A Buddhist State?

A number of prominent Buddhists in Ceylon, some with political ambitions, constituted themselves “The Buddhist Commission of Inquiry” two and one-half years ago. This year, the group made its report, entitled “The Betrayal of Buddhism.”

As expected, it proved to be a highly partisan document, re-writing the “good old” (Buddhist) days of Ceylon’s history in a manner which no modern historian could approve. But the document proved illuminating as a mirror of racialist views.

The Buddhist re-write of history said that the Buddhist kings of Ceylon had a superb kingdom which was completely spoiled when the Portuguese invaded in 1505, followed by the Dutch and finally by the British in 1795. “The Betrayal” pointed the way back to the palmy days before foreign rule began.

(Some have pointed out that Singalese rule was at its lowest ebb when the Portuguese came. When foreign rule ceased in 1947, Ceylon was a state at peace, with its security founded on the rule of law. Its welfare government gave citizens a widespread system of education and medical care).

Modern Buddhists, bitten by excessive nationalism, dream about another kind of state. As outlined in “The Betrayal,” all religious and charitable bodies should be required to pay income taxes—except Buddhist temples and their lands. This exception, it was explained, would serve as compensation for losses suffered by Buddhist institutions due to foreign conquest.

Other recommendations: A representative Buddhist Council should care for the Buddhist religion; the capital should be moved from Colombo in order to get away from undesirable foreign influences such as horse racing, which should be banned.

The greatest concern to the Christian Church was the commission’s recommendations that within two years all schools be run by the government. A majority of Protestant churches in Ceylon are more or less dependent for support upon the staffs of nearby schools. Any religion, however, which wishes to run a private school can do so at its own expense and with all pupils of its own faith.

In any state school, if the pupils are 51 per cent or more of one faith, the head of the school must be of that faith. The teachers of any particular faith must be in proportion to the number of students in the school of that belief. Coeducation is forbidden.

Finally, the group recommended that it be a punishable offense to seek conversion of a person under 21 in any school.

The number of such fanatical Buddhists does not seem to be large, and Christian leaders do not expect the report to become law. They do feel, however, that the days of denominational schools (tax-supported, at present) are numbered.

Hindu Praises

Nine prominent Indian Hindu leaders, in a joint statement at Madras, praised the work of Christian missionaries and assailed charges made against foreign missions by some state government groups.

The Hindu leaders said, “It is not our experience that they seek to undermine patriotic or national loyalties.”

This charge was brought against missionaries in July by the Madhya Pradesh government.

Among the signers of the joint statement were Jadunath Sarkar, former vice chancellor of Calcutta University; B. V. Narayana Reddy, general manager of the Bank of Mysore; Dr. P. Subbarayan, former chief minister of Madras and now a member of parliament; and Teja Singh, retired chief justice of the Punjab High Court.

Church Merger

A proposed merger of Anglican and Protestant churches in northern India and Pakistan has been approved by the 12th General Assembly of the United Church of North India.

Five bodies are involved. They are the United Church of North India, the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon (Anglican); the Methodist Church in southern Asia, the British and Australian Methodist missionary societies and a Baptist Church of British Commonwealth origin.

The plan will be presented by the negotiating committee to the churches involved after the committee’s next meeting in April, 1957. If approved, the union will be known as the Church of North India and Pakistan.

The United Church of North India was formed from American Congregational, Evangelical and Reformed groups, British and American Presbyterian bodies and United Church of Canada mission congregations. It has a membership of over 400,000.

Hong Kong Rallies

An estimated 2,500 conversions resulted at more than 200 rallies attended by 75,000 during a two-week Baptist evangelistic crusade in Hong Kong and nearby Macao.

The campaign, sponsored by the Foreign Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, was the first of its kind in the area.

Speakers included three from the United States, two from Formosa, two from Japan and one from Thailand. American speakers were Dr. Forrest C. Feezor, executive secretary of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; Dr. J. Howard Williams, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and Dr. Ralph Herring, pastor of First Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Clubbings On Bus

Brutal treatment by Egyptian secret police was described by an expelled Australian chaplain after his arrest in Suez.

The Rev. William Robert Tyler, chaplain of the Seamen’s Mission at Port Said, stated:

“Eighteen of us were put into a bus and we were made to sit with coats over our heads. After a while, one of the guards, who must have been a hefty fellow, went along the gangway of the bus and clubbed us all at the back of the head with a rifle butt.”

New Translations

The Wycliffe Translators plan to send teams into Papua and the Australian Trust Territory of New Guinea—a territory with hundreds of languages and few Scriptures.

