Week 8—Saturday John 6:66-69
John 6:66-69
TALKED HIMSELF BACK INTO BEING A CHRISTIAN
We continue our study of the discovery of principles of Christianity in the necessities of business. The management engineer when confronted with the question of how to get unsnarled is compelled by necessity to suggest God—a point of reference and loyalty outside themselves. They are snarled up because they are self-centered and hence self-preoccupied. So there must be some center of loyalty outside themselves to which they can be loyal in order to break the tyranny of self-centered loyalty. That center can only be God. Every other center, being human, will let them down and, hence, is mortal. “Yes,” they say, “but how do we get to God?” Then the engineer has to talk about “conversion,” “new birth,” a change of heart and life. “How do we get a change of heart and life—a new birth?” Then he refers them to a book like Abundant Living. Here we find a group of hardheaded people sitting to talk about how to straighten out a business and finding themselves running straight into the necessity of straightening out themselves, of finding a new birth, a conversion. So not merely the pulpit, but production is saying “You must be born again.”
Dr. Henry Link, the psychologist, threw overboard all his Christian beliefs as he studied psychology—Christianity was outmoded. Then he began to try to straighten out people who were tangled in their lives. He found they were self-centered, tangled in the flypaper of self-preoccupation. He had to talk to them about God—Someone outside themselves to whom they could be loyal. Then he had to talk about conversion and the new birth. Before he knew what was happening, he found he had talked himself back into being a Christian again. Then he wrote two excellent books, The Return to Religion and The Rediscovery of Man. As he faced life, he found Christianity inescapable—life demanded it. If the Christian faith did not exist, we would have to invent it to meet the demands of human nature.
O Son of the Most High, when you came into a human body and a human world, you came to your very own. It was waiting for you as the eye is waiting for light. So when we see you, we see that for which we are made—our own. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Life is taking me by the hand and is bringing me out at the feet of Jesus.