Week 11 Sunday
Week 11 Sunday
What the Victorious Life Is Not (continued)
Acts 15:37-41; Romans 12:18; Philippians 4:2-3
Victorious living does not mean the ability to get on with everybody. There are certain people whose outlooks and interests are so different from ours that when we are thrown into close contact, we shall find it practically impossible to get on with them. They may be very good people. Nevertheless, we find ourselves incompatible.
John Wesley was married to one such person. Others are. But who shall say that John Wesley was not a victorious soul? He was, and yet he found it practically impossible to get on with his wife. However, he used that thorn in the flesh to make him a better, a more patient, victorious man.
If Christian workers find they are incompatible, the best thing to do is to talk the matter over frankly and honestly. And if there is no other way out, get a transfer.
But—and this is the point—as you talk the matter over calmly and honestly you will probably find that what you thought was incompatibility was misunderstanding. You will see the other person’s point of view, and seeing it, will probably sympathize with it. It is not at all necessary to agree with another person to get along with her or him. Some of the greatest of fellowship comes out of the most opposite temperaments.
In our ashram, we bring together people of differing outlooks and temperaments and races and theological beliefs, and we undertake to make a community out of these differences. And we do! So far, I cannot say we have had any real incompatibility. What we thought at first was incompatibility has usually yielded to understanding, and sometimes spiritual surgery. We shall see very often that difficulties are not rooted in our real nature, but in complexes, in hidden sin, in wrong attitudes. Bringing these out and correcting them leads to an amazing depth of fellowship. There are some incompatible relationships, but they are very, very few.
O Christ of the patient heart, we thank you for the possibility of bridging gulfs through love. Teach us to love even those whom we find hardest to love and give us victorious living in all our relationships. Amen.
Week 11 Monday
What Is the Victorious Life?
Ephesians 4:11-13; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
We have seen what the victorious life is not; we must now see what it is: It is the life of Christ reigning victoriously in every portion of our being and in every one of our relationships.
First, in every portion of our being. There are many Christians who have certain areas of their lives in which Christ functions, feebly perhaps, but there is a functioning. But there are areas withheld. There are “reserved subjects” in the government of the soul. Over these reserved areas we rule, we make the decisions there. Thus a principle of duality is introduced into the life.
When the British reserved certain subjects after turning over other subjects to Indian rule, that kind of government was called “dyarchy.” It was a failure. The attempt to have a spiritual dyarchy within our souls is also bound to be a failure. Yet millions of Christians attempt it and wonder why the spiritual life is so unsatisfactory. It is bound to be. For we cannot be happy and effective with an inner division. We must be unified.
You must make your choice. You must either dismiss Christ entirely from your life and forget him and take over the entire control into your own hands, in which case you will be unified under the control of self; or you must make a complete surrender of every withheld area into the control of Christ, in which case your life will be Christ-controlled and therefore unified.
There is no third way. And yet millions are trying the way of compromise between. It won’t work. We have just enough of the love of Christ in our hearts to make us miserable. A war is set up between opposing ideas of life; we live in that war and call it being Christian. As pure unadulterated pagans we might be happy. “Might be”—note that, for the attempt has so far not succeeded. But as compromised Christians we cannot be.
O Christ, forgive us that we have thought to make you a half-king, leaving other half-gods in our hearts. We cannot bow at a double shrine. Forgive us. Amen.
Week 11 Tuesday
What Is the Victorious Life? (continued)
Amos 5:21-24; 8:4-6; Matthew 6:24
Yesterday, we saw that the life of Christ must reign victoriously in every portion of our being, and now we must look at the second part—in every one of our relationships.
Duality cannot be introduced within the soul without disaster. But there is another point of duality that is just as disastrous. This is the point between the individual and the social. If duality is introduced at that point, there will also be defeat. The life of Christ must rule in every one of our relationships.
Now, many try to introduce duality at this point. Christ shall function in their personal lives, but the social and economic life is something else. There other ideas and ideals must be applied.