The latest government list names 471 languages in Papua and Australian New Guinea. Two of these have the whole Bible; 10 have the entire New Testament and 39 have some lesser portion of the Bible. This leaves 420 languages with no part of the Scriptures. Most of the languages have not been reduced to writing.

Digest …

► American missionaries take over work of two British mission groups in Egypt. Personnel placed under house arrest.… Rt. Rev. Kimber Den, former Anglican Bishop of Chekiang, China, released and “publicly exonerated” after four years as prisoner of Reds.

Stone Age Burial

The first Natufian burial ground has been unearthed about 15 miles north of the Sea of Galilee.

French archaeologist Jean Perrot made the discovery at Mallaha, near Lake Huleh, while conducting excavations for the Israeli Department of Antiquities.

The Stone Age cemetery belonged to the Natufian hunting-fishing civilization of the Mesolithic culture. Isolated Natufian tombs have been found before, but this was the first reported discovery of a burial ground.

The cemetery surrounded a chieftain’s tomb, which consisted of a circular pit about 16½ feet in diameter. The walls were of solid clay, covered with red ochre. The pit was covered by a circular stone pavement, surmounted by a low wall. Inside the pit was a second pavement, about 20 inches below the surface, with a fireplace. Under this pavement, seven skeletons were found, each wearing shell and bone necklaces.

Found in the center was the skeleton of the chief. The hip bones had been extracted, the feet tied and large stones placed on the shoulders—apparently to immobilize the spirit of the dead chief.

Indications were that several women and children were sacrificed when the chief was buried.

Sermons Banned

Religious sermons over the state broadcasting station have been banned by the Lebanese government.

Both Christian and Moslem services were affected. The order stated that services will be limited to the reading of the Bible or Koran, prayers and liturgy.

The ban followed a sermon by Sheik ShafikYamout, chief justice of the Lebanese Moslem religious courts, from the Grand Mosque of el-Emary. His sermon criticized the Lebanese authorities for lack of full support to Egypt and Syria and for not severing diplomatic relations with Great Britain and France.

Despite vigorous Protestant protests, the Philippines this month became the third nation in the world to be officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

President Ramon Magsaysay, in solemnly dedicating the Filipino people at the Second National Eucharistic Congress, prayed that Christ will “take under His strong and Self-giving protection … all government agencies whose cooperation is essential for the progress and prosperity of our republic.”

(Spain and Ecuador, the only other nations consecrated to the Sacred Heart, have been the scenes of many official oppressive measures against Protestants.)

The late President Manuel Quezon had requested that all references to the President or Philippine government be eliminated from the program of the First Congress to keep from indicating an official participation of the government in the ceremonies.

Quezon wrote to the Archbishop of Manila:

“I hope I am a good practical Catholic. As such in my individual capacity there is nothing that I shall not be glad to do to give added solemnity to the celebration of the Eucharistic Congress. But as President of the Philippines I’m not in the position to do what your program calls for.”

Evangelical church leaders, prior to the congress, protested without success against Catholic domination of political, social and religious life in the country as a violation of the Constitution.

The Rev. Jose A. Yap, executive secretary of the Philippine Federation of Christian Churches, in a statement at that time said, “It appears the President is yielding to the pressure of the Catholic hierarchy.” Dr. Gumersindo Garcia, respected Protestant lay leader, expressed the fear that the trend toward union of church and state “will endanger democracy here.”

Filipinos are more receptive today to the Gospel than at any period in the history of the Protestant Church, according to evangelicals.

(Earlier this year, Dr. Billy Graham addressed 40,000 at a night service in Manila and saw over 5,000 walk onto the track at Rizal Memorial Stadium to make decisions for Jesus Christ. This was the largest response seen on the evangelist’s world tour. By comparison, when he addressed 120,000 at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1954, there were 2,500 decisions. In Manila, Dr. Graham faced the only organized church opposition on the world tour. A Catholic spokesman urged the people not to attend to guard against getting “confused” in their faith.)

Freedom In Israel

Donn C. Odell, correspondent for CHRISTIANITY TODAY in Israel and graduate student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been denied a visa renewal and will be forced to return to the United States immediately unless Israeli officials rescind their action.

The visa refusal, evidently caused by Odell’s status as magazine correspondent and former association with the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society, touched off the following reactions:

* Discrimination against Christian activity was strongly denied by the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D. C. Vice-Consul Baruch Barak said “Christian missionaries are given all possible help in Israel.” He stated, emphatically, that visas were never denied because of missionary activity.

