeper cleansing in its teaching and provision for receiving of the Holy Spirit. The area of the work of the Holy Spirit is largely, though not entirely, in the realm of the subconscious. There the Holy Spirit works: purifying, redirecting, and dedicating age-long driving instincts. The wild horses of nature, roaming in all directions, are tamed and harnessed to the purposes of the kingdom. The Holy Spirit is tamer and redeemer, for only the Spirit can work at those depths. “For the Spirit fathoms everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10 Moffatt)—and humanity. But the Holy Spirit not only fathoms the depths of humanity; the Spirit refashions the depths of humanity and unifies us at the center, so that the conscious and the subconscious speak the same language, understand each other, drive for the same goals, and own a common Lord.
But here is where the Christian church is weakest. It believes in and teaches the Holy Spirit—partly. The disciples were at this stage when Jesus said to them: “He [the Holy Spirit] remains with you and will be within you” (John 14:17 Moffatt). The Holy Spirit was with them, but not within them. The same is true today. Most Christians know the Holy Spirit is with them, disturbing them by momentary touches, flashes of nearness, illuminations and insights, saving here and saving there. But all this is “with,” and not “within.” The Spirit goads us rather than guides us, illuminates rather than invigorates, prods us into activity rather than penetrates all activities—it is from without in, instead of from within out. The capital and government are on the outside, rather than on the inside. This sense of outsideness will persist in religion until we enter into what the disciples entered into at Pentecost. There they passed over from the with stage to the within stage. Their religion was no longer a prodding, but a penetration; no longer a restriction, but a release.
O Spirit of God, I, too, long for this withinness—I would be every whit whole. I would have the seat of your authority within me. For I cannot conceive that you have come so far in your redemption and will not come the full way. You will not stop on the threshold—you will move within. Come, Spirit, come—within, within, entirely within. Amen.
Week 22 Friday
“For They Were Afraid Of”
John 19:38-44; 20:19-23
Suppose the Gospels had ended where the original Gospel of Mark was broken off, the rest of the narrative being lost: “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of —” (Mark 16:8 Moffatt, who shares two attempts to supply an ending from various ancient versions). The resurrection had taken place; the whole of the redemptive process was complete; the gladdest news that ever burst upon human ear was in the possession of the disciples. But “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of—” Suppose the Gospel had ended there. The disciples with good news but gripped by fears, the whole movement frozen by fear. Suppose they had not gone on to Pentecost where these fears were dissolved by a new invigoration of divine resources within them. How crippled, how unsatisfactory, how far short of human need would our Christianity have remained, if the gospel had stopped at the pre-Pentecost stage! And yet that is where most of our Christianity has stopped. With glad good news entrusted to it, it has stopped in its tracks, “afraid of—” what? Everything—inadequate resources, the power to grapple with the complete need of humanity; in short, Christianity is afraid of itself and others.
A discerning layperson explains the inadequacy of Christianity this way: “The present level of Christianity has exhausted itself against the problems of the present day. It will have to be renewed on a higher level to become functionally adequate.” That higher level is nothing less than the powers of Pentecost becoming our working capital.
The neo-orthodoxy of our time illustrates this vividly. It has no doctrine of, or emphasis upon, the Holy Spirit, hence it ends in pessimism and despair: “for they were afraid of . . . . ” The Christianity produced is a sad, despairing type, like the interim days between the crucifixion and the resurrection—of the first and second day, but not of the third day. It is a broken-off gospel, a before-Pentecost message instead of an after-Pentecost, frustrated instead of fruitful.
Holy Spirit, I see what I need; I need you. I need you, not as an occasional visitor with me, but as my constant Guest within me. This three-storied house of my body, mind, and soul is yours. Take charge. Put light and heat in every room, and let the light shine from every window—with no part dark. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 22 Saturday
Striking Deeper Levels
Luke 24:49; Acts 2:38-39; Galatians 5:17; Ephesians 1:13
A young minister had a nervous run-down condition that the doctor diagnosed as follows: “You are trying to build a $2,000 house with $1,000 resources. You are strained and worried over the inadequate resources. Cost of diagnosis $50.” That diagnosis could be given to the Christian church as a whole. We are trying to do things beyond our spiritual resources, hence strain. We must tap new resources.
In Texas, surface oil was used for a long time; then the supply became meager. Finally someone dared to go down 5,000 feet and struck new levels of oil, which brought forth gushers. Now almost all the oil is tapped at those low levels. When we as Christians go down to the deeper levels and tap resources, “laid up” for us by Divine Providence, then we shall be artesian and overflowing. Then we shall be ready for anything.
Melva Livermore, who knew so well the deeper levels of living, stood up in our Ashram and said with a shining face, “I just go around swishing love about.” And then she added as she stretched out her arms, “Come on, life, I’m ready.” She was ready for anything that life could bring.
Melva Livermore’s life had been transformed from a thermometer to a thermostat. The thermometer merely registers the temperature of its surroundings; the thermostat changes the temperature. Our Christianity is often only registering its surroundings, instead of remedying them. The early disciples did not go around registering the current pessimisms; they changed them. They didn’t go around saying, “Look at the problems,” but “Look at the Savior.” Their emphasis was not on sin abounding, but on grace much more abounding. And they spoke with transforming force. For the “Acts of the Apostles” were the acts of the Holy Spirit working through the apostles. And what they began we can continue. “To be continued,” is written at the end of the “Acts of the Apostles.”
O you Living Spirit—you bringer of Life into death, of Victory into defeat, of Purity into impurity, of plus into minus—come within me and capitalize all my nouns and substantives, make life sparkle that has been dull and dead and ineffective. Put yourself into myself. In Jesus’ name. Amen.