Look, No Hands!
My duties as sidewalk superintendent have reached a new peak this summer. I have assumed virtually full responsibility for a library being built on my favorite campus. Unhampered by board fences, I have got right into the job. The workmen use a jovial signal when I begin an inspection tour; it’s rather like piping an admiral on deck. The skill of these men is astonishing. They wheel a barrow of cement past you on a narrow plank.
Steelworkers are great showmen. One girder jockey insisted on riding high with the beams and waving to the crane operator. “Look, no hands!”
But a crane’s claw can’t build a stone wall. Up against the steel beams stone masons now stand on their scaffolding, skillfully chipping rock. I’m glad. Part of the beauty of a stone building lies in the human touch. That touch has been given to almost every stone in the library by a stooped master mason who follows his men, smoothing a joint, resetting a stone—the heir of generations of artisans.
Pastor Peterson joined me on an inspection trip. He agreed that power construction could never give a building the charm of hand craftsmanship. “But the greatest building is made without hands,” he added. Sensing a sermon, I suggested we supervise the setting of a limestone column. He was not to be diverted.
“Solomon’s temple was built without a mason’s hammer; the stones were shaped at the quarry. Yet it was built with hands, and dedicated to the Lord who cannot dwell in a temple made with hands.”
“Is the temple made without hands the church?” I asked. I remembered a New Testament passage about living stones.
“Yes, but that is because the church is the body of Christ. He pronounced destruction on the temple made with hands, and by his resurrection he built another temple, not made with hands.
I had another question, but three tons of crushed rock happened to be delivered at that moment just where we stood.
Later I reflected that God’s house is handcrafted, too. The stone cut without hands is shaped by the hand of God. And the Builder’s hand is on every stone.
EUTYCHUS
A Time To Laugh
“God Made Me to Laugh” (July 6 issue) brings a welcome emphasis. There is too frequently a spurious solemnity connected with orthodox Christianity. We do tend to take ourselves too seriously.
Why must Mr. Redding confuse his point by lumping together so many diverse elements for his touch of lightness and laughter? People laugh for very different reasons, ranging from cruel derision to genial merriment. What has slapstick (“Let us play, er—pray”) have to do with bitter irony (Frost: “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.”)? What has either of these to do with the deep joy in the conversion of a degraded sinner?
Granted that our Lord knew real joy and manifested a wholesome and vigorous sense of humor, it is misleading to say: “She (life) flew at him in a tantrum, flung suffering in his face and hung him up to die. We do not keep back the tears. But he took life and taught it a thing or two. Nothing could destroy Christ’s good humor, for life tried everything.” Surely we are not to understand that Christ avoided all tears and anguish, and always wore a sunny smile. We are not entitled to conclude that it was in a light-hearted mood that Jesus cast out the money changers in the temple, rebuked the legalists, preached repentance and judgment to come. Human redemption was at the center of Christ’s intent. He was far from attempting to play tricks on life, ever in rosy good humor. Christ was not a cosmic clown.
Let there be genuine and spontaneous joy, yes exuberance, among those who know the Lord. It is part of our birthright. May God help us to puncture our stiff and stuffy ways. We need desperately to learn to laugh, but it does make a difference when and how and why we laugh.
ARTHUR W. KLEM
Wheaton College
Wheaton, Ill.
“God Made Me to Laugh” was good, but to picture our forefathers by writing, “Yesterday’s pilgrims didn’t dare to clown and Plymouth squeezed itself into a poker face,” and “the Calvinists were so afraid of sin’s consequences that they tried to wipe off every smile, put a stop to dancing and turned off the organ.” is not a concrete picture of them.…
Our fathers were deep with God. They stood amazed about his majesty and holiness. They lived on resurrection ground, and they saw plain when God’s Word tells us that a small minority are saved, and the throngs are marching night and day to hell.…
D. KORT
Oaklawn, Ill.
If David A. Redding was attempting to emphasize the joyful side of the Christian life … he went too far afield. To attribute to God a sense of humor in creating creatures that are fitted to excite ridicule because of their grotesque appearance is to charge him with a vicious character. Scripture tells us that “God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” … It does not say, “Much of it was laughable.” … God did not make His creation to laugh at it, but to glorify Himself.…
REGINALD VOORHEES
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Omaha, Neb.
Trend And Tradition
I read with real interest and appreciation the article on our Jubilee Council in the June 8 issue (News). I do, however, deeply regret the statement … “CMA churches traditionally stress the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a ‘second definite work of grace.’ ”
The words “baptism of the Holy Spirit” cannot be found in the word of God. The use of this term leads many innocent and sincere people into confusion as they search for an emotional experience, which is wholly unscriptural. The Bible says we are to be “baptized with the Holy Ghost.” We are to be baptized into one body and we must then be continually “filled with the Holy Ghost.”