* The U. S. State Department said it was “looking into” Odell’s case, and a number of similar situations.

* A Christian source in Jerusalem, who will not be named in view of possible deviations in the Israeli policy, said: “Irsael does not grant (new) visas for missionaries. If any Christian comes to Israel as a tourist or under any type of visa and is suspected of engaging in missionary work, his visa is revoked and he must leave the country.”

The source continued:

“The Post Office maintains a file on every Christian in Israel who is suspected of missionary activity. Both incoming and outgoing mail is heavily censored and excerpts from correspondence which may indicate such activity are transcribed and placed in the individual’s file. In some cases, the suspect person is followed by government agents to further confirm his activities. When his visa comes up for renewal, the contents of his file provide evidence against him.”

In looking at mail censorship from Israel’s point of view, however, he had this to say:

“This act is necessary and justified on at least two counts. The Arab states still consider themselves to be at war with Israel. There are Arabs living here who are suspected of passing military information to the Arab governments by means of mail to neutral countries. Thus, on the one hand, censorship is carried out to prevent Arab espionage. On the other hand, certain foreign missions in Israel are believed to be pro-Arab, even though they are attempting to work with Jews. Inasmuch as Christianity is looked upon as a religion which seeks the end of Judaism, all Christians, and especially missionaries, are watched very closely.”

Donn Odell found Christ while he was in the Navy and later dedicated his life to missionary service. After graduating from Fuller Theological Seminary, he departed for Israel in 1955 with his wife, the former Ruth Kerr, and their three children. After working for some time, he resigned from the missionary organization on the field and enrolled for graduate work at the Hebrew University in order to learn more about the sociological problems of the people.

With the recent outbreak of war in the Middle East, Mrs. Odell and the children went to Naples, Italy, while Donn remained.

A well-qualified Christian observer in Israel pointed out the following:

“Jews have suffered during centuries of prejudice, hatred and slaughter under the Roman Church and Protestants and they have a pathological fear of the ‘cross.’

“With this background, Israel is violently anti-missions. Those mission organizations which existed under the British Mandate are permitted to continue functioning, but under considerable restrictions.

“Unfortunately, the history of mission groups is stained with jealousy and frequent feuding over converts, doctrine and ecclesiology. This un-Christlike attitude has served to further negate an already-weakened witness.

“Christians have entered Israel with organizational banners flying—Baptists, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, ad infinitum. All use the name Christian and all call themselves missionaries. But before they have time to define these terms to the Jews, they already have three strikes against them. To the Jews, these words and these people represent the hated instruments of their oppression.

“There are a number of fine Christians in Israel who are genuinely attempting to do a work for Christ, but the traditional mission approach has failed and there is little likelihood of its succeeding in the future.

“It is difficult to realize that there is any other alternative to Jewish evangelism than professional missionary activity. The Jews cannot be categorized with the pagans of Africa, India, or China. They, for the most part, take the missionaries in their midst at face value, without a long history of bloody slaughter at the hands of Christians. A missionary in Israel has no face value. He is an intruder, with no objective but to eliminate Judaism through any means of conversion available to him.… We can only realize that this condition exists and search for a new point of beginning in our relations to the Jews. It cannot be done by pouring more dollars into Jewish missions. To send money to a converted Jew in Israel is the quickest way of making him an outcast in his own society. He then becomes a paid foreign missionary and thus the worst kind of traitor. More often than not, he becomes spoiled through this easy money and leans more heavily on his monthly check than is either healthy or expedient … Nor would 10,000 new missionaries in Israel be the answer. Even if this were possible, their inability to present a united front would further confirm to the Jews the inadequacy of Christ.…

“The long-run work of evangelism in Israel must be done by young, intelligent Hebrew-Christians who are trained in a secular profession. They must love Israel and their brothers enough to … work there, raise and educate their children and prove their undivided loyalty to the people and nation. They should not represent any mission society, either Jewish or Gentile.

“Intheir own communities, as Jews and loyal Israelis, they should live a simple, loving witness for Christ. If they have no connection with foreign missions and do not propose a union with foreign Protestants, their witness will be heard as coming from Jews who believe that Jesus is truly their Messiah and who stand to gain no material benefits from their belief in Him. As one or two are added to the body of Christ, they can meet together for worship and Bible study. They need not organize a church in the American sense of the word, but can consider themselves to be a church.

