The story is told that Martin Luther used to fall into fits of deep despondency and melancholy when the fortunes of the Lutherans at times reached low levels in their struggles with Rome. On one such occasion his wife appeared at breakfast in mourning, and when Luther inquired who had died, she replied, “God.” Completely taken aback, he protested that she was fooling. But his wife insisted that his deep depression she could explain only on such grounds, so she had decided to go into mourning for God. Luther quickly took the hint and ceased to act as though God were dead.
Among Christian people today the same lesson seems very much needed. As one reads Christian papers, listens to quiet orthodox sermons as well as to those not quite so orthodox, or discusses current events of church, state, and society, one finds that the same basic pessimism has wide currency. Christians today spend so much time bewailing the decline of morals, the rise of unbelief, the successes of Russian communism, and so forth, that an inhabitant from another planet landing here might well think that Christianity, knowing of nothing but disaster, has for its motto “Brethren, let us weep.” The common attitude is that since all depends upon man and since man does nothing to change the situation, total disaster stares us all in the face.
The fundamental trouble is that, like Peter when he walked on the water, Christians see the difficulties and problems, the waves and the winds, all too clearly As a result their hearts cannot but fail them for fear. The problems are so great, the challenges so mighty, the difficulties so overpowering that they feel themselves powerless to achieve anything. Therefore, they throw up their hands in sheer despair. Dismal and despondent, they declare that everything is going to the dogs. The real trouble, however, lies within themselves: they have forgotten the sovereign God. While they recognize their own weakness, they fail to remember that the Covenant God still reigns and rules.
Such forgetfulness makes men powerless. Like Peter they begin to sink under the waves because they fear to act, or even to attempt anything. If one has reached the position where he feels that the forces of unbelief and evil dominate the universe in which he lives, he soon resigns himself to the belief that he can do nothing to oppose them. And he does nothing. Rather he contents himself with living out his day in his small environment and conforming to everyone else and looking for the end of his life. Such an attitude many Christians would seem to have adopted in the face of present-day difficulties.
On November 18, 1559, when the Protestantism in Scotland had reached its lowest ebb, Scottish Reformer John Knox wrote two letters, one to Sir William Cecil, secretary of Queen Elizabeth, and the other to Mrs. Anna Lock of London. In the letter to Cecil he set forth most accurately the state of affairs in Scotland, and pointed out that to human eyes disaster stared at the Protestants around every corner. But to Mrs. Lock he had the following to say:
Least that the rumors of our trubles truble you above measure, deare Sister, I thought good in these few words to signifie unto you, that our esperance [hope] is yit good in our God, that He, for his great name’s sake, will give such successe to this interprise, as nather sall these whome he hath appointed to sigh in this be utterlie confounded; neither yet that our enemies sall have occasioun to blaspheme his veritie, nor yet triumph over us in the ende.
The situation looked bad, but God the Redeemer still ruled.
The Church needs a renewal of this faith today. She must go to the Scriptures to hear there the Word of God: I am the Lord and there is none else beside me. As Paul says in Ephesians 1:22, Christ is head over all things to the Church. He still rules and reigns to subdue all his enemies and the enemies of the Church. This doctrine nerved the arms of the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, and only this doctrine can give us comfort and confidence in the present day.
Down through the history of the Church many Christians have rejected the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty. They have felt it to be bad because it seemed to take from men their responsibility. As it seemed to teach that men had to do nothing but stand by and let God act, the contrary tendency was to insist that man could frustrate God’s purposes. Such an attitude became particularly common on this continent during the period of “rugged individualism,” prior to 1930, and its continuance in the Church has now brought despair and hopelessness in many quarters.
History, however, shows that only those who really believe in God’s sovereignty, in the kingship of Christ over the Church, have turned the world upside down. It was a man such as Augustine of Hippo who, in the face of the advancing hordes of barbarians sweeping into North Africa, wrote The City of God to set forth the fact that Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings even though the world may appear to be dissolving in flames. This same Augustine hewed out of the Scriptures the foundations for Christian theology even to our own day. Upon his structure many others—Luther, Calvin, Knox, Kuyper, and Machen—further built and did exploits in the name of their God.
Belief in God’s sovereignty gave point to these men’s prayers, as it does today. The Christian’s duty still is to make all his needs known unto God by prayer, and to do so not doubting or wavering. If indeed God rules over all then the Christian can pray in confidence, for he knows that he places his needs before One who is omnipotent, omniscient, and above all else before the God of love who has redeemed him through Jesus Christ. God has told him to pray, and to pray believing that he shall receive his request.
