Week 3 Sunday
Week 3 Sunday
Some Things Bitter to Digest
Isaiah 3:8-11
We must continue the emphasis upon the not-the-way. Revelation 18:14 (Moffatt) reads, “Vanished the ripe fruits of thy soul’s desire!” Just as the soul is about to grasp the ripe fruit of its desire, it vanishes. That is the point about ways that are not God’s ways: just as you think you are going to get the ripe fruit of your soul’s desire, it vanishes. You never quite get to the realization; it’s always around the corner. It is never just there. Someone has said, “All the fruit of sin is either green or rotten”; it is never just right! It never brings the soul its deepest satisfaction.
A passage used in another connection could be applied to the fact we are considering, “It did taste sweet, like honey, but when I had eaten, it was bitter to digest” (Rev. 10:10 Moffatt). That is the point about evil. It does “taste sweet, like honey”; its beginnings are apparently sweet. But it is “bitter to digest”; it cannot be assimilated, cannot be related to the rest of life. For life is not made for it. Evil is alien; it is not food; therefore the system cannot digest it. The inner structure of our being is not made for hate, for resentments, for self-centeredness, for fears, for guilts; therefore, the attempt to digest them, to make them a part of our being, ends in indigestion. And this indigestion is not only moral and spiritual; it is mental and physical as well. For in the inner structure of our life we are made for God-centeredness, for love, for faith, for reconciliation. Evil, then, is trying to live on that for which we are not made. Jesus said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me” (John 4:34 KJV). Is God’s will our meat, our food? Does it feed us, build us up, sustain us, and give us life? The answer is an unequivocal yes! And does our own will, lived contrary to the will of God, poison us? It does. It lowers our sense of well-being, depletes us, starves us, and poisons us.
Why? Because we are allergic to evil. I am physically allergic to shrimp. I have tried them four times, and it always ends in the same result. I am just as allergic to sin! I can’t assimilate it. For I am not made for it. It disrupts me, soul and body. Gilbert Stuart, the painter, once looked at Talleyrand, the French statesman, and said, “If that man is not a scoundrel, then God writes an illegible hand.”*
I thank you, Lord, that when you fashioned me, you fashioned me for yourself—your ways are my ways. For I know when I do wrong, it is wrong—wrong to everything connected with me and others. Help me to do right. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God’s will is my highest interest—always.
*Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1906), 142.
Week 3 Monday
The Payoff!
Isaiah 1:28-31
We are beginning to see, I trust, that “there is a path that may seem straight to someone, but in the end it is a path to death” (Prov. 14:12 CEB). Note that in the beginning the way “seems straight”; the person lives without any God reference, lives by what seems right to the person’s own unaided light. Result, “in the end it is a path to death”—not the beginning, but the end, the finished product, is “death.” The person breaks down and decays. “In the end” is important. We have to put things under life to get the final judgment of life. “You will know them by their fruit” (Matt. 7:16 CEB)—not by the bud or the flower, but by the finished product. The fruits of evil are always evil. The fruits of good are always good. Evil is evil, and good is good, both in essence and in result.
Jesus speaks of a road that “leads to life” and another that “leads to destruction” (see Matt. 7:13-14). We used to think that he meant heaven and hell hereafter, but on closer examination, we see that Jesus was talking about life here and now. Some roads lead to life, some to destruction. The life forces break down; they do not hold together; there is no inner cement. One road leads to life: life is the payoff. All other roads lead to destruction: destruction is the payoff. Jesus said, “A good tree can’t produce bad fruit. And a rotten tree can’t produce good fruit” (Matt. 7:18 CEB). The outcome of a good life cannot, by the very nature of things, be bad. The outcome of a bad life, by the very nature of things, cannot be good.
Ezekiel 23:17 (Moffatt) says, “Till she grew sated and broke with them in disgust.” Is that the history of evil, you grow “sated” and, by the very nature of things, you are compelled to break with it “in disgust”? You may not break with evil, but if you go on, you commit evil with the joy of it gone. Then it becomes a treadmill.
In the first psalm, we read, “The way of the ungodly shall perish” (v. 6 KJV). Is it a fact that the way of the ungodly perishes now? Do their plans and schemes for happiness perish, turn to ashes in their hands? Does not Romans 7:5 (Moffatt) express it when it speaks of ways “fruitful to Death”? When the whole thing is over, do you have “Death” on your hands, Death to everything worthwhile?
Something, my Lord, is being burned into my consciousness—your judgments of life. I am not able to escape them. Nor would I, for to escape them would be to escape from salvation. I would accept them. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I break with God, I break with life.
Week 3 Tuesday
Sin Has No Future
Psalm 1:3-6
When Amos says, “I make your steps collapse” (2:13 Moffatt), does he not put his finger on the fact that, the more evil advances, the more its “steps collapse”? The universe will not sustain it.
Again we read, “Because you have sold yourself to no purpose in doing what is evil in the sight of the Eternal” (1 Kgs. 21:20 Moffatt). Note the phrase “to no purpose.” Does the doing of what God cannot approve always end in futility? Is it all “to no purpose”?