“There are a number of ‘secret believers’ in Israel. They are isolated and stand pretty much alone. They need leadership, comfort and encouragement, but it must come from within their own group. The immigrant Hebrew-Christians could provide the necessary leadership, but they must be patient and willing to plan for the long run. Such action lacks glamour and demands great sacrifice.

“American Christians must realize that Jewish evangelism begins with love—not dollars.”

Worth Quoting

“Intellectual development is rudderless at best and dangerous at worst when isolated from moral convictions and personal commitments that are religious in character.”—Dr. Liston Pope, dean of Yale University Divinity School.

“What America needs more than railway extension, western irrigation, low tariff, a bigger cotton crop or a larger wheat crop, is a revival of religion. The kind that father and mother used to have. A religion that counted it good business to take time for family worship each morning right in the middle of wheat harvest. A religion that prompted them to quit work a half hour earlier on Wednesday so that the whole family could get ready to go to prayer meeting.”—Wall Street Journal.

“Because they despise the Church, the Communists continually attempt to infiltrate unsuspecting religious organizations. What better cloak of legitimacy can be found for their programs than to present them as the offerings of clergymen and churches? The strategy of the Communists to get others to front for them and do their dirty work cannot be underestimated.”—J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the U. S. FBI.

“A lot of people who travel 100 miles an hour and endanger the lives of others would be plain shocked if you told them they are just as bad morally as the man who steals money out of a safe.”—Governor John F. Simms of New Mexico.

Interesting Face

America’s top calendar artists agreed that Dr. Albert Schweitzer, noted medical missionary, has the “most interesting face in the world.”

Runners-up were President Eisenhower, Arturo Toscannini, symphony conductor and Frank Lloyd Wright, architect. Marilyn Monroe, the film actress, was near the bottom of the list.

Deaths Hit College

The second faculty death in two years has brought mourning to the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Dr. Henry Zylstra, professor of English, died recently of a heart attack while serving abroad as visiting professor in literature at the Free University of Amsterdam. He was in his 40’s.

Dr. Cecil DeBoer, 54, professor of philosophy, died suddenly last year.

THE CHILD AND THE CHILDREN

Dennis the Menace is a disconcerting American image of childhood. Our knowing guffaws at his pre-juvenile delinquency are in the same tradition that found Tom Sawyer hilarious. The novelist who pictured “momism” as the great threat to America must have had an atypical home life. The American home is not matriarchal or patriarchal; it is a filiarchy. We are not afraid of Big Brother. It is Little Brother with his six-guns who runs the ranch.

Child-centered living has at least made us more realistic about child nature. We may even be less inclined to adore the boy Jesus as a symbol of romantic, innocent childhood. Indeed, Christ Jesus was born of Mary not to symbolize childhood but to save it. Our hope is not in the children but in the Child.

Yet at the manger we learn not to despise the little ones. From Bethlehem, from the memory of Jesus blessing the children in his arms, flows Christian tenderness toward boys and girls. Martin Luther shows it. Beside the virile drum beat of “A Mighty Fortress” is the childlike simplicity of the “From Heaven on High” which Luther surely sang with his children and may have written for them:

Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,

Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled,

Within my heart, that it may be

A quiet chamber kept for thee.

Kierkegaard has “Climacus” say that Christianity is not for children. The reverse is true. It is for children and the childlike only. Jesus laid his hands on the children and said, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” He is saying that to us of our children. In the Christ-centered home the child in the midst is not idolized but respected and loved, admonished and nurtured—in the Lord.

EUTYCHUS

PERILS OF ECUMENICITY

Sincere thanks … for the two editorials … the perils of Independency and Ecumenicity. Since I am devoted passionately to the ecumenical movement, I specially appreciated your penetrating words toward it. Here you have expressed certain things about which I had been vaguely troubled, but which I had never put into words, so to speak. The matters of doctrinal vagueness and the form of unity, for example, and especially the former. For me, you have done a great service.…

GEORGE W. BARGER

First Christian Church

Maryville, Mo.

Since when does orthodoxy, Church membership, or anything else require that we believe in the Virgin Birth, the Bodily Resurrection, the, of all things … “substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ”?… Many ecumenicists have no quarrel with at least some of these ideas, and most of them will agree that others are free to believe them. Personally, I have no truck with any of them.… Our Presbyterian Church does not require belief in the three things you mentioned. If it did, a lot of us would be out on our ear.…

THOMAS J. KELSO

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

As a member of the Church of England which is the Catholic Church of this land, I have no desire to see foreign Protestant literature.

