Week 43 Sunday
Week 43 Sunday
Adjusting Our Vocabulary to Fact
Luke 4:22; Acts 6:10; James 3:1-13
We have been studying how to adjust ourselves to passing time, if we are to live abundantly and freely. We turn now to another adjustment: the adjustment of our vocabulary to fact.
Words often lose their relation to fact. They are like institutions in this respect; for institutions, given at first for the purpose of expressing life, often end by throttling that very life, and so must be constantly readjusted and perpetually realigned to their original purposes. In like manner, our words often throttle the life they are intended to express, and hence need constant reconversion and readjustment.
This is particularly true of religious words. They become sacrosanct, but all out of touch with reality. We will have to go over our vocabulary with relentless inquiry to see if we are using words out of which the content has dropped. This is important, for the younger generation has a strong sense of reality; it can sniff unreality from afar. The young people of our high schools and colleges usually give the speaker the first five minutes to prove he or she has reality. If they hear only words, they will take out a book and read it! We must reclothe the eternal truths of the gospel in the language that each age can understand. But even that will not do, if the reclothing is just adopting the words of a new age. The words must have content, reality in them, or they will say nothing.
Language is a symbol, and has to be changed constantly to fit the facts. The symbols are not the facts. A map is not the territory it represents; a map has constantly to be changed to bring it nearer the facts. Maps of the air, used by aviators, have to be changed every few minutes, or they become dangerous. Vocabularies that are not being constantly changed to fit the facts of life become dangerous.
But we dislike change, especially in words. An elder in a certain denomination felt that the statement put out by the 1911 Conference was sacrosanct; and when the church changed it, he committed suicide. But the church would have committed suicide if it hadn’t made the words fit the facts.
O God, perhaps I, too, am caught in phrases and words, a prisoner of my vocabulary. Then break up my speech; tear down my words, for they may be unreal and hollow. I know that nothing real will perish in the shakedown. So I surrender my words and my phrases to you. Make them over, and help me cooperate in remaking them. Amen.
Week 43 Monday
Labels Can Become Libels
Psalm 15:1-3; Proverbs 10:18-21; 12:18-20; Matthew 5:37
This matter of bringing words into closer relationships with the facts they symbolize can have serious consequences. A girl had a fear of the word mother; whenever she saw it or heard it a fear went over her, and she revolted from the word. It was found that her mother had been very cruel to her, and the content of the word came from that fact. She was released only when she was made to understand that the word mother could and did stand for tenderness and understanding love in the experience of thousands. The word–fact relationship was righted, and she was freed.
We mentioned a young man who was jilted as church bells were ringing, and whenever he saw or heard the word church or bishop, he found himself seized by fear and revolt. Association brought this reaction. There was nothing wrong with the word church or bishop, but he had carried over into the word a false meaning. His vocabulary needed to be cleansed from fear.
A theology professor rightly says: “Words in themselves mean nothing; the meanings go back to persons.”
We stick labels on whole people by saying [at the time of World War II], “All Japs are tricky”; “All Americans are materialistic.” These labels are false and unjust. Some Japanese are tricky, as some Americans are; but many Japanese are not. Some Americans are materialistic, and some are not. Such labels are libels.
A man was being introduced in a fulsome manner, so he arose and said, “The adjective is often the enemy of the noun.” We must cleanse our adjectives and see that they fit the nouns. Gandhi is an example of this. He has said that he would no more use ornate language than he would use ornate clothing. He has reduced life and language to simplicity. When he speaks, his words are a revelation of fact. In Jesus, this simplicity of speech came to its perfection. His words were so stripped of verbiage that they are fact. His statement was “By your words you will be either judged innocent or condemned as guilty” (Matt. 12:37 CEB). We must surrender our vocabulary, then, for cleansing.
O Christ, I do surrender my vocabulary to you, for I want my words, as Tagore says, “to come out from the depth of truth.”* Cleanse from my symbols of speech all unreality, all seeming, all veneer, and let me speak words that have been cleansed by the Word. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, chap. 35.
Week 43 Tuesday
Steps to Bridge the Gap between Word and Fact
Matthew 12:36-37; Luke 20:26; Acts 26:25; 1 Corinthians 14:9
Word and fact can never be one—except on that single occasion when “the Word became flesh,” the Word and the Fact were one. Once in human history, the Symbol and the Reality coincided—but only once. Apart from that sole exception, when symbol and meaning fused into one in Christ, the symbol of language must constantly be adjusted to the facts.
