Week 31 Sunday
Week 31 Sunday
Naturalized in the Unnatural!
Luke 15:15-16; Romans 1:19-25; 2 Peter 2:19-22
Seek first the kingdom of God! We have seen that the kingdom of God is written into our true nature and that to live according to it is to find ourselves. But we have been so accustomed to false ways of life that we think them our true nature. We hold to our unnaturalness and suspect God’s true nature. A woman who had lived all her life in the foul, heavy air of the slums of New York said that she got physically sick when she went into the country and breathed the pure, fresh air. Her lungs had become so accustomed to unnatural foulness that natural freshness was unnatural! In a South American city a new market was built, clean and sanitary, with tiled floors and walls. But the people holding the stalls in the dirty old market would not move into the new. One woman stall-holder explained her attitude thus: “That market is so clean it makes me sick. It is just like a hospital.”
That is the tragedy of our humanity. We see that our ways won’t work, and yet we hesitate to take God’s way. The great-hearted mayor of a city in India, who had cleaned up vast portions of the slums and in their stead had built lovely, neat cottages and apartments, said to me: “Sometimes I walk around the remaining wretched sections of the city at night and say to myself, ‘If the people would only let me, I could do anything for them.’ But they won’t let me; they are naturalized in their filth and cling to it, though it kills them off like flies.” How Christlike that great, lonely figure, sighing over people who would not accept the life he offered! Christ must be doing that today! He sees us with our unworkable ways of life, running into roads with dead ends, ending in frustration and futility, losing our means of living, and our lives themselves, and he says again: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, . . . and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33 KJV). But we are seeking other things first, and all these things are being subtracted from us.
Gracious Lord, we have our life strategy wrong, and things won’t come out right. We become all tangled up, because we will not take your way. Help us have sense—just plain sense. Then we will abandon our ways of futility for your ways of fruitfulness. Help us to seek first the kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 31 Monday
What Shall We Seek First?
Matthew 6:24-33; Colossians 3:1-2
Seek first the kingdom of God! The struggle in the world is over one question and only one question: What shall we seek first? I do not think that you can understand the world situation, with its terrible clashes, unless you look on it primarily as a religious question. Sifted to its final issue, the question at bottom is this: What shall ultimately command us? What shall we finally obey? Where shall we bend the knee?
Someone has said that mistakes in tactics, the detailed carrying out of plans in war, may be forgiven; but no forgiveness can be granted for a mistake in strategy, the general plan of large-scale action. You may be forgiven if you make detailed mistakes within a right plan of life, but no right-detailed actions can atone for a wrong life strategy. If you get your life strategy wrong, all life will go wrong with it. You seek the wrong thing first, then all life goes wrong with it.
What are the answers being given to that question, What shall we seek first? The Japanese have their answer: “Seek first the Emperor; be loyal to him in complete obedience, and all these things shall be added unto you.” The Chinese have their answer: “Seek first Family, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Governments might come and governments might go, but the Family has been the unit of allegiance in China. Hindu India has its answer: “Seek first the Caste, and all these things shall be added unto you. If only you obey caste dharma, or duty, then you will get a better birth in the next turn of the Wheel of Rebirth. The Muslim has this reply: “Seek first the fatalistic will of Allah, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Islam literally means “submission”—submission to your fate as decreed by Allah. Buddhism says: “Seek first nothing; cut the root of desire, even desire for life, and Nirvana will be added unto you.”
Gracious Lord, your children are in obvious confusion. We live at cross-purposes in our central aims, and hence we are at cross-purposes with one another. Take us by the hand and help us to see things from your standpoint. And then we shall see. Otherwise, we are blind, groping for the light. Help us to see in your light. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 31 Tuesday
Calling the Roll of Life Strategies
Luke 16:1-12
Seek first the kingdom of God! We continue our calling of the roll of life strategies. The modern Communist says, “Seek first Society, as expressed in the will of its proletarian dictator, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Society and its interests are supreme; the individual counts for little—Society is all.