L. A. PEARSON

The Vicarage

Hornsey, N.8, England

It is the first world wide publication of its kind I have come across and should help our churches toward that oneness in Christ for which we all long.

FRANK MILIKEN

St. John the Baptist Vicarage

Meopham, Kent, England

DISCORD OVER KING JAMES

… It is shocking to read that changes in the interest of fidelity to the original language, etc., should be deferred.… This approach is far less in the prophetic spirit and tradition than it is in the spirit of spineless accommodation.…

LAURENCE T. BEERS

First Baptist

Pottstown, Pa.

… He speaks so highly of Paul’s “hymn to love” … but apparently hasn’t read K.J.V. recently. “Love” isn’t even mentioned. The word’s still “charity,” Brother Jewett!

HENRY ERVIN

Philadelphia, Pa.

I have the prejudice that Christianity was intended for all people and should be so presented; the thousands of instances where words like “Let love be without dissimulation” are changed to “Let love be genuine” should show which version is best adapted to the “preaching to all people” idea of Christianity.

ROBERT S. LEDERMAN

Otterbein College

Westerville, O.

… Enough grinding for your ax to become visible: to damn the R.S.V. and church union.… Stop sending your bait right now. I won’t bite: it’s too rotten.

GEORGE HIPKINS

Port Deposit Presby. Ch.

Port Deposit, Md.

After reading with agreement the article on the King James Version, I wonder if your readers would appreciate the appraisal of Dr. Frederick William Faber “who had exchanged its beauties for the crudities of the Romish Version.” Of “the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible” he remarked further: “It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words.… In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant, with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible.”

ARTHUR PETRIE

Seattle, Wash.

A vast group of devoted Christians … have neither burned nor scourged the R.S.V., but have with common sense and appreciation, received it for its ability to get the Word of God “across” to the millions … who are absolutely confounded by the “beautiful literature” of the antiquated K.J.V.… Pagan Americans will never sit in an ivory scholastic tower to appreciate the archaic beauty of former golden ages.

N.E.J.

Lafayette, Ind.

Correct the 13 errors and drop the 13 “eths” in the K.J.V. of 1 Corinthians 13, and it will be music.

DALE MOODY

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, Kv.

… The lowest form of “defense” of the King James version.… I cringed at the premises which Dr. Paul K. Jewett builds in his “Majestic Music of the King James.” … This type of defense will do more to confuse than anything that a group of “ecumenical experts, working jointly in America and England” can or ever will be guilty of doing.

P. LYNN MILLER

First Baptist Church

Paw Paw, Ill.

We were greatly fascinated.… About the best tribute ever paid the King James Version.… Would it be possible to reprint it …?

ERNEST GINGERICH

Huntington, Ind.

NO ULTRA-FUNDAMENTALISM

… I am glad to see this magazine appear. The list of contributors indicates that it will be Biblical and evangelical without being ultra-fundamentalist …

J. GEORGE W. SWOPE

East Orange, N.J.

A good standard of religious journalism.…

ADIELMONCRIEF, JR.

First Baptist

St. Joseph, Mo.

As a Christian teacher in an elementary school, I was deeply impressed.…

DAVE MACPHERSON

Long Beach, Cal.

I feel moved to say “thank you”.… Many liberals like myself who felt in Seminary they were saved by Karl Barth have made the long journey upward to an acceptance of the Bible as the complete word of God.… Beyond Barthianism is the Bible.…

MAURICE O. MAHLER

The First Church

Sterling, Mass.

All that you propose for your magazine is now available in many other journals of excellent quality. I see no need for another.… There are urgent needs in the world today for which your time, energy, and money might better be used.

P. A. COLLYER

White Plains, N. Y.

American churchmen need a good middle-of-the-road journal. CHRISTIANITY TODAY simply does not qualify.

C. HARDING VEIGEL

Boaz-Sylvan E.U.B. Churches

Boaz, Wis.

EVANGELISM IN ENGLAND

Thank you very much for sending me the second issue of “CHRISTIANITY TODAY.” I am grateful for it.

While there is much in it of great interest and with important bearing upon the world today, there is one reference to England which I feel I must criticize.

On page 31 (Oct. 29, “Britain and the Continent”) you say: “The change in the climate of British church life has been dated by most observers from the Billy Graham Greater London Crusade of 1954.

“A new evangelistic spirit has been seen in all the churches. The Church of England recently set up a Commission on Evangelism, with the official backing of the Church Assembly.”

