Week 21 Sunday
Week 21 Sunday
Victorious Living and the Social Environment
Matthew 18:3; 15:19-20; John 3:3
So far in our quest for the victorious life, we have centered upon the causes of evil within ourselves. It is well to begin there, for many are like a man with fever, tossing on his bed to find a cool spot, when all the time the fever is within him. You cannot cure him by giving him a cool spot on new sheets as long as the germs of the fever are within. This modern age, intent upon social change as the cure-all for human ills, must not lose sight of this fact. We have a way of brushing past our inner problems and fastening our attention upon outer difficulties.
As theologian William Adams Brown says, “It is not so much that this modern age has lost its sense of sin as that we have developed a technique by which we are able to fasten it upon those we dislike and whom we disapprove—big business men, for example, wicked imperialists, or corrupt labor leaders.” This transference of guilt to others is essentially dishonest. Alfred North Whitehead says, “Religion is force of belief cleansing the inward parts. For this reason the primary religious virtue is sincerity, a penetrating sincerity.”*
That sincerity must begin with ourselves. Beginning any other place is insincerity. It is an escape mentality. No one is in any fit state of mind to face the problems of the world unless prepared to face honestly his or her own life and right it.
George Arliss in his reminiscences, tells of a fellow actor, John Mason, whose work Arliss greatly admired. Arliss makes this comment: “John Mason would, in my opinion, have been the greatest actor in America if his private character had been as well balanced as his public performance.”
Public performance in social reconstruction is out of balance if the private character is left unattended to.
We have rightly begun with ourselves. But we dare not stop there.
O Christ, we thank you that you have put your hand upon our own hearts first of all, now help us to follow you as far as you go. Amen.
* Religion in the Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 5.
Week 21 Monday
Adaptive Organism and Suitable Environment
Matthew 11:20-24; Acts 19:23-27; 1 Corinthians 15:33
Yesterday we said that the first emphasis in our quest for victorious living should be on ourselves. But while it may be the first, it must not be the last. We said that to go to environment, passing over the personal, is an escape mentality, but to stay at the personal and to refuse to go to the environmental is also an escape mentality.
Many of the hindrances to victorious living are within us. But there are many hindrances that are not within us. They are within the social order. It will not do to counter this by saying that the social order is made up of individuals. It is, and it isn’t. The social order is not entirely the product of the individuals now living. It is made up of accumulated attitudes and customs passed on from generation to generation and may be only modified slightly by existing individuals. It can therefore be very impersonal. The question is, does this social order help or hinder the new life?
Life depends on two factors: an adaptive organism and a suitable environment. The organism may be very adaptive, but if there is no suitable environment, it will die. If, however, the environment is suitable and the organism not healthy and adaptive, it will also die. If life depends upon response to environment, the question arises: Does the present social order provide an environment to which the Christian can respond? Does it feed or poison? If it feeds, it must be preserved at all costs. But if it poisons, then the Christian must either convert it from poison to food, as in the case of the Persian peach, or if it cannot be converted, then it must be replaced by something that will feed. For live we must, and live victoriously.
O Christ, as we pass into the question of the order about us take from our hearts the blinding prejudices that keep us from seeing things as they are. Make us open-eyed and open-hearted. Amen.
Week 21 Tuesday
Is a Private Environment Sufficient?
Matthew 6:9-13; 21:11-13
We saw yesterday that life depends on a suitable environment. No matter how healthy a palm may be in itself, if transferred to a northern climate, it will die. “But,” the objection is made, “the analogy doesn’t hold, for the Christian has his own private favorable environment—the kingdom of God. As the diver down in the sea has the air-pipe leading to the surface, so the Christian has personal contact with a higher world, the kingdom of God.”
The diver cannot stay down very long and is restricted at every point by the hostility of the environment. That we can exist in this world-order as Christians, I do not deny. But we are restricted at every point. And it is not our native air, so that unless we periodically rise to the atmosphere of a cooperative society, a Christian church, and take off our helmets and breathe freely, we shall probably suffocate.
And what about those who are compelled to live in this world-order without any contacts with the kingdom? How shall they live who have to breathe one atmosphere and one alone—the poisoned atmosphere of the modern social order?
We must have an environment that will minister to the spiritual life, one in which we can live freely and fully. Now we have to live a Christian life in spite of our environment. Is it not possible to have one in which we shall live as Christians, not in spite of it but on account of it? Did Jesus intend that we should have a private favorable environment and not a collective one? Did he not ask us to pray that the kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven? Do they in heaven have only a private and personal kingdom-of-God environment, or is it built into the collective order?
To ask it is to answer it. If there, then here.
O Christ, we pray again, “Our Father, may your kingdom come and may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Help us to put that into our plans as well as into our prayers. Amen.
Week 21 Wednesday
All Causes of Sin
Mark 13:9; John 18:25; Acts 12:20-22
In Matthew 13:41 is this remarkable statement: “The Son of Man . . . will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all who violate His laws” (Weymouth). Note the two emphases: “All causes of sin and all who violate His laws.” The latter refers to personal, individual transgression, the former to the impersonal causes of sin. One kind of sin was in the individual will and the other in the social order. We have been dealing throughout our quest with sin in the individual will; we must now look at the causes of sin in the social order.
For the social order may cause sin, and it may cause good. It may positively cause people to do evil, for they cannot survive under that order without doing evil.
It is not easy for us to see the causes of evil in the society to which we belong, especially if we are in a favored position in that order. Human beings think emotionally; our reason tries to make rational our emotional attachments. This fact of emotional thinking will put us on our guard about the validity of our social attitudes.
