Week 1 Sunday
Week 1 Sunday
The Inner Confusion
Psalm 42:1-7
An inner breakdown has taken place. Said an international thinker, “It is manifest that the breakdown in international comity is not solely due to economic and Political causes.” The breakdown is due to something behind the economic and the political, a breakdown in the spiritual. Something has collapsed there, and the outer collapse is simply an outer expression of a more serious inner collapse. The outer arrangements of people are awry because the inner arrangements of people are awry. For the whole of the outer arrangements of life rests upon the inner. People cannot get along with others because they cannot get along with themselves, and they cannot get along with themselves because they cannot get along with God.
Perhaps you have the rather appalling sense that you are not on the Way. You are out of joint with the nature of reality. You feel that the nature of things is not sustaining, backing, and approving your way of life. You have a sense of uncertainty about the outcome of it all, for you are uncertain about the present. There is a sense of futility, of not getting anywhere, of being up against it. “We don’t know what it’s all about,” said a returned aviator from one of the battlefronts. He did not feel that they were working out any Great Design. You cannot advance in life with any buoyancy unless you are sure you are on the Way.
“Why are we so faded?” asked a youth of his mother. People are “faded” because they haven’t the red blood of an inner certainty coursing through them. The colors in which they have dyed life have “run.” They were not fast colors. In the downpour of calamity and the stress of human living, the colors of life have faded into a sickly gray.
If people are to get a sparkle, a buoyancy, a gaiety back into life, they can get it only as they are sure they are on the Way. Then they go singing down through life. Till then? Life simply won’t sing. Something lays song-less within. I once had a canary that wouldn’t sing until after it had its bath. Our souls are like that: until we get a bath that cleanses away all fears, all uncertainties, all guilts—all sense of not being on the Way—the soul will not sing. Can we get that cleansing bath . . . from all doubts that there is a Way and that we are upon it?
O God, if you are, then there must be a way, yes the Way. For that Way would be your Way. My ways don’t lead me anywhere except to dead ends. I’m starting the quest for the Way. If you are, help me, help me to the Way. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: It is not given to humanity to imagine something higher than the reality of things.
Week 1 Monday
Is There Such a Thing as the Way?
Isaiah 35:1-10
This question confronts us as we begin our quest: Is there any such thing as the Way? Aren’t we looking for something that isn’t there? Philosophy has been facetiously defined as “a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.” Are we on the same kind of futile search when we search in a universe of this kind for the Way? Are we trying to impose on reality our way and making it out to be the Way? Or is it possible that the Way is written into the nature of reality?
In regard to all phases of life in the universe, there is “the way” and “not-the-way.” In chemistry, H2O produces water. You may fight with the formula and try to twist it into something else, but in the end, you will surrender to it, accept it, and obey it, or you will not produce water. Two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen is the way, and everything else is not-the-way. There is the way to fly, and there is not-the-way. Aviators tell us that every moment they must obey the laws upon which flying depends—or else! There can be no moral holidays in the air. You obey or break. You gain mastery only by obedience. Aviation did not invent those laws or impose them; it discovered them.
This necessity of obedience to laws holds good in every single physical relationship, but what about when we come to the business of human living, come over into more subtle relationships—the social, the moral, and the spiritual? Does chance reign there? Can you do as you please and get away with it? Or do you find there something that demands obedience if you are to live masterfully and well? And is that something that demands obedience not merely a set of conventions and customs built up by society, but written into the nature of reality? When Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, said, “Two things fill the mind with . . . awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within,”* did he mean that the laws of those two worlds are equally dependable and equally authoritative and equally inescapable? Is there a way and not-the-way written in both? If you obey the way, do you get results; if you don’t, do you get consequences?
O God, are you the author of both these worlds, or did they happen by chance? But how could that be, for then Chance would be God. I’m feeling for you and your way. Help me as I grope in the dark. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I know the universe will respond in results or consequences. I am determined to get results.
*Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1923), 123.
Week 1 Tuesday
Results or Consequences?
Isaiah 24:4-5; 30:13
Yesterday we ended by saying that some people get results, others get consequences. We can see that at work around us. Some people know how to live; they seem to work with the grain of the universe; reality works with them. They get results in harmonious, happy, effective living. Others are not harmonious, not happy, not effective; they are up against it. The nature of reality is not with them; they are working against the grain of the universe. They get consequences.
Is there something here that always has the last word, no matter who has the intermediate word? A great many people don’t believe that anything here has the last word. A woman said to me, “It’s all right to do these things [meaning sex license] provided you can get away with it.”
My reply, “That is a big ‘provided,’ for nobody gets away with it. The results register in you. You have to live with yourself, and the hell of being bad is a bad hell.”
