1972: Year of the Person?

The year 1972 promises to be memorable for evangelical Christianity. Many signs suggest we are on the verge of a major spiritual awakening that will benefit not churches alone but the whole of civilized culture.

But will this movement be characterized by a greatly intensified focus upon people as people and by fresh recognitions of individuality? Both Christians and non-Christians in our highly sophisticated technological society sometimes have the feeling that they are statistics lost in a chart or anonymous respondents in an opinion poll. Christianity must be presented as that which brings out the best in a person. Our faith needs to be seen more in the light of the value it assigns us in one another’s eyes. Regeneration through Christ and control by the Holy Spirit should bring us to a respect and love for people as they are that has no parallel in the world. It seems, hearteningly enough, that the revival is indeed shaping up in just such a way. This may be the year of the person!

A good example of the attitude to be sought after appeared in the December issue of Faith at Work in a testimonial by Peter Larson, a student at Northwestern University:

I have always been, or tried to be, a vocal crusader against injustice. But when I became a Christian, I saw the realm of social change in a different light. It was always easy for me to lash out against intangible evils like “the establishment” or the “fascist, racist nation.” But through Christ I’ve come to see that the problem is personal. The “establishment” is my next-door neighbor, my teachers, my employer.

I’ve come to see that the most effective and lasting change comes through relating to people, changing the portion of the world that I, as a seventeen-year-old Christian, come in contact with. When seen in this light, America with its many ills is no longer some faceless opponent; it looks like the man next door. Changing him is changing America.

For many years, churches have been jostled about by the controversy over social gospel versus personal piety. This dispute has produced in many minds a distinction between personal and social ethics that is unreal. The two areas are merely selective emphases, distinguished for purposes of discussion. One cannot exist without the other.

When Christians exercise a deep, abiding, selfless interest in other people, they are bringing these two disciplines together in a way that no theory can. “Turned on” Christians cannot help sensing a responsibility in personal as well as social dimensions. We talk about a society that suffers, but there is no such thing. Only people suffer, and only other people can help them. And winning others to Christ today often entails the prerequisite of a person-to-person identification that may even be sacrificial.

To take this matter seriously may mean turning some of the spotlights in the Church away from program and even pulpit and toward the pew. And this is happening. A number of congregations are beginning to experience lay participation at a much more wholesome level. Door-to-door visitation is making a comeback. So are church fellowship dinners. Coffee hours in the churches are becoming more popular. Home Bible-study groups are going stronger than ever.

The trend toward more closeness among people in churches is even influencing architecture. Some congregations are designing new sanctuaries and educational rooms to encourage it: the long, rectangular auditorium in which all but the front pews are remote from the action gives way to a “church-in-the-round” plan.

Reaffirmation of the person is going on outside the Church also. So-called secular man has begun to see that he has been assigning too much priority to data and systems, at the expense of personhood. One of the marks of our time is a moving away from the purely theoretical and closer toward human-interest aspects. This has been especially evident in education, where special needs of students are getting more attention and behavioral sciences are gaining over the physical, and in commerce, where advertising and marketing more and more emphasize the concept of caring.

The turnabout may be due to some extent to the great Jewish thinker Martin Buber and his brief classic I and Thou, first published in 1923. Buber was a humanist and a pantheist whose philosophy was in many ways far removed from New Testament Christianity. But the distinction he drew in interpersonal relations is basically valid: We can use people and serve things, and when we do so an I-it relationship is operative. Or we can have a much more profound relationship, which he terms the I-thou, in which there is conscientious effort at mutual respect and trust. What he describes as the I-thou approach should characterize the evangelistic outreach of the concerned Christian believer.

Emphasis on people should not be seen as a mere emotional jag or a bias toward experience. It involves focus upon the whole man, and that includes his mind. This is a terribly important factor. Evangelical youth workers say that the primary obstacles to acceptance of the Gospel today are intellectual. We must grant that often these reservations, though unwarranted, are nonetheless sincere; they must be dealt with and not dismissed as illegitimate or irrelevant.

Person-to-person Christianity is not new in the sense of being something that has just been discovered or developed. It is new in the sense that it represents a recovery of a crucial aspect of biblical truth.

