Week 2 Sunday
Week 2 Sunday
Is the Christian Way the Way?
John 14:5-8
There is a hint that the universe is made in its inner structure to be Christian. Is the evidence overwhelming and inescapable?
In Acts (CEB), we read of those “who belonged to the Way” (9:9), of those who “slandered the Way” (19:9), that “a great disturbance erupted about the Way” (19:23), and of Felix, who had “an accurate understanding of the Way” (24:22). What does “the Way” with a capital W mean? We usually interpret it as “the way of salvation.” It is the way of salvation, for Christ is God’s offensive of love invading us, redeeming us. He invades us in incarnation, in dying for us, in rising again, in coming into our hearts in the Spirit. It is the way to God, for it is the way from God. It is the way of salvation.
But this passage doesn’t say it is “the way of salvation.” It says it is “the Way”—“the Way” unqualified. Is the Christian way “the Way” unqualified? Is it the way to do everything: the way to think, to feel, to act, to be in every conceivable circumstance and in every relationship? Is it the way that is written into the nature of everybody and everything? And is it written into the nature of every relationship of everybody and everything? And does this hold good for God and humanity? Is the universe a universe and not a multiverse? Is the moral universe all of a piece?
Do the laws that govern human conduct govern all conduct: divine and human? And are these laws not impositions upon reality but inherent in reality itself? Can God or people act in any way other than the Christian way and not act against reality? Is the Christian way imposed on life or inherent? Is it the way we are made to work, as well as the way God wants us to work? Or is the Christian way the revelation of the Way written into the very structure of all being? If the creative touch of Christ is upon all creation, then does creation work his way or work its own ruin? And is the history of humanity nothing but a long confirmation of that statement?
When Ching Chow, the newspaper sage, says, “This commonplace person believes the best preacher is time,”* can it mean that time is rendering a verdict and that the verdict is the Christian verdict?
O God, my Lord, I am beginning to be confronted with something with which I must come to terms, something that is inexorable and yet tenderly redemptive. Help me as I begin to relate my life. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to the Way—inherently. The Way belongs to me—inherently. Therefore, we belong to each other—inherently.
*Ching Chow was a syndicated cartoon feature, popular in the 1930s, that displayed a severe race-stereotyped character offering homespun philosophy.
Week 2 Monday
Are We Finding Out How Not to Live?
Matthew 7:24-27
We saw yesterday that there is a law of all being, which may turn out to be Christian, and that the law is an integral part of our makeup. It will not be clear at once, but it will unfold and become life’s most important fact.
Is it true? Does all life sift down to just two things: the Way and not-the-way? And is this fact of the Way and not-the-way inherent in every situation and in everything? Does all life become a choice between the Way and not-the-way; and does that choice confront us in every thought, every act, every feeling—in fact, every time we do anything? Is the Christian way always the right way, and is the unchristian way always the wrong way? And does that refer to individuals and nations, the smallest to the largest? For individuals and nations, for God and humanity, in every conceivable circumstance in heaven and on earth, are there just two things: the Way and not-the-way? And is the Christian way always the Way, and is the unchristian way always not-the-way? With no exceptions anywhere?
If that is true, then it is tremendously true. Beside that one fact—if it is a fact—everything else dwindles into insignificance. A Hindu chairperson said at the close of my address, “If what the speaker has said tonight isn’t true, it doesn’t matter; but if it is true, then nothing else matters.” If the Christian way is a way among ways, you can take it or leave it and nothing much happens. It doesn’t really matter. But if it is true—if it is the Way—then nothing else matters. This is the one thing in life with which we must come to terms, or ruin life itself.
Human beings are, in large measure, trying the experiment of how not to live. Rats, under scientific experiment, learn their way to the cheese through a maze of ways by finding out that when they put their heads into the wrong way their noses get an electric shock. Only the right way is shock-less. Human beings are in the process of finding out how not to live. We are sticking our noses into ways that are not-the-way, and we are getting hurt. Someday we will try the Way.
O God, in very fact I am finding out how not to live. I am running into ways that leave me frustrated and exhausted and hurt. Help me to find the Way. For in finding the Way, I shall find you. And I would find you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I have learned the bitter lesson how not to live. I am learning the better lesson how to live.
Week 2 Tuesday
Will Life Work Only in God’s Way?
Luke 15:11-16
Edison tried 10,000 experiments, and they all turned out failures. Someone remarked, “Then you must have wasted your time.” “Oh, no,” Edison replied. “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”*
That is about where we are now. We are finding out how not to do things, how not to live. We are finding out that there are some ways that life will not approve, and some ways that life will approve. We must come to terms with the nature of reality. We cannot evade it, twist it to our ends, and make it approve what cannot be approved. There is something “given”; we don’t produce it, we don’t build it up, it is there, built into the nature of things. Whoever has the first word, or the intermediate word, this moral order has the last word, and that last word is the final word. We choose, but the moral universe decides the results of our choosing, and those results are inexorable. We must come to terms with the moral universe or get hurt. We do not break the laws of God written into the nature of things. We break ourselves on them. Those laws are color-blind, class-blind, and religion-blind. Break them, and you’ll get broken. If you leap from a tenth-story window, you will not break the law of gravitation, you will only illustrate it.
