Week 23 Sunday
Week 23 Sunday
Another Cause of Sin: Race Prejudice
Amos 9:7; Luke 4:22-29; Acts 10:84-85; Colossians 3:11
We have looked at two causes of sin in the social order: selfish competition and war. We must now look at a third, race prejudice. H. G. Wells says that it causes more sin than anything he knows:
I am convinced myself that there is no more evil thing in this present world than race prejudice, none at all. I write deliberately—it is the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty, and abomination than any other sort of error in the world.
This is literally being proved true.
Race prejudice is self-starvation. An American lady said, “Oh, can’t we have an American doctor instead of this Dutch doctor?” Why? This Dutch doctor had more than the average medical training, was an artist of very rare ability and a musician of high attainment, and withal a Christian gentleman. But this lady would shut herself off from all that culture and skill because of one thing—race prejudice. She was practicing self-starvation through race prejudice. Race prejudice caused her to sin, against herself and against the doctor.
I had volunteered to go to Africa as a missionary. Before I left, I was in a streetcar in my home city when an African American woman got into the crowded car, and as there was no seat for her, I got up and gave her mine. I heard a titter run through the crowd behind me. “Getting up and giving an African American woman your seat! He doesn’t know what he is letting himself in for!” Hence the laugh.
But the laugh is now on the other side. I opened the door of my heart to the people of another race and of a different color of skin, and outside of the influence of Christ. It has proved to be the most enriching experience of my life. What love, what friendships, what wisdom, what Christlikeness, what nobility have come to me during these years through that open door! The laughers on that streetcar closed their door with a bang of superiority. But they starved themselves.
O Christ, open my heart wide to the people of every race, and perhaps you too will come through that open door. Amen.
Week 23 Monday
Race Prejudice and Snobbery
Ephesians 2:14-18; Revelation 5:9-10
Yesterday we talked about opening our hearts to the people of another race. But if you open the door, you must really open it, for the people will sense whether it is really open or not.
Some new missionaries were studying the language on board ship going out to India. An English lady, who had been in India before, listened to them trying to get the proper pronunciation. She broke in with this: “Of course I believe in getting the language, but I don’t believe in pronouncing it like the native.” I suppose she still wonders why the native (perish the word!) is so hard to understand! She would go back from this land pinched and starved, having denied herself many enriching friendships.
A Hindu youth told me how he rescued an outcaste boy from drowning and how his parents scolded him, saying he should have let him drown rather than touch an outcaste. But if that youth had let him die, something would have died in him. He flung away his “Brahminhood” and found a brotherhood.
Peter came near keeping his Jewish “Brahminhood”: “Lord, I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean” (Acts 10:14), but he flung it away, went to the Gentiles, and found a community. Had he refused to open his heart, he would have shriveled and died. We should have heard little or nothing of him. You and I will shrivel and inwardly die if we refuse to open our hearts to every person, of every race, of every class.
The members of the ashram were asked to volunteer to do the outcaste sweeper’s work and give him a holiday. For the first time in his life did a people of another “caste” do that for him! In the evening, I looked out of my window and saw the sweeper back from his holiday, standing before my window with folded hands, his face wreathed in smiles! It was worth it all! Race and class prejudice would have shut me out from that!
O Christ, I pray you give me victory at this place, the place of my prejudices. For if I do not gain victory here, I shall be poor; and I would be rich. Amen.
Week 23 Tuesday
Economic Inequality: A Cause of Sin
Matthew 19:22-26; James 2:1-4
In tracing back the various causes of sin we come across the fact that the unequal distribution of wealth causes a great deal of sin. This inequality works in several directions. First, it works harm to those who have more than their legitimate share. It often produces in them the feeling that they must in some way deserve all this, and that God must be very pleased with them, when the fact of the matter is that they may have been only clever enough to choose their parents!
Inequalities produce superiority complexes. We often think that because we have more we are worth more, which doesn’t necessarily follow. It might make us decidedly worthless. Without it, we might give a great contribution to life; with it, we give only contributions. It also sets the stage for lack of ambition, parasitism, selfish hedonism, and wasted time in general.