Conscience: Good Or Bad Guide?

A multitude of good and bad deeds have been done in the name of conscience. The Berrigan brothers are in jail right now for actions they took in the name of conscience. Daniel Ellsberg was said by the New York Times to have given them the Pentagon Papers as “an act of conscience.” Hundreds of American servicemen who have fled to Canada to escape the draft say they did so for reasons of conscience. J. R. Vequist, the first graduate of the U.S. Military Academy to refuse to serve in Viet Nam, said upon taking asylum in Sweden that he “just felt in conscience … I could not go along with the idea of killing people.…”

In the Fall, 1971, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, the question of conscience surfaced in connection with papal infallibility. Arthur B. Crabtree, associate editor of the journal, says that papal authority is “a tradition which negates the claim of conscience.” As a Catholic he feels that “the consequence of that negation in the sixteenth century [Luther and the Reformation] was the division of the Catholic Church. The consequence in the twentieth century is the dissolution of the Catholic Church.” He says that Catholics today “can no longer submit blindly to the fiat of authority. They have their own intellect, their own values, and above all their own conscience. And like Martin Luther they know it is never safe nor prudent to act against one’s conscience.”

What should the Christian do about this matter of conscience? To what extent must it determine his decisions? For an answer we too turn to Luther, the shining Reformation figure who elevated conscience above the claims of pope or council. At the Diet of Worms in 1521 Luther took his courageous stand and appealed to conscience. But he knew that conscience in itself is not necessarily a reliable guide. He laid down the guiding principle that delivers conscience from self-deception and provides a standard of evaluation for all decisions. Luther said, “My conscience remains captive to the word of God.”

The doughty John Knox once pressed his claims on Queen Mary. She told him, “My conscience says not so.” Quickly Knox responded: “Conscience, Madam, requires knowledge.” And it is ever so. Conscience finds counsel in knowledge and knowledge in the revelation of God. If conscience is not captive to the Word of God, it will err; but under the tutelage of the Word and motivated by holy determination, conscience can reign supreme.

Fresh Starts

As the New Yorker might say: we’re no better than the next fellow at talking through a mouth filled with dental equipment and fingers, so, like the next fellow, we listen and grunt as expressively as possible while under the influence of Novocaine. The other day our dentist was describing his “newest” antiques, and it was easy to imagine the hand now drilling away decay later sanding the ravages of time from a pot-bellied stove and some solid walnut table legs. Under the circumstances, we could only manage to murmur something about the value of recycling.

When the tooth was finally patched, we wished the dentist happy new year as sincerely as we could with a sluggish mouth and, retrieving our umbrella from a renovated milk can in the waiting room, went out into the drizzly winter day, not exactly whistling but glad all the same for fresh starts: refurbished teeth, recycled table legs, rejuvenated years, and regenerated souls.

Blessed Are The Intelligent?

There is one “minority group” that, unlike virtually all others, can do little to call attention to itself. The mentally retarded by and large must depend upon others to make their plight known. Fortunately, a number of compassionate people with good minds have devoted much, even their whole lives, to the battle against genetic defects and illnesses that cause mental retardation, and to the care of retardates.

Increased concern in our day for the mentally retarded is a sign of intellectual maturity. Yet the intellectual sophistication that brings aid to the mentally retarded can in another sense be part of the problem. Contemporary prophets proclaim, “Blessed are the intelligent,” and people whose intelligence is below par may come to be regarded as less deserving of life than those who are normal or bright. Perhaps this was part of the attitude that recently allowed the avoidable death of a mongoloid infant without demur from society’s traditional humanitarians—members of the medical, legal, and theological professions.

Mongoloids and other imperfect people can live happy, loving, and useful—if simple—lives. And some have more potential than is immediately apparent. Studies have reported that 2 to 3 per cent of all mongoloids have average IQs.

It is especially befitting for Christians to be on guard against too high a regard for intelligence. True blessedness lies more in gentleness, peacemaking, and mercy.

Storm Signals In The Near East

The Pakistan-India war should not cause us to overlook developments in the Israeli-Arab struggle. There are grim hints that World War III may be in the making in that area of the world.

