EDITORIALS
A Salvation Army lassie stood in the cold before an open pot ringing her bell. Passersby moved along briskly, heedless of the plaintive note of the bell. Only ten shopping days before Christmas. There was much shopping still to be done, and never enough money to buy all that was wanted. Occasionally someone would drop a nickel in the pot, a dime, a quarter, a dollar. What for? Soup, soap, and salvation!
The world is full of empty bellies bloated with wind and carried about on spindly legs, of emaciated human beings with listless eyes and hopeless faces staring out at nothing, their hands extended in despair to a world that does not pause to care. There never has been enough soup for all. Will there ever be—at this or any other Christmastime? Hard comes the Word of compassion: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these … ye did it unto me.” Not to all, for that is not possible. None of us has enough for that. Not all that you have. God doesn’t ask that. But enough of it, until it hurts, until it is a true sacrifice to the Son who gave not some but his all.
There are squalid, rat-infested hovels along ribboned streets of concrete and asphalt; cities within cities, boxlike dwellings piled one atop another; dirt and disease; leaking roofs, falling plaster; filthy alleys piled with rubbish. Like lepers, multiplied thousands of unclean people wait to die. Some have no leaky roofs for they have no homes; many scratch their scabs or whisk away flies from open sores, while others look out on a world they cannot see, blinded beggars with matted hair and filth-encrusted bodies. Too little soap and never enough hot water. Have you no soap to spare? No water to bring? Hard comes the Word of healing: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these … ye did it unto me” this Christmas. Not all your soap, but some. Not all the hot water, but surely that which you don’t need. A cleaner earth, a healthier people—this Christmastime.
Hopeless faces, rich and poor; some in hovels, others in mansions; some walking in shoes with paper for soles, others in shoes of alligator skins; some hungry and chewing a crust of bread, others leaving half a steak on a gold-flowered plate; some well showered, powdered, and perfumed, others dirty and foul-smelling. But all dead, lifeless because godless. Soup and soap are not enough; the one cannot satisfy the hunger of the soul, the other cannot cleanse from sin’s defilement. What can meet these needs?
At Christmastime God came in the form of a child, cradled in a stable because there was no room in the inn. The gates of Paradise swung open, and to the mansions and hovels, to the tenements and split-levels, come the glad tidings: The Bread of life is here—eat and hunger no more! The Water of life has come—wash and be clean forever! And hard comes the Word of salvation: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these … ye did it unto me.”
O Jesus, precious Sun of gladness,
Fill thou my soul with light, I pray!
Dispel the gloomy night of sadness,
And teach thou me this Christmas Day
How I a child of light may be,
Aglow with light that comes from thee.
Tolstoy: A Measurer Of Man
December 4 marks the centenary of the publication of Leo Tolstoy’s mammoth novel War and Peace. Seven years of intensive labor went into this novel, and more than any of his other writings—even Anna Karenina—War and Peace unremittingly explores the mysteries of the human spirit.
The title itself conveys the juxtaposition of love and hate, a reality faced by all men. The surface plot, alternating between peace and war, sweeps across the restlessness of man’s spirit. The novel opens in peace-time and records the everyday events of Russian life in the early 1800s, but war soon grips the nation. A few years later peace returns only to be dissolved once again in war. In the detailed story of Tolstoy’s central characters—Natasha, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, and Pierre Bezukhov—this same restlessness can be seen and felt. Tolstoy has done more than capture the Russian attitudes of the day (the book is filled with descriptions preceded by “Russian”). The hungerings and questions of all men are recorded here. Prince Andrey, as he stares at the sky, remarks “How calm and peaceful, how majestic.… Everything is vain, everything is false.…” This and many other passages show the paradox of living in turmoil while recognizing the grandness of life itself. There is much in Tolstoy reminiscent of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
As Christians we should honor God’s gift of genius to Tolstoy and accept the truths he expresses. With the power of a great novelist, Tolstoy reminds us of the words in Psalm 8:3, 4: “When I look up at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, what is man that thou shouldst remember him, mortal man that thou shouldst care for him?” (NEB). After reading War and Peace we better understand man made “little less than a god.”
