Christians at times get themselves overworked about the state of the world. This is not a sign of faith but the exact opposite. They should relax and trust Christ more. And so we set about, with the best of intentions, no doubt, and calling upon the power of Christ, to save the world from prejudice, ignorance, backwardness, corruption, injustice, war, sin: in short, from the grip of the devil. Christians in position of responsibility, whether civil or ecclesiastical, must certainly try to do all this; they cannot face their Lord in his day having been unprofitable and delinquent in their tasks. But it is eminently possible to lose oneself in the cares and worries of the world and therewith to lose Christ. The cry of “Martha, Martha” (Luke 10:41) keeps ringing in my ears when I behold people, including above all myself, busy day and night trying to save the world; especially as I am not sure that in our business we are adoring Christ enough; and our adoration of him is the most important thing possible.
It is perfectly clear that we can save nobody and nothing if we are not first sure of ourselves. In these matters we can never bluff, we can never hide away our truth. To have the world maddeningly on our mind all the time is not the way to be sure of ourselves. It is rather the way to be distracted, to be unsure, to be impotently spread all over, for the world is completely uncontrollable and there is absolutely no end to what can and should be saved. The dike of corruption cannot be plugged at every point, because the points are infinite. And so to be busy at this point and that point and that other point is often the way of escaping and fleeing from ourselves and therefore from Christ. It appears that the contemplative method of Mary is preferable. I think it is the Marys more than the Marthas who are going to save the world, although the Marthas are indispensable in the process.
Only those who stay very close to Christ can help others who are far away. Only those who prefer him to everything else, even to the call of the needy world, can be used by him for the need of the world. Only those who are not lifted by pride to suppose that they must carry the whole burden of the world will be pitied by him, who does in fact carry the whole burden of the world, and given a humble part of that burden to carry with Him.
A TASK IN THE WORLD
And yet Christians live in the world and Christ never meant them to live out of it. In the world they must work out their own salvation and as much of the salvation of the world as possible. They cannot wash their hands of what is going on in the world. On the contrary, they must take the most active interest in it. This is especially true of the American Presbyterian Church with its wonderful missionary epic, ventured forth and accomplished purely in the name of Jesus Christ. What a crown of glory this church has laid up for herself as a result of her prayers and exertions and vision and loving sacrifice and service over the world.
Now the importance of the emergence of Asia and Africa from the Christian point of view is threefold. First, it is good and proper that these nations take their destinies in their own hands. A Christian can only rejoice at the sight of people asserting and exercising their dignity and independence. Second, new perfections of the spirit are called for to work out the proper creative fellowship between equals. The fellowship of equals is the end of all fellowship, and therefore it should be looked upon as the norm and rule. Once perfected it becomes far more stable and enriching. And third, Christians under the new conditions will have to demonstrate their faith in Jesus Christ in the teeth of five trials. 1. They have to stand firm as they face the resuscitated tribal and national deities. 2. They have to stand firm as they see old great religions rediscovering and reasserting themselves. 3. They have to work out creative dialogues based on our common human nature and need. 4. Their own governments often find themselves embarrassed by them and by Christ. Now the Church should never meddle in political affairs; she should never make the truth of the Gospel dependent upon the fortunes, which are more often misfortunes, of systems and regimes and persons. But in the impersonal formal order of international relations, Christians could find themselves a cause of embarrassment to their own governments. This is their trial and their cross, and they should bear it courageously, keeping in mind that governments and politics and cultures come and go, but Jesus Christ endureth forever.
And 5. alien anti-Christian movements also have to be faced. It could be said a hundred years from now, it might be said in heaven right now, that the Christians, whether by default or by folly or by sheer stupidity or because they were comfortable and relaxed, lost in the competition for the soul of Asia and Africa in the sixties of the twentieth century. For ours is a most crucial decade. We can only say with Paul, God forbid! But let me tell you, there are situations in which the issue is very delicately poised. The Christian debacle in China is a sobering warning. I am not thinking of competition between political systems: that is an affair of governments, and that is a realm completely other than what I am considering, a realm with its own honourable rules and laws. I am thinking of competition for the soul and mind of the people. I am thinking of whether Christians, not governments, can relax if the mind of the people is poisoned with respect to the name of Jesus Christ. Mighty forces are moving fast into whole spiritual vacua. Surely history will say a hundred years from now—in so far as there will be history then—surely heaven is saying right now, what was the matter with the Christians, where were they? Nothing therefore is more necessary than to rouse responsible Christians from their lethargy and slumber into both the infinite dangers and the infinite possibilities of the moment.