I have before me a copy of a Report called “Towards the Conversion of England.” It was published in 1945 by the Press and Publications Board of the Church Assembly, 2 Gt. Peter Street, Westminster, S.W.I. The sub-title to this is “Being the Report of a Commission on Evangelism appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York pursuant to a resolution of the Church Assembly passed at the Summer Session, 1943.”

The terms of reference for this Commission are given on Page 6 of the Report. They are as follows: “That the Assembly, recognizing the urgent necessity for definite action, requests the Archbishops to appoint a Commission under Standing Order XVII to survey the whole problem of modern evangelism with special reference to the spiritual needs and prevailing intellectual outlook of the non-worshipping members of the community, and to report on the organization and methods by which such needs can most effectively be met.” (June 23, 1943.)

It was, I think, remarkable that this project was planned and launched in one of the grimmest periods of the War. It meant that when the War came to an end, the Church of England had at hand a splendid report on Evangelism, which was much discussed at the time, and had a profound influence upon the work of clergymen and laymen in the years that followed. At the same time it must be said that this Commission and its Report were no more than focal points of a very widespread concern for evangelism in the Church in this country. And even in those days the concern was being translated into action.

While I do not wish to under-estimate the effect of the Billy Graham Greater London Crusade of 1954, I hardly think your observers—whoever they may be—have estimated accurately its importance if they suppose that the change in the climate of British Church life it to be dated from it. I am quite sure it cannot. The change began much earlier, and from very different roots.

I hope it may be possible for you, of your goodness, to correct the impression given, that the Billy Graham crusade led to the Church of England setting up a Commission on Evangelism. For this is simply not true. We owe Billy Graham a debt—though it is only honest to say that the nature of the debt has been much debated amongst us—but the facts prove that we do not owe him the particular debt you suggest.

JOHN TOWNROE

King’s College

London, Eng.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17).

Therefore—As if he should have said, Will you have the reason why that I know nothing any more after the flesh; no, not even Christ himself? It is because I am a new creature, that is the reason of it. I have had a new principle wrought in my understanding, by which all my thoughts are turned; all my former thoughts perish, as a man’s doth when he dies.—RICHARD SIBBES.

The work of grace is wholly supernatural; it is a creation, and a creation-work is above the power of the creature. No power but that which gave being to the world, can give a being to the new creature: Almighty Power goes forth to give being to the new creature. This creature is not born of flesh, or of blood, nor of the will of man (John 1:13).—JOHN FLAVEL.

Some say, “It denotes no more but a new course of life, only the expression is metaphorical. A new creature is a moral man that hath changed his course and way; for if he were always a moral man, and was never in any vicious way or course, then he was always a new creature.” This is a good gospel, at once over-throwing original sin and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ! This turning all Scripture expressions of spiritual things into metaphors is but a way to turn the whole into a fable, or at least to render the gospel the most obscure and improper way of teaching the truth of things that ever was made use of in the world.—JOHN OWEN.

In Christ

To be in Christ, it is not enough that we have been baptized into the Christian faith, that we bear the Christian name, and have assumed a profession of the Gospel; we must be vitally united to him through faith, by which the merits of his death are imparted to our souls. By this means also, the principle of spiritual life is maintained.—WILLIAM LOTHIAN.

To be in Christ is the common scriptural phrase to express the saving connection or union between him and his people. They are in him by covenant, as all men were in Adam; they were in him as members of his body, through the indwelling of his Spirit; and they are in him by faith, which lays hold of and appropriates him as the life and portion of the soul.—CHARLES HODGE.

Whatever is wrought in believers by the Spirit of Christ, it is in their union to the person of Christ.… By him are we united unto Christ—that is, his person, and not a light within us, as some think; nor the doctrine of the gospel, as others with an equal folly seem to imagine. It is by the doctrine and grace of the gospel that we are united, but it is the person of Christ whereunto we are united.—JOHN OWEN.

New Creature

The word, kainos, new, unimpaired, uncontaminated, is an epithet of excellence; a new song, a new name, new heavens, new earth, the new Jerusalem, the new man, a new creature, are scriptual expressions which will occur to every reader.—CHARLES HODGE.

An entire moral revolution is effected in his character. Not only is he reformed, but he is created anew; his heart is not merely rectified, but a new heart is implanted. His understanding is illuminated, his affections are sanctified, his will is brought unto subjection to the law of Christ, his conversation, pursuits, and manner of life are changed.—WILLIAM LOTHIAN.

