Week 5 Sunday
Week 5 Sunday
Does the Christian Way Favor Life?
Acts 26:14; Romans 8:1-2
We continue to consider this week the important question: Is the Christian way the natural way to live? When we live the Christian way, are we living the way we are made to live, made in the inner structure of our beings? Is life made for the Christian way as tracks and engines are made for each other? As blood and arteries have an affinity? As seed and soil are made for each other? Or is the Christian way at war with nature and therefore an unnatural way to live? Is its morality imposed and alien, morality for which we are badly made? Is the Christian an unnatural person living against nature, therefore off center and a little strange?
This is one of the most important questions concerning the Christian way. If it is unnatural and anti-natural, then it would seem to be hopelessly handicapped, for you cannot hope to try to live against nature and get away with it. It is an unequal battle. In the end, the sum total of reality will close in on you and break your puny efforts to live against it.
There is much to be said on the side that the Christian way is unnatural. Two arguments are cited: certain passages of Scripture and the obvious bents of human nature. In addition to the Corinthian passage noted, a verse usually given to sustain this view is, “We . . . were by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). But Moffatt changes the sense of this passage thus, “We obeyed the passions of our flesh, . . . we were objects of God’s anger by nature, like the rest of men.” Translated thus it means that we are objects of God’s anger by nature, since we live this way. In other words, God is naturally against us when we sin. And rightly so. Another passage, “Jesus did not trust himself to them, . . . for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25). He “knew what was in man,” namely, sin. But that verse is neutral. Sin may be in human beings—it is—and yet sin may be unnatural, not native to us. Sin is in us, deeply, tragically. It has gone down to the roots of our being and has depraved it. But the fact that it depraves us shows it is not natural. If it were natural, why should it deprave us?
O God, I am sure that sin is not native to me, for when I commit it, then I am disrupted, out of gear. I know that this is not-the-way. Help me, then, to take that for which I am made—your Way. For when I find your Way, I find my way. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: In God I am in tune. Out of God I am out of tune, a discord.
Week 5 Monday
Is Sin Anti-life?
Romans 7:24; 8:13, 15
We saw yesterday that certain passages of Scripture that show people depraved by sin do not necessarily teach that sin is natural and goodness is unnatural. The fact that sin depraves human nature implies that sin is unnatural, for if it were natural, why should it deprave human nature? It should enlarge it, strengthen it, fulfill it. It does the opposite. Sin does deprave. Therefore, sin is that for which we are nor made. It is anti-life. It is an attempt to live against life and get away with it.
In Colossians 1:21 (Moffatt) we read, “Your hearts hostile to him in evil doing”—not naturally hostile, but become hostile through wrong choices and attitudes and habits. Again, “To be consecrated and unblemished in his sight” (Eph. 1:4 Moffatt). Evil, then, is a blemish, something that blemishes the truly natural. But if evil is natural, why should it blemish? Why does Hebrews 12:1 (Moffatt) speak of sin as “clinging folds” if sin is natural? Another passage speaks of one who “suffered weakness from an evil spirit” (Luke 13:11 Moffatt). Does an evil spirit always weaken us, and does a good spirit always strengthen us? If so, one is anti-life and the other pro-life; one is unnatural and the other natural. Hebrews 13:9 (Moffatt) speaks of “one’s heart strengthened by grace.” Does grace always strengthen us, and does sin always weaken us? The answer is an unequivocal yes!
A young man in a camp said, “We have come to the place where we can sin with assurance.” If so, then it is a false assurance, for life speaks otherwise. All approaches to life are converging on one thing: Some things disrupt life, throw confusion into it; some things build life, put harmony into it. And when we look at the things that disrupt, they are strangely like the things we have called by the old-fashioned term sin. In other words, everything that is unchristian is unnatural, is against nature, and everything that is Christian is natural, is for nature.
In the words of an acute observer, “We become natural as Jesus comes into our lives.” We do—thoroughly so!
O my Lord God, I am beginning to see that when I am in you and in your purposes, I am in the way intended by life for me. When I accept you, I accept Life. I gladly do so, for I want to live and live fully. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall not fight with life. I shall yield to life and let it possess me.
Week 5 Tuesday
The Only Sickness Is Homesickness
Psalm 139:7-12
We must pursue consideration of the question of whether the Christian way is the natural way and the unchristian way the unnatural.
We must grant that evil is the accustomed, the habitual, but we do not grant that it is the natural. It is true that people have been naturalized in the unnatural; but this naturalization is not the truly natural. Sin and evil are intrusions, aberrations, things for which we are not made. They are foreign bodies in the personality of humanity and set up festering places exactly as a foreign body does in the physical.
We can become naturalized in the unnatural. Elsewhere, I have written of a friend who became so used to riding a bicycle with the handlebars crooked that when someone straightened them he fell off. He was so used to crookedness that he thought straightness was crookedness! A woman used to the dust-laden atmosphere of New York, went upstate to the country and said, “Why, the air was so pure it made me sick.” She was naturalized in the unnatural.
