Week 18—Wednesday John 14:10-11
Week 18—WEDNESDAY
ALL THE IDEAS ARE GUARANTEED
BY THE FACT OF JESUS
We linger another day upon beginning with Jesus—the Incarnate. To soften the emphasis on Jesus in the interests of universality is to soften God’s Particular, which is God’s universal, and substitute our own eclectic particulars. This is to abandon God’s universal in favor of our universals, which are not universal. They are a revelation of us instead of a revelation of God.
A principle without a concrete illustration is a person without feet—it gets nowhere. I don’t know whether a principle is true until it is put under life to see whether life will approve of it. A principle is only a hypothesis until it is verified by life. All the principles of the Christian faith have been verified in the life of Jesus—they work and have produced the character of Jesus. And “in any battle of ideas the victory will go to those ideas guaranteed by the facts.” In the Christian faith all its ideas have been guaranteed by the fact of Jesus. So the final victory goes to him. For you will never get better ideas than Jesus held until you live a better life than Jesus lived. That can’t be done. He is standard.
“When we hear him present Christ,” said a Hindu chairman, “we feel, we hear the notes of Buddha, the ancient ages, the notes of Positivism, of Humanism—all seem to sound and blend in his message.” And yet I had mentioned none of these; I had only presented Christ.
Someone asked Dr. Malik how the American University at Beirut was lost to the Christian Church, and he replied, “The curse of Christianity in the Middle East has been and is syncretism.” They try to be broad and only succeed in becoming shallow, sometimes succeed in becoming a swamp. The difference between a swamp and a river: a river has banks, a swamp spreads over everything.
O understandable God, O adorable God, O approachable God, O Jesus—we come to you to see through the aperture of the little happenings of your life, the universal laws and the universal Love of God. We thank you for being you. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be universal today because I shall be Christian.