These laws are God’s preventive grace. They are barriers put up at the edge of precipices to keep us from going over. They are not put there to bind our freedom; they are put there to save us from using our freedom to destroy ourselves. They are the electric shocks upon the noses of the rats to keep them from going into ways that lead into confusion and away from the cheese. God is shocking us away from folly to food, away from confusion to the Way.
Humanity is finding out how to live by the hard way. God offers us the Way in Christ. We think we know better, take other ways of our own choosing, and are constantly getting shocks. These shocks are of various kinds: neuroses, inner conflicts, illnesses, guilts, inferiorities, fears. This modern age has put hell out of the door, but it has come back by the window. Dismissed from the universe, it has moved inside us in the form of inner neuroses and conflicts. Painfully, we are finding out how not to live.
O God, I begin to see. I am not God—you are. And your will, not mine, must be my starting point. Help me to start with you and start with you this day. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God is shocking me to save me. God’s shocks are redemptive.
*Quoted in Erica R. Hendry, “7 Epic Fails Brought to You by the Genius Mind of Thomas Edison,” Smithsonian.com (Nov. 20, 2013).
Week 2 Wednesday
The Way and Not-the-Way?
Jeremiah 17:5-8
We must spend some more days on the one thought—there is the Way and not-the-way—until this becomes a fixed conviction, almost as axiomatic as two plus two make four. I say “almost,” for it is not capable of such a simple demonstration as two plus two, but it can become an insight that is corroborated on a universal scale.
We first turn to the Scriptures to see what they say, and then we will turn to all life and get its word. Is it true that there is a Way that the universe will approve and other ways it won’t?
When we find this passage, “The peace of an upright life” (Heb. 12:11 Moffatt), does it mean that an upright life brings peace, harmony, coordination, rhythm; and that a non-upright life brings disturbance, disharmony, disintegration, discord? And does that happen now? Who decrees that? Does not the nature of reality decree it? Again, we read, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God, that no root of bitterness grows up to be a trouble” (Heb. 12:15 Moffatt). If you miss the grace of God—if you live life some way other than God’s Way—does “a root of bitterness” grow up to be “a trouble” to you? Does it spring up from the depths of you? Is life embittered at its sources? When you get out of joint with God, do you get out of joint with yourself? Do you become cynical and bitter, inevitably?
The troubled British philosopher Bertrand Russell is alleged to have said, “Life is a bottle of very nasty wine.” Did his judgment of life have any connection with his lack of faith in God? When God goes, does the meaning drop out of life? And does life actually become “a bottle of very nasty wine”? Do we then live in a generally devaluated world? Does life turn sour? There is only one answer: Yes! And the whole of life is one long comment on it!
I once saw in New Mexico—on a corrugated-iron-roofed mud hut, with a couple of other mud huts around it, and a mangy dog lying in front—this sign, “Radium Springs—Park Your Pains Here.” Those surroundings, that sign! When you “park your pains” in some place other than God—in intoxicants, in money, in sex license, in yourself—do they stay parked, or do they come back to you multiplied? Is evil the great illusion?
O God, my Lord, how often I’ve parked my pains of body and soul in places that have brought me naught but disillusionment and letdown. I bring them to you. For I know you are the answer. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Evil keeps the word of promise to my ear, and breaks it to my hope.
Week 2 Thursday
Will the Universe Back Evil?
Jeremiah 6:16; 12:4, 13
Yesterday we ended on the note that evil is not merely bad but futile. It is like Macbeth’s witches, who “keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope.”* In 1 Peter 1:18 (Moffatt), we read, “Ransomed from the futile traditions of your past.” Is futile the word? Why did the “utilitarian age” turn into the “futilitarian age”? Hindus and Muslims are bound by many “futile traditions.” Are we also bound by “futile traditions”: That you can break the moral law and get away with it? That a self-centered life can be happy? That evil can bring something other than evil results? That you can hurt another without hurting yourself? That intoxicants, since they are a subterfuge, can bring something other than disruption to the personality? That the universe will back a lie? That evil isn’t always evil and good isn’t always good?
These “traditions,” passed through society, are both “futile” and fatal. That is not the imposed judgment of a moralist, but the inherent judgment of life.