Israel and Egypt have reached an impasse. The Israelis have made it very plain that of the territories taken in the six-day war they will give back only those that they do not consider essential to their military security. Obviously the Golan Heights, the old city of Jerusalem, and the Jordanian land on the west bank of the Jordan are among the territories Israel will never surrender. From an Israeli viewpoint, that position is logical and reasonable; any nation in a similar situation would probably take the same stance. But this determination collides head-on with Egypt’s insistence that Israel return all lands taken in the recent war.

If Sadat of Egypt means what he says, if his statements are more than bluster and diplomatic camouflage, then he will soon have to “put up or shut up.” He has stated his demands in such bald terms that he may have talked himself past the point of no return.

By supplying Egypt with extensive air and ground materiel, the Soviet Union has upset the military balance. Meanwhile the United States has been dragging its feet about making more planes available to the Israelis.

The United States and the rest of the world cannot stand by and watch the dissolution of Israel and the possible genocide of its people. The crisis hours may come sooner than we expect. A resumption of fighting could bring the great powers into the conflict, and if this happened, the danger of a third world war would be great.

Christians are called upon to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and had better do just that. Until the guns begin to fire there is always the hope, however forlorn, that war can still be averted and a peace agreement negotiated.

The Indian-Pakistani Conflict

The world has witnessed another show of U. N. impotence—the Pakistan-India war, the repercussions of which will be with us for a long time to come.

Although the United Nations has served usefully in some areas, it has not fulfilled its major reason for existence. It has not been able “to maintain international peace and security … to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace.” It has not been able to persuade “all members” to “settle their international disputes by peaceful means” and “refrain … from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” And there is nothing to suggest that the U. N. will be any more successful in the future than it has been in the past on this score.

The Pakistan-India war is a complex affair. It is clear that there has been oppression and high-handed treatment of East Pakistan by West Pakistan. It is also clear that the Pakistani government dragged its feet in dealing with the independence movement and thus gave India an opportunity to intervene in its internal affairs.

India, despite its being a democracy and despite the Gandhian tradition of non-violence, needlessly went to war against its neighbor, with the intention of dismembering that state and with the hope of securing part or all of Kashmir. It has been supported in its aggression by the Soviet Union, while Pakistan has been supported by Red China.

The United States has not emerged with hands that are wholly clean. Recent information suggests that this country did exert behind-the-scenes pressure on the Pakistani government to deal constructively with the independence movement in East Pakistan. Nothing came of it. But public statements that implied full support of Pakistan and opposition to India clouded the picture and virtually precluded any U. S. role as mediator.

There never has been a warless world and there never will be so long as men remain unregenerate sinners. Since there is no prospect that all men will ever be converted to Christ and thus transformed, we can expect wars and rumors of war to be with us till the end of time. But the Christian realist still has hope. Christ himself will some day return and by his coming put an end to war. Meanwhile the world will simply have to endure the prospect of periodic warfare.

Using The Amish?

“True it is,” said Charles Dudley Warner, a noted man of letters in the latter part of the nineteenth century, “that politics makes strange bedfellows.” In the current campaign in behalf of Amish parents who do not want to send their children to public high schools—or to start their own—we wonder if the reverse is not true. Is the appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court by an ecumenical coalition simply a battle for religious freedom for the Amish? Or is it also an instance of strange bedfellows making politics?

The National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom boasts that Jonas Yoder, Wallace Miller, and Adin Yutzy, the three bearded fathers who are the defendants in the case, “have the support of their big brothers in the faith.” The “big brothers” are groups that have filed “friend of the court” (amicus curiae) briefs, and these include the National Council of Churches, the American Jewish Congress, the Synagogue Council of America, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, the Mennonite Central Committee, and Seventh-day Adventists. The U. S. Catholic Conference has also expressed its support of the Amish. William Ball, who for years has been the leading lawyer in the Catholic bid for public money for parochial schools, argued the Amish case before the Supreme Court last month.