The Fascist has this answer: “Seek first the State, and all these things shall be added unto you.” The State is supreme: “Nothing above the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State; everything within the State.” The Nazi is ready with this reply: “Seek first the Race, the superior Aryan Race, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Modern Capitalistic Society has its answer: “Seek first Money, and when you have that, all these things shall be added unto you.” One man put it this way: “O money, money! . . . Thou art health and liberty and strength; and he that hath thee may rattle his pockets at the Devil.”* Many who inwardly hold that view would hesitate to put it in these bold terms, but they believe in money and act upon their belief. Modern Hedonism, the search for the pleasure principle, says, “Seek first the Thrill, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
It may be added that a corollary to the aims of modern Capitalistic Society is this: “Seek first to be able to do without working; get to the place where others will work for you, and all these things shall added unto you.” Someone summed up this aim, in depicting heaven thus:
No strike—no speed-up—no lay-off—
Everybody a coupon-clipper in heaven,
Living in peace, on the eternal drudgery
Of the damned.**
The Christian turns to Christ for his reply: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God . . . and all these things shall be added unto you.” Which life strategy is right?
God, we have come to life’s supreme question and to life’s supreme choice. Don’t let us fumble at this place, for if we do, then everything tumbles to pieces. We approach this individual and collective choice with prayer upon our lips, for our wisdom fails us—we need yours. Amen.
* Charles Lamb, Thomas Purnell, Barry Cornwall, The Complete Correspondence and Works of Charles Lamb (London: E. Moxon, Son and Co., 1870), 1:151.
** Source unknown.
Week 31 Wednesday
The Kingdom Is the Eternal Rightness
Proverbs 14:12; Romans 3:4; 1 John 2:16-17
Seek first the kingdom of God! We have called the roll of the life strategies of various peoples and groups, and we have found the Emperor, the Family, the Caste, the fatalistic Will of Allah, Nothingness, Society, the State, the Race, Money, Thrills, the Cessation of Work, and the Kingdom of God. Here are twelve answers—which is right?
Jesus was always so right in everything. He was never misled by a subordinate issue, never once slipped to the marginal, the unworthwhile. He was always centrally and fundamentally sound. Was he wrong in this? Did he miss the way here? To ask the question is to answer it. His answer towers above all other answers, as Everest towers above foothills. When we state it, it is self-verifying. When we really look at the ends of other life strategies, there is no choice. We must take this answer of Jesus or brand ourselves as simple, plain fools. If this answer of Jesus isn’t the answer, then there is no answer.
I have often been puzzled about the words Jesus added in Matthew 6:33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”—why add “and his righteousness”? Is this not included in the kingdom? Is it not a needless addition? Perhaps the answer would be found if we put it “and his rightness.” This answer of God—the kingdom of God—is God’s rightness. It is eternally “right,” and everything out of harmony with it is wrong, crooked, out of gear, doomed to break itself upon this eternal rightness. If that isn’t the interpretation to be taken out of these words, it is a fact, nevertheless. When you seek first the kingdom, then you are right—the sum total of reality is behind you, working with you; your life sums come out right. But if you seek something else first, you are setting yourself against the sum total of reality; your life sums won’t add up—you are wrong.
The reason the world situation is going from snarl to snarl is that we are centrally and fundamentally wrong—we are seeking the wrong thing first.
O living Christ, how can I cease thanking you for your answer. It is so right. Everything within me says so. Now help me to take it with the consent of all my being. In your name. Amen.
Week 31 Thursday
Get the Spiritual Straight and the Material Will Be Guaranteed
2 Corinthians 8:14-15; Philippians 4:5-6, 11-13, 19
Seek first the kingdom of God! That is the proposal. Now, what is the product? Jesus replied: “And all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33 KJV). Get the first thing straight, said Jesus, and all the things down the line will come out right: “all these things shall be added unto you.” What did he mean by “all these things”? He mentioned the simple things: food, drink, and clothing (see v. 31). In other words, the kingdom of God is concerned not merely with supplying us a heavenly world after this life, but with supplying our need for bodily sustenance in this life. Get the central spiritual facts straight, says Jesus, and your material facts will be straight too. They are one. You cannot go wrong in one without going wrong in the other.
In seeking first the kingdom of God, Jesus says, the material basis of human life will be guaranteed to you. You will get what you need. “Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (v. 32). Note that you will get according to your need, not according to your greed. You have a right to as much of the material as will make you mentally, spiritually, and physically fit for the purposes of the kingdom of God. You and I are constitutionally made in such a way that if we get less than we need or more than we need, we harm ourselves. Therefore, those who strive to get more than they need are working for their own harm.