Of these two dualities, I am not certain which is the more disastrous, possibly the latter. For if an amazing amount of unhappiness comes out of inner division, then a greater amount of unhappiness comes out of the division that applies one rulership on the inside (Christ) and another rulership on the outside (mammon). This is where the house of present-day civilization is divided against itself, and it cannot stand. With this duality at its heart, our present-day life is unhappy and paralyzed.
It is bad psychology. This division between the personal and the social is artificial. It is not rooted in the facts. The personal exists in relationships with others. My relationships with others are just as much a part of my personal life as my so-called inner life. Think of how much of your personal life is made up with relationships with others and how much is made up of relationships with yourself alone, and you will see at once that they cannot be divided. It is all personal.
Victorious living must include both; it takes in life, and life takes in both.
O Christ, we thank you that you are claiming the whole of life—the whole. For we can tolerate no longer these paralyzing divisions. Help us to end them by bringing everything under your sway. Amen.
Week 11 Wednesday
Does Conversion Give Us Victorious Living?
Galatians 5:16-24
We have our definition of victorious living, and now let us step back a bit. Does the victorious life take place in what we call conversion, or is a further crisis or a number of crises necessary to bring about this complete sway of the life of Christ?
Conversion is certainly the beginning of victorious living. Here life is lifted to a permanently higher level. Things are changed. “Do you know me?” eagerly asked a Hindu youth. “I am sure you don’t, for I am not the same person who saw you yesterday. Last evening as I sat on the hilltop looking at the sunset, Christ came into my life. I am strangely new today.” He was; we all are, when the new life is introduced within us. Life is permanently changed, but not fully changed.
Most of us experience a rapid climb to a new height in conversion, but after that there ensues a tableland of alternate defeat and victory. It is up and down. In one of my books I quoted a very radiant soul as saying in one of our Round Table Conferences that religion meant to him three things: Victory, Victory, Victory. It did. But to some of us it means no such thing. On the lowest scale, it means defeat, defeat, defeat. A little higher, it means an alternation: defeat, victory, defeat. Or better still, it may mean victory, defeat, victory. But it certainly does not mean Victory, Victory, Victory. And yet religion should mean just that. When it doesn’t, we feel disappointed and aggrieved. We expected more.
Conversion introduced new life, but not full life. As the first flush of the new life ebbs a bit, we find things within us we did not dream could survive the inrush of the new. But they have. The rank growth has been cut down, but roots have remained. And we are uneasy with old roots alongside of new Life, and we cry out for full deliverance.
O Christ, you who have begun a new work within us, will you not complete it? Our very uneasiness is a sign of your redemptive love at work, gently pointing out that we ail here and there. Heal us where we ail, and heal us completely. Amen.
Week 11 Thursday
The Inner Conflict
Romans 7:14-23
I found after my conversion a strange conflict ensuing. For weeks I did not think there could be any conflict; life was one glad, unified, and universal day. But I soon found something rather strange for me; I began to be bad-tempered with a tendency to be morose. I was usually sunny-tempered, so this periodical inner conflict, producing a tendency to get out of patience, startled me. I could not account for it, for I was never more earnest, and Christ was never more precious. I was startled to find myself divided. I think I now see what happened.
Modern psychology tells us that down in the subconscious lie the instincts, holding within them the instinctive habits and tendencies. These instincts have gathered up within themselves the human experience running back through a long history. They, therefore, have certain leanings, certain drives, which, unrestrained, tend toward evil. This all sounds strangely like the almost forgotten doctrine of original sin. But there it is. These instincts control the conscious mind in very large measure. It is true that the mind builds up ideals that try to hold them in check.
Now, in conversion there is a sweeping out of the conscious mind all that conflicts with the love of Christ and the establishing of his reign there. For weeks perhaps no conflict ensues, the new life reigns supreme. These instincts in the subconscious are cowed; they are cowed but hardly converted. They soon demand recognition and expression. They knock at the door of the conscious. We are startled and alarmed that there are voices in the cellar. To change the figure, these suppressed instincts are like pirates who hide in the hold of the vessel and then rise up while the ship is under way; they try to capture the bridge and with it the ship. A fight ensues.
