That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Tim. 3:17).
God’s man is never a priest of the cult of contemporaneousness. God’s man must always have a sense of past, present, and future to be enabled to give stability, purpose, direction, and even a sense of destiny to an age characterized by the withering feeling that it is a cut flower with no roots in the past, radically discontinuous with earlier generations, and uncertain about the future. God’s man can never speak to the present without knowing what God has done in the past, and how God’s prophets have related revelation to the life of the people, and without having the assurance that no matter what the future holds, he knows who holds the future. Special characteristics of any particular time are never as new, as distinctive, or as significant as we like to suppose.
Actually the man of God is confronted with the necessity of applying ancient principles and long-effective solutions to the modern version of the problems with which human nature has always struggled. One of these problems is pride, which makes every generation want to feel that it is the pivotal point of history, that it will unquestionably be the most honored to stand before God because of what it has endured.
Indeed one of the things most desperately needed by Christians today is a sense of being instruments in God’s plan of the ages rather than prima donnas. Too often we feel that the spotlight of God’s special interest must follow us wherever we move across the stage of human experience. Humility bids us to become aware of all that God is doing in our world through all of his people and to rejoice in the dignity of linking our lives with God’s plan of the ages.
In his conclusion of the ten-volume A Study of History, Arnold J. Toynbee asked, “Why do people study history?” and answered, “The present writer’s personal answer would be, An historian … has found his vocation in a call from God to ‘feel after him and find him.’ ” He could also say, “We are right in seeing in history a vision of God’s creation on the move.…” In the religious realm the cult of the contemporary tends to identify God with the achievements of a specific era and a specific area. We are therefore inclined to think of God in terms of the mid-twentieth century, Western civilization, the United States of America, and our particular denomination. Only the historian could conclude that, whereas a clear majority of the assemblage of civilizations is already dead, every civilization, including our own, can die without that disaster’s proving that God has lost control of the universe like a careless teen-ager driving a hot rod on a crooked road. Our Western Christian civilization may die with all of its political, economic, social, and scientific achievements. Indeed the latter may be the cause of its death. This is the generation which produced DDT to kill bugs, 24D to kill weeds, Formula 1080 to kill rats, and E = MC2 to wipe out cities.
There is truly a place for the man with the Word of God in today’s world. It is precisely because he is not primarily concerned with today’s world that he is so needed by it. Indeed, it is precisely because he is not primarily concerned with improving or even saving today’s world that the man with the Word of God may turn out to be the saving salt in our society.
The minister is to preach and teach in such a way that the children of this world shall become the children of God. Such a statement may be simply a retreat from grappling with what it means to preach the Gospel in today’s world, or it may be a profound prescription for the ills with which we are beset. The Gospel is never communicated at all unless it transforms individuals by faith in Christ Jesus, makes new creatures through the sacrifices of the Cross, and imparts a new destiny through the power of the Resurrection. A gospel, however, which is designed only to provide people with a magic formula to be repeated on the Judgment Day as the password for heaven is just hocus-pocus. What we are trying to communicate is a present-tense experience with the eternal God which transforms an individual so that he becomes a new creature in Christ. This experience is more than an idea or information about the historical Jesus. It is more than a doctrinal formula well memorized. It is more than a cheap insurance policy taken out by those who figure that at that price—“a free gift”—they can’t lose much if it turns out to be an unnecessary precaution against the flames of hell. It is an encounter in time with the eternal God whereby ordinary men whose lives would otherwise be defined by two dates on a tombstone become in this world the embodiment of what God is doing in his plan of the ages.
These are not clichés. The most damning thing in today’s world is the willingness of men of God to resort to stratagems, promotional devices, theological rationalizations, and ecclesiastical machinery to get people into the church who yet remain outside the kingdom of God.
Today’s world is far too desperate to be satisfied long with hocus-pocus. If religion does not come up with some clear and effective answers to the fears and frustrations of today, the tide will soon turn, and people will seek refuge in some new messiah. I predict that even in the United States he will turn out to be a political messiah with an American brand of Nazism, Fascism, or Communism. The scientist has had his day and has provided his best gifts to humanity, but without answering men’s deepest needs. The economist has had his day and, at least in our own land, has provided his best gifts in material prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of the power of Aladdin’s lamp, but he has not answered the deepest needs of the people.
The sociologist has wrought mighty ideas, particularly in our own land, but a member of the British House of Parliament described his weakness: “You cannot make the golden age out of leaden men.” Currently in our own land people are turning to the psychiatrist and the preacher. As a result, we have broken out with the cult of peace of mind and tranquilizing drugs. There are many examples of successful ministers and psychiatrists, but across the land there is not yet a general cure. This is illustrated by the fact that while there is a revival of religion, there is a decline of morality. While more Bibles are being sold, more salacious literature is being consumed.
One of the characteristics of today’s world with which the man of God must deal is the evaporation of optimism about the individual. While the rugged individualism of the pioneer era of American life persists in many places, it is becoming increasingly a minority attitude as the people are swallowed up in the urbanization of American life. They lose self-confidence in awareness that economic tides ebb and flow. They become aware that distant international events may reach into their home to change every relationship through world conflict. Big unions, big business, and big government create a sense of impotency.