It is a blessed leaven, that leavens the whole lump, the whole spirit, and soul, and body. Original sin infects the whole man; and regenerating grace, which is the cure, goes as far as the disease. The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness; goodness of the mind, goodness of the will, goodness of the affections, goodness of the whole man. He gets not only a new head, to know religion, or a new tongue, to talk of it; but a new heart, to love and embrace it, in the whole of his conversation. When the Lord opens the sluice of grace, on the soul’s new birthday, the waters run through the whole man, to purify and make him fruitful.—THOMAS BOSTON.

It is then to a new standing or state, a new moral character, a new life, a new joy, a new work, a new hope, that we are called. And he who thinks that religion comprises anything less than this knows nothing yet as he ought to know. To that which man calls piety, less may suffice; but to no religion which does not in so me degree embrace these, can the divine recognition be accorded.—HORATIUS BONAR.

Old Supplanted By New

He desires to be holy, as well as happy; and rather to be gracious than great. His hopes, which before were low, and fastened down to things on earth, are now raised, and set on the glory that is to be revealed. He entertains the hope of eternal life, founded on the word of promise.—THOMAS BOSTON.

It is to a new life that God is calling us; not to some new steps in life, some new habits or ways or motives or prospects, but to a new life. It is not merely the old life retouched and made more comely, defects struck out, roughnesses smoothed down, graces stuck on here and there. It is not a broken column repaired, a soiled picture cleaned, a defaced inscription filled up, an unswept temple whitewashed. It is more than all this, else God would not call it a new creation.—HORATIUS BONAR.

Yet, though every part of the man is renewed, there is no part of him perfectly renewed. As an infant has all the parts of a man, but none of them come to a perfect growth so regeneration brings a perfection of parts, to be brought forward in the gradual advances of sanctification.—THOMAS BOSTON.

The new man often remains in a dwarfish state, because he is fed upon husks; or, he grows into a distorted shape by means of the errors which are inculcated upon him. It is of unspeakable importance that the young disciple have sound, instructive and practical preaching to attend.—ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER.

Every man in Christ is renewed in his frame and constitution; all the faculties and affections of his soul are renewed by regeneration: his understanding was dark, but now is light in the Lord; his conscience was dead and secure, or full of guilt and horror, but is now become tender, watchful and full of peace; his will was rebellious, stubborn and inflexible, but is now made obedient and complying with the will of God; his desires did once pant and spend themselves in the pursuit of vanities, now they are set upon God; his love did fondly dote upon ensnaring earthly objects, now it is swallowed up in the infinite excellencies of God and Christ; his joy was once in trifles and things of nought, now his rejoicing is in Christ Jesus.—JOHN FLAVEL.

Application

Either a new man or no man in Christ. Get into him therefore with all speed; for till this be done, though thou shouldest spend thy time in gathering up pearls and jewels, thou art an undone creature.—JOHN TRAPP.

The new creature continually opposes and conflicts with the motions of sin in the heart.… If there be no conflict with sin in thy soul, or if that conflict be only betwixt the conscience and affections, light in the one, struggling with lust in the other; thou wantest that fruit which should evidence thee to be a new creature. The mind and affections of the new creature are set upon heavenly and spiritual things.… If, therefore, thy heart and affections be habitually earthly and wholly intent upon things below, craving eagerly after the world, as the great business and end of thy life, deceive not thyself, this is not the fruit of the new creature. The new creature is a praying creature, living by its daily communion with God, which is its livelihood and subsistence.… If, therefore, thou be a prayerless soul, or if, in all thy prayers, thou art a stranger to communion with God; if there be no brokenness of heart for sin in thy confessions, no melting affections for Christ and holiness in thy supplications; surely Satan doth but babble and delude thy over-credulous soul, in persuading thee that thou art a new creature.—JOHN FLAVEL.

In an afterlife, H. L. Mencken is an intriguing idea. He always hoped there would be none, but he did say—when he realized he would not get everything done—that it would be nice to have one life for observation and another for comment. He felt, though, that a place where there would be no sinning people—even preachers—would be boring indeed; there would be nothing to laugh at!

Wherever he is now, Mencken is passe as far as this world is concerned. And with him lie many of his radical ideas. Along with speak-easies and the village atheist, he represents an era gone.

And most Christians are glad. United States 1956 with its fashionable churchgoing and its staid approval of evangelists makes quicker soil for growing Christians than the humus that Mencken stirred around Bryan. But though the soil seems to produce rapid growth, this may be the rocky ground of which Jesus spoke as producing plants that could not bear adversity.