One’s first reaction is: how nice of all these people to come to the aid of the Amish. But that is by no means the whole story. For one thing, most of the Old Order Amish think it wrong to press any kind of litigation. They are embarrassed and offended by these “favors.” They prefer—indeed they insist upon—taking their chances, so to speak. This kind of intervention violates their religious scruples (interestingly, none of the three defendants was present for the Supreme Court hearing).

The claims of the self-styled friends of the Amish that “their religion will be destroyed” if adolescents are required to attend high school are nonsense and an insult to the vitality of the Amish faith. Some Amish parents in Pennsylvania have started their own secondary schools and have adjusted reasonably well to the state’s educational requirements without resorting to special legal considerations.

That leaves us the question: why is this sudden supposedly humanitarian concern being imposed upon the Amish against their will? We are not sure of the answer, but it is relevant to point out that the arguments seek to enhance the stature of non-public education in a way that makes it seem deserving of government financial support.

No Christian parent approves all that is taught in public schools. There is increasing cause for concern about the educational drift, and to a substantial extent we agree with Amish anxieties at this point. Students, Amish or non-Amish, should be excused from specific activities that violate their principles. But non-Amish Christians are not exempted from general state educational requirements; what they are free to do when they feel that public schools are intolerable is to start their own private schools. There is no good reason to grant the Amish release from reasonable educational requirements that everyone else must meet.

Whom Can You Trust?

Recently one of our editors drained the radiator of his car, flushed it with a cleaning agent, and put in six quarts of fresh antifreeze-coolant and some water. The next day he took the car for routine servicing—new spark plugs and points, lubrication and oil change, and a minor tune-up. When the car was delivered, the serviceman informed its owner that he had checked the water in the radiator and found it necessary to add three quarts of antifreeze for $2.55.

Although editors are not noted for their mechanical savvy, this one quickly determined that the petcock to the radiator had not been opened and that there was no sign of fluid on any part of the car frame. He also knew it was impossible to take out three quarts of fluid from the top of the radiator. And so he was confronted with a mystery: how the serviceman could add three quarts of antifreeze to a full radiator without removing any fluid.

The owner of the station agreed to refund the $2.55. But he had no answer for the question: “How then can I be sure that the work I did order was done?”

Ceasing to do business there will probably accomplish little; there are plenty of other fish in the water for this shark to prey on. And as the poor fish knows, there are also other sharks.

Many of us could recount similar tales of how we have been cheated by those who have sold us products or services. What it all adds up to is further convincing evidence of a moral breakdown in our society. Unethical conduct, whether in business or in personal dealings, is a corrosive that eventually eats out the vitals of a people and leaves them spiritually hollow.

The Last Word

When we come to great intersections in life, it is a good idea to stop for a moment to reflect on where we have been. This can help us determine whether we are on course in the Christian life. As we stand at the junction of 1971 and 1972, we have arrived at another timely moment for reflection—and perhaps resolution. The Apostle Paul can provide checkpoints.

As he approached that final intersection where time and eternity meet, Paul looked back in self-evaluation, then said, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). It is the last word we have on his life.

The three main aspects of the journey of the soul—the fight, the finish, the faith—require a close-up look by every Christian.

What Paul saw as he looked back was not a succession of pleasant Sunday-school outings but an ongoing struggle against a tough, threefold enemy: Satan, self, and the world system. Never copping out or caving in, Paul fought to keep God’s purposes intact. Although he was driven on occasion to cry out, “Who shall deliver me?” he never gave up. And in his hours of deepest crisis and weakness he discovered the exceeding greatness of God’s power and victory.

Unlike some of his strong-starting companions who quit, Paul came down to the finish line of life a winner, not because he kept a fast and furious pace but because he was faithful. He was no drop-out; he persevered, attaining the goals and completing the tasks to which God had called him.

In and through it all he kept the faith. He kept it by vigorously giving it away, by visibly living it, by vigilantly contending for it in the marketplace of ideas.

Paul followed a well-marked route. Christ had been there first. He too had had to fight off the world, the flesh, and the devil. He had finished the task of reconciliation at the cross. He was truth incarnate, and lived it.

Another year has passed and a new one is upon us. Where have we been? Where are we headed? Ultimately, each of us must come up with some answers, remembering that God will have the last word.

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