Again, it creates the mentality that tries to justify this condition of inequality. Rationalization sets in and with it an unconscious hypocrisy. Moreover, it keeps us from fellowship. How can you have fellowship across these chasms? One of the severest indictments that can be drawn up against unequal distribution of wealth is that it sends cleavages through life everywhere and separates person from person. And the deepest need of the world at the present time is fellowship. The Christian must question everything that makes fellowship more difficult.
At a certain function in England, there were tables for “ladies” and tables for the “working girls.” At the one table, butter was served, and at the other, margarine. It is difficult for butter-table people to associate with margarine-table people!
In India one can see on railway quarters these words painted, “Menial quarters.” The difference in wages makes one belong to the “Menial.” Fellowship with “menials” is difficult. The inequality puts up a barrier.
O Christ, you who did come to break down barriers, forgive us that we have set up barriers between us and our fellow people. And forgive us that we have thought these barriers were blessings from you. Amen.
Week 23 Wednesday
Causing Sin to the Underprivileged
Leviticus 19:13-15; Job 32:13-22
Unequal distribution of wealth causes hurt to those who have more than their share, but it also causes hurt to those who have less than their share. It tends to create in the one a superiority complex and in the other an inferiority complex. In an acquisitive society, where people are judged as to their “worth” by their wealth, not to have wealth brands one as inferior. This is a positive sin against personality.
Moreover, from the Christian standpoint, it loads the dice against inward peace and harmony. Sullenness and bitterness are engendered. A fine lady came out of her castle to give charity to the poor. A workman saw it, spat on the ground, and said bitterly: “Their charity! Let them be just, and we shall not want their charity.” It is not enough to preach to that man that such bitterness is unchristian. We must strike at the causes that produce that bitterness.
Among the Zulus, there is the saying, “The full-belly child says to the empty-belly child, ‘Be of good cheer.’” Our preaching of contentment and cheer to the poor, while leaving untouched the causes of their gloom and lack of contentment, adds insult to injury. It is said that “an optimist is one who is hopeful about other people’s troubles.” No one today has any message to that gloom and misery unless he or she has an ax in hand to strike at the root of that misery. And what is the root?
Professor Frank W. Fetter, of Princeton, puts his finger on the root: “We are living in a society which is financially controlled to intercept the gains of economic progress, by means of higher prices to consumers and financial rewards to insiders, thus keeping the fruits of science and technology from passing on to the people.”* Note the phrase: “To intercept the gains.’’ When we become alive to that, will bitterness not be engendered and will that bitterness not continue until the cause is removed?
O Christ, we pray you to teach us to hold steady at this point and not to excuse or explain away, but in your name to be straightforward and courageous. Amen.
* In Facing the Facts, an Economic Diagnosis (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1932).
Week 23 Thursday
Nationalism: Another Cause of Sin
John 18:25; Acts 10:28; Philippians 2:15
One of the greatest dangers to the peace of the world is the rise of modern nationalism, as seen in the totalitarian state. It has taken that lovely sentiment called patriotism and has turned it into the deadliest enemy to our modern world. It causes people to sin where they otherwise would not. The common people of one nation usually have no reason to hate the common people of another nation. But nationalism takes hold of these common people, subjects them to propaganda, instills fears, inspires hates, puts bayonets into their hating, frightened hands and flings them against the common people of another country. Why? Who knows? The grinning devil that inspires this mad business is nationalism.
This nationalism, becoming preposterous beyond words, reaches in and puts its dominating, determining hand on the one thing that is sacred between me and God—my conscience—and says that it is sovereign in there. God is secondary, nationalism is primary.
This nationalism sees that Christianity is stretching across all barriers and is bent on the full community of humankind, and hence it looks on Christianity as its most deadly foe. So it produces a new paganism that would oust Christianity, or it proceeds to render Christianity innocuous, which amounts to the same thing.
