Week 26 Sunday
Week 26 Sunday
An Unchristian Social Order
Psalm 1:1; Micah 2:1-2; Habakkuk 2:12-14
We come now to the thirteenth major enemy of abundant living: an unchristian social order. We have space in this review of the enemies only to touch on the effect of an unchristian social order on the individual; we shall expound it at length later. We must mention it here to get clearly before us the disruptive effects of what many would consider the major enemy.
We are now beginning to see the effect of the social order upon the individual. We will not debate the question of whether heredity or environment has the determinative influence in the life of the individual. Perhaps we shall see in the end that the determinative influence in the life of the individual is the individual’s own reaction to what is received from heredity or environment. For only what you respond to influences you. But the fact must be faced that the individual usually responds to social heredity, and that social heredity then proceeds to change the individual into its own image. The social heredity has an amazing power to convert the individual for good or ill. Not mechanically, mind you, for we repeat that only that part of your social heredity to which you respond changes you.
The psychoanalysts stress the fact that the cause of maladjustment to life is within the individual, and some schools of psychologists stress environmental factors as responsible for maladjustment of the individual. Both assumptions are true, for the individual and the environment act and react upon each other. But if I had to choose between them, I think I should have to conclude that an unchristian social order produces more thwarted and disrupted lives than any other single cause. A dean of girls in a public school told me that the three major factors in producing problem children are “poverty, broken homes, and a lack of attendance upon Sunday school or church”—all social factors.
The social conscience is being made more acute and sensitive as the facts are coming to the surface.
O Christ, we are beginning to see more clearly your rightness in presenting a new order on earth, the kingdom of God. We would submit ourselves to that new order and be made into its image. We would yield to its every impulse and thus be responsive to the highest. Amen.
Week 26 Monday
The Social Order Converts the Individual
Hosea 4:1-3; Amos 8:4-7
We must continue our discussion of the effect of an unchristian social order upon the individual. Many things that we think are born within the individual are imposed on the child through the social heredity at a very early age. The social heredity in China converts into its image 400 million people every thirty years. A Chinese child transferred at birth to North America and put into a purely American home would grow up in the image of the American social heredity, with the outlook, the mentality, and the spirit of the American.
If dyers’ hands are colored by the colors amid which they work, so the souls of individual are colored by the colors of the social heredity amid which they live and move and have their being. A person makes a machine, and then the machine makes the person. Someone has expressed it this way: “Some machines lift us up, help us to make the most of ourselves. Some tear us apart, grind us down. A machine geared to a man is one thing, but a man geared to a machine is another thing. One is human, gives you a chance to be at your best self. The other is mechanical, works on you like a gear cutter, whittling you down; chiseling at you, cutting grooves in you, making you like all the small gears on the line.”
As the machine cuts into your inner being, so the social surroundings cut into your being, chisel you, and make you after their own pattern. In the interest of individual conversion, I am committed to the necessity of social conversion. If a person shows no interest in converting an unchristian social order, then by that very fact that person has little interest in individual conversion, for, apart from the Holy Spirit, the greatest single power to change the individual is the social order.
Jesus sees this clearly and would replace this unworkable, rotten social order with God’s Order, the kingdom of God. He would change individuals; he would change the total order; he would convert the total life.
O God, forgive us that we have made you a half-god, ruling over a half-realm. You are God, and all life, individual and social, must bend the knee to your will and find itself in that will. For your will is life to all life. Amen.
Week 26 Tuesday
A Lack of a Total Discipline
Matthew 6:22-24; 7:13-23
We now take up briefly, awaiting a fuller development, the fourteenth of the major enemies of abundant living: lack of a total life discipline.
The future of the world is in the hands of disciplined people. “The meek [literally, the trained] shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). But this statement, that the future of the world is in the hands of disciplined people, must be modified; the future of the world is in the hands of people who are disciplined to the highest total discipline. Very often our disciplines are too small; we are geared to concepts and purposes that are too small, so we remain small with the smallness of our concepts and purposes. Many are geared to the discipline of the family, which may be very good but is inadequate unless the family is geared to something beyond itself—an absolute. The discipline of a lodge, a club, a union, a church, a country, may be good, but they are not good enough. We must be disciplined to something that gives total meaning to the total life.
It is just this total discipline that is lacking in modern life. Modern life is so compartmentalized, specialized, picked to pieces, that it lacks total meaning. Science is abstracted knowledge; it abstracts knowledge about specific things, but fails to deal with the sum total of reality and its meaning; hence science can never exert a total discipline. Psychoanalysis picks people to pieces, but often cannot put them together again on a higher level. It uses psychoanalysis and not psychosynthesis, hence it cannot exert a total discipline. “They picked me to pieces and couldn’t get me together again,” said a brilliant but disrupted woman. Just as the spokes of a wheel hang loose without a hub, so the powers of life are at loose ends unless fastened into the central hub: God and God’s kingdom. There is simply nothing to which we can be totally disciplined, except one thing: God’s absolute order, the kingdom of God. That and that alone gives total meaning to life.
Gracious Lord, until I bring every thought to the obedience of your kingdom, and every relationship under its sway, I am hanging at loose ends, and life lacks total meaning, and hence lacks purpose and power. Help me to a complete discipline to your kingdom. Amen.
Week 26 Wednesday
Disciplined to the Kingdom
Matthew 13:52; 1 Corinthians 9:23-27
We have thought that humans are made for freedom. They are. But freedom can come only through obedience. I am free from the police, if I obey the laws they represent. Within the framework of the laws they represent, I am free. The larger the unit I obey, the larger the freedom I enjoy. If I obey the laws of the United States, I am free within the boundaries of that country.
When I am disciplined to the kingdom of God and obey its laws, then I am free within the limits of its area. But its area is universal; therefore I am universally free. The Christian, disciplined to the kingdom of God, is the only universal person, universally free. The Christian is a cosmic person.
The thing works the other way as well. If you are disciplined to yourself and your own desires, then you are free within the area of yourself and your desires. You have chosen a small unit of allegiance, hence you become small. Moreover, you become disliked by others to whom you have no loyalty or love. In the end, you dislike yourself for being so small and for being disliked by others. This is a vicious circle, a descending spiral. But if you are disciplined to the kingdom, you will like yourself for the greatness and nobility of your loyalties and allegiances, and other people will respond to you, for you respond to them; and, best of all, the universe will take sides with you, will back you, and will make you feel at home and free. This is an ascending spiral.
A woman who had been all tied up with fears, a physical and nervous wreck, writes after her release: “The sense of freedom and release, the new understanding, and the something that seems almost like finding a sixth sense is wonderful.” That “sixth sense” is the cosmic sense, a sense of being universalized, of a cosmic at-homeness, of being in tune with the sum total of reality. Being disciplined to the total order in a total way, with every part moving toward a single goal, you become a narrow person with a narrow purpose. But at the very moment you are narrowed, you are broadened into the purposes and the life of the kingdom. You are totally free.
God, I want every area of my life to own one allegiance, and one alone. I cannot be an undisciplined person, or disciplined to too small an allegiance. I cannot rest until I am under the sway of the Ultimate, nor until the Ultimate has the ultimate sway. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 26 Thursday
Lack of a Creative, Outgoing Love
1 John 3:2-3, 11, 14, 16-17, 22-24; 4:21; 5:2-4
We come to the last of the fifteen major enemies: lack of a positive, outgoing love. I have saved this enemy for the last, for it is the sine qua non of abundant living. If you were able to conquer the whole of the fourteen major enemies, you would still lack the one thing needful if you lacked an outgoing love. Life is not built for negative achievement—it is made for positive contribution, for outgoing love. One who loves not, lives not; and one who loves most, lives most.
I have purposely put the word creative in the title and definition, for there is a kind of love that goes out to get for itself. It goes out to bring in. That kind of outgoing love is as bad as a turned-in love, for it still says, “Give me.” But the creative love is the love that stimulates, helps, and awakens others. And as it stimulates, it is itself stimulated; as it awakens, it is awakened.
Love ever gives,—
Forgives—outlives,—
And ever stands
With open hands.
And, while it lives,
It gives.
For this is Love’s prerogative,—
To give,—and give,—and give.*
And the writer of these lines might have added,
And, while it gives
It lives.
For this is Love’s reward,—
To live,—and live,—and live.