Compassion For Pakistan
The neediest place on earth is easy to identify this Christmas. The cyclone and tidal wave that hit East Pakistan left not only countless dead but also untold thousands who may wish they had perished. Their suffering is a challenge to men of good will everywhere. What a year it would be if funds intended for office parties and toys (adult “toys” included) were diverted to relief aid. The Pakistanis don’t celebrate Christmas, but if Christians really rose to the occasion to alleviate the hunger and disease, the result might be a holiday the whole world would remember.
Is There A Priest In The House?
Yes, and a Jesuit at that. Robert F. Drinan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, joins a re-elected Southern Baptist minister, a Republican from Alabama (see News, page 35). Protestant ministers have long served in the House. Adam Clayton Powell even continued as pastor part-time of a large Baptist church during his long tenure. Since Catholics are becoming more and more like Protestants, it is not surprising that so many of their clergy sought election. And it is a mark of the Catholic voters’ independence of clerical control that most priests lost even when their districts (and in the case of one, his whole state—Rhode Island) were largely Catholic.
The Congress ideally should be composed of men and women from all walks of life. While congressmen and senators primarily represent their districts and states, secondarily they serve to reflect the diverse constituencies that cross geographical borders. For a priest to take a seat in Congress is no more anomalous than for a physician or actor or farmer to do so. Of course, he cannot continue to function primarily as a full-time religious worker any more than a doctor in Congress could have much of a private practice. And any influence he can have in shaping legislation should be based on grounds of national rather than sectarian interest. Catholic laymen in state as well as the national legislatures have amply demonstrated their interest in aid to parochial schools and opposition to abortion. It is hard to imagine that priests could do any more to advance their cause.
Another reason for some priests and preachers to aim for political office is that government is the God-ordained way for achieving many of the things—such as peace in Viet Nam—they have worked for in the ministry. As we have often had occasion to say, we believe the Scriptures teach that the Church collectively is to be greatly restricted, but the role of the individual layman or clergyman is much broader, and can include active participation in partisan politics as a legitimate vocation.
The Monday-Night Revolution
Pro football in the United States is seldom considered an institution that fosters moral and spiritual renewal. Indeed, its most noticeable effect upon Christendom is to reduce church attendance. This season, however, not all the pro games are being played on Sunday. One contest each week is delayed until Monday night, then televised across the continent, and according to Sports Illustrated the impact has been revolutionary.
The seamier side of American culture seems to have been hit the hardest. Movie houses featuring nudies are said to be hurting terribly, and some theater owners are reportedly thinking of closing down for the night. Too many people prefer the football game.
There are also some things to be discovered from the fact that all it takes is a good game to attract people back to television. Television is a medium that has yet to find its best niche. Christians ought to be the pioneers in that search—for their own reasons.
‘La France: C’Est Moi!’
The man who rescued his country from war and revolution and who said, “I am France,” died in isolation, having been turned out of office, as Churchill was, by the people he wanted to serve. Charles De Gaulle’s career was a bittersweet one marked by varying political fortunes. He was undoubtedly the greatest Frenchman of the twentieth century, a remarkably astute leader who exhibited an almost uncanny prescience about many things. He was a nationalist who sought to recover the glory, the power, and the prestige that once had marked his native land and to some extent he succeeded.
But De Gaulle’s greatest dream, that of making France what it had been in earlier centuries, the top-ranking European power, was not fulfilled. He failed at this, not because he lacked the aspiration or dedication, nor because he was short on gifts of greatness, but because it was an impossible task for him or for any other man. The hinge of fate had left France in a position from which it could not in the foreseeable future dominate the European landscape again. The primacy had passed to others. God sets up and puts down nations according to his own timetable, not that of men or of nations.
De Gaulle lived and died in the Roman Catholic Church. He was a man of conviction who held tenaciously to the high principles that motivated him, one who did not hesitate to challenge Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin as the occasion required. We only wish he had led France into moral as well as political and economic renewal.
V.D. Distress Signal
Venereal disease in the United States is at the “pandemic” stage. This is the message the American Social Health Association flashed to the public at its annual session in New York last month, and since pandemic refers to “an epidemic of unusual extent and severity … over a wide geographical area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population,” the message should be considered a distress signal.