I used to think that the passage, “Be sure your sin will find you out,” meant, “Be sure your sin will be found out.” It doesn’t say so; rather it says, “Your sin will find you out”—will register in you, cause deterioration, decay; you will get consequences, in yourself.
An attempt to manipulate the universe and make it do what you want ends in consequences. A young man wrote to the Duke University paper a letter to the older generation in which he said, “I’d like this older generation to get acquainted with this guy called ‘Kick.’ he is a wonderful guy—gives you thrills.”
I felt like replying, “Young man, may I suggest that you get acquainted with another guy called ‘Kick-Back.’ He is always a little behind the first guy and always has the last kick. You had better get acquainted with him, for everybody does, sooner or later.”
He overlooked the fact that when you strip off the first three letters of thrills (the beginning) you have ills (the end). It’s not the beginning but the end result that counts.
Apparently, we are free to choose, but we are not free to choose the results of our choosing. Those results seem to be in hands not our own. There is something here, something we must come to terms with, or get hurt.
O hidden God—hidden and yet there—I am seeking you; I want to come to terms with you. I know you will have the last word, so I would give you the first word. Speak and I obey. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: There is a God, and I must come to terms with God.
Week 1 Wednesday
Can We Manipulate Life?
Psalms 25:12; 32:8; Matthew 5:5
We have seen that there is something written into the nature of reality, something with which we must be related in order to be released. Phyllis Bottome in Survival says that we must not “try to manipulate life”; rather we must try “to find out what life demands of us, and train ourselves to fulfill these demands. It is a long and humble business!”* “We must not try to manipulate life”; and yet how many are trying just that, trying to make life work their way. They, and not life, are the center; they demand of life instead of listening to what life demands of them. And the results are written in frustration and wreckage. If you won’t be humble, you will be humbled.
The first step, then, is to be humble, to be teachable, to cease struggling and fighting and listen. Something is speaking, and speaking authoritatively. What is it?
Above we quoted, “We must try to find out what life demands of us.” But life is vague, too impersonal. I want to relate myself to something that is both definite and personal, something that can answer me, something with which I can commune. Behind life is there Life, and behind Life is there God, and behind God is there the Father? Is the Father that infinite Spirit who creates us, loves us, and would redeem us, and whose character we have seen supremely and perfectly in Jesus? Is Jesus God become understandable? When we say God, do we think Jesus? Is Jesus the human life of God? Is he God stooping to our understanding and to our need?
With the consent of all my being, I can answer all these questions in a glad affirmative. For in Jesus I see the uncovering of the nature of the Divine. And my heart almost skips a beat when the thought forms: I wouldn’t, if I could, have God otherwise than what I see in Christ. If I were to sit down to try to think out the kind of God I would like to see in the universe, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything higher than that he should be like Christ. The moment we arrive at this conception, we feel we have arrived at an ultimate, like two plus two makes four. Argument is at an end. We see.
O God, I am grateful that, as I reach up, you are reaching down. You are reaching down in terms lovable and understandable and, best of all, in terms redemptive. For I need to know that you do care, do redeem. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God is; God is like Christ. I am; I must be like Christ.
*Phyllis Bottome, Survival (Boston: Little Brown, 1943), 32.
Week 1 Thursday
Can God Be Proved?
Psalm 19:1-4
Yesterday we came to the conclusion that God is, that in character God is like Christ, and that this is the highest and noblest—and to me the ultimate—conception of God. If I cannot think of God in these terms, I cannot think of God in any terms. If God is not like Christ, I’m not interested. It is this—or nothing.
Can I prove this to you? No! But better, it can prove itself to you. As you follow through these pages day by day, you will come, I trust, not to a faith that you will hold, but to a faith that will hold you. It will be a faith that will hold not only your mind but also your emotion and your will. It will hold the total you. For this is not only an intellectual or an emotional or a volitional quest; it is a life quest. The whole person is involved—you and all your relationships.
The man who wants this proved to him is like a man who stands with his back to the sunset. I describe its breathtaking beauty. He says, “I don’t believe it. Prove it to me.” I reply, “I can’t prove it to you. But turn around and look at it; it will prove itself to you.” He replies, “I won’t. Prove it to me.” Is he fair? I hold a rose in my hand and describe the sweetness of its fragrance to him. He closes his nostrils and says, “I don’t believe it. Prove it to me.” “I can’t,” I reply, “but open your nostrils, and it will prove itself to you.” He replies, “I won’t. Prove it to me.” Is he fair? He is unfair both to the sunset and to the rose—and to himself.
