Thursday: We Are Drifting into Humanism
WEEK 25
THURSDAY
WE ARE DRIFTING INTO HUMANISM
John 17:1-3
We are meditating on the great clarification that took place when the early Christians confessed, “Jesus is Lord.” Without that confession, life is under a strange sense of either unfulfillment or being at loose ends. The Hindus have had nine so-called incarnations of God. They are waiting for the tenth—the Nishkalank Avatar, the Spotless Incarnation. They cannot live on the Is; it is all unsatisfactory. They are living on the To Be.
Where groups have taken Jesus as teacher and example but not as Lord, there the key to God slips through their fingers. For them, Jesus as teacher and example takes his place among the other moralists and philosophers who point to truth. But they are not the truth. Jesus never pointed to truth; he pointed to himself and said, “I am the Truth.” He never pointed to the Way as a signpost; he simply said, “I am the Way.” He did not philosophize about life; he said, “I am the Life.” And the amazing thing is that when we try him, it works. He becomes the Way, the Truth, the Life. His ways become the Way. His truths become the Truth. His life becomes the Life. In him we see God. And apart from him, God is vague and uncertain. A member of a Unitarian group said to me, “I wish you would come to our annual convention and help us to get God back into our movement. For we are drifting into humanism.” That was interesting and revealing. Here was a group specializing on God and losing God, and here I was specializing on Jesus and finding God. If you lose the Incarnate Jesus, you lose the Excarnate God. If you know the Incarnate Jesus, you know the Excarnate God.
“Jesus is Lord” was the key to the mastery of confusion. When they began to make him Lord of their thoughts, they knew that their thoughts were becoming Truth; when they began to live his life, they knew that this was Life; when they began to walk his ways, they knew that this was the Way. Life burst into meaning everywhere. The universe was a universe and not a multiverse. Life added up to sense—to Sense!
O Jesus, I thank you for the fact that when I know you, I know how to think, know how to feel, know how to act. I just know how to be—blessed, blessed certainty. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall approach every subject, every relationship, everything, through Jesus today.