I also trust that the society, of which I am part, is not bound by tradition. God deliver us from tradition and make us biblical. I fully understand that in the early days of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, what you say may have been true, but today I find many who insist that the Bible teaches … a Spirit-filled life and not a second work of grace.
E. NIELSEN
First Alliance Church
Charlotte, N. C.
The statement regarding the CMA position on what you call a “second definite work of grace” might have been categorically true in Simpson’s day but the trend has been otherwise through the years. Those of us who champion Bible exposition over tradition point out that the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit is part of his saving work.
The presuppositions in 1 Corinthians 12:13 are important. The en heni pneumati (by one Spirit) reveals that the Holy Spirit is the agent which places us into the body of Christ. The eis hen soma (into one body) states the extent or end of the action. If a man is not baptized by the Spirit he is not in the body of Christ, hence, not a Christian.
ANDRE BUSTANOBY
Arlington Memorial Church
Arlington, Va.
Thank you for the excellent coverage given our Diamond Jubilee Council. I have enjoyed reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY from its inception, and have appreciated your fair and factual reporting of the current religious scene.
Please permit me to comment on two of your statements in reference to our council. First, concerning “a second definite work of grace.” As you well know, words and phrases tend to change in meaning through usage. We in the Alliance believe in “a crisis experience subsequent to regeneration” at which time, in response to a step of total surrender to Christ and an act of appropriating faith, Christ himself, in the person of the Holy Spirit, dwells in fullness in the believer. Thus our holiness is not in self-effort nor in the perfection of the flesh, but rather is the life of Christ himself, “I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me.”
Your reference to the few who attended the closing morning prayer service at the “appointed hour” implies that they were all who prayed. Actually there were scores who did meet in prayer during the period.
NATHAN BAILEY
President
The Christian and Mission Alliance
New York, N. Y.
Salvation And The Army
Your publication will, I am sure, welcome some comment from the National Office of The Salvation Army regarding the reference to The Salvation Army’s program for alcoholics in the communication from Hatfield (Eutychus, May 25 issue). I am, therefore, submitting the following information on behalf of our National Commander, Commissioner Norman S. Marshall.
In the United States, The Salvation Army operates 125 Men’s Social Service Centers, and 20 Harbor Light Centers (skid-row), installations where we endeavor to meet the needs of men.
We have a Service to Man program in operation in all of our Men’s Social Service Centers. The following is a quotation from our “Men’s Social Service Handbook of Standards, Principles and Policies”: “If a man’s body and mind are redeemed for society, if we have been able to lift him up from the waste heap of the world to a place of usefulness and productivity, we have performed a meritorious service. The men coming to these institutions are often steeped in sin, and bound by the strong chain of intemperance and moral evils. There is no hope or real help for them apart from the salvation of God.”
These fundamental purposes have not been altered. Other activities and techniques have been added. Case work techniques of interviewing, counselling and case recording, as well as group work techniques of group therapy, and leisure time programs are typical of these activities.
Many of our institutions have an “Alcoholics Anonymous” group organized and operated by the men within the Center and men, of their own choice, may attend the regularly scheduled meetings. This, however, is an additional activity by and for the men which in no way modifies our traditional evangelistic approach in the regularly scheduled meetings of each Center. Last year 4,525 converts were registered as a result of these meetings.
… the primary function of the Men’s Social Service Center is the rehabilitation and/or the spiritual regeneration of the man, and to aid him in regaining self-respect and acquiring such moral and spiritual principles of conduct and such habits of industry as to enable him to take his rightful place in society.
We assure our friends everywhere that the fundamentals have not changed; conversion and regeneration are necessary to salvation!
JOHN GRACE
Colonel
National Headquarters
The Salvation Army
New York, N. Y.
Delete ‘Diocesan’
In the May 11th issue … Review of Current Religious Thought … quoted an article written by an Episcopalian clergyman in a “Diocesan magazine.” It has been brought to my attention that this quotation came from the magazine “Trinity” published by the Blessed Trinity Society of Van Nuys.… This magazine is not a Diocesan magazine, but is published by a “group of dissidents” of the parish of St. Mark’s, Van Nuys, who, according to the Rector of that parish “is not related to our parish in any way.” The Bishop of the Diocese has stated in a letter to me “the Trinity magazine published by the Blessed Trinity Society of Van Nuys is not recognized by the Diocese and I do not know very much about their activities.”
FREDERICK C. HAMMOND
St. John’s Episcopal Church
San Bernardino, Calif.
The Name Stays
I still like your title (CHRISTIANITY TODAY) rather than that given you either by the Time headline writer (“Conservatism Today,” Religion section, July 13 issue) or by Karl Barth (“Christianity Yesterday”)!
PAUL S. JAMES
The Manhattan Baptist Church
New York, N.Y.
My congratulations to you all for the kudos in … Time.…
VIRGINIA MATSON
Libertyville, Ill.