You are going to be fair to God, to life, and to yourself in this quest, aren’t you? You are going to let down all your barriers of prejudice, of self-defense, of fear, and make this a life adventure, a life quest. You are going to find God, life, yourself. You are going to put your feet upon the Way. And the moment you do, something within you will whisper, “This is it. You’ve struck it—at last.” And the whisper will be more certain than certainty, more real than reality. For it will not be a bare certainty or reality; it will be warm and tender and satisfying to the depths. It will satisfy the mind, appeal to the emotion, and commit the will. It will have you.
My God—for I begin to see you as just that—I will need you to take me by the hand as I start, for I shall be pulled in many a direction as I break with the old and begin the new. I start eager, but not sure. Help me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I cannot prove God. I’m letting God prove God to me. My barriers are down.
Week 1 Friday
Is the Way Written in Us?
Romans 1:19-20; 2:14-15; Hebrews 10:16
There is beginning to be formed in our minds that: (1) There ought to be a God back of, in, and through the universe. “If there were no God, we would have to invent one to keep people sane,” said Volatire.* Life wouldn’t add up, it would be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”** There must be a God.
(2) If this God is to be a good God and trustable, this God must be like Jesus Christ. Modern humanity is shut up to being religious after the pattern of Christ, or not at all. There is nothing else on the field. As a Hindu put it, “There is no one else seriously bidding for the heart of the world except Jesus Christ.” God is Christlike or God does not appeal
(3) If the very nature of God were Christlike, then we would expect that God has acted and still acts in a Christlike way, not only in the revelation in the Scriptures, but in creation as well. In other words, when God made all things, God made them to work in a certain way, and that way would be according to Christ; for Christ is the revelation of God’s nature. Is the Christian way, then, the Way? And is this Way not only written in the Scriptures, but written in the nature of reality as well?
If the Way is written only in the Scriptures, then a battle is precipitated around the authority of the Scriptures: their authorship, authenticity, and worth. The foundation of authority is limited to the Scriptures. It is not broadly based in the nature of reality. But suppose the Way is written in the nature of reality as well as in the Scriptures; then the Way is inescapable for everybody. For if you are not impressed with the authority of the Scriptures, then you will be impressed with the authority of life, of reality. That is inescapable.
If Jesus is a moralist imposing a moral code on humanity, then of course we can question that code and his authority. But suppose Jesus is the revealer of the nature of reality, then that makes him different. He is not only revealing the nature of God; he is revealing the nature of life. Life then works in his way and only in his way. Then the Christian Way becomes not a side issue but the central issue of life—the one issue of life.
O God, I am starting something that grows on me. I have hold, precarious though it may be, of something that will fill my horizon, perhaps fill me. Help me, for I am weak and will need help—and grace. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The Way is; the Way is written in me. I cannot escape myself; therefore, I cannot escape the Way.
*In Bertha Conde, What’s Life All About? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 23.
**William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 5.
Week 1 Saturday
Are We Predestined to Be Christians?
Romans 10:11-13; I Corinthians 2:9
We continue to face the question of whether or not the Christian way is the Way. If the Way is imposed upon life, then it is a way; but if it is a revelation of life, of life itself, then it is the Way. If it is written in the Scriptures only, then it is a way. If it is written in the nature of reality and the Scriptures, then it is the Way.
Elsewhere, I have called attention to the fact that the Scriptures say that God created the world through Christ. God not only redeemed the world through Christ but also created it through him. “Through him [Christ] all existence came into being,/no existence came into being apart from him” (John 1:3 Moffatt). “A Son whom he has appointed heir of the universe, as it was by him that he created the world” (Heb. 1:2 Moffatt). “For it was by him that all things were created both in heaven and on earth, both the seen and the unseen . . . all things have been created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16 Moffatt). Note, “All things have been created by him and for him.” Do all things have the stamp of Christ upon them? Is his will wrought into their very structure? Will they work in his way and in no other way? Do the “by him” and “for him” mean that there is both a Christ touch and a Christ purpose in creation, that creation is made for him—his will is its life, and any other will is its death? If it doesn’t work “for him,” does it work its own ruin? Apparently a will from without doesn’t decide the result of departure from his will; something inherent decides it. Something seems to be wrought into the texture of life: a way, a purpose, a plan. Is that way the Way—the Christian Way?
In Romans 8:29 we read, “[Them] he . . . predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” The doctrine of predestination—that some are predestined to heaven and some to hell—has been rightly thrown out of the window. But does it now come back again through the door of manifest fact? Is there a destiny written into the nature of reality, written into our blood, nerves, tissues, relationships—into everything? Are we predestined by the very nature of things to be Christian? And is that destiny not merely written in the Bible but also in us, in the very make-up of our being?
O God, I begin to see that you have fashioned me in my inmost and outmost being for your will, that there is something here that I did not create, but must accept—or get hurt. Teach me, for I follow. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: There is a destiny written in me. That destiny is a Christian destiny. I am predestined to be a Christian.