Luke 8:29 (Moffatt) says, “Driven by the daemon into the desert.” Is that where evil always drives you, into a desert? It promises a garden but ends inevitably in a desert? “I don’t want you to think I’m happy,” said a leery-eyed devotee of sin to me. He needn’t have assured me he wasn’t happy; it was sticking out all over him.
“Your doom appears; your sin has blossomed, your pride has budded” (Ezek. 7:10 Moffatt). Note how sin blossomed and pride budded. And the fruit? Doom! By its very nature, sin brought forth doom. No “day of doom” is needed to pronounce sentence. The very nature of evil dooms itself. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (Moffatt) we read, “The Lawless One, the doomed One.” Do those things hang together? When you are lawless, break the laws of God written into the nature of things, are you doomed? No matter how that “Lawless One” may be implemented—by money, by prestige, by military power—inevitably that one is a “doomed One.” Perhaps not today, not tomorrow, but inevitably evil is doomed. It carries the seeds of its own disruption in itself.
In Revelation 17:11 (Moffatt) we read, “The Beast which was and is not.” Note: The Beast was and is not; evil has a past, but it has no future; it “was,” but it will not be. No matter if “the Beast” is spelled with a capital B; it will shrivel; it is under the law of decay. Give evil enough rope and it will hang itself. If it is not constantly being bolstered up by the surrounding good, it will go to pieces. All evil is a parasite upon the good. You have to throw enough good around evil to keep it going. When it is pure “Beast,” it is pure blight. It has no future. It is not-the-way.
Gracious Father, I have looked upon evil until my eyes are tired, tired of looking at death. Now lift my eyes and let me look upon good—upon you—and then I shall look upon Life. I want to live; help me to see and obey you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Evil is the Great Illusion; God is the Great Illumination.
Week 3 Wednesday
The God of Grace and the God of Nature—Two Gods?
Ecclesiastes 8:12-13; Mark 4:33
We have seen that the Way and not-the-way are written in the Bible. But there are many for whom the authority of the Bible has decayed. It doesn’t grip or guide them. They think that the Christian faith as contained in the Bible is, as someone once said, “a set of scruples imposed on the framework of humanity to keep it from functioning naturally and normally.” They therefore turn to the revelation of life through science and experience for their guide.
This is a serious situation if the revelation of life through science and experience turns out to be different from the revelation of life we find in Christ. This would be serious for science and experience, for what we find in Christ is the highest we have seen on our planet, and for science and experience to be against that would mean that they are arraigned against the highest. At the same time, for the Christian faith to be arraigned against science and experience would mean that the Christian faith is trying to live against life. But suppose the Way that is written in the revelation of Christ and the way that is written in life around us turn out to be the same way, different revelations of the Way; then we can go on with abounding confidence, for then the Way is the way of everything, for everybody, everywhere.
There cannot be two Gods: the God of grace and the God of nature. There must be one God, perhaps revealing Godself imperfectly through nature and experience, for the medium is imperfect, and revealing Godself perfectly through Christ, for the medium is perfect. But they must be revelations of the one Way.
Is the Way written into the structure of reality? Is there a kingdom “prepared . . . from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34), a kingdom built into the very foundations of life and therefore inescapable? I can escape the injunctions of the Bible if they are imposed from without upon life, but I cannot escape them if they are a revelation of life itself, a lifting up of laws written into the nature of things. For if I run away from them as written in the Bible, I meet them confronting me everywhere out of life. I’m “hooked”!
O God, my Lord, you have hedged me about; hedge me about so I cannot run away from your love. Nor would I run away, for if I run away from you, I run away from life. I come to you, for in you is life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The God of grace and the God of nature are one God dealing with me in two ways for the same end.
Week 3 Thursday
The Two Approaches to Life
Mark 4:25-32
We are considering the Way as it is found in life and experience outside the Bible. Is there slowly emerging out of life and experience a body of truth that is revealing the Way? Is this body of truth a series of signposts that point to the Truth? In tracing these intimations, we are not avidly gathering up the crumbs from the table of science and feeding upon them—poor relatives of a rich host. Rather we are seeing that science is working up through the facts to the Fact, through truths to the Truth. We pick up these crumbs because, when we taste them, they taste like the Bread of Life.
The Christian faith works down to life from the revelation in Christ. Science works up from the revelation of life—to what? Are these two approaches going to meet? They must, if life is one. I was tapping my way down a very steep mountain path in pitch dark. A misstep on either side would bring disaster. It was a slow and tedious process. When I was about halfway down, suddenly the lights came on. There was the pathway clear; I could abandon my tedious method of tapping my way and walk with confidence along a lighted way. My tapping in the dark was the way of science and experience; my assured walking in the light of a revelation of the pathway was the Christian way. They were not contradictory; they were different approaches to the one Way.
For instance, Charles A. Beard says that as a historian he has learned four lessons from history: (1) “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” (2) The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. (3) Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. (4) The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.* Did he not discover through historical research that there is a moral law written into things and that this moral universe always has the last word? If you fit into it, you live, but if you don’t, you perish. That moral universe is not humanity’s creation but humanity’s discovery. History uncovered for Beard intimations of the Way. Beard could add to Kant’s saying that “two things fill the mind with . . . awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”** He could add that he found a moral law not only within the individual but also within the relationships of individuals, within history.