At the heart of the whole matter is faith in Jesus Christ. Do we believe in him as passionately as others believe in their own ideas and systems? If we do, then we ought to do better than they. For we worship a Person, they worship an idea. We worship life and strength and love and victory; they worship negation and hatred. Christ can do without us; he can raise up children to Abraham from these stones; he may be doing so already in the vast spaces of Asia and Africa. And if we fail him it cannot be that he failed; we will only have proven that we are unprofitable servants. Nothing puts our faith to the ultimate test more than the concrete challenge facing us all in Asia and Africa.
Christians all over the world are mingling with other religions, outlooks, and points of view more than ever before. Their faith could be easily overwhelmed and overawed by the gods and religions and mythologies of Asia and Africa, as well as by the new fads and outlooks sprouting in the West. Jesus Christ becomes one among many. He becomes even a weak one, one of whom we might be ashamed. We begin to see the good in these other outlooks—and there is plenty of it—and we lose our hold on Christ, or, better, he lets go his hold on us. The result is confusion, uncertainty, and loss of faith. You and I must know of cases where people began with the stoutest Christian faith, but upon prolonged mixing and exposure and living with other religions and cultures, they ended with the haziest notion of Jesus Christ and began to preach some vague eclectic or pantheistic or humanitarian form of religion.
It is a bounden Christian duty to love and serve our fellow men, whether Christian or un-Christian; indeed to love and serve our enemies. It is our sacred duty to promote justice, give everybody his due, educate the ignorant, tend the sick, recognize the good everywhere, and salvage and rejoice in the truth wherever we find it and regardless of the error and darkness in which it may be embedded and with which it may be overlaid. The Lord said to Jeremiah, “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth” (Jer. 15:19). Surely we are to identify the precious everywhere and take it forth from the vile to become like unto the mouth of God. But if the price we pay for all this is loss of faith in Jesus Christ, estrangement from his presence, then that is too heavy a price, at least because without him we cannot love our enemies, or serve kinsman and stranger alike, or know what justice is, or recognize truth and goodness where we find them. When I see all this attempted without faith, I wonder if it is not all sentimental and human and political; and these will not only soon decay and degenerate, but they will never last. If Jesus Christ exists, and if he is what we believe him to be, what he himself says he is, and what our fathers have handed him down to us for 2000 years, then I can only be loving and helpful and just and profitable to others through him and with him. I certainly do not expect this to be understood by diplomats or politicians or businessmen or philanthropists or educators who are only what their name connotes; I expect it to be understood by Christians who know and believe in Jesus Christ.
CHRIST AND OUR DILEMMA
The German philosopher Kant emphasized the theoretical and moral nature of man and made everything in the universe depend on him. Hegel attempted a deduction of everything from pure reason which, regardless of what he said, was only the reason of man. The Communists emphasize man alone (in the sense of the collectivity) and want him to take everything into his own hands (in the sense of absolute political control), even to the extent of deriving all science and all culture, including religion and God, from the class struggle. The existentialists know nothing absolutely except man and his miserable existence. Here is this tremendous convergence upon man from every side. But we Christians have been affirming man ever since God himself became man. Could we not therefore show Kant, Hegel, the Communists, and the existentialists that their attempt to concentrate everything in and derive everything from man represents a sound instinct, but that it is our God-Man who is really the Alpha and Omega of all this impulse; Alpha, because he started it in the first place, whether directly or indirectly; and Omega, because the perfect man they pant after and long for and desire to create in history our God-Man already is?
We tend to think that this very culture and civilization in which we enjoy ourselves and take so much pride has created itself; that it subsists by itself and is self-sufficient. We thus lose sight of how much it owes Christ.
The life of slothfulness and satisfaction and relaxation is certainly a life of death: try it and see what I mean; it makes you forget God, it causes you to tend in the end towards nothingness; for nothingness is exactly that where God is forgotten. Whatever the value of a relaxation of tensions in the international order, such a relaxation is disastrous in the order of the spirit. Nobody understands the mysterious depths of man and God who does not understand what James meant when he shouted: “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness” (James 4:9). In mourning and affliction we come much nearer God than in laughter, and that is why they that mourn are called blessed, seeing that their reward is the comfort of God (Matt. 5:4).
Frustration because of imperfection and sin?! O yes! But thank God, Jesus Christ is without sin and he is our Lord. Only the Christian can say this. All others are just as sinful as, or they may even be much less sinful than, the Christians, but they do not have somebody to look up to who is without sin. It is not sin or sanctity that differentiates a Christian from a non-Christian; it is the Lord Jesus Christ whose mercy the poor Christian trusts. And you and I have known his power, how in the twinkling of an eye he is able to change everything and make us into new creatures. And then, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).
And so faith has been tested and through God’s grace it has emerged triumphant over hell and the devil, when it can say with Paul, simply, quietly, and without guile: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38 f.).
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
