Week 45 Sunday
Week 45 Sunday
Has Gandhi Shown Us a Way Out?
Matthew 5:43-48; Romans 12:21
Last week we were considering our Christian attitude toward war. We ended by insisting that Christ and war were incompatible. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world, [else] would my servants fight” (John 18:36 KJV). Here he says definitely that his servants will not fight, for their kingdom is different from the kingdoms of this world and their weapons are therefore different.
The God I find in Christ is a God who overcomes evil with good, hate by love, and the world by a cross. But if the objection is made that God redeems in terms of Christ but rules in terms of a throne, my answer is that Jesus identified with God and also with the kingdom of God. He and God are one, and he and the kingdom are one. He used “for my sake” and “for the kingdom’s sake” synonymously. He is the kingdom personalized—the Order and the Person are one. So Jesus is both the revelation of the character of God, and the character of God’s reign. God redeems in terms of Christ, and God rules in terms of Christ: the cross and the throne are one.
There is a moral equivalent to war—Gandhi has shown the possibilities of putting the cross into corporate life. Pacifism is not passivism—it is activism from a higher level. Gandhi has shown us that a nation need not sit down under disabilities, nor need it have recourse to the barbarities of war. It can match its own capacities to suffer against the capacities of the other to give suffering—soul force against physical force. Gandhi has trained a nation to say: “We won’t hate you, but we won’t obey you. Do what you like.” He has put the cross into public life. If our nation took the Christian way of active good will toward all, we should probably do away with nine-tenths of the possibilities of invasion; if on the one tenth, the Christian way should break down, we would not be lost, for 130 million people could sit down and say to a dictator: “We won’t hate you, but we won’t obey you. Do what you like.” We could overcome by our capacity to suffer. Twaddle? Christ tried it, and he rules the world.
O Christ, I am your follower. And yet, and yet I am afraid to follow you—all out. But I see your way is right. And nothing else is right. Then let me take your way though the heavens fall. But they will not fall, for they stand as they stand with you. Help me stand with you. Amen.
Week 45 Monday
The Good Things in War
Romans 8:16-18; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; 2 Timothy 2:12; 1 Peter 2:19-21
We left off yesterday at the possibility of a moral equivalent to war. The British politician George Landsbury once objected to the use of that phrase, saying to me: “There is no moral equivalent of an evil.” But while war is an evil, yet there are noble things caught up and used by war: patriotism, self-sacrifice, comradeship in a common cause. These are no necessary parts of war, but they are seized hold of and used by war, and they make war bearable to troubled souls—troubled about the essential purposes of war, namely, to kill, to destroy.
The moral equivalent to war is the moral equivalent of the fine things war has gathered up and used—patriotism, comradeship, self-sacrifice. The willingness of youth to sacrifice their lives touches me deeply. We can rescue these fine qualities and use them in a higher purpose to higher ends. Gandhi’s nonviolent non-cooperation takes patriotism, self-sacrifice, and comradeship in a cause and links them to the constructive purposes of overcoming evil by good, hate by love, and the world by a cross. If our millions of people should sit down, refuse to obey, and practice nonviolent non-cooperation with a dictator, what would happen? The jails would be filled until jails would become ridiculous—an honor. They would line us up against a wall and shoot us until they would shoot themselves and their regime full of holes.
If it is said that this might work against the British in India, but not against the Germans and the Japanese, the reply is that the early Christians used this method against the most brutal empire of the day—the Roman Empire—whose ordinary method of punishment was crucifixion. They used it against that empire and won. They broke the Roman Empire by their capacity to take suffering, not to give it. For the first three centuries, no Christian ever went to war or stayed in the army after becoming a Christian—it was incompatible. After the first three centuries, with the conversion of Constantine, no one but a Christian could get into the army. Christianity and the war method became entangled.
O God, strengthen my inner spirit with a disciplined way of life, so that I may be prepared to adopt this way of nonviolence as my way, whether or not others take it. May I embrace the way of the cross even if it means the added cross of being alone. For we must find a new way—this old way is ruinous to everybody. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 45 Tuesday
Becoming an Embodied Conscience
Acts 24:16; Romans 13:8-10; 1 Timothy 1:5
As we expound this possibility of nonviolent non-cooperation, there are many who say, “Well, it might work if we could convince enough disciplined people to try it. But we have disciplined our people in the other method, not in this one.” True. And how do we begin? With ourselves! We cannot wait until everyone is ready; we can let this method of the cross begin in ourselves and in small groups we can gather around us.
A woman speaker was trying to whip up a frenzy of hate against our war enemies. Somehow, her effort just wouldn’t work. She finally turned aside and said, half-wistfully and half-disgustedly, “How can you hate with Jane Addams in the room?” Jane Addams* was the new order embodied, and was the conscience of the situation.
A college president sent a wire to a speaker who was going to visit, and urged him to go all out for war. American Quaker theologian Rufus Jones had been on the campus and had greatly influenced the students against war. The speaker tried his best, but didn’t get far. The president of the college said afterward, “Why didn’t you really go all out?” The speaker replied, “Who can go all out for war with Rufus Jones on the platform?” Rufus Jones was the Christian conscience of the situation. The speaker had to justify himself before that conscience, and the going was hard.
This method will fail? All right, I would rather fail using this method than succeed in using the other. But will it fail? The opposite is failing to do anything except to get us into universal ruin. Just sheer common sense should keep us out of war. Jean Rousseau, speaking of nations keeping out of war, said, “They do not need to be good, generous, disinterested, public-spirited, humane. They may be unjust, greedy, putting their own interests first; we ask only that they shall not be fools—and to this they will come.”** Kant said, “Even a race of devils, provided only that they were intelligent, would be forced to find a solution other than war.”***
O Christ, my Lord, make me a Christian whether others become Christians or not. I feel in my heart of hearts that this way is the only way that will work. For it is your way. I will need courage to take this way, for so many are afraid the universe won’t back it. But I am convinced that the universe is not backing the other. It is ending in futile ruin. Help me take your way. Amen.
* Jane Addams (1860–1935) was a pioneer social worker and leader in women’s suffrage and world peace. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
** Published source unknown, but see The Social Contract (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1913).
*** Published source for direct quotation unknown, but see Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (Washington, D.C.: American Peace Society, 1897), 37.
Week 45 Wednesday
The Church Is a Society within a Society
Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 10:32; Hebrews 12:28
The discussion of our attitudes toward war led to the necessity of getting small disciplined groups to be the seed plots of a new order, so that, if the old order goes to pieces, the group will be the seeds of a new one. The Christian church became just such a seed plot when the Roman Empire, founded on military might, went to pieces. The Epistle to Diognetus, written at this time of decay, says, “What the soul is to the body, so the Christians are to the world—they hold the world together.” It was the Christians then who held the world together, and it is the Christians again who will now hold the world together. For we are in a similar period of decay. Pitirim Sorokin, the Harvard sociologist, says that our sensate culture has exhausted itself and is dissolving, and the future must reform itself around other ideas and purposes.
The future must form around the kingdom of God, or, in its turn, perish. For the kingdom is the final order, and what does not fit into it shall perish. The church is the seed plot of that kingdom. In a mass meeting, it was announced that a Japanese girl would sing. I held my breath to see the reaction of that audience. We were at war with Japan. Would they hiss her? She sang simply and beautifully: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.” Although it was a religious service, the audience broke out into spontaneous applause. The Christian fellowship was unbroken. The church was not at war. It was a supranational fellowship that held together in spite of the snapping of national bonds. Only in a Christian church could that have taken place in wartime—a citizen of a nation at war with us cheered in public! The Christian church is different. It is a society within a society—a nation within a nation. When a nation decays, the church need not decay; it is attached to undecaying purposes and ends. It is, or ought to be, an expression in society of that “kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28). To the degree that the church is such an expression, it will stand unshaken amid a shaken world.
O God, I am so grateful that there is one island of sanity amid a raging sea of confusion and hate. Help me be a worthy part of this glorious fellowship of those whose hearts have been touched and illuminated and changed, and who are the realized future. May I be the miniature of that future. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 45 Thursday
Why I Should Give My Allegiance to the Church
Acts 20:28; Ephesians 3:14-15; 5:23-32; Colossians 1:17-18
In order to give full inner consent to allegiance to the church, perhaps you can take these steps:
(1) There is no such thing as solitary religion. If it is solitary, it is not religion, for Jesus expressed religion as love to God and love to people. There can be no love to people unless life is lived out in relationships. “To be is to be in relationship.” The Christian’s life can be lived only in the give-and-take of corporate relationships.
(2) The Christian church is founded on a necessity in human nature. The three great driving urges are self, sex, and the herd. The herd, or social drive or instinct, is frustrated if I do not work out my spiritual life in a corporate fellowship. If the church were wiped out today, it would have to be replaced tomorrow by something similar, for human nature demands it. Those who try to cultivate their spiritual lives alone, apart from the church, are attempting to live a vertical spiritual life, without the horizontal—they are attempting the impossible. Human nature is against it.
(3) The church, in a sense, is an extension of the life of the Incarnation. I say “in a sense,” for there was only once when “the Word became flesh”; but the church attempts, in varying degrees, to reincarnate that Word in corporate relationships. It is the only group in human society living, not for its own purposes, but for the purpose of manifesting in time an Eternal Purpose.
