Eutychus and His Kin: March 17, 1972

SLOVEN POWER

It happened at the PTA-sponsored “Back to School” night. I was talking to my son’s algebra teacher, and she had just pointed out that to improve his grade a student could retake any examination in which he had done poorly.

She then added in a guilty aside, “Of course, sometimes it’s hard to remember just which test they’re taking over. I guess I’m not a very organized person.”

My heart went out to her immediately. From my own experience I knew the years of intimidation she must have faced at the hands of the world’s neatniks.

Obviously we two are members of the last great unorganized minority—the fellowship of the disorganized. All of us who are a part of that minority bear the scars of our encounters with the neat majority. You can recognize us by our slightly paranoid air. The neat power structure has done its job on us. We have been objects of scorn, rebuke, and ridicule.

Secretaries have brought perfect strangers to my office door to gape in open disbelief at the disarray. On receiving my resignation one employer replied with malice, “Well, there goes four bucks for another waste basket. Up till now we haven’t needed one for your office—it’s all on your desk.”

My first college roommate was a man of appalling orderliness. He was a spit-and-polish Navy man who believed that neatness was next to godliness. As far as I was concerned, neatness was next to impossible.

One of my friends complains his wife is so orderly that when he returns from a midnight visit to the bathroom he finds his bed made.

The interesting thing about these encounters is that it’s always the non-neat person who is left with a sense of guilt. It has been communicated to us since childhood that God is on the side of fastidiousness. Go clean your room, we are told; you don’t want Jesus to be unhappy.

Well, friends, I’m here to raise the banner against neatness. Hold your head up high, teacher; the kids are learning algebra in your class, and that’s what an algebra class is all about.

Untidy minority of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our shame.

You see, we non-neat people have been liberated. We have learned that orderliness is a means and not the end. It can safely be sacrificed when unnecessary to the end.

But, brother slovens, we must not judge others as we have been judged. Let your hearts be filled with mercy. Remember that even the fastidious are created in God’s image, and that inside every neat person there’s an untidy one struggling to get out.

IMAGINATION NEEDED

I was happy and encouraged by David Barr’s article, “Religion in Schools: Four Questions Evangelicals Ask” (Jan. 21). As department head of a course in our local regional high school, Moral and Social Development, I am often asked by my Christian friends if I don’t think such a course is really a waste of time due to the lack of an emphasis on personal salvation through Christ.… I feel that the types of courses we are offering … not only keep the door open to a fair discussion of our evangelical beliefs and convictions, but allow all our students to consider God, religion, and moral convictions in an appropriate setting. I feel that all too often we as evangelicals allow ourselves to be defeated by default.… I trust that Barr’s article will encourage Christians to think positively in regard to such education and put some imagination to its advantages rather than its disadvantages.

Lennoxville, Quebec

David L. Barr’s article finds in me a ready affirmative response. It was Jesus, I recall, who said, “Whoever has the will to do the will of God shall know whether my teaching comes from him or is merely my own” (John 7:17, NEB). He knew that whether the conditions in which the Word of God was given utterance were ideal or not, those who received it with open minds and hearts would respond favorably. Also, the Apostle Paul asked three questions closely related to those Barr calls to our attention: “Now how can they call on one in whom they have never believed? How can they believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how can they hear unless someone proclaims him?” (Rom. 10:14, Phillips). Perhaps, then, it is those of us who are too particular about the public-school Bible reading and study conditions who are most guilty of denying the millions of unevangelized youth their best, and for some their only, opportunity of hearing the Word of God, which is still “like fire, and like the hammer which breaks the rock in pieces” (Jer. 23:29).

Eugene, Oreg.

Leaving aside the four questions, a more basic issue arises with the attitude Mr. Barr employs in testing objectivity. “Historical honesty and the study of divergent points of view” mean different things to different people, and hopefully such differences exist between Christians and non-Christians. If the Scriptures are the Word of God, then knowledge and morals are possible, and one may talk about testing for objectivity (the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom): if the Scriptures are not, then there is no logical reason for there to be meaning in this universe, and therefore no historical honesty nor study. Since one must start from one of these assumptions, the answer to whether the Bible is the Word of God is not difficult to obtain.

Cambridge, Mass.

ANOTHER OPTION

Thank you for the balance you bring to the perspective of seminary education (“The Seminary as a Source of Renewal,” by Richard Lovelace, Jan. 21). However, is there not another major option for church renewal and correcting “the defects of a century of lay evangelicalism”? Why not theological training geared on a graduate level for laymen to erase this lack? Or must we go on accentuating the schism between a trained clergy and an unlearned laity? Is it not necessary for seminaries to drop their “don’t take up the space unless you plan on professional ministry” mentality? What graduate schools are willing to teach laymen to be Reformation men and women “of scriptural doctrine, depth of piety, and breadth of learning”?

Vancouver, British Columbia

GOVERNMENT-SUPPORTED CHRISTIANITY?

Bishop Harmon’s article “Church and State: A Relation in Equity” (Feb. 4) confuses more than clarifies the issues he addresses. He seems more interested in restoring the colonial stance of Massachusetts than in going the way of Roger Williams. He appears more concerned that all religious options be given some degree of equity than he is in recovering the New Testament’s teaching regarding church and state. It is hardly helpful to emphasize the ways in which church and state can never be utterly separate. Surely it would be better to point his readers to those ways in which church and state could be more consistently separate.

The revolutionary New Testament insight which Harmon obscures, if not rejects, is that it is entirely possible to have “liberty and justice for all” even when men worship in a great diversity of ways or not at all. It is possible to have peace and civic order in the public square along with freedom of religious belief. The New Testament conceives of society as a composite entity; i.e., composed of factions. This conception does not imply or produce either chaos or deterioration in the courthouse. This conception of society has been called “one of the New Testament’s boldest innovations” by the Christian Reformed scholar Leonard Verduin. Strange indeed is it that Christians should so often be calling for a pre-Christian type of culture-religion, which is really all an Americanized Christianity is.

Author Harmon argues for equity while assuming that a beneficent Protestantism will predominate. The New Testament doctrine is that the state with its rightful powers is ordained of God even if the state should be explicitly anti-Christian—as indeed it was in apostolic times. Consequently, it is neither fair nor pertinent for Harmon to say: “To rule for no-religion in the public schools or in the state at large is to establish anti-religion by legal fiat.” To be sure, neutrality is impossible if Christianity desires the favor and protection of the law, but neutrality is possible if government neither supports nor promotes any particular religious belief. In such a case, however, the religious belief of the majority can not fairly claim, as Bishop Harmon does, that the absence of support for the majority’s religious interests amounts to anti-religion.

Police protection is not a valid illustration of Harmon’s thesis that there cannot be separation of church and state in every respect. For the maintenance of civil peace is precisely the policeman’s calling, regardless of what religious faith is promulgated inside the buildings he passes on his beat.

Neither can we who hold to a more rigorous separation be changed with advocating anarchy! Yet Harmon comes close to suggesting this when he speaks to those “churchmen who say they want a church totally free of government.” I know of no such churchmen!

I see no reason why I must be coupled with an advocate of atheism simply because I also favor the removal of “In God We Trust” from our coins and the removal of all chaplaincy service in Congress, the legislatures, and the armed services. If civil government is ordained of God outside of grace, then Christianity need not seek government support for its welfare.

Scottdale Mennonite Church

Scottdale, Pa.

Bishop Harmon’s article points out very clearly some of the consequences we face as a result of this nation going so far overboard in its effort to insure the separation of church and state. The remedies we keep proposing are somewhat like rubbing Vaseline on the chest to cure stomach ulcers. We are not going quite deep enough.

Our nation, in the Constitution by which we are governed, needs to make its acknowledgment of the divine authority and law. Forty or more of our state constitutions contain their divine acknowledgments. Our federal constitution contains none. Too long we have been rendering unto Caesar that which belongs to God.

Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church

Morning Sun, Iowa

NO SUCH AFFLUENCE

Thank you for the excellent news coverage of the Evangel College Washington Studies Program—1972 (“Students Seek Answer: What Can One Man Do?,” Feb. 4). The project has made a significant contribution to our Jan-Term program and to the experience of our students in political science and social studies areas.

One sentence (“Last year the course cost the college $15,000 for twelve students) leaves the impression that excessive costs were incurred by the college for the project. Please assure any inquirers that we do not enjoy such affluence, and that the Washington Studies Program is self-supporting. Members of our Washington constituency make this possible.

Dean

Evangel College

Springfield, Mo.

SMUG ASSAULT

I think your … cartoon depicting a policeman coming to the aid of an assaulted victim but stopping and saying, “Sorry, sir, I’m a pacifist” (“What If …,” Feb. 18) to be a dehumanizing assault on a Christian witness of peace. With thousands of persons needlessly dying in Northern Ireland and Indochina, this cartoonist is smug and hinders other Christians actively working for peace. Is this the stand of CHRISTIANITY TODAY? For the future, an equally funny cartoon would be, “Kill a Commie for Christ.”

Greensboro, N. C.

TWO MORE MISSIONS

In the news article “Mission: Bangladesh” (Feb. 4) you state that only two missions have missionaries in both “East” Pakistan and “West” Pakistan. But the Assemblies of God has work in both areas. In the East it is the U. S. mission board, and in the West it is under the British, Swedish, and Finnish mission boards and is much larger. The U. S. [board] has worked there and intends to enter in a permanent way soon. The Seventh-day Adventists also have a small work with a large hospital in the West, along with their larger work in the East.

Director

New Life International

Fresno, Calif.

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