When the prodigal son was in the far country, he “hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country” (Luke 15:15 CEB), but he never became a citizen; he was never naturalized. He knew that it was not his homeland. He was out of joint, orphaned, estranged, starved, and homesick. Only when he was in his father’s arms, a member of his father’s household, did he feel he was where he belonged. There he was naturalized; that was his homeland.
The only sickness is homesickness. It is. A strange nostalgia is upon humanity, and homesickness for God is responsible for most of our other sicknesses: mental, spiritual, physical, corporate. A prominent Christian leader threw over his Christian faith and followed his lusts. He tried to rationalize it all, tried even to make a new religion out of sexism, “a broader religion.” As I sat beside him, old and haggard, lying in a hospital bed, he said pathetically, “I’m an ancient prodigal that never returned.” He simply couldn’t naturalize himself in evil. In the end homesickness got him.
O God, I know, I know I cannot run away from you, for I cannot run away from myself. For I am fashioned for you, and you are the life of my life, the joy of my joy, the being of my being. Nor do I want to run away; I want to run into your arms. For there I am at home. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God is my Home. When I am in God, I am at Home. When I am out of God, I am away from Home—I am Homesick.
Week 5 Wednesday
Naturally Pagan?
Colossians 2:9-10; 3:4
There are three attitudes one can take toward the soul. Tertullian, one of the church fathers, says, “The soul is naturally Christian.” Reinhold Niebuhr says, “The soul is naturally pagan.” Walter Horton says, “The soul is naturally half-pagan and half-Christian.” I vote with Tertullian. The soul is unnaturally pagan. When it is pagan, it is off center, missing the way to live. When it becomes Christian, it has a sense of homecoming, of being reinstated, of being reconciled. The soul instinctively knows that this is the Way.
A radiant man of eighty-two said to me, “I knew that this was the Way, for the moment I put my feet upon it I was no longer fighting with myself.” That proved that the way of Christ and the way of the soul were one. When the soul found Christ, it found itself; it was no longer fighting with itself.
If the soul were naturally pagan, it would be very ill at ease in coming into the kingdom. On the contrary, coming into the kingdom means nothing less than coming into its own.
Besides, if the soul were naturally pagan, why should it be punished for its pagan ways? It would be unjust to punish it for living according to its own nature. But we feel that evil is evil, and to be punished for it is just; therefore we witness to our feeling that evil is unnatural. In The Screwtape Letters a senior devil, writing advice to a junior devil, says, “Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.”*
There are three great driving urges in human nature: self, sex, and herd. The self urge is self-regarding; the herd urge is the social, other-regarding; the sex urge is partly self-regarding and partly other-regarding. So, really, there are just two urges: the self-regarding and the other-regarding; the egotistic and the altruistic. Then the other-regarding urge is just as natural as the self-regarding. As Professor Garnett says, “The desire for the good of others is just as natural to man as to desire his own good and just as incapable of further explanation.”** It is “incapable of further explanation” because it is a part of human nature.
O my Christ, I know when I meet you I meet that for which I am fashioned, that which fulfills me at the very moments it humbles me to the dust. I know I meet myself, my real self, in you. So I come knowing that I come to my destined way—your Way. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am natural only when I am in God.
*C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 1942), 118.
**Source unknown.
Week 5 Thursday
My Will and God’s Will—Alien?
Psalm 119:37, 103, 130
There are a great many who still think with Ephraim, of whom God complained, “Were I to write for him my laws, he would but think them foreigner’s saws” (Hos. 8:12 Moffatt). Ephraim felt that God’s laws were foreign sayings, or saws—something imposed from the outside. God says that God’s laws are native to us.
“There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood,” wrote the poet Bliss Carman.* There is something in Christ that is native to my blood. He is the author of my blood. He is at home there. It flows better, is warmer and purer when he is in it. He is native to my nerves. When he controls them, they are calm and creative and contributive. He is native to every organ of my body. When he controls them, they function well, perfectly, in fact, for they are made for his control. When they get under the control of resentments, of fear, of selfishness, they function badly.
Jesus said, “I have told you this; that my joy may be within you and your joy complete” (John 15:11 Moffatt). Note: When his joy is within us, then our joy is complete, for his joy and our joy are the same. He is not imposing a foreign joy, trying to make me happy in something I can’t be happy in. He is giving a joy that, when I take it, is my very own. My own joy is complete. Every joy, other than his, leaves me dissatisfied, incomplete. It doesn’t hit the spot.
T. S. Eliot says, “We may say that religion implies a life in conformity with nature . . . and that not toward nature implies a wrong attitude toward God, and the consequence is inevitable doom.”** The Christian way is the way that conforms to nature, real nature. Anything else is doomed.