Dr. Gordon Campbell, a medical psychologist and an advocate of word–fact reality, gives steps for bringing words into closer relationships with facts, for bridging the gap between symbol and reality*:
(1) Date your statement. People change; you change. For example, if you make a statement about a person, date it; otherwise you may be talking about some other person, for in the meantime this person has changed.
(2) Index the differences. When you make a statement about a person, then proceed to modify the statement by indexing differences between the person and the statement. The statement may be true in general, but there are other factors that modify the generalization—state those other factors. “All generalizations are false—including this one!”
(3) Put et cetera, et cetera after your statements. You have said certain things, but you haven’t said everything. If you stated everything about the matter, all the facts would modify your statement. For example, in saying something about a person, if you don’t provide for the fact that the person is changing characteristics, then the statement may be false. As Professor William James says: “If you start out to describe the universe in a sentence, then put in a comma instead of a period.”**
(4) Often put your statements in quotes. When you use the word socialist or communist in reference to a person, put it in quotation marks, if you desire to express the commonly accepted use of the term, which is very loose and inaccurate. Only when you are sure a person is a real socialist or a real communist should you use the word without quotation marks.
O God, as you are cleansing my soul from all falsities, so cleanse my speech too from all falsities. I would be pure in speech as well as in soul. For my false speech may creep back and make false my soul. I would be a clarified person. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Published source unknown.
** Published source unknown, but see William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909).
Week 43 Wednesday
Further Steps in Word-Fact Relationships
Matthew 7:1-5; Romans 12:10, 16; 15:1-7
We continue our steps in the word-fact relationship.
(5) Often hyphenate your statements. In speaking of body and mind, it is inaccurate to put them thus apart—they should be body-mind. For the body and mind are closely intertwined.
Some further observations may be added to the above five steps. The first-century philosopher Seneca says: “A man who does not wash his hands is not a pig. He is a man who does not wash his hands.”* The difference in mental attitude produced by those two statements is profound. If you make one or the other of those statements, your whole attitude has to change accordingly. Again, when speaking about a person, don’t say, “I don’t like that person.” Say, “I don’t like such and such a thing about that person; I rather like the person, but I don’t like this and that about him.” That statement would make all the difference in the world in your attitude toward that person. Sometimes we take a particular thing about a person and chew on that one thing, and cannot see the rest of the person at all.
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell: / The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know, and know full well: / I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.**
The probabilities are that you do not love Dr. Fell because you have isolated one thing from Dr. Fell, and you are blind to the rest of him. Turn your attitude and say, in regard to a person, “The person in general is right, but this thing isn’t right.” That would make you accurate and the other person lovable. It is important that, after having segregated the thing you do not like in the person, you do not end on what you do not like, but on what you do like. Let the last impression be positive.
Loose statements about people are harmful, but sometimes amusing. A woman said, “Stanley Jones is a Communist.” When asked why she said that, she replied, “Because he has written a book on Communism.” She didn’t pause to ask on which side I had written it!
Gracious Lord, straighten me out from mind quirks that distort and disrupt. Help me have a mind clarified of all prejudice and half-truths. May I be a person wholesome in mind and speech, for only thus can I be the person you intend me to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Published source unknown.
** Attributed to seventeenth-century satirist Tom Brown, in response to discipline from Dr. John Fell, dean of Christ Church, Oxford.
Week 43 Thursday
Looking over Our Money Relationships
Matthew 19:21-22; Luke 16:13-15, 19-31
We pass on to our relationship with money, another symbol. No one can live abundantly until finding a Christian relationship with money. The account says that “Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and watched” (Mark 12:41). It is a solemn moment when we review our money relationships, with Christ sitting beside us watching the effect of money on us.
We have seen how the life of the body depends on balance; too much or too little produces imbalance, and hence disease. Too much food is just as harmful to the body as too little. Too much or too little secretion of a gland will alike produce disease. Balance is the key word to bodily health, a word that we neglect only at our peril.
Yet how we have neglected that word balance in relation to possessions. We have had no brakes on accumulation; the more we possess, the more successful we are supposed to be. “I feel like a million,” is our statement of the height of well-being. This imbalance in possessions is producing disease in the body of society and in the individuals concerned. Too little and too much produce a diseased society and diseased individuals. Decay sets in, in the very poor and in the very rich. Where is the place of balance?
