Week 44 Sunday
Week 44 Sunday
Gold-seekers or God-seekers?
Acts 2:44-47; 2 Corinthians 8:1-15; Philippians 2:4
Before we leave the subject of material possessions, we must spend one day in gathering up our steps in a final one:
(9) Work for a cooperative order in which each will think and work for all, and all will think and work for each. There is no doubt that the level of need will go up, but it should go up for everybody. We would not produce less wealth in a cooperative society; we would produce more, but it would be more widely distributed. The general level of life would rise for everybody. Where there are vast inequalities, there are bound to be instability and unrest and clashes. The Scandinavian countries were on the verge of a demonstration of a wide distribution of wealth, with no very rich people and no very poor people. And they were accomplishing it quietly, without revolution. We must carry on from the point where their efforts were broken off by the war.
We have had a demonstration in American history of two attitudes toward money and how they have worked out. In 1852, two sets of caravans with covered wagons started out from Omaha across the wide expanses toward the Far West. For days, they went in parallel lines, and then they diverged in more ways than one. The Mormons had written on their covered wagons: “God-seekers.” The other group, who represented the gold rush, put on their wagons: “Gold-seekers.” The latter group was individualistic and competitive, with the attitude “Each man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.” The former group was a society of mutual aid, seeking the good of all and of each. These two outlooks and attitudes were put under life to see which one life would approve of. The “gold-seekers” found their gold, but it went through their fingers like water. Their gold is now, for the most part, in the hands of corporations. The God-seekers settled on barren salt land, developed it, and now have a corporation for the good of the whole with assets in the billions. Life approved of a society of mutual aid and doomed a ruthlessly selfish society.
O God, you are teaching us, through many a pain and many a frustration, that we must live as a society of mutual aid. We have been slow to learn the lesson. Our slowness is written in devastation and breakdown. Forgive us. Give us another chance, and we will learn the ways of your kingdom, which are really our ways, did we but understand. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 44 Monday
Some Steps in Getting Rid of Race Prejudice
Matthew 23:8-10; Acts 13:1-3; Colossians 3:11
This cooperative order must be an order not of class, or color, or creed, but the cooperation with human as human, apart from these extraneous things. Cooperation of class is snobbery; of color, prejudice; of creed, bigotry; of human as human, Christian. But the moment we try to start a cooperative plan of living, we run into race prejudice—one of the deepest prejudices we have to encounter. How can we master it? We cannot live abundantly if we are hidebound; and color prejudice is just that—bound by hide. If we get rid of these prejudices, we shall not do so by sentimental vaporing, but by facing irresistible facts. Are there such facts? Yes.
(1) We have the backing of Christianity that humankind is one. “God . . . hath made of one blood all nations . . . for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26 KJV). “One is your Master, . . . and all ye are brethren” (Matt. 23:8 KJV). “There is neither Jew nor Greek . . . in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). “The Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction” (Acts 11:12)—Peter was making a racial distinction in his mind, and the Spirit canceled this out. The early church not only put human beings on an equal theoretical level, but actually gave them equal authority also. Paul was ordained by a black man at Antioch—“Simeon who was called Niger”; “Niger” is, literally, “black.” There is no doubt whatever that these modern color prejudices were not in early Christianity. Then a person was looked on as a person for whom Christ died.
Paul gave the Christian conception of equality in these words regarding a slave: “no longer a mere slave but something more than a slave—a beloved brother; especially dear to me but how much more you as a man and as a Christian!” (Phlm. 16 Moffatt).
Christianity was to be a revelation of both God and humanity, and it was to be a faith in both. The Christian faith is therefore creative, bringing out the best in all people. Christ is the great believer in humanity. He is the great believer in humanity—not in some people, but in all people. Hence he is the hope of the world.
Our Lord, give us faith in you and in one another. Doubt destroys; faith builds. Help us then to look on people with the eyes of kindling faith, and not with the eyes of chilling doubt. For only thus shall we be like you. For you believe in us when we cannot believe in ourselves. Help us pass on your faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 44 Tuesday
The Backing of Biology and Democracy
Matthew 7:12; Acts 17:24-29; 1 John 4:11-12, 20-21
(2) We have the backing of biology. The idea of inherently superior races and inherently inferior races is being fast exploded by scientific investigation. There are undeveloped cultures, but no inferior or superior ones. An outstanding biologist says, “There are cultural differences between races, but no biological.” The four types of blood found in one race are found in every race. The IQs of African American children in New York are as high as those of white children. The cultural background of the homes from which they come may help or retard their progress, but the raw material is the same. An English judge in Burma,* who had also been a judge in England, told me he had discovered that the brain of humanity is one, for the lawyers in England and in Burma argue from the same fallacies to the same conclusions! I find as I go around the world that people of all races will laugh in exactly the same way over the same jokes. Humanity is literally one.