We must have hold of this until it becomes a basic axiom: My will and God’s will are not alien. When I find God’s will, I find my very own. The idea that God’s will always lies along the line of the disagreeable is false. The will of God is always our highest interest. It could not be otherwise and God be God. I am fulfilled when I make God my center. I am frustrated when I make myself the center. I am destined to be a Christian.
O God, what a destiny I have—I am destined to be conformed to the image of your Son. Every portion of my being cries in glad anticipation of the fulfillment of that destiny. I surrender myself to the loving purposes that would make me into his glorious image. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When my will and God’s will coincide, I live. When they clash, I do not live.
*Bliss Carman, “A Vagabond Song” in The Home Book of Verse, American and English, 1580–1918, vol. 1, ed. Burton Egbert Stevenson (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1918), 1689.
**No published source was found for this quotation.
Week 5 Friday
Made for Each Other?
John 4:13-14; Galatians 5:14
We saw yesterday that my will and God’s will are not alien. They fit as light and the eye fit, as truth and the conscience are affinities. Jesus said that man lives “on every word that issues from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4 Moffatt). As the stomach and food are made for each other, so we are fashioned in our inner natures for the will of God as expressed in his words. So we “live” on them. We perish on any contradictory word. And it says “every”; there is no exception. People perish when they live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of hate, of greed, of fear.
Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34 Moffatt). The will of God was “food”; it fed him. Any other will contrary to God’s will is poison. My poison is to do my own will when my own will clashes with God’s. It leaves me frustrated, sick.
Whichever way you approach life, from the Christian revelation down to life, or from science up through the facts, you come out at the same place. The philosophers Moore and Otto “refuse . . . to connect their ethics with any theistic metaphysic. Yet they have defined for us exactly what the enlightened religious consciousness declares—the duty to seek the good, not of ourselves alone, but also of our fellowmen.” In other words, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself ” is written in us as well as in the Bible. It is native to us.
To be good is good for you: your soul, mind, body, and relationships. To be bad is bad for you: your soul, mind, body, and relationships. You must love others in order to be able to love yourself. Apparently God has us hooked; if you don’t love others, you cannot get on with others or yourself.
One of the first things you must learn in public speaking is not to think of your voice but to think of the people and getting the message to them. If you think of your voice, you will become self-conscious; and if you do, you go to pieces. To think of others is “native” to us; it is the way written in the constitution of us.
O God, when you fashioned me, you fashioned me for your will and purposes. In them I live—live radiantly, rhythmically, abundantly. In myself, I perish. So I exchange my foolish ways for your will, and then I find my own wise ways hidden in me. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall love my neighbor because I love myself. If I do not love my neighbor, myself will be too ugly to love.
*Arthur Campbell Garnett, A Realistic Philosophy of Religion (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1942), 252.
Week 5 Saturday
Finding God—And Ourselves
Psalm 51:7-12
Again we must look at the naturalness of the supernatural and the supernaturalness of the natural.
Jesus said, “If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside” (John 15:6 Moffatt). That is an amazing statement, “If you do not remain in me, then life throws you aside.” Life says, “Sorry, I cannot use you. You don’t fit.” Right now, before our very eyes, that inevitable throwing aside is going on; those who live in hate, selfishness, fear are inevitably thrown aside as unusable. Is that arbitrary? Oh no; the person who holds these things within becomes unfit. The rest of that verse says, “He withers.” Cut off from the source of true life, we wither, become unfit for use. When we remain in Christ, however, we are full of life and life giving.
Again, Jesus says, “He who does not gather with me scatters” (Matt. 12:30 Moffatt). Life is scattered, goes to pieces, breaks down if it is not held together by Christ. On the contrary, those who gather with Christ gather up the forces of their own souls into living unity. They are put together into harmony. “Do not be senseless, but understand what is the Lord’s will” (Eph. 5:17 Moffatt). If you know God’s will, you have sense; if you don’t, you are senseless.
There is a story of a child who couldn’t get the jigsaw puzzle of the map of the world together and was well nigh in despair until she looked on the other side of the pieces and found they made a picture of Christ. When she put him together, then the world on the other side came out all right. Get Christ right in your life, and then all of life will come out with it. For Christ and life are one.
This passage may well sum up our week’s study of the naturalness of the Christian way, “All things have been created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16 Moffatt). Note: We are not only made “by” him but also “for” him. That is, life works in Christ’s way and in no other way. Look at everything in your life—every organ, every relationship—and you can see, if you have eyes to see, this written in everything, “Made for him.” When it finds him, it finds its own fulfillment. God’s will is my peace.
O gracious God, you are overwhelming me with your generous grace. I thought I would have to climb up to heaven to bring it down, and lo, you have brought it near—it is my very being if I will but accept it. I do accept it. I accept it now. And I thank you—from the depths. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Christ and life are one, and I cannot live against Christ without living against life.