Christianity has the answer. Christianity teaches neither asceticism nor avarice; it teaches that you have the right and the duty to have your needs met. “Distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:35). Need is the place of balance. Less than need produces disease and more than need produces disease. Someday we shall scientifically study the matter. and we shall come to that conclusion, for that conclusion is written into the constitution of things. Said a psychiatrist: “My greatest problem is the overprivileged boy or girl who has no incentive to struggle.” They, and the underprivileged, are the disrupted personalities of our civilization. They represent imbalance. Christianity represents balance: to each according to need.
Our civilization is unbalanced because it is unchristian. Hence it topples over periodically into war.
O God, we are now in a real battle. Unnatural cravings have been created within us. We are victims of false values, of false goals. Help us return to sanity, to equilibrium, to balance. We have hurt ourselves and others in our madness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 43 Friday
A Ladder for Mastery over Money
Psalm 62:10; Proverbs 23:4; Jeremiah 9:23-24; Mark 4:18-19; Luke 12:16-21; 1 Timothy 6:6-12, 17-19
In order to get the mastery over money, lest it get mastery over us, we would suggest the following ladder:
(1) Hold in mind that money is a good servant, but a terrible master. If it gets on top, and you get under it, then your life is decided by a thing; in consequence you are no longer a person, but a thing. If money is your god, then your enfeebled personality is the price you pay for the worship of that god.
(2) Reject the philosophy that you may hold vast accumulations as a trustee for the poor. Andrew Carnegie, who was the best illustration of this philosophy, said: “The millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor, entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.”*
To which Dr. William J. Tucker replied, “If the few can administer wealth for the community far better than it can do for itself, then democracy has reached the limit of intelligence and responsibility.”** The poor need not charity, but justice. When you give charity, you are the bountiful patron; the poor are the recipients. When you give justice, your relationships change; you become equals. It is easy to be charitable; it is difficult to be just.
(3) Nothing that you can do for your children will be more harmful than to leave so much to them that they will not have to struggle and work. The surest way to flabby, irresponsible character is too much money.
(4) There are two ways to be wealthy: one is in the abundance of your possessions, and the other is in the fewness of your wants. In taking the latter way to be wealthy, you transfer to the inside of you the real wealth that cannot be taken away by depression or death.
(5) Put in a stop where your needs end. After that, all you make belongs to other people’s needs. If you can put in that stop, you are a person of character—you master things; they do not master you.
O God, I live in an acquisitive society where worth is judged by material wealth. At the same time I am a Christian, and my judgments must be different. Help me decide the Christian way, no matter how strange I may seem to be. That strangeness may be the sign that I am becoming more Christian. I want to be just that. Amen.
* Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth, and Other Timely Essays (New York: Century, 1900), 18.
** Published source unknown, but see Andover Review 15 (1891): 631-45.
Week 43 Saturday
The Ladder for Mastery over Money (continued)
Malachi 3:7-10; Mark 10:17-27; Acts 20:35; 1 Corinthians 16:2; 2 Corinthians 9:1-15
We continue our ladder for the mastery of money:
(6) Keep your needs down to needs, not luxuries disguised as needs. Needs contribute; luxuries choke. If you eat food beyond your needs, you simply clog the system and lay on useless fat, surplus baggage that you have to carry around. The same with money and things—if you have too much, then invest it in persons. It is the only bank that will not break. The bank of human character will pay dividends through eternity. Invest all surpluses in that bank.
(7) Settle the level of need in the full light of the needs of others, of your enlightened conscience, and of the judgment of a disciplined group. These three things are necessary and all three should converge in the final decision. I speak of an “enlightened conscience,” for a conscience trained in the half-lights of contemporary society is not enlightened. Train at the feet of Christ. But when you come to the feet of Christ, be sure that you have adequate information about the needs of others. Conscience needs wide information to be a safe guide. You train your conscience, and then your conscience trains you. A disciplined group is necessary to help you to sound judgments, for the group is objective and represents the corporate conscience, which should check the individual conscience. An unchecked conscience is not safe.
(8) While you are lifting your economic level to the level of need, give a tithe of what you earn. After you have reached that level, give everything you earn. The tithe is a token—a token that you are not owner, but ower. Just as you pay rent as a token of acknowledgment of the ownership of another, so you pay a tithe to acknowledge the ownership of God over the nine-tenths. When the level of your needs has been reached, then all you earn belongs to the needs of others, not as charity, but as right and justice.
O God our Lord, I am digging deep around the roots of my life. I am trying to tie up this root of money, which is “a root of all evil.” I cannot cut it entirely; but I can, and I do, tie it up so that it does not take too much nourishment from the soil of my life. I want to absorb it—I don’t want it to absorb me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.