Right now some 14 million Americans have either syphilis or gonorrhea, and nobody can accurately estimate how many others have had these diseases and been cured by penicillin. Medical experts say gonorrhea germs have developed a resistance to penicillin. If allowed to go untreated, both syphilis and gonorrhea leave their victims marked for life. Sterility, blindness of offspring, paresis of the brain, and other conditions accompany venereal infections.
The ASHA called on President Nixon to appoint a commission to study the problem of venereal disease. This is hardly the answer. One gets awfully tired of study commissions that spend a lot of time and money but have little appreciable affect on the problem. It requires no panel of experts and no extensive study to determine that venereal diseases are spread by sex outside marriage. Sexual laxity, a byproduct of the erosion of morality and a companion of a general attitude of permissiveness flowing from a decline of true religion, is the root cause.
The cure is as simple as the disease is widespread. Sexual intercourse belongs to marriage and marriage alone. When sex is kept within its proper limits, venereal disease can be stopped dead. Even those who do not adhere to the express commandments of Scripture can hardly deny that a case for chastity can be made from these medical statistics that reflect one of nature’s inviolable laws: we reap as we sow.
Gay Demands
Homosexuals have become more and more demanding of late (see News, page 40) and now seem to want more freedom under the law and in social convention than heterosexuals have. Those who are heterosexual, if they follow the Word of God, wait until they are married to have sexual relations. Then they have relations only with their spouses. If a husband and wife through chronic illness, physical injury, prolonged absence, psychological difficulties, or any other condition is unable to fulfill the sexual side of marriage, heterosexuals do not go out loudly demanding the right to take an additional spouse or two or to commit adultery. They do not argue that since their nature is heterosexual they have every right to transgress the marriage laws of God and their country. Homosexuals should practice the kind of voluntary restraint that has long been practiced by those who are unmarried or who are unable to enjoy sex with their marriage partners. The same God who has proved himself able to help the voluntarily and involuntarily celibate heterosexual is able and willing to keep the would-be homosexual from sexual practices outside the bounds of marriage to someone of the opposite sex.
Winter Serenity
The chill of early December days heralds the cold deeps of winter, and we know we are, as Emily Dickinson said, only “a little this side of the snow,” that token of purity that covers sleeping branches and blades of brown grass with a newness befitting the season of Christ’s birth. Agelessly recurring yet ever wondrously new, the whiteness calms the spirit with a sense of peace unbroken by human intrusion. Such serenity encourages contemplation, while the unmarred expanse of white reminds Christians of the sinless Christ, the author of peace that the world does not know. Even when the snow swirls tempestuously, as our lives sometimes do, the chaos always ends in that perfect spread of white. As we look forward to this year’s celebration of Christmas, the chaos all around should seem less devastating to those who see the snow subdued to serenity.
Integration And Official Accountability
Ever since 1954 the District of Columbia school system has been officially integrated. Well before the Supreme Court decision of that year outlawed segregation the number of white children in the city schools was decreasing. Even if the dual system had been preserved there would still have been a continued decrease in the size of the white student population. But undoubtedly the exodus would not have been as rapid. Now the D.C. school system on the elementary level is 95 per cent black. One might be tempted to say that nothing has been gained by official integration if de facto segregation comes about anyway. What good is legal integration if it only causes whites to flee the city? What good is it to bus students in an effort to achieve integration if it only causes whites to withdraw from the public schools?
Before arguing that official integration hasn’t worked in the District of Columbia one must recognize that blacks are certainly no worse off in a unitary school system than they were in the former dual one. More important they are considerably better off, because the government has at long last recognized that skin color is not a legal basis for separating its citizens. The obligation of the government is to do right even when its people do wrong. Ultimately governors are accountable for their actions to God, whose servants they are (Rom. 13:4). God has made it clear beyond any shadow of doubt that discrimination against people because of the color of their skin, or any other factors of inheritance, is utterly abhorrent to him. Authorities are to operate under the rule of unbiased law. Those who do wrong are to be punished; those who do right are to be approved (Rom. 13:3). Personalities, prejudices, and public pressures must not be allowed to sway them from the right course.
There are indeed limitations on the government’s ability to promote integration even as there is little it can do to promote good will within a single family. But at least it can, by due process, dismantle the built-in legal bias present since the nation’s founding that has required separate treatment of black and white citizens. For continuing to do this even in the face of great opposition, the authorities are to be commended.
Will The Real Accc Please Stand Up?
Two groups now claim to be the American Council of Christian Churches. The one with headquarters in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, is an association of ten denominations, of which the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches is by far the largest. Its president, now in his third term, is a Presbyterian pastor, J. Philip Clark.
The other group is presided over by Carl McIntire, and while it claims to include all fourteen denominations that until recently were in the Valley Forge group, it has so far demonstrated the allegiance of only the five whose delegates elected Dr. McIntire last month. The best known of these denominations is McIntire’s own Bible Presbyterian Church. This ACCC has set up headquarters in Manhattan (where the Valley Forge council was until a couple of years ago) and through the Christian Beacon is widely heralding its case for being the true ACCC and its version of what happened at the recent annual meeting in Pasadena when the council divided (see November 20 issue, page 44). McIntire managed to have the bank account of the Valley Forge group frozen, and the courts will have to decide who is entitled to it and to the property there.
No one who is involved in the matter should form a decision without reading material from both sides. Those who have only the Beacon’s account should write the ACCC at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania 19481 to receive its side.
We will be very surprised if the courts rule in favor of McIntire. For one who contends so strongly for law and order, he certainly appeared to act in a most un-parliamentary and disorderly way. It was as if at a church service someone suddenly called for a business session and proceeded to have himself elected chairman and to replace the existing leadership—and this when a business session was scheduled for later the same day. McIntire will probably continue as president of an ACCC regardless of what the courts say. He has thousands of followers in hundreds of congregations. But it is of more than passing interest that over the years many of those who have been his close associates, as distinct from people who follow him from afar, have broken with him.
The views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY are not well represented by either side in this controversy. But we are concerned lest the name of Christ be made a target for ridicule. We only wish that those who continue to support Dr. McIntire knew some of the things about him and the way he conducts his activities that have become known to some who once marched close by his side. They might then find less reason to be enthusiastic about him and about the way he conducts his ministry.
Showing Compassion
Symbolically we use a word referring to the bowels to represent courage or fortitude. But in New Testament usage the bowels more closely approximate what we mean by the heart. Bowels often mean affection, though not in the male-female “sweetheart” sense, as when Paul tells the Philippians that he longs greatly after them “in the bowels of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:8), or when he tells Philemon that the “bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee” (Philem. 7). At other times, the bowels are viewed as the seat of compassion, as when John speaks of closing one’s bowels against a needy brother (1 John 3:17). Indeed, the verb that means “stirring the bowels” is interpretively translated as “being compassionate.” In the same sense we speak of our “heart going out” to someone in need; or, if we feel someone is too easily duped by the apparently needy, we call him a “bleeding heart.”
Significantly “bowels of mercies,” that is, compassion, is the first of the “things that are above” that Paul tells us to seek (Col. 3:1, 12). From compassion flows kindness, lowliness, meekness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. These virtues are various expressions of “love, which binds everything in perfect harmony” (v. 14).
What is compassion? What is it that we are to seek and to put on? To find out, we can look at some gospel accounts of compassion. On one occasion Jesus compared the crowds to “sheep without a shepherd” (Luke 9:36); his compassionate response motivated him to request prayer that laborers be sent among them to carry the Gospel. Too often when we think of crowds, unled or misled, our attitude is more one of indifference or anger. We need compassion to see them as Christ did.
On another occasion, Jesus disregarded his desire for solitude to minister to the crowds that pursued him. We too can expect such changes in our personal plans when compassion grips us. Another time Jesus’ compassion on a hungry multitude led him to feed them miraculously (Matt. 15:32). He did something specific and practical to meet their needs. Compassion is not only a feeling—it includes the action of hearts (or the Greeks’ bowels) moved by the needs of others. Do we place the same value on compassion that the Apostle Paul did, or have we become hardhearted?