This passage expresses it, “The world is passing away with its desire, while he who does the will of God remains forever” (1 John 2:17 Moffatt). Where “desire” instead of “the will of God” becomes dominant and determines life, does it “pass away”; does it tend to decay? For instance, who gets the most out of sex: the one who makes sex central, dominant, and controlling, or the one who puts sex under the guidance and control of the will of God? Make sex dominant and it will decay, will rot on your hands. Inevitably, lust equals disgust. But sex dedicated to God becomes love, and love equals life. Who gets the most out of himself or herself: the one who centers self on self and becomes a self-centered person, or the one who dedicates self to the will of God and human welfare? A self-centered person “passes away,” disintegrates. The God-centered person “abides forever”; he goes on from strength to strength, goes on through difficulty and calamity. That person has survival value and stands up under life. That person walks the earth inwardly stable, inwardly at peace. Doing the will of God, we abide forever; doing our own will, we inwardly break down, disintegrate.
O gentle but firm Ruler, I begin to see that you are blocking me here and blocking me there, and through these blockings saving me, turning me to yourself. So I come. Where else can I go? Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: To whom else can I go? You have the words of eternal life.
*William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 8.
Week 2 Friday
Is the Christian Way Imposed or Intrinsic?
1 Corinthians 3:6; 2 Corinthians 3:17
We saw yesterday that the universe will sustain certain ways of life and will not sustain others. It is said (1 John 3:4 Moffatt), “Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness”—commits chaos. Everyone who does right commits cosmos. Every thought, every attitude, every action produces either chaos or cosmos; it produces in some degree hell or harmony. Nothing from without decides what it will produce. The thing itself by its own nature will produce the result.
Intrinsically, love is light and hate is darkness. Note, “He who loves his brother remains in the light—and in the light there is no pitfall; but he who hates his brother is in darkness, he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going, for the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:10-11 Moffatt). Note these steps: (1) Anyone who hates his brother is “in darkness,” his general atmosphere. (2) Every advance is in darkness; “he walks in darkness.” (3) It is not so bad to be in darkness if you know where you are going, but he doesn’t, he “does not know where he is going.” (4) The worst result is in the self, “The darkness has blinded his eyes.” The punishment is a condition: blindness. Love brings cosmos; hate brings chaos.
Another passage teaches the same thing, “You may escape the corruption produced within the world by lust” (2 Pet. 1:4 Moffatt). Wrong desire—that is, lust—produces corruption, decay, death. Right desire produces health, well-being, and life.
Punishments are inherent and from within. Sin and its punishment are one and the same thing. In 2 Peter 2:1 (Moffatt), we read, “bringing rapid destruction on themselves.” Note: not punishment from without, but destruction from within. The life forces clash and break down, there is “rapid destruction,” a galloping consumption of the soul.
Second Peter 2:9 (Moffatt) says, “To keep the unrighteous under punishment till the day of doom.” The unrighteous will not merely get punishment hereafter at “the day of doom”; they are “under punishment” now. The unrighteousness is the punishment, for it causes decay by its very nature; it is doom.
O my Lord, I am trailed by your love. Your love will not let me go. I know your purpose is to redeem me, save me, from myself and my follies. Help me this day to turn around into the arms of your love and be released. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God’s law is my life. My sway is my suicide.
Week 2 Saturday
Is Evil Stupid and Dull?
Psalm 73:21-25; Ephesians 5:15
We look further at ways of life that are not-the-way. Jude 12 (Moffatt) reads, “They look after none but themselves—rainless clouds.” Are those who look after none but themselves “rainless clouds”? Do they inevitably become non-contributive, useless to themselves and others? Down in Texas, where they truly want rain, someone pointed to a cloud in the sky in hope of rain; but an old Texan shook his head and said, “Nothing but empties.” Are people who live for themselves “nothing but empties”?
Again, the same verse describes the self-centered as “trees in autumn without fruit.” They come down to the autumn of their lives, the period of ripe fruitfulness when life should be laden with peace and calm and memories of life well spent, and instead what do they show themselves to be? Autumn trees without fruit. The saddest thing in life is to see a person come to the autumn time with nothing to show except a decadent self.
Jude 16 (CEB) says, “These people are faultfinding grumblers, living according to their own desires.” The self-centered are always complaining of their lot in life. They haven’t the key to life, so they try to find the cause of their failure in other persons or in circumstances around them. They blame others for everything but do not realize that their self-centered attitudes are the cause of their grumpiness and dissatisfaction. Of all the unhappy people on earth, the most unhappy are those who have nothing to do but sit on hotel porches and think about themselves, their aches and pains and troubles, most of them produced out of their own self-centered attitudes.
Matthew 12:43 (CEB) says, “An unclean spirit . . . wanders through dry places.” Is it a fact that when you are “unclean” with self-centeredness and other wrong ways of life, your life “wanders through dry places”? Does life turn insipid, dull, stupid? And do you have to do as one person said of himself, “I have to invent more and more ways to make life tolerable”? The inane stupidity and dullness of evil makes its devotees invent more and more extremes to get the same result. It is under the law of diminishing returns.
O God, I am sure that your ways lead to fruitfulness—to life, to sparkle, to joy. And I am just as sure that the other ways lead to death, to dullness, to sadness. Help me to take your way, and help me to take it with my whole being. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I am out of sorts with others, it is a symptom of being out of sorts with myself.