(4) With all its faults, the church is the best serving institution on earth. It has many critics but no rivals in the work of human redemption. It has filled the world with schools, hospitals, and orphan and blind asylums. There isn’t a spot on earth where, if it is free to do so, it hasn’t done so. Christians are people who care. And they are people who care on a world scale; they care for a person as a person, apart from race, birth, and color.
O God, I thank you that you have a Family, and that I can belong to that Family. Make me a good member of that Family. May the Family spirit be in all I do and think and say. For I want others to love this Family. Help me bring to the Family the constructive spirit of love and mutual aid. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 45 Friday
The Church: The One Unbroken Fellowship
Acts 2:46-47; 7:37-38; 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19-20; Ephesians 1:17-23
We continue our ladder of thought in regard to the church:
(5) The church, with all its faults, contains the best human life in the world. Its character is higher and finer and more dependable. When a churchperson goes wrong morally, it is news. Something else was expected. Look over the service-club groups that usually gather up the leaders in the life of a city: 90 percent or more will be church leaders. They rise to the top like cream. The church produces a steadier type of character; people who can get along with each other, if not on account of, then in spite of.
(6) The church is the one unbroken fellowship around the world. All other ties have snapped; the tie among Christians remains unbroken. The missionaries are now carrying on the work of the German missions until the war is over, but will return the work to them at the close. The church, as we said before, is not at war. It is holding an unbroken fellowship. The Christians are therefore the bridge across all chasms.
(7) The church is the one institution that delivers you from the present century and gives you a sense of solidarity with all the centuries. When you are in the church, you are not a prisoner of your date—you have a sense of belonging to the ages.
(8) The church, at its truest, breaks down all class and race barriers, and makes humankind feel it is one. An African American minister arose in a train in Nazi Germany, gave the German lady his seat, and stood for four hours. When the German lady was about to leave, she tried to thank him, but he couldn’t understand her German, nor could she understand his English. Finally she wrote out a Scripture reference from Isaiah and handed it to him: “The Lord make you like a watered garden” (see Isa. 58:11). Isaiah, a Jew, brings together an African American and a German in Nazi Germany! Celsus, a third-century critic of Christianity, said in derision: “These Christians love each other even before they are acquainted.”* They do.
O God, I thank you that the church has been “the mother of my spirit,” the guide of my youth, the fellowship of my mature years—the home of my soul. May no class, no caste, no color line mar the open fellowship of the Family. Help us have a relaxed fellowship in which everyone will be at home—except those who sin against the fellowship. Amen.
* Origen, Contra Celsum, book III.59-60.
Week 45 Saturday
The Church: The Mother of Movements
Acts 14:22-23; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Hebrews 2:11-12
We gather up some concluding meditations on the church.
(9) The church has been and is the mother of movements. It is a creative society. It gave birth to the arts, to education, to reform, to missionary movements, to democracy. It may be said that democracy is a child of the Christian faith. Rhode Island gave to the world democracy through its original covenant, and Christian thinking gave democracy to Rhode Island.* The Christian settlers thought of God as Father, then of men as brothers, and then of democracy as expressing that egalitarian attitude in government. Democracy is founded on a view of God, and hence of humanity, and hence of government. “Democracy,” says Thomas Mann, “is the political expression of Christianity.”** If the root of democracy decays, the fruit will die.
(10) The denomination is not the church. The church is bigger than the denomination. I stood on top of a hill overlooking a valley. Here and there I could see isolated ponds of water. But they were not isolated ponds; they were portions of one winding river, only parts of which I could see at one time. The denominations are parts of a continuous river—the church. The church is bigger than the denominations. To think that we have roped off the grace of God and confined it within our denomination is as absurd as to say that the areas roped off for swimmers on the beaches are the ocean.
(11) As the denomination is not the church, so the church is not the kingdom. The church contains the best life of the kingdom, but is not synonymous with the kingdom. It is a means to the ends of the kingdom, and not an end in itself. It must lose its life for kingdom ends and then it will find itself.
(12) The primary function of the church is the worship of God. Here we get in living contact with God, the Eternal, in order to meet Time, the fleeting. Here we pause and have the “signet ring of Eternity” stamped on the fleeting moments of Time.
Out of that worship of God, impulses and movements spring for the service of humanity.
Gracious Lord, in your house I learn to live simultaneously in time and in eternity. There I know I am the child of an Eternal Purpose and the harbinger of an Eternal Destiny. I am no longer cheap. Nor can I be given to cheap ends. Help me hold my bosom clear for the working out of your Eternal Purposes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* See the biography of Roger Williams at http://sos.ri.gov/library/history/famous/rogerwilliams/, accessed May 13, 2014.
** Original source unknown, but see Thomas Mann, Goethe and Democracy (Washington, D.C.: [Library of Congress], 1950), 18.