Week 25 Sunday
Week 25 Sunday
Another Road with a Dead End—Jealousy
Matthew 27:18; Galatians 5:19-20
We cannot end our long list of roads with dead ends without emphasizing jealousy as a road that leads only into defeat and frustration.
Strange that I have put off the consideration of it so long, and stranger still that, after going through about three thousand notes of materials for this book, I could scarcely comb out a dozen references to jealousy and envy. And yet it was probably the one thing that crucified Jesus. At least Pilate “knew that the high priests had handed him over out of envy” (Mark 15:10 Moffatt). Envy and jealousy are still crucifying Jesus. But more, they are throwing disruption in many personalities. If you have jealousy or envy in your life, you are on not-the-way.
Near where I am writing is a ghost town, once a thriving, prosperous paper-mill town. Two men in the mill became jealous of each other, and when one man came to the top, he closed the mill to spite the other man. Hundreds were thrown out of employment, a town fell to pieces, a community was devastated, all to satisfy the jealousy of one man. Satisfy? Hardly. He will have poison in his bosom the rest of his days. For jealousy is poison.
Two brothers were jealous of each other, and that poisoned their relationships and upset everything around them. A jealous wife or husband can keep a home in a nervous hell. “For wherever jealousy and rivalry exist, there disorder reigns and every evil” (Jas. 3:16 Moffatt). Note “wherever.” There are no exceptions. Jealousy has been, is, and ever shall be the cause of disorder and evil. And further note “every evil.” Out of jealousy comes a whole brood of ugly evils.
And yet jealousy can and does invade supposedly Christian people. A prominent evangelist was jealous of Moody and went out of his way to discount D. L. Moody and his work. Result? This prominent evangelist faded out, his power ebbed away, and soon he was talking hollow words. Few remember his name, while Moody lives on immortal. Jealousy may be green-eyed, but it is brown-souled, seared into brown devastation.
O Christ, at whom all sorts of shafts of jealousy were thrown, and who, by your love and patient goodwill, turn it back as forgiving grace; give me the patient goodwill to deal with jealousy. And save me from the poison of it. May it never invade me. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Put affection into your love for the brotherhood; be forward to honor one another” (Rom. 12:10 Moffatt).
Week 25 Monday
Steps to Victory over Jealousy
Acts 13:45; Romans 13:13; 1 Corinthians 3:3
We must now look at the steps for release from jealousy:
(1) Fix this in your mind: jealousy detracts from you and makes you unfit to gain the love of the loved one. A jealous person defeats his own purposes. You do not gain love by jealousy; you lose it. You cannot love a jealous person, not really, not with the stops out; jealousy is tied up, suspicious, unlovable. You can be jealous or lovable; you can’t be both.
(2) Look on jealousy as self-centeredness. If you are a jealous person, you are a self-centered person.
(3) Go to the root and surrender the unsurrendered self to God, and jealousy will drop away—rootless. When you surrender yourself to God, you then enter a fellowship where you become “organs one of another.” So if we are organs of one another, then a good executive is my organ of executive ability, a good singer is my organ of song. I need not be jealous because that other person is an “organ” of me.
(4) Since you are surrendered to God, now you need not be looking around to see what is happening to this, that, or the other person. Your approvals and your joys come from God. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” The reply, “What is that to you? Follow me!” (John 21:21, 22). Peter had a little lingering jealousy of John. Pentecost had not yet burned it out, so he looked John-ward instead of Jesus-ward.
(5) Surrendered to God, you now work out a unique plan, a plan that no one else can fulfill. When the disciples of John saw Jesus was going ahead of their master, they said, “Rabbi, the man . . . to whom you bore testimony—here he is baptizing, and everybody goes to him!” John replied that he was the bridegroom’s friend, “Such is my joy, and it is complete” (John 2:26, 29 Moffatt). In other words, “I know my place. I’ve found my niche, and I’m happy in it.”
(6) Say everything good you can of the person toward whom you are tempted to be jealous. As you do so, your attitude will turn from jealousy to love—especially if you breathe a prayer for the person every time you hear the person’s name.
O loving Lord, help me to rejoice in the joy of all your children; help me to feel success in the success of anyone; help me to be honored in the honors of others; help me to love with a creative love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “When my heart was sour” (Ps. 73:21 Moffatt). But mine is sour no longer, for I wish the best for everybody.
Week 25 Tuesday
Fastening upon an Idol
Jeremiah 2:13; 1 Corinthians 10:7; 2 Corinthians 6:16
We must look at another road with a dead end, which many are unconsciously taking—the road of fastening yourself upon an idol.
Fritz Künkel lays bare the devastating effects in the personality of those who stop short of reality and fasten upon substitutes, upon idols. An idol is a relative thing become an absolute. In its place an idol is a good thing, but its place is not absolute; it is relative. It must be surrendered to and related to something beyond itself.*
A great many people fasten themselves upon idols in religion, for instance, a favorite preacher. Faith is pinned upon that preacher. If he or she stays steady upon the pedestal, then the religion of the idol goes smoothly. But if the idol wobbles on the pedestal, or worse, falls? Then the faith fastened upon that person goes down as well. But an idol doesn’t have to go down in a crash. If an idol turns out to be less than perfect, then faith is disappointed and hurt and bruised. The idol worshiper nurses a hidden pain.
I came near doing this as a young Christian. The man under whom I was converted was my ideal and came near being my idol. I found myself imitating his rough voice. And then I found that, while he was a good man, he was not a perfect man, and my idol tottered on its pedestal. In that moment, Christ said to me, “Are you following him, or are you following Me?” I saw it; he had come between me and Christ. He must be surrendered. He was. Then he was not an idol; he was a good man to whom I owed much and was deeply grateful. I was released from bondage; I was free.
There are those who make an idol of the religious group to which they belong. People have an instinct for belonging to a group, the herd instinct. Within the group they feel secure, they “belong.” And in the belonging, they glorify the group; they put upon it a halo and invest it with saving qualities. Those who belong to the group or denomination are all right, safe; those who do not are insecure, unsaved. The group has become an idol.
O Christ, how easy it is to stop this side of you and fasten upon something less than you. And when we do so, we know that we are doomed to disappointment, to inner hurt. For only you do not let us down. Everything else does. I would therefore fasten my affections on you, and you alone, supremely, all else relative. Help me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “If you lose your freshness in the land and deprave yourselves by carving an idol” (Deut. 4:25 Moffatt). I too fasten on idols as I lose the freshness of God.
*Fritz Künkel (1880–1956) was a noted psychiatrist and social scientist who developed “We-Psychology.” A possible source for this reference is “Idolatry and the Attempt to Escape from the Crisis of Idolatry”; see Fritz Kunkel: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1984).
Week 25 Wednesday
When the Idol Crashes
Revelation 18:10, 16-19
We saw yesterday that the group may become an idol. As long as we can invest our idol with saving qualities—and that is easy in the first days of “belonging,” for one has a sense that at last the haven of security has been found—then everything goes well. But if difficulties arise within the group, and the group turns out to be less than perfect, then a sense of “lostness” comes over the devotee. The idol is about to fall. There is such a sense of insecurity that another group has to be formed, minus the less-than-perfect elements. The idol must be reestablished upon its throne. In the breakup, many are not able to reinvest the new idol with infallibility, and hence they wander spiritually homeless, lost souls. They don’t “belong” anymore.
In Latin America these orphaned souls can be counted by the millions. They had fastened upon the “Church” as the ark of safety. All in it were safe, for the “Church” was “infallible.” And then the modern investigating mind came into being, and the infallibilities fell to pieces. They saw that there was nothing infallible about the “Church” except that it was infallibly fallible. They were set adrift and found no resting place between infallibility and infidelity. So Latin America has produced more infidelity than any other place in the world, except perhaps Russia, and even that is “perhaps.” The soul of educated Latin America is a vast moral and spiritual vacuum into which everything is rushing—the worship of Psyche and Cupid, Positivism, the worship of Humanity, Eastern cults—everything. Millions declared themselves Spiritualists in the last census in Brazil.* Why is there an anticlerical movement arising in almost every Latin American country? The idol had been invested with saving qualities, and then the devotees found that even the saving idol was not saved, not saved from human frailties and sins. A sense of spiritual orphanage has set in. “What are the three great needs of your country, and in what order?” I asked a Brazilian. He replied, “The first need is Christ, the second, Christ, and the third, Christ.” He was right, for this side of the Absolute we fasten upon idols. And idols always let us down.
O Christ, I know that you are alone the Absolute, our resting place, for in you we find the Absolute God. We would get to you and to you alone. For in you is everything. You are the Way. Outside of you is not-the-way. So I come—to you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “They went after false gods to become false like them” (2 Kings 17:15 Moffatt). I become like that which I worship.
*Sources for these statements unknown.
Week 25 Thursday
Steps to Release from Idols
1 Peter 4:3-5
We now come to the steps for release from idols:
(1) Fix in mind that everything this side of God has the seeds of disillusionment in it if made into an idol. They may be good things—home, children, husband, wife, minister, group, rite, ceremony, denomination—but they are all relative. You can rest only in the Absolute. “Good-bye, dear reader,” said Will Durant in his book on his own philosophy of life, “I am going out in the garden to play with my children.”* In other words, his philosophy of life rested in human relationships. My inner comment was, “And suppose something would strike your family circle—sickness, death? You have built your nest too low. The floods can reach it. You are vulnerable. Only when your ultimate life values are in God are you invulnerable.” He was resting on an idol.
(2) Fix in mind that no person, no institution, no creed, no denomination, no group, no rite, no ceremony can be invested with saving qualities without disappointment or letdown. All of these have to be saved. How, then, can they save?
(3) Fix in mind that no person, no institution, no creed, no denomination, no group, no rite, no ceremony is the issue. If any of these is made into an issue, it is a false issue, an issue over an idol. Christ and Christ alone is the issue. He is the Dividing Line. If we are in him, nothing else need divide us. “Whoever isn’t with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30 CEB). But he did not say, “Whoever is not with this person, this institution, this creed, this denomination, this rite, this ceremony is against me.” That would equate Christ with the relative things gathered around him through the centuries. In other words, it would make Christ an idol maker. One is the issue: Christ. Had this been kept clearly before Christians, then they might have been saved infinite bitterness and division. In Latin America an evangelical denomination was split over the meaning of aion: are the sufferings of the damned “eternal,” or only “unto the ages”?