A man recently died who was called “The Excise Monarch of Sind,” for he controlled nearly all the liquor shops of the province of Sind. The government gave him the title of “Rai Bahadur,” because of his “cleverness in the detection of crime.” But he never detected his own liquor shops as the cause of most of the crime! He probably prided himself on his righteousness as shown in his zeal against crime, for his reason always skirted around one of the most prolific causes of crime—his own system. He was probably not a conscious hypocrite. He didn’t see it, for he thought emotionally. We all do. We shall therefore need open-eyed wisdom as we look at the causes of sin in our society.
O Christ, you pierced beneath the seeming to the real and bared the hearts of humanity and put your finger on festering sores in the temple system. Give us your clear-eyed vision and courage. Amen.
Week 21 Thursday
Some Causes of Sin
Mark 14:11; John 2:14; Acts 24:26; 1 Timothy 6:10
In searching for causes of sin in modern society we are compelled to brush aside the lesser causes and go straight to the central one—selfish competition. The competitively acquisitive spirit in modern society is probably the most prolific cause of sin. It sets the stage for evil. It becomes easier under a competitive order to be hard and ruthless than to be loving and generous. It loads the dice against goodness.
When I say that, there probably arises in your mind an objection which is real: If competition is taken out of life, will there not be the loss of individual initiative, and will life not then sag and become nonprogressive? This is a real fear to many. But note that I said “selfish competition.” There is a higher competition that is not selfish.
In a cooperative order there would still be competition, we should still compete as to who could give most to the collective good. But this friendly competition would be constructive and not destructive. As the individual self-instinct must be redeemed and turned toward constructive ends, so the collective ego-instinct must be redeemed and made to serve the public good. In either case, you cannot eradicate the ego, you must harness it to the making of a better order. It must be sublimated. But competition there will be, now Christianized and harnessed to the purpose of the kingdom.
The selfish competition that holds the center of our total life is a very different thing, however. It has been softened and civilized, but underneath that softness and civilization is a ruthlessness, just as hidden under the soft pads of a tiger are flesh-tearing claws. If you don’t believe it, ask the ten million victims that walk our streets unemployed, to show you their wounds of soul and body. They know. We all know. For civilization is bleeding from a thousand wounds, bled pale by competitive struggle. The selfish competitive order is the chief cause of sin.
O Christ, we ask you to help us to face this matter calmly and courageously and right it. In your name. Amen.
Week 21 Friday
Selfish Competition: The Chief Cause
Proverbs 20:14, 21; 21:6; James 5:2-4
Yesterday we said that selfish competition was the chief cause of sin. We must pursue it.
Here are boys brought up in a refined and loving home. The basis of life in that home is cooperation, as in any good home. That is what makes it a home. But suppose when meal time came, the stronger boy snatches as much as he can from the younger and weaker and piles it around his plate, whether he can eat it or not. Would not the family be outraged? And would not such unsocial conduct be severely dealt with? Good families are simply not built that way. Each meal is not a scramble to get all we can get. Each gets a proper share of whatever there is, and the older and stronger ones look after the younger and weaker. The whole family attitude and mind-set make it easier for the children to be cooperative and helpful. A family life is built on cooperation. So is our best education.
But the moment one of those boys steps out of that home or out of that school to go into the business world, most values are reversed. In order to be a good family member, he had to develop in sympathy and mutual helpfulness and service. Now, in order to be successful in a competitive order, that must be trained out of him. He must drive hard bargains, without looking too much into detail as to the ruination of others in that bargain. Blinkers have to be put on so that he looks straight ahead at what he wants. He would be shocked to find that around this table of business he is grabbing all he can from the weaker members and piling it up around his own plate regardless of whether he can eat it or not. And yet that is exactly what he is doing. The family spirit is dying in him. The competitive order is a cause of sin to him.
O Christ, you who came to make us one family, forgive us that we have not put that family spirit into our total life. Help us yet to do it. Amen.
Week 21 Saturday
Loving Your Neighbor in a Competitive Order
Matthew 20:10-14; 1 John 4:19-21
When that young man who is slowly becoming hardened and losing his ideals goes back from business to the family circle, he looks at his parents in a puzzled way and says: “This is different. I am unlearning everything you taught me in the home. Why this difference?” His parents, remembering with a sigh the reversal of their own ideals, helplessly reply, “Son, business is business.” They are all caught in a system that is a cause of sin to them.
H. G. Wells is right: “[Human society is] a limited and legalized struggle of men and women to get the better of one another.”*
I received this question: “Isn’t the very center of Jesus’ teaching that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and if we did that, wouldn’t we have a new world?” I happened to turn the paper over and saw the printed announcement on the other side that a new printing press had been opened in that city, and asking for people to come and “give it their blessing.” Now, there were already sixty-eight printing presses in that small city, and the oldest and best was going out of business because of the ruthlessness of the competition. One more participant enters the struggle.
On the back of this announcement is the statement that the only way out of the world’s difficulties is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Can we apply that in the struggle we are entering? It isn’t impossible, but it is highly improbable. The dice are loaded against us. One side of the paper says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” And the other side says, “Get all the business you can, no matter if your neighbor goes to the wall.” Which side of the paper will be our history? We will probably try to compromise. The competitive order will become a cause of sin to us.
O Christ, help us to make a world in which the light that is in us will not be snuffed out. You are calling us to make that order. Help us to come. Amen.
* Men Like Gods, 1923, 49.