But this does not mean that one should pray only when things go well, or when one thinks one can see the answer just around the corner. Rather the Christian must pray even when the clouds lower thick and black, when everything seems wrong. Then God answers in his own might and power to vindicate his Name and show forth his glory.
But such belief also brings with it the realization that God has called his people to work for him. Men have not chosen him, but He has chosen and called them for this purpose. Therefore, he has laid upon them a heavy responsibility to serve him in all of life. While many Christians know and believe this, they often forget that the results and effectiveness of their work also come from Him. They must indeed be pessimists if they think that God has commissioned them to serve him in this world, to witness for Christ to men, and has left the outcome dependent upon their abilities and upon their faithfulness. Christians must recognize that while their own works may seem very ineffective, yet God gives an increase far beyond anything that they can ask for or conceive. Since God is sovereign, Christians must only obey and leave the results to their Lord and King.
For this reason Christians should show themselves not pessimists and mourners but rather optimists living in true joy, for has not Christ stated that despite tribulations and troubles which appear to overcome his people, he has conquered the world (John 16:33). For the same reason Paul could assure the Romans that all things worked together for good to those who are Christ’s people (Rom. 8:28). Therefore, in spite of all the apparent difficulties lying in the pathway, they should go forward trusting in Him who is their Saviour, and manifesting the joy of his Spirit dwelling within.
Is God dead? If he is, we may well despair for behind everything lies chance and uncertainty. What is more, we might well give up trying and content ourselves with awaiting death. If God is dead all we can do is concentrate upon the things of this life and know that though we gain as much from it as possible, become wealthy, famous, and powerful, nothing lies beyond. All our efforts have no point. But should Christians adopt this defeatist, mournful, sad-eyed attitude, as only too many do? Not if they believe that their Redeemer lives. Pessimistic attitudes belong to those who feel that God is dead.
Now is Christ risen from the dead! The God-man, Christ Jesus died, but he has also come from the tomb victorious. Moreover, he today reigns over sin and death. Therefore, let us not wallow in our misery, nor clothe ourselves in sackcloth and ashes. Let us rather in joy and gladness abound in the work of the Lord and know that our work is not in vain for he has already won the victory (1 Cor. 15:58).
Are you going to God’s funeral? If you are, garb yourself in mourning clothes and draw near to his coffin in tears for all is over. But if you are truly a Christian, cease from mourning and remember that Christ is risen and is head over all things to the Church. This is the message that the mourning Christians of our day need to hear that they may truly show forth the joy of their Lord.
ROMAN CATHOLIC INTERESTS DEMAND U.S. FUNDS FOR PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
History demonstrates that where Romanists are strong enough, they persecute; where less strong, they oppress and harass; where in the minority, they seek privileges, government favor, and more power.
America is now facing unprecedented pressures to secure special favors for Roman Catholic education. This is more than an attempt to get financial help for Roman Catholic parochial schools; it is an effort to establish a precedent through which additional pressures for governmental assistance will be explored in the future.
President Kennedy has resolutely stood out against the efforts of the Roman Catholic church to change his proposed aid to education bill to reflect the hierarchy’s preferences. This is to his high credit, and indicates his determination at this stage to be independent of partisan pressures from his Church. Whether politicians in responsible government posts uphold American traditions or Roman Catholic traditions in Church-State matters should be an increasing popular concern. Webster’s New International Dictionary defines bigotry as “obstinate and unreasoning attachment to one’s own belief and opinions.” President Kennedy rightly insists that federal grants to nonpublic schools are unconstitutional. The hierarchical pressure for such grants seems to us obstinate and unreasoning.
I Believe …
That Jesus Christ is God’s supreme and only saving manifestation, and that sinful man is lost and forever doomed apart from a personal knowledge of the crucified and risen Saviour are irreplaceable convictions that sustain the missionary impetus of Christianity. With today’s seeming loss of martyr spirit church historians may well chart a foreboding future for the Christian faith. Some think Christianity might regain its apostolic zeal were it driven underground; they almost yearn for communism to strip away the affluence of the Christian fellowship in our times. Evangelistic renewal cannot be humanly plotted in this way, however, for persecution can destroy a faltering witness no less than revive a faithful remnant. While we must learn much about the stewardship of private possessions, can we expect effective lessons from a social philosophy that destroys private property and removes the capacity for voluntary consecration? The Church’s cutting edge in the world is her missionary passion. This power lurks not in the drear shadows of communism but bursts from the resurrection glow of the Tomb.