The facts bear that out. A friend of mine is in charge of the problem children of a certain city that is divided into three economic classes: 25 percent below the poverty line, underprivileged; 25 percent above the average level, the wealthy, the overprivileged; 50 percent who haven’t too little or too much. She says that the problem children come either from the 25 percent underprivileged, or from the 25 percent overprivileged. The 50 percent are the normal, adjusted children of our civilization. The facts say that if you have too little or too much, you tend to produce the problem person and the problem society.
God, our Lord, you have written your laws into matter as well as into mind and spirit. Help us discover those laws and live according to them. For if we do not, we hurt ourselves and others. Help us discover your mind in matter and live according to it. Amen.
Week 31 Friday
Too Little and Too Much, Alike Harmful
Proverbs 11:24; 30:8; 2 Corinthians 9:5-12
Seek first the kingdom of God! We must continue our examination of the material basis of the spiritual life. God has written into the constitution of things that too little and too much are alike and equally dangerous. I say “alike and equally,” for the facts bear out the truth of that. We all see the devastating effects of poverty; they are manifest in sickly bodies, stunted minds, and problem souls. It is true that, here and there, a person can struggle against grinding poverty; make it sharpen the wits, determination, and ability; and rise through obstruction to achievement. But where one triumphs, a dozen are broken or stunted by poverty. Let not our boasting about the achievement of the one blind us to the devastation to the many. Poverty is wrong, for it produces wrongs to body, mind, and soul.
But if poverty is wrong, so are riches. The latter is not so easily seen, for it is covered up by refinements, by culture, by things, by the glamour of prestige and power. The rich die beautifully. But they die; and I don’t mean just physically. Decay of the total person sets in unless arrested by a planned giving away of riches. The people who do that arrest the process of decay by putting back into life the adventure of dispensing to human need from what they have. Such people are saved. Those who hold on to what they have, inevitably decay; their faces grow dull, bovine, the light of adventure gone. The light has gone out of the face because the light has gone out in the heart. Jesus described this leaden-eyed existence in these words: “They are choked by . . . riches” (Luke 8:14). The person who holds on to riches as an end strangles the life forces within and suffocates, chokes. When we say, “Three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves,” we do not mean physically; we mean in total manhood and womanhood. I have bitter tears for the underprivileged children. I have bitterer tears for the overprivileged children; they are doomed to decay, unless some miracle of grace or of personal effort rescues them from the dead hand of riches, slowly closing in to strangle their life forces.
Gracious God, we have been blind. We have made our aim that which in the end turns out to be our poison. Forgive us this individual and collective suicide, slow though our dying may be. Help us be so related to the material that it may be our minister and not our master. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 31 Saturday
The Results of Too Little and Too Much
Matthew 6:8, 11; 20:1-16; Acts 4:32-35
Seek first the kingdom of God! In order to have a proper physical basis for abundant living, we must surrender the will to be rich, and determine to keep only enough wealth to supply our needs—and no more. We must likewise surrender the will that reconciles itself to poverty, and determine to make enough to supply our needs—and no less. Two classes have to think too much about money: those who have too much and those who have too little. I want just enough of material goods so that I can forget about them and get on with the business of human living. Someone has said that “the poor have to think about their next meal, and the rich have to think about their last one.” Both results are bad. Need should be supplied; no less, no more.
Now note: The law of “to each according to need” is written into the constitution of things, and it is written in the Scripture. There is one, and only one, basis for the material life in the New Testament, and that is summed up in the verse “Distribution was made unto every man according as he had need” (Acts 4:35 KJV). The word need is used in the New Testament seven times in relationship to the material. This constitutes positive proof of divine inspiration. How did the early Christians arrive at that basis? They knew no economics, no sociology, no science; but out of an experience of God they arrived at that basis. They reached it by inspiration.
And now society, by the method of trial and error, of experimentation to see what will fit the facts, is slowly but surely corning to the same conclusion.
Nothing else will fit the facts; life will back nothing else. Everything else breaks itself upon the facts written into the constitution of things, ends in self-frustration. The frustrations in modern society, its instabilities, its wars are in large measure due to the breaking of this law of the kingdom. Some have too little; some have too much. Result: war, instability, frustration. God’s way is our way. And we take our way against God’s way at our peril and to our frustration.
God, our gracious Lord, you are saving your children by hard refusals. You wilt not let us rest in wrong, for wrong is ruin. So you let us hurt ourselves against your laws. May our bruises make us turn to you for healing and for sense. In Jesus’ name. Amen.