“Then he who is seated upon the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new!’ … If a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new” (Rev. 21:5a; 2 Cor. 5:17, Phillips).
The mood of our age of disillusionment is aptly portrayed in Pinero’s play The Second Mrs Tanqueray. The heroine, an intriguingly beautiful woman who has had many lovers, finally meets a man with whom she falls in love. Emotions are stirred within her that lust had long quenched. He is handsome and personable, a man who enjoys the prestige of wealth and a long-respected name. He seems to be all that a woman might want in a husband arid in a father for her children. His love is selfless; he desires above all else to make up to her somehow for the years of sordidness she has endured.
They sit down like the intelligent people they are and attempt to foresee all the possible threats to their marital happiness because of the hangovers from her past. This may happen, what will we do? This former lover may call, what will we say? They are completely sincere, almost naive; there is no hint of the morbid or sordid, no thought of forces outside themselves that might bring to destruction their well-made plan. It is beautiful, idyllic, and seems certain to succeed.
But they find that despite their noblest efforts, they are using only the same old inadequate block’s that proved tragic before. They are only rearranging the furniture of their lives, and the new room fails to make old furniture new. Too late they discover the impossibility of their task. The suicide of Paula Tanqueray comes as an inevitable conclusion. Just as she is about to take her life, Paula speaks the key line of the play: Tomorrow is but yesterday entered through another door. Is this not the essence of our disillusionment today?
What is there in man that makes him so desperately want a better life?
In a frequently cited psychological experiment, thirty kindergarten children were brought into a playroom furnished with a great variety of attractive toys. The problem was that none of the toys was perfect: there was a phone without a receiver, an ironing board without an iron, a table with no chair, a boat with no pond. Yet the children got along together very well, without crying or fighting or complaining. The child who picked up the boat made a pond out of paper and sailed merrily away; the child who wanted to phone used his fist for a receiver; two girls sat on boxes at the table.
The next day the children returned to the same room and the same toys. The only difference was that now they could see through a glass window an adjoining room where there were perfect toys, where everything fit together and was complete. And from the moment they entered and saw these perfect toys that were denied them there was nothing but quarreling and unrest. Some withdrew from the conflict (one just lay on the floor); others became aggressive. On the second day they had discovered that a better world lay beyond their reach and so were discontent with the world they were in.
If we did not realize the possibility of a world better than ours, we would not suffer from disillusionment. But we know there must be something better. We know that war, violence, poverty, are not fitting characteristics of human life. The cruelty and exploitation we see in human relationships are not appropriate for man; this cannot be why we are here.
Herein is Christ’s opportunity to make his revolutionary claim, one based upon his resurrection from the dead: “Behold, I make all things new.” Not new in time alone, but new in quality of life. At the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples, “I will not drink again of this cup until I drink it new with you in the kingdom.” He took symbols of the old covenant—old because now a new quality had been revealed—and fulfilled them in himself, thus making the symbols radically new. Then he gave his Church the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of himself. But this still is not the end, for he will drink with believers again in the kingdom—the same feast but made new.
In Christ is the only source of newness. Like Mrs. Tanqueray we think we can create a new world for ourselves by our own determination. We will reform society, banish ghettoes, rid the world of prejudice and oppression, all through sincerity and zealous love. But we find our brave new tomorrows neither brave nor new—only yesterday all over again, entered vainly through yet another door.
Yet in the midst of the chaos of disenchantment with the past and with the present, the stone is rolled away to reveal, not another door to yesterday, but newness of life. The old disillusionment with the historical record of age-long futility, with too easy answers to perennial questions, with shouted clichés that reveal only how stupidly anachronistic the truth can be made to appear—this fades away when one receives the Christ who makes all things new. The haunting realization that just out of reach there are better blocks with which to build gives way to a spiritual experience of newness of life when a man sees Christ dying for sin and creating an access to resurrection life. The believer begins to realize what it means to receive him who is created wisdom from God, one person who is unique in his perfect adaptability to each unique creature, the one who is “our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).
This wisdom in the received Christ provides the tailor-made way of escape from temptation, created new according to each person’s most intimate need at each moment of trial. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
The creation of the believer is both a perfect work and a process of maturation. Christ’s own analogy is that of the vine and the branch: the branch is alive through its union with the vine, and in due season it reproduces fruit according to the nature of the vine. The believer receives a new quality of love, love based upon an irrefutable experience of divine grace, forgiven-forgiving love. Christ provides a man the wisdom of God to love and creates an ever-increasing and abounding love toward all men (1 Thess. 3:12). As a corollary the life of the believer is transformed from the chaos of self to the cosmos of love—for God so loved the cosmos that he gave. In this manner Christ creates others new through their contact with his own love in believers’ lives. Love grows by contact with love; it is contagious; love infects. Christ creates in his disciples the quality of love that makes them, each in his particular way, become fishers of men.
All this, finally, is accomplished through the Word: the Scriptures alone are able to create in a believer this full wisdom unto salvation (2 Tim. 3:15). The window between us disillusioned children and the perfect toys beyond our reach is God’s revelation of his love, the Scriptures of the Christian faith. The window reproves and sets limitations of love, but it also enables, becomes a door. Like the cherubim guarding the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, the Word of God shuts man out from the perfection of which he is aware but deprived, but shuts him out that it may bring him in, created new. These are the new blocks for new men to discover and to use for building liberated lives.
J. Furman Miller is chairman of the Department of English at Athens College, Athens, Alabama. He holds the M.A. degree from Ohio State University, and teh Ed.D. degree from the University of Georgia, and he is also a graduate in theology of Nyack Missionay College.