You can never get rid of your own troubles unless you take upon yourself the troubles of others. The saintly Anglican, John Keble, said, “When you find yourself oppressed by melancholy, the best way is to go out and find something kind to do to somebody else.”** Or as someone else has put it: “When I dig a man out of trouble, the hole left behind is the grave where I bury my own sorrow.” Then go out each day and do something that nobody but a Christian would do.
O God, I see, you have fashioned me in my inmost being for creative love. You Creator God, you have made me to be a creator too. I share your power to make and to remake. I am so glad I am no more a negative being—I am positive and outgoing and creative. I thank you. Amen.
* John Oxenham, “Love Ever Gives,” in The Vision Splendid (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1917), 74.
** Published source unknown.
Week 26 Friday
The Miracle Starts from Within
Matthew 12:34-35; 15:19-20; Colossians 3:8-15
We pursue today the necessity of a creative, outgoing love. It is, in the words of Professor W. E. Hocking, “the only radically creative attitude yet known to humanity”*—the determination to do what the Everlasting Mercy does. The Everlasting Mercy is creative and outgoing in love. As someone has said, “If you want to survive, get faith and make it infectious. The chances are on the side of that audacity we call friendliness.”
Leslie B. Salter says, “Every normal man or woman longs more keenly for love, for warm friendship, admiration and human responsiveness from his fellows than for anything else in life. . . . Wouldst you love life? Then start giving those about you the feeling they long for. Start passing out good cheer and brotherly love, and you will receive in return a personal friendliness and genuine happiness you never dreamed possible, and which will revolutionize your whole life.”**
Don’t wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts from within, not from without. Throw your will on the side of outgoing love, and all the healing resources of the universe will be behind you.
But neither God nor people can help you if you remain bottled up in yourself. You are not made to live that way, and all the medicine you can take, all the advice you can receive, all the praying you can do, will do you no good, unless you throw your will on the side of outgoing love. Get out of yourself, or perish!
Allan Hunter says, “We may discover, as a contemporary philosopher suggests, that loving our enemies because we first love God is better treatment for nervous indigestion than an operation or an analysis.”*** It is a better treatment, not only for nervous indigestion but also for almost anything that ails us.
O you who is always reaching out after me in love and awakening me, help me this day to do the same. Help me to quicken and awaken some life by the touch of my friendliness and love. Here is something I need not be afraid of—I cannot be too loving. Help me. Amen.
* William Ernest Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912), 205.
** Source unknown.
*** Source unknown.
Week 26 Saturday
A Final Examination
Psalms 19:12-14; 26:1-2; Colossians 3:5-7
We have now reached the halfway point in our year, and with it have reached the end of our study of the fifteen major enemies. Today must be spent in review, asking ourselves straight questions about these major enemies. As we ask our questions, let there be no blind spots, no allowing of any enemy to remain. Life or death depends on a full riddance. Ask these questions slowly and give considered answers.
Have I a faith in, and loyalty to, Something beyond myself that gives ultimate meaning, coherence, and goal to life? And is that Something God? Or are there still areas of self-centeredness? Do these uncleansed areas breed the offspring of self-centeredness: dishonesty? greed and avarice? prejudice and intolerance? pride? refusal of responsibility and cooperation? Have I really shifted the center of my life from myself to God?
What about anger, resentments, hate—any roots left? Am I still harboring worries, anxieties, and fears? Or are they turned over to God?
Is there any sense of unresolved guilt still lurking in me? Am I now forever turned away from negativism and inferiority attitudes? Is there any insincerity left anywhere in me, conscious or unconscious? Are my desires controlled? Does impure sex thinking have any part in my thoughts? And are my other appetites all under God’s control? Are there any divided loyalties still left within me?
Am I balancing my virtues with their opposite virtues? Do ignorance and lack of judgment still hamper me? Are there physical disharmonies rooted in wrong mental and spiritual attitudes? Is lack of proper nutrition weakening me? Am I doing my best to change the unchristian social order that so deeply affects us all? Am I now under a total discipline in my total life? Am I released and outgoing in creative love to others?
If, on the whole, we can answer these questions on the right side of things, we are on the way to abundant living.
O God, I have faced my enemies, and in your name I have downed them. I thank you. Now help me to enter into no alliance with an enemy that pleads to stay. Help me make a clean sweep. In Jesus’ name. Amen.