O God, you are speaking to me in the still small voice within and also in the stormy events of human history. Help me to listen to you whenever you speak. And help me to obey. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: History is His story.
*Quoted by Arthur H. Secord, “Condensed History Lesson,” Readers’ Digest 38, no. 226 (February 1941): 20.
**Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason, 123.
Week 3 Friday
There Is an Everlasting Right
2 Chronicles 15:3, 5-6
There is direct evidence of the workings of a moral universe in the relationships of people. Henry M. Wriston, president of Brown University, says, “The history of tyranny is long. . . . Its transient character and the manner in which it has always nurtured the seeds of its own destruction make it desirable for us to be familiar with its record wherever and whenever it has appeared in human history.”* Note “its transient character and the manner in which it has nurtured the seeds of its own destruction.” What planted the seeds of its own destruction? There is one answer: the nature of reality. Tyranny is not-the-way.
This Way written into the nature of things is well expressed in Harry Emerson Fosdick’s words, “There is an everlasting right to which our nation, our business, our racial relationships, our schools and church, and our personal lives must be conformed if salvation is to visit us.”** That “everlasting right” is not built up by custom and does not conform to it. It is there before customs are built up and will watch the inevitable decay of customs that do not conform to the “everlasting right.”
Carlos Martins, the Brazilian ambassador to the United States, brings this “everlasting right” to bear upon the problems of the present, “The great powers, if they consider only themselves, can produce only universal wars. They can produce peace only if they cooperate with a world-wide system of liberty. In no other way can they win the necessary confidence, consent, and support of the rest of the world.”*** Why is it that “great powers, if they consider only themselves, can produce only universal wars”? Who decides that result? The answer is that the nature of reality decides it. The Way is unalterably opposed to life that considers only itself, whether that life is that of an individual or that of a combination of great powers. They must think in terms of all—must “cooperate with a world-wide system of liberty”—or they cannot “win the necessary confidence, consent, and support of the rest of the world.” If individuals or nations or combinations of nations think they can live against the Great Design and try it, the end will be disillusionment.
O redeeming God, I come to you to help me to live this day according to the Great Design. Your will is my peace. Your plans are my very person. When I find you, I find myself. Help me this day to discover and do your will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I think of only myself, I produce a war—within myself.
*Henry M. Wriston, “Education for Democracy,” Commencement Address, Providence College (June 6, 1950), 5. http://www.henrymerrittwriston.org/pdfs/volume_5/1950_06_06_commencement_address_v5.pdf.
**Quoted in Alan Walker, “Are Christians Sentimental?” The Sydney Morning Herald (Dec. 13, 1947). http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19471213&id=T _5UAAAAIBAJ&sjid=v5MDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2919,1623034.
***Carlos Martins was Brazilian ambassador to the United States from 1939 to 1948. Quotation source unknown.
Week 3 Saturday
Is the Right Thing the Healthy Thing?
Psalm 107:17-18; Proverbs 29:6
Speaking in a Japanese relocation center, I once quoted four people. First, a surgeon said, “I’ve discovered the kingdom of God at the end of my scalpel; it’s in the tissues. The right thing morally is always the healthy thing physically.” Second, a leading economist, “The right thing morally is always the healthy thing economically.” Third, a leading sociologist, “The right thing morally is always the healthy thing sociologically.” Fourth, an educator, “The right thing morally is always the healthy thing educationally.” The head of the center commented, “If the right thing is always the healthy thing, why isn’t the healthy thing also the right thing? Doesn’t it work both ways?” I agree wholeheartedly. Whether you work from standards of morality down to the tissues and their health or from the tissues and their health up to standards of morality, you will come out at the same place. For morality is one, whether written in tissues or written in Testaments.
All life is of a piece. There are no dualisms, no compartmentalisms. Life is one, and the laws that govern all life have one source: God. The laws that govern our physical life are not other than the laws of God. They are the laws of God written into flesh and blood and nerve and tissue. Nor are the economic, social, educational, and political laws that govern relationships other than the laws of God.
British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone once said, “Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.”* The laws that govern right and wrong are of universal application, and politics are no exception. Anglican priest Richard Hooker uttered this truth in a penetrating phrase, “Law . . . her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world.”** He saw that law, wherever found, when true law, had one source: the bosom of God. And he also saw that the purpose of that law is the harmony of the world. When you obey it, you obey the very laws of your being, so the result is harmony. The converse of that is true: when you break these laws, you break yourself. The result is disharmony and disruption.
O Gracious Lord, author of me and of the laws that underlie me, help me to do your will, for only thus can I do my will. Help me, then, not to do your will grudgingly or of compulsion, but gladly and joyously, as one who finds the Way. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God’s will is harmony; my will against God’s is discord.
*Gladstone may have been quoting Hannah More, Complete Works, vol. 2 (Derby & Jackson, 1857), 53.
**Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London: 1636–39), 51.