(3) We have the backing of democracy. If democracy means anything, it means equal opportunity to all—and all means all, of whatever race, color, or class. If it doesn’t mean that, it is not democracy, but hypocrisy—the rule of the mask instead of the rule of the mass. Some Russians said to me: “You are outdated. We are the real inheritors of democracy. You grew afraid of your principle of democracy, tried to confine it to the political; we went on and applied it to the economic and social as well. We are therefore the inheritors of democracy.” There is only one answer to that, and the answer cannot be verbal, it must be vital: a demonstration. When we take the pledge of allegiance to the flag and say “with liberty and justice for all,” “for all” must mean all, or it means nothing.
Remember the words of Peter: “The Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction.” When we make racial distinction, we break with the Spirit of God and accept the spirit of arrogance. We have broken with the Christian way.
O God, help me belong to “the community of the just.” For I know that without justice there can be no community. Cleanse my heart of all that cannot be made into community—all divisiveness, all prejudice, all smallness. I want to be big—to love in spite of differences of color and race. For down underneath we are the same—and I know it. Amen.
* Now Myanmar.
Week 44 Wednesday
Continued Steps in Getting Rid of Race Prejudice
Galatians 6:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:8-9; 1 Peter 2:17
Since we have the backing of Christianity, biology, and democracy that humankind is one, and that prejudices are not innate but artificially imposed at an early date on the mind of the child, then we can deliberately take steps to build up new attitudes toward other races.
(4) I will cease sticking labels on whole peoples.
(5) I will deliberately cultivate friendships with people of another race. I will probably find that down underneath surface differences, we are fundamentally one. A German woman, after the last war, in applying for a job in which she felt there would be prejudice against her, said, “Madam, we both shed the same tears.” We do.
(6) I will deliberately set out to find what I can learn from people of another race. Each race has something to teach people of other races. It takes many differing notes to make a symphony. The white and black keys on the piano are the symbol of the fact that it takes both races to bring out the full music of humanity. One year, I found that the three people who had influenced me most were Gandhi, Booker T. Washington, and Toyohiko Kagawa—not one of them of my color or race.
(7) I will deliberately try to bring people of other races into my church fellowship. Every white church should have at least one member of a different race as an honored member, and every church of color at least one white member, as a symbol that the Christian church is different from surrounding society.
(8) I will deliberately identify myself with the dispossessed and discriminated against and make their disabilities my own, until everything is open to everybody on the basis of equal opportunity to all. Their cross shall be my cross; and their resurrection, my resurrection.
Gracious Lord, here I will find my cross in modern life. I will become a part of the disabilities that fall on others. Help me to choose to be identified with the forgotten and despised. And make this choice real and not mere gesture. For I am bound in the bondage of others and degraded in their degradations whether I identify myself with them or not. Help me take it on myself. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 44 Thursday
We Face the Question of War
Romans 14:4; 1 Peter 3:12-17
Those who have set out on this pilgrimage for abundant living will probably be impatient to face the vital question now facing every serious-souled person: What shall be my attitude toward war? If we do not face that question and find abundant living through it, and not around it, we shall have abundant living that is unreal. It would be easier not to face this question, for equally good people are on both sides of it; it would be easier and more deadly. Sometimes in our discussions, I have used the pronoun I in a representative capacity; but here I must use it in a strictly personal way, and tell you how far I have gone in my thinking and attitudes.
(1) I have determined that my attitude toward war shall not break my fellowship with those who differ from me. I believe in liberty of conscience so much that I must give the other person liberty of conscience to differ from me without inwardly de-Christianizing him or her, even in thought. The fellowship must not be broken.
(2) I am completely disillusioned about the war method. During World War I, I preached on two texts: “Herod and his soldiers set Jesus at naught” (Luke 23:11 KJV)—militarism sets Jesus at naught. “But when they saw the tribune and soldiers, they stopped beating Paul” (Acts 21:32)—military power can be used to protect the innocent. This last text allowed me to approve of the war. Since then I have been completely disillusioned about the ability of the military method to accomplish what its advocates believe it can.
(3) The military method cannot and does not protect the innocent. It protects the guilty, who are behind the lines, and involves the innocent, both civilians and soldiers alike, in insensate, useless slaughter. To compare the military method to that of protecting your wife or daughter from a ravisher is a false analogy; for war exposes wife and daughter—in fact, all innocents—to ravishment: spiritual, mental, physical. To compare war to killing a mad dog is a false analogy. In war, the mad dog—e.g., Hitler—is not killed, but millions of innocent youth are.
