Saturday: Underlying Ideas Become Outer Fact
WEEK 7
SATURDAY
UNDERLYING IDEAS BECOME OUTER FACT
James 2:5-9
We have been studying the effects of the simple fact that the one hundred twenty instead of the twelve received God’s highest gift, the Holy Spirit. When we lose sight of the meaning of that fact, then alien ideas and practices invade the churches and make their influence for democracy weak and halting. For basic religious ideas sooner or later come out and show themselves in the structure of society.
Why has Latin America not achieved democracy, except where it has been skeptical or antagonistic toward religion? It has republics but not democracies. Elections are for the most part superseded by military revolutions, overthrowing the government by force. Why? Is it not because the dominant religion is based on special privilege and special status, in fact on an autocratic conception? Out of that underlying conception democracies do not grow. They cannot. If we are unequal before God, then we must be unequal before humanity. Democracy is impossible.
Why did Kurusu, the Japanese special envoy to Washington, say to us after World War II, “Japan will never become a democracy until Japan becomes Christian”?* Did he see that the underlying idea of the emperor being descended from the Sun Goddess—a Son of Heaven—had to be replaced by the idea that persons as persons are children of God? One idea will not sustain democracy; the other will. But Kurusu’s statement has to be modified, for it depends on what kind of Christianity becomes the basis of Japan’s life as to whether real democracy is produced.
Some types of Christianity do not produce democracy. They make society into their own image—autocracy. The barons of Briton said to their king: “We who are as good as you are say to you who are no better than we are that we will elect you as our sovereign liege and lord provided you protect our liberties and our laws; if not, then not.”** That was good, as far as it went. But the people then had to have their say to the barons. For the people must rule. “I saw thrones, and people took their seats on them” (Rev 20:4). The “people” finally rule, and that fact comes out of the basic fact that a person as a person receives the Holy Spirit.
O Lord, I thank you that my faith and my form of government are not at war. Help us to Christianize it, and then it will be truly democratic. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I bend low before God, then I will stand straight before humanity.
*Quotation attributed to a personal conversation between Dr. E. Stanley Jones and Saburō Kurusu.
**For more information, see Magna Carta of 1225.