Churchgoing America 1956 prefers the millions who quietly snooze in church pews to the one who threw brickbats at the stained glasss. And one can hardly blame them. But even from the grave Mencken’s missiles may stir Christians today—and perhaps even toughen them.

How irritated he would be if some of his brickbats became solid building blocks!

No one would accuse Mencken—the cynic, the cocky, the iconoclast, the sceptic, the impious, the arrogant, the irreverent, the blasphemer—of consciously backing Christianity or helping Christians. It would be unkind! And yet in what he said was so much basic truth that he often defended what are Christian ideas despite himself. Though he stood a long way from the church, some of the bricks he threw at religious superficiality, at hyprocrisy, at pious dishonesty are the same bricks that Jesus used, the same ones His followers must handle if they would build the church by His standards.

Mencken said much that needs to be said today—both to Christians and to those who go along on the 1956 Religion Bandwagon just for the ride.

Mencken And The Supernatural

For one thing, Mencken insisted that Christianity was basically supernaturalistic. With telling thrusts he made his point again and again that it was based on supernaturalistic revelation, not philosophy or science.

And this is a point old-fashioned Modernists all too often ignored. Mencken never forgot (many professing Christians do) that Christianity teaches that “without faith it is impossible to please God.”

Of course, supernaturalism was to Mencken superstition. God and ghosts, hell preaching and snake oil for rheumatism—they were all the same; and there was as much evidence for witches as for immortality. “Faith may be defined briefly,” he said, “as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” Since he felt he did not accept anything on faith, every Christian was, ipso facto, a fool, since being a Christian demanded acceptance of the supernatural by faith.

Obviously Mencken was not proselytizing for Christianity when he thus insisted on the supernaturalism of Christianity. But he drew the line clean in a way many with more claims to Christian truth than he could well emulate.

Mencken saw Christ’s supernatural Resurrection as central to Christian doctrine and demanded to know if it really happened. If it did, he admitted, there might be something to Christianity. If not—and of course he chose that side—it was “sheer nonsense.”

He said he preferred science to theology, but he honestly admitted that science too left “dark spots.”

The whole matter of Mencken at the Scopes trial was concerned with the same idea. To Mencken, Evolution removed the necessity of supernaturalistic creation and was therefore the only reasonable answer to the conundrum of man’s presence on this planet. Since he felt it was obvious that the Bible taught supernaturalistic creation, Evolution proved Christianity again a fool’s philosophy. In the same way he believed Copernicus’ discovery not only proved that the earth revolved around the sun but also that the “Old Testament was rubbish” instead of revelation. There is little indication that he would have been intrigued by the problems of metaphor, myth, and symbol that contemporary Christian thinkers struggle with. If the angel blew from the “four corners of the earth,” then the earth was square; and, since it had been proved not to be, then the Bible was false and irrelevant. Within his naturalistic presuppositions there could have been no honest alternative in any event.

Men are civilized, Mencken said, in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The larger a man’s stock of faith and “adamantine assurances,” the more stupid he was in Mencken’s eyes. Perhaps there would be fewer wrangles and splits in Protestant churches if Christians reserved their faith and “adamantine assurances” for the essential and supernaturalistic elements of their faith and allowed some of Mencken’s doubt to creep into their vociferously held opinions on other matters.

Mencken sometimes seems to be battling windmills or adolescents converted last Saturday night—youths who know the seven steps to becoming and remaining Christian and are sure that these cover everything necessary. Mencken seems to think that all Christians, like enthusiastic youths, believe they can reason out or know the answer to every question. He’s there to assure them that they can’t. But not all Christians are as stupid as he makes them out; some not only hold to the Christian truth which the human mind can understand but also unabashedly believe the Christian revelation of those things which have not “entered into the heart of man.”

Words From The Silence

Mencken’s pronouncements and example in regard to the use of words is another way he can speak to Christians even from the grave. He has been called the greatest prose stylist America has produced. He loved to shock and overstate. He insisted on being read. And he worked at finding a vital idiom that would arouse interest. He wanted American language for Americans. He liked the specific, concrete, even vulgar word because it got the meaning across sharply.

This is the impulse that provides a new rendering of the Bible every few years. This is the contention of teachers of English and of religious journalism or creative writing in Christian colleges when they red-pencil out the religious cliche and the jargon that is meaningless to the uninitiated and worn out to the rest.

Mencken tried a body blow to religious shibboleths by using cliches for satiric purposes—e.g., signing his letters “I pray for you constantly.”

Christian writers almost without exception can learn in Mencken’s school. Vital truth deserves vital garb.

Ideas That Smