Faith at Play

God himself saw fit to “rest” when he was creating the world, but some of his creatures have convinced themselves that they cannot be spared long enough to take a rest. Busy at our jobs, in our churches, and elsewhere, many of us find it hard to take a real vacation. Even if we separate ourselves from our working places, we are likely to line up so much other activity that true rest is an impossibility.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that there is a point beyond which we cannot push ourselves. Yet most people would agree that the body, mind, and spirit are refreshed and renewed by periods of repose. As Miguel de Cervantes put it some four centuries ago, “the bow cannot always stay bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.”

It has been the experience of many that putting off vacations and a change of pace results in a deteriorating psychological and spiritual situation. They have found that incessant labor leaves one open to frustration and depression and even invites temptations. The smallness of our world, the fact that we are living closer and closer together, accentuates the problem.

We must keep in mind that leisure is a requirement, a divine principle wrought in man in his humanity. This was made clear by Jesus himself; in Mark 6:31 we read that he asked the disciples to come apart into the desert for a rest, because “there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.” One commentator aptly notes how it was plain that the apostles were overwrought and excited and needed refreshment. “This is one of the needed lessons for all preachers and teachers, occasional change and refreshment,” he adds. “Even Jesus felt the need of it.… Change was a necessity.”

Somehow this principle went astray in the historical shuffle, and leisure has had an adverse moral connotation throughout much of the modern era. As Harold D. Lehman notes in a nice new study, In Praise of Leisure (Herald Press), “for years Christian people maligned leisure as the just dues of the idle derelict or the dubious prerogative of the filthy rich.” It was perhaps just as well, because until recent decades the average person did not have time for leisure anyway. Now the work week is limited, and theoretically we have a lot of time on our hands.

Lehman states that it is open to a great deal of question whether in fact we have more leisure time than our forefathers. True, the TV addicts seem to have found a lot of time for this questionable activity, and there is a hobby boom on. But even people with a four-day work week complain that they are too busy and never able to do all the things they really would like to do. Our age of affluence has given us so many opportunities that it is hard to concentrate on the enjoyment of any one!

Leisure also gets to be an elusive concept when one tends to think about it simply as non-productive time, for when measured against the yardstick of productivity, a great many areas of full-time employment are of dubious value. Billy Graham once pointed out in a newspaper column that some people accomplish more in “leisure” than others do in “work.” Lehman contends that a Christian should consider his leisure not as an end in itself, nor as the opposite of work, but as a function in his life which contributes to his calling: “He views rest, relaxation, fun, and activity in light of how they enhance or detract from this vocation.”

Paul Fromer, who gave up a promising career in chemistry to become the editor of His magazine, finds in Scripture at least nine prominent uses of leisure (Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics): worship, rest, service, evangelism, health, creative avocations, celebration, amusement, and delight. There are many ways to please God. We need to get away from the notion that he expects from us a very narrow range of deeds. Human beings are constructed to do a variety of things, and getting locked into a single one can be detrimental.

The Christian ought to plan for leisure, and plan it carefully. The proud attitude, “No one can do what I am doing,” is particularly inappropriate for Christians. They of all people ought to exhibit a community of spirit and duty, an interdependence that allows for mutual spelling-off.

Safety In The Cities

Have you ever noticed that some strangers stir dogs into vigorous barking when they walk by and other passers-by, just as unknown to the dogs, arouse nary a whimper? Have you noticed that even though all of us have accidents from time to time, some people seem to be especially accident-prone? Dorothy Samuel suggests that this kind of distinction may also apply in that widely feared portion of America, the inner city, in a short, thought-provoking book entitled Safe Passage on City Streets (Abingdon, 96 pp., $3.95).

Ms. Samuel does not pretend that perfect safety is possible, but she marshalls a lot of evidence to suggest that people who have and radiate an inner confidence are less likely to get mugged than those who tred with trepidation. It is obviously difficult to gather statistics on attacks that do not occur because the would-be attacker decides to wait for a more typical victim. But Ms. Samuel also tells of instances when a self-assured (though not cockey) attitude has turned a potentially destructive confrontation into something milder.

She tells of the pious elderly woman returning from a prayer meeting that had closed with the singing of “Under His Wings I am Safely Abiding.” The classic holdup man accosted her, but her unexpected exclamation—“You can’t hurt me! I am covered with his feathers!”—so upset his game plan that he retreated to find a more fearful victim. Muggers, like the rest of us, prefer people who act predictably.

Christians have a divine commission to be especially concerned for the poor and for the criminals who inhabit our inner cities. Christians also have an exceptional resource, the indwelling Holy Spirit, who longs to give us confidence and fearlessness. Reflection on the message of Safe Passage on City Streets can be an invaluable aid to applying a major aspect of biblical teaching to modern urban life.

Gotham On The Hook

New York City, America’s largest and most profligate dispenser of free social services, tottered on the brink of bankruptcy this month. Maybe it would be good for America if New York did go bankrupt. The citizenry might learn some elementary lessons of economics that apply to cities and nations as well as to individuals. These lessons might be particularly pertinent at a time when the administration and Congress of the United States are talking about a planned deficit of 60 billion dollars for the next fiscal year.

The first and most obvious lesson is that nothing is free. If the recipient does not pay for what he gets, someone else must do so. The second lesson is almost as obvious: when expenditures exceed income, insolvency is the result. Both human beings and their institutions can and do go broke. A third needed lesson is that there are limits to what can be given away free or at a small fraction of the cost, however desirable the services, and however helpful such largess is in securing the re-election of politicians.

There is only one way to produce more income, and that is to increase productivity. For a long time the income of American workers has increased faster than their productivity. Part of the present recession is due to this; the ramifications can be explored in any textbook on economics.

We hope the federal government, the State of New York, and the bankers do not let New York City off the hook until it puts its finances in order. This can serve as a warning to other cities and states and may teach the federal government a lesson as well.

Film Folly: A New Low

The Danish Film Institute, an independent but publicly financed body, voted to authorize a $170,000 “production guarantee” to producer Jens Jorgen Thorsen for a film entitled The Many Faces of Jesus. Thorsen plans to show Jesus in several nude and love-making scenes. After the 3–2 vote, all five institute members resigned, two to protest the guarantee, three to protect “political pressures” against the guarantee.

God did not spare his Son from the cross, nor will he necessarily spare him from this slander; but surely Christians would not be remiss in protesting the depiction of their Lord as a fornicator and in praying that God will show them how to make their protest most effectively.

When Irish Eyes Are Bleary

The Irish are making news in more ways than one these days. Dr. P. A. Meehan of St. Luke’s Hospital, Clonmel, County Tipperary, said that most Irish doctors are getting heartily sick of alcoholism and heavy drinking. “They are sick of listening to the complaints of mothers and wives, sick of the nervous state of children whose health is being wrecked, of the road accidents, and of the damage to hospital property by people being brought in in the middle of the night intoxicated.” Dr. Meehan, a psychiatrist, predicts that some day the Irish will have to obtain licenses to drink.

Drunkenness is an old, old problem, going back at least as far as Noah (for an article on wine-drinking in biblical times see page 9), and the idea of licensing the consumer as well as the seller of alcoholic beverages is one of many suggestions for solving it. We do not think it would be an enduring solution any more than Prohibition was. But that such an idea should be broached reveals how bad the situation is and how urgent the need for a remedy. We predict that alcoholism will become an even worse problem for many nations before society decides that grave problems require hard answers and tough enforcement procedures.

Bribery Is A Dead End

A Soviet publication disclosed one day last month that a convicted bribetaker had been condemned to death. The man, head of a Soviet business organization, accepted the equivalent of more than $150,000 in bribes from a Western firm seeking orders in Moscow.

That same day Gulf Oil chairman Bob Dorsey testified before a U. S. Senate subcommittee that his company had made “political donations” of some $4 million to persons in Korea, Bolivia, and elsewhere. The money was turned over in response to “pressure that left little to the imagination,” Dorsey said. In return, he explained, Gulf got the right to continue to do business in those countries.

Knowing full well that the gifts would be widely interpreted as bribes, Dorsey added, “There is no universal ethical absolute. You know that mores, customs, standards, values, principles, and attitudes vary all over the world. What is immoral is perfectly correct to others.”

The idea seems to be to get results no matter what the cost in the short term. There need be no other principle in decision-making.

This principle is now being associated with U. S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger. One commentator recently described Kissinger’s diplomacy as one of duplicity and manipulation: “He was adept in the backrooms at producing accords that meant different things to different signators, assiduous in building up houses of cards by ambiguities.” The equivocal approach now appears to have been not only morally wrong but practically unsuccessful as well.

Despite all the brickbats thrown at the United States, there has nevertheless been a basic respect for this nation as one that still had some principles and would stay by them. Is it now joining the ranks of those that have built dishonesty and bribery into their systems?

One wonders whether it was more than coincidence that Moscow announced the doom of the bribetaker when it did. Was it perhaps a subtle recognition that standing for principle attracts respect? We are not gullible enough to think that the Soviet Communists have suddenly abandoned their philosophy of expediency, but there is some reason to think that perhaps at this time it is expedient not to appear expedient! The long report in Nedelya, the weekend supplement of the government newspaper Izvestia, stressed the death sentence meted out. Whatever else it meant, it was obviously to be taken as a stern warning to others who might be tempted.

Maybe the Communists are learning a lesson that the Western world has known for centuries but has not always practiced: no society, Christian or atheist, can prosper without adhering to ethical principles writ large in nature and etched especially large by God on tables of stone called the Decalogue.

The Anonymous Hero

Heroes of the faith. The list is long, and any Christian worth his salt can probably name them through most of the alphabet, from Augustine, Brainerd, and Calvin on down to Zinzendorf. But perhaps a place should be reserved for an “unknown soldier” to signify all the unnamed and unknown who have been faithful in the Lord’s army down through the centuries.

The Apostle Paul gives us a likely one in Second Corinthians. He expresses thanks for Titus’s concern for the church at Corinth and then adds: “With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel” (2 Cor. 8:18, RSV).

Who was this once famous preacher? And why was he not named? Paul did not hesitate to name Titus here, and no reason is given why he did not identify this other preacher. Surely it was not out of jealousy; Paul had his faults, no doubt, but jealousy does not seem to have been one of them. And Paul pays “the brother” a high compliment, saying that he was “famous … for his preaching of the gospel.”

Let us reserve “T,” then, for “the brother,” whose identity we probably shall not learn this side of heaven. And let us take his very anonymity as an encouragement to persevere in our own God-given callings, knowing that both our names and our accomplishments remain forever fresh in God’s memory.

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