O Christ, I see, I see how we have reduced you to irrelevancies. We have made you the center of an idol worship. Forgive us. Help us to put you on the throne again, and help us to bow our knees to nothing less than you. For you are the Way. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Your Teacher never leaves you now; you see your Teacher for yourselves, and when you swerve to right or left, you hear a Voice behind you whispering: ‘This is the way, walk here.’ ” (Isa. 30:20-21 Moffatt).
*Published source not located.
Week 25 Friday
Further Steps to Release
Luke 9:49-50; 1 John 5:20-21
We continue our steps in release from idols:
(4) Be a member of this group or that denomination, but do not belong to it; belong to Christ. The group or the denomination belongs to you; you do not belong to it. Paul put it in these words, “All belongs to you; Paul, Apollos, Cephas [all great teachers], the world, life, death [all great facts], the present and the future [all time]—all belong to you; and you belong to Christ, and Christ to God” (1 Cor. 3:21-22 Moffatt). You belong to nothing—nothing but Christ. But when you do, then all belongs to you.
(5) Lean lightly on things and people—absolutely on Christ. When a man was taken up in an airplane for the first time, he was asked how he liked it. He replied, “Fine, but I never did let my whole weight down.” Let your whole weight down only on Christ. If you let your whole weight down on anything else, on anything other than Christ, it will let you down. Everything surrendered to Christ comes back to you; it belongs to you forever.
(6) Expect the person and the group to be imperfect and accept them as such. “Blessed is the man what don’t expect nothin’, for he won’t be disappointed.” This can be said of people and things, but it cannot be said of Christ. Here we can let expectation take wings, for in him we are never disappointed. “He who believes in him will never be disappointed” (1 Pet. 2:6 Moffatt). In everything else you will be disappointed if you do not provide for imperfection.
(7) Follow the person or the group as they follow Christ. That provides for contact with persons and groups, saves us from cynical aloofness and isolationism, and yet we do it with reservations. We are free to break with them, if they break with Christ. And we can do it without moral and spiritual disaster to ourselves. We have tied ourselves to people and groups with a bowknot. To Christ, we are bound by bonds that cannot be untied or broken.
O Christ, it is all clear; I see that I belong to you unbreakably. Other things belong to me breakably. They may come and go; you remain. They may wax old as does a garment, but your years are ever the same. I am beyond disappointment. I cannot be reached by the passing show of life. I am in you. And you are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am through with “the slippery gods of the glen” (Isa. 57:6 Moffatt). My heart is fixed on God.
Week 25 Saturday
Jesus Takes the Place of Idols
Hebrews 1:1-4
We have one more day’s meditation on release from idols.
We turn to idols because God seems so aloof, inaccessible, un-get-at-able. But for us, Jesus takes the place of idols. When we get hold of him, the necessity for the idol drops away. He is near at hand, tangible, approachable, for he is “Emmanuel—God with us.”
We long for the near-at-hand, but we also long for the universal. We cannot be satisfied with the concrete unless the universal is in that concrete. These two things are put together in this passage, “May Christ dwell in your hearts. . . . May you be so fixed and founded in love that you can grasp . . . what is the meaning of ‘the Breadth,’ ‘the Length,’ ‘the Depth,’ and ‘the Height,’ by knowing the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge!” (Eph. 3:17-19 Moffatt). Here is a fixed faith—“fixed and founded”—and yet unfixed, “able to grasp ‘the Breadth,’ ‘the Length,’ ‘the Depth,’ and ‘the Height.’ ” If Christ dwells in your heart, you are the narrowest person in the world—you are a person of one Person, one Allegiance, one Love—you are One-centric. And yet you are universalized. You “grasp” in every dimension of life. You “grasp” the truth in “the Breadth”—the liberals. You are more liberal than the liberals, for truth found anywhere belongs to you because you belong to the Truth, Christ. You “grasp” the truth in “the Length”—the successionists, those who feel a sense of solidarity of the Christian centuries. You are more successionist than the Apostolic successionists, for you are a Christ successionist. All the Christians of the ages, not only the apostles, belong to you because you belong to Christ. You can “grasp” the truth in “the Depth”—the fundamentalists, those who insist upon the Incarnation, the Atoning Death, the Resurrection. But you are more fundamental than the fundamentalists, for you are “fixed and grounded” in the incarnate, atoning, resurrected Christ. He, and not merely doctrines about him, is the fundamental center of your faith. And you can “grasp” the truth in “the Height”—the mystics. But yon are more mystic than the mystics, for you know “the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge”—the universal.
O Christ, I put one point of my compass upon the fact of you; then I let the other point sweep as far as it will and take in the whole horizon of fact. I am fixed, oh how fixed! And yet I am free, oh how free! My center is in you—and everywhere! I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I have given myself to him who is the “express image” of God. What need have I for any idol?