O God, my Lord, I come to you for light and guidance in this matter of war. I am involved in it whether or not I choose it. And yet, when I inwardly repudiate it, I am not as morally involved as when I choose and approve. Help me, then, inwardly to repudiate it, so that I may extricate my soul from moral involvement. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 44 Friday
Is War a Surgical Operation?
Romans 12:17-21; Philippians 2:5; 1 Peter 3:8-12
We left off yesterday while discussing the inability of war to protect the innocent. “Then Abner said to Joab, ‘Let the young men get up and have a fight before us.’ ‘Very well,’ said Joab” (2 Sam. 2:14 Moffatt). It is the young men who have little or nothing to do with the precipitating of wars who have to bear the brunt of the fighting. But in modern war, probably the worst suffering comes to the civil populations. War has lost any power it had to protect the innocent; it now exposes them. If it is said that there are some things worse than war, then the answer must be given in the words I heard from someone: “Yes, and war produces every one of those things.”
(4) War is a means out of harmony with the ends it hopes to accomplish. People everywhere acknowledge that the war method is wrong, but they hope to use it to accomplish good ends. This is a fond and futile hope, for the means preexist in and determine the ends. You cannot dismiss the means before they have shaped the ends. They go straight into and determine the ends. Evil means produce evil ends. If good has ever come out of war, the reason was that other constructive influences have been introduced into the process and have produced constructive ends in spite of the war method.
(5) To liken war to a surgical operation is a false analogy. A surgical operation posits an immaculately sterilized surgeon with immaculately sterilized instruments, or else it will do more harm than good. I know this from my own experience, for I was infected with tetanus when operated on for appendicitis. What nation as it goes to war can claim immaculate sterility for itself and its instruments? If it did, then the first germ that would infect the body of humanity would be hypocrisy. War cannot be carried on in an immaculately sterile manner—its weapons are lies, deceits, hypocrisies. “The first casualty in war is truth”; the second is love, for it is absurd to say that you can go to war loving your enemies. If you loved your enemies, you would be a very poor soldier.
Gracious Lord, I come to you asking you to wash my eyes and my heart. I want to see straight and cannot unless I am straight. Then make me straight. Amid the hysterias of this hour keep my soul and my mind clean. For hate invades, and prejudices corrode, and I begin to think with my emotions. Help me think with your mind. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 44 Saturday
Did Christ Approve of War?
Matthew 22:36-40; Luke 20:25; Acts 5:29
I cannot draw the analogy between an army trained for war and a police force. I can and do believe in a police force, for a police force brings the criminal to the bar of justice to be tried by a tribunal of right. An army trained in war does not bring the supposed offender to a tribunal of right, but fights it out before a tribunal of might. Moreover, the police punish the guilty; in war you punish the innocent and guilty alike—mostly the innocent. Again, a police force is trained against criminals: one police force doesn’t go out and fight against another police force as does an army trained for war.
Nor can I by any twisting of meanings find the approval of Christ for war. They just don’t fit in. The missionaries in Nanking, China, gave New Testaments to the Japanese soldiers. At first, the officers were glad for the men to have them, but later they came to the missionaries and said, “Please don’t give our men any more New Testaments, for when they read this book, it takes the fight out of them—they don’t want to fight any more.”
To say that Christ used force in the cleansing of the temple (see John 2:13-16) is to twist the account, for he used force as follows: (1) He “overturned their tables”—on inanimate objects he used force. (2) He made a whip of small cords and “drove them all, sheep and cattle together” (v. 15 Moffatt)—on animate creatures who could not understand moral force, he used a whip. (3) On persons, he used moral force: “Take these things away” (v. 16). There is no scriptural warrant whatever that Jesus used physical violence on any person, let alone his approving of the violence of war.
When he said, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he immediately added, “and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). The first phrase is qualified by the second. In his interpretation of the kingdom, he said that all life belongs to God. Then: Render to Caesar what can be reconciled with rendering to God—if Caesar fits into the kingdom of God—well; if not, then, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33 KJV). The idea that loyalty to Caesar is on a par with loyalty to God is foreign to the Christian faith.
Lord, help me get my values and my allegiances straight. I will give my loyalty to Caesar as long as it does not interfere with and contradict my loyalty to you. For you, not Caesar, are God. Help me then to fear no consequences of my loyalty to you, first, last, and always. Amen.