Peter’s Narrative
Acts 11:1–18
It’s not the first time roosters called my name,
Tearing the day to ribbons with their shrill
Incisive cries—like daggers in the heart.
And I remember dogs a’whine, and swine
Squealing the depth from cliff to sullen sea.
But bear! And someone’s cat; adder and mice,
Gazelle and antelope all clasped in one
Great square of sail cloth! Tell me, would you eat?
I loathed the sight of crawling, creeping fare
For mealtime. Three times did I stare and hear
The order, “Kill and eat.” Three times the air
A’quiver with the breath of God. Three times?
Lord, will that triplet always be my fear?
Three lies, three questions; even then three men
Calling in Joppa for a Simon who
Also replied to Peter. How they knew,
Had but one answer, so I went along
And saw God work his miracle of grace
On heathen, pagan, Gentile—pick your name,
The fact remains the same Christ died for all.
Don’t you remember Pentecost? And flames
Twisting their tongues of brilliance on each brow
In that locked upper room? I’d have you know
Our petty grievances bring back to mind
Old Jonah, whimpering when fellowmen
Accepted pity. Need we have the vine
To wither up our shade to scorching lines
Of dimness on the burning clay? Our God
Is wide enough, and wise and true, and great
As any net that scoops up trout and bass
And pickerel—if they will. To think I found
The Master’s stay in Sychar something strange
When eagerly they heard, and all because
One woman—not the kind I’d choose,
Or you, or you, or even you, I’m sure—
Heard out his message “spirit and in truth.”
What other way to worship is there left?
And these in Caesarea were the same;
I felt the Spirit working, moving, sure
As any tongues or doves could prove. And they
Received no less a gift than fired our souls.
I dare not be the one to block their way.
CHARLES WAUGAMAN
The answer to this problem is both a new emphasis on the dignity of the individual in the sight of God, his infinite worth and value, his capacity to encounter the ultimate, and also a new emphasis on the church as a fellowship in which individuals can warm their spirits with others of common spiritual experience.
Another characteristic of today’s world is what Eric Fromm has called the “escape from freedom.” Men have found that freedom is sometimes both a lonely and a dangerous thing. Thus it is that today many are eager to trade freedom for security, to get out from under the responsibilities of freedom by shifting that responsibility elsewhere. It is this combination of devaluing the individual and despair with freedom that causes one to feel that unless churches come up with eternal answers to today’s questions, the United States stands just one world conflict or one major depression from a political dictator.
To resort to familiar terminology, Christ is our only hope. But never say that with despair—our only hope! What wonderful hope, what assurance is here!
Again it was Arnold Toynbee who pointed out that real progress in any civilization is always the product of a great challenge which “releases the energies of the society to make responses to challenges which henceforth are internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material.”
How then shall the man of God deal with these two characteristics of our day—his disillusionment with individualism and with freedom?
First, the man of God must point out that the individual has never been the measure of all things. He has never been the ultimate good or the ultimate standard. The individual in isolation has never been sufficient. Then he must show that freedom is not anarchy, that freedom is not the absence of discipline, that freedom is not the absence of controlling principles. Freedom is not doing what one pleases but doing what is right. Freedom is not just the possibility of error but also the possibility of correcting error. Freedom is given the individual not as an end but as a means whereby he may responsibly pursue an understanding of truth.
Jesus took account of the shifting historical scene, but he set his Word as more permanent than the North Star to guide us. “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.” He spoke eternal truth that should stand the test of time. He launched that truth in human experience by his words. He spoke them not in the ordered procession of a philosopher but released them at random, wherever someone in need would give them ear. He sought no auspicious setting for profound pronouncements; rather, an audience of one worthless woman and the curbstone of a well provided the occasion for a discourse which the marching feet of time can never drown out. His words belonged not to his day but to all the tomorrows. Yet he wrote them in no book but sowed them in the lives of those who would listen. Careless did he seem with the truth he spoke, for he sought to perpetuate it in no school or political organization. He simply bade his friends pass on his word.
Now his words are echoed in the languages of all the earth. They have become the breath of hope to millions. They have become the guide of life to those who are perplexed. Comfort have they been to the sorrowing. Courage have they brought to those in fear. They have enchanted us and changed us, for whenever and wherever they are repeated, these words of Jesus lead men through faith to identify themselves with him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
His words are old with the passing centuries, but they leap from their setting to become as fresh as reflected sunlight on the dew of the morning, for they speak the way of redemption. They are the language of faith by which the death and resurrection of Christ are mediated as the personal possession of all who would have life abundant and eternal.
The words of God need no editing by the minds of men. The truths of God need no retouching by the hands of men. They need only to be set to the music of our heart’s rejoicing that God so loved us and loves us now.
END
First Love
Revelation 2:1–7
Oh Church of Christ,
Of native love bereft,
Come back again
To that first love you left.
Your prudent works
You have not failed to do,
But you have left
The love which once you knew.
Your purity,
And zeal for truth and right,
Your patient care
Are worthy in His sight.
But all is vain
Unless impelled by love,
Thrice-pledged, to Him
Who lives and reigns above.
Repent, Oh Church,
And seek again to know
That first constraining love
Of long ago.
DAVID G. GANTON