With the introduction of new life within me by conversion, a conflict began between this new life and the old life found in the instincts. I was divided.
O Christ, you know what is in me. I open it all to you. Cleanse me in the secret places, the hidden depths. I would be unified. Amen.
Week 11 Friday
Can the Subconscious Be Converted?
Romans 7:24-25; 8:1-2; 2 Corinthians 7:1
R. Newton Flew ends up his scholarly study The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology with this rather startling question: “Is salvation possible for the subconscious? This is the real question for the seeker after holiness in our time.”* Dr. Flew has raised a most important issue.
These instincts cannot be eradicated. Leslie D. Weatherhead says, “The instinctive forces cannot, by any known process, be eradicated, and the method of evasion and pretense simply means that these forces function at the depth of the personality at which they cannot be controlled.”**
India has tried to eradicate these instincts. Its holy men try by every possible device to root them out. But put out of the door they come back by the window. I saw naked sadhus (devout mystics), who had renounced the world and themselves, being very touchy about getting the proper place and prestige in the processions going to bathe in the sacred Ganges. These instincts still showed through the ashes! You cannot eradicate them.
Nor must you repress them. If they are repressed, then they are driven below and form what is called a complex, a system of emotionally toned ideas ranged around one central idea. They are festering places in the subconscious mind. Repression of the instincts is dangerous.
If they cannot be eradicated, and they must not be repressed, and in the interests of the new life we cannot allow them to be expressed, is there no way out? Psychology says they can be sublimated, that is turned into expression in a higher form. In the language of religion they can be converted. We cannot put them out or put them under, but we can put them behind the central purposes of our lives where they can become the driving force. Our former enemies now become the allies of the new life. The wild horses are now tamed and harnessed to the tasks of the kingdom.
The instincts can be converted and dedicated.
O Christ, we thank you that in your life every power, conscious and subconscious, was dedicated to the kingdom. We want that oneness within us. Amen.
* Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1934, 2005.
** Psychology and Life (New York: Abingdon Press, 1935).
Week 11 Saturday
Must We Face Another Spiritual Crisis?
Luke 24:48-49; Acts 1:8; 2:4, 33
Of course, we shall face many spiritual crises along the way, for the soul gets on by a series of crises. But must we face another decisive crisis like conversion? Yes, I think that usually we must. For we cannot go on changed in our conscious mind and unchanged, or only partially changed, in the subconscious. The instincts must be brought into line. We must be inwardly unanimous, or we shall be outwardly defeated. We cannot carry on a civil war and a foreign war at the same time.
It is instructive to find many different types of movements—the Holiness movement, the Pentecostal, the Wesleyan, the Keswick, the Oxford Group, and many others—all converging on this one fact, namely, that it is necessary to bring the whole of life into line with the will of God. There must be an absoluteness about the whole thing. All of these movements converge on this: that while conversion began this process, a further crisis in some form or other is necessary to bring everything into line.
Are they all wrong about this? That they are wrong in many things I grant, for many stupidities have been built up around these movements. But in the central thing I believe they are profoundly right. At least I have found it so in my own experience and in the lives of thousands of others whom I have dealt with intimately.
I have seen hundreds of missionaries come out to India, and the dedication to mission work carries them through for a year, perhaps longer. But the changed environment sooner or later strips them bare to the inmost spirit. India finds them. They are then driven to a deeper and more complete self-giving and thus go on to victory, or they sink back into being mediocre Christians—serving Christ, but not like him. They develop tempers and superiority complexes and attitudes of patronage, and thus they come to a working compromise between Christ and the old instincts. The result is not a clear-cut Christian impression but a spiritual blur.
O Christ of the united will, we bring ours to you. They are not united, but we want them to be. We consent for them to be. Amen.