Sunday: By Compulsion or Impulsion?
WEEK 18
SUNDAY
BY COMPULSION OR IMPULSION?
James 2:5-7
We were studying last week the fact that the principle of distribution of material goods according to need was sound and was slowly but surely being adopted as the basis for human living. There are two approaches to that distribution: one the method of force and compulsion, the way of Communism; and the other the way of impulsion, the way of freedom, the way of democracy and Christianity. The social revolution is on. The depressed portions of humankind are on the march. They are through with exploitation and are knocking at the gates of privilege with no uncertain knock. There are just two patterns that social revolution can take: one the pattern of Communism and the other the pattern of the Christian faith, best expressed in democracy and freedom. I am convinced that the Communists have betrayed the social revolution, guiding it into channels of compulsion and tyranny. The cure is as bad as the disease. We must guide the social revolution into channels of Christian freedom and democracy. But if we do, then the basis of distribution must be according to need. Not according to greed, but according to need. We can’t have a world half-stuffed and half-starved.
Just how did early Christians fasten upon need as the basis of distribution? After two thousand years we cannot find a better basis. This basis has survived scrutiny and struggle of the sifting centuries. And it is being adopted by both opposing camps—Communism and free enterprise. One says the distribution according to need will come by force and compulsion; the other says it will come by consent and freedom. The point is that they are both aiming in varying degrees at the same thing in this particular. That is the most interesting and important fact in the collective life of the world today. And the important thing is that the Christians discovered this basis and put it into operation from the beginning. How did they discover it? They knew nothing economics or sociology. They must have found that basis through inspiration. It must be God’s will and plan to distribute the goods of the world according to need.
O Lord, if you are teaching us the lessons of life the hard way because we wouldn’t take them by the way of grace, forgive us and give us sense. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall take life from the hand of grace instead of from the hand of judgment.