The spirit of compromise has already resulted in the use of government funds for indirect rather than direct aid to nonpublic schools. Whether the Constitution forbids even indirect aid to sectarian schools should be firmly established, since every concession will be readily exploited as a precedent. What Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops and archbishops think is nondiscriminatory, based on their sectarian point of view, ought not automatically to revise the American ideology.
The Bulletin (Aug., 1959) of the National Catholic Educational Association describes a meeting of that organization’s School Superintendents’ Department in Washington, D. C., at which then Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell and U.S. Commissioner of Education Lawrence G. Derthick were among the speakers. In a closed session at the end of the day’s program, the Bulletin discloses,
… Monsignor Hochwalt discussed the National Defense Education Act. He described the methods used to bring influence on the Congress so that Catholic interests would be included. Monsignor also pointed out the discriminatory aspects of the Act, particularly that part which grants forgiveness of loans only to teachers who work in public schools, not to those who choose to teach in private or parochial schools. Monsignor Hochwalt then sought direction from the superintendents for the policy he should follow in regard to the federal aid discussions which will almost certainly come into the next session of Congress.…
A third matter brought up at this closed session was the importance of immediate organization of the superintendents into state-wide groups. They are particularly important at this time for the distribution of funds available through the National Defense Education Act. Such funds will be available on a state level, not on a diocesan level.
The political maneuvering now in evidence supplies a warning of things to come. Rome never changes. She is determined to make the secular governments of the world her own agents of ecclesiastical gain. If she fails today she will try again tomorrow, in accord with her ambitious concept of Church and State. Whether Romanism eventually dominates America may well depend on the stalwart faithfulness of men and women who look back to the past, study the present, and see the storm warnings of the future.
The effort to deviate federal aid to parochial schools must be stopped dead in its tracks. Federal subsidization of public education is inadvisable; federal subsidization of nonpublic education is inexcusable.
LACKADAISICAL LAYMEN MAKE CHRISTIANITY A ‘SPECTATOR SPORT’
It is appropriate that Howard Butt, who doubles as lay evangelist and grocery chain executive, should underscore the dual role of the Christian layman. In a poignant address to the Layman’s Leadership Institute, Mr. Butt recently characterized the dedicated layman as one who actually lives in two worlds—a life in the Church, from whence he moves into “the world of daily concrete affairs, there to be a witness, a minister of reconciliation, a servant of God.”
Too few Christian laymen fully appreciate this dual role, and still fewer are willing to commit themselves to it. The result is that the tremendous interest in spectator sports now has a counterpart in American religious life. As Mr. Butt says:
“We have developed a spectator Christianity in which few speak and many listen. The New Testament Church commenced with Jesus saying to every one of his followers, apostles and ordinary believers alike, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.’ These words were not spoken in a pastor’s conference or a seminary classroom. They were spoken to all his disciples. But what started as a lay movement has deteriorated into a professional pulpitism financed by lay spectators.”
DECLINE OF CONSCIENCE IN THE WORLD OF WORK
Sometimes free enterprise suffers as much from its friends as its foes. Both big business and big labor currently sport ugly headlines. Government regulation stands to widen, not because controlled society is indeed better than free society, but to restrain greed.
Forty-one executives of 29 leading manufacturing companies were jailed 30 days, and individuals and corporations fined $1,924,000, in the largest government antitrust case. Convicted of price-fixing and bid-rigging in electrical equipment sales, their companies now face damage suits to recover millions of dollars of alleged overcharges. In Maryland, some savings and loan associations unregulated by federal agencies have fleeced depositors out of their life’s savings.
On labor’s side of the ledger, a Miami federal judge held Eastern Airlines’ flight engineers in contempt for resisting a court injunction in a wildcat strike that touched off the worst tie-up in American aviation. A half million travelers were inconvenienced, major lines daily lost millions of dollars, some 100,000 workers were out of work. The local union was fined $200,000 “or whatever was in the treasury.” Also in Florida, James R. Hoffa, international president of the Teamsters Union and others, face federal trial in a land development scheme involving $500,000 in union funds.
Responsibility before the law ought to be required with equal vigor from business and labor. A prison cell prayer meeting of errant executives and union bosses, flight engineers and bankers, might provide a happy prelude to sturdier social conscience in the world of work.