Listen to this official declaration of how nationalism, where it cannot oust, will proceed to render innocuous:
The new church leadership fully agrees that, in accordance with the fundamental principles necessary to safeguard the national existence of Germany, “The National Socialist work of nationbuilding on the basis of Race, Blood, and Soil,” must be recognized and supported, while at the same time the church will preach the gospel of “The Saviour and Redeemer of all nations and races,” which gospel bridges over all temporal and human changes.*
The gospel “bridges” these gulfs, but nationalism rules at the two ends of the bridge. And Christianity rules over what? The gulfs—emptiness!
O Christ, we are asked to follow another god, nationalism. How can we? We love our native land. But we love you more and supremely. Amen.
* Source unknown.
Week 23 Friday
A Cause of Sin: Subjection
Exodus 1:14; Jeremiah 34:8-17
Another cause of sin is the subjection of one people by another.
I know that imperialism in general has been the cause of an amazing amount of advancement to undeveloped peoples. And of all imperialisms I look on the British as the most beneficent that has ever existed. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that the subjection of a people over a long period of time against their will is a cause of sin on both sides. When Sir John Seeley said that “deterioration sets in in any subject race,” he was simply recording fact. Life is weakened, loses initiative, is driven underground, loses frankness, becomes sycophantic, untruthful, and undependable. Not always of course. But that is the tendency and the trend.
Moreover, it causes inner deterioration in the rulers. For they believe in freedom for themselves, but being compelled by the system to deny it to others an inner contradiction takes place. A defense mechanism is built up that wars against their own finest ideals. Deterioration is bound to become a fact under these circumstances.
Young students come out of the universities of Britain, nourished upon great traditions of liberty, and when they arrive in India are eager to serve and to share their traditions. Then the system begins to tame those impulses, and they who came out to be brothers, end up by being bureaucrats.
One chair of a public meeting, a British official, once said, “I have a quarrel with the speaker. He began by saying, ‘Mr. Chairman, Brothers and Sisters’! He left me out of the brotherhood, and I refuse to be left out.” It was said so sincerely that the Indian crowd roared its appreciation. For he was a fine type of Christian gentleman. But the next day when I saw him on a matter connected with India, he was a different man. He stood within the framework of the system. The system made him, not a brother, but a bureaucrat.
O God, our Lord, help us to share our liberties with everyone, everywhere, for we know that if we do not share them, we cannot keep them. Help us, then, to share them. Amen.
Week 23 Saturday
Another Cause of Sin: Inadequate Housing
Isaiah 5:7-10; Jeremiah 22:13-16
We have crowded the weakest and most unfortunate members of society into that blot on human civilization called slums. Here many families are compelled to live in one room. In this one room they have to eat, sleep, and breed. At every moment of their lives that most sacred shrine, human personality, is invaded. There is no privacy. Now, preach to that group of human beings that modesty is a virtue and purity is a necessity and quarrelsomeness is bad, and your words sound hollow. Why? Because the whole situation is loaded against purity and against modesty and against good temper. The very physical basis of life works against your preaching. Young people growing up in such surroundings are handicapped in their battle for purity. Their very surroundings take away fifty percent of their chances for success.
Obviously, our message must have two sides: a demand for purity and amity and a demand for proper housing.
A picture haunts my imagination: In the Anti-Religious Museum at Leningrad is the picture of a large two-storied mission bungalow and beside it a tiny African grass hut. The suggestion is that religion is doing “spiritual” work for the people of that grass hut, but that the disparity between the hut and the bungalow will remain. That indictment must be disproved. That disparity must go; for as long as that disparity persists, there will be an undertone of resentment as soon as the people come to self-consciousness.
That disparity causes sin. Mission bungalows, on the whole, have been too large, and the huts around them are too small. There must come a closer approximation; the hut should come up a long way and the bungalow should come down some. The cells in which most of us live in the Lucknow ashram are about six by eight. And we are happy in community. But the point is, our cells, however small, give us privacy, and a slum does not.
O Christ, we bring to you those who are crowded into slums. Forgive us that we have these blots of our shame still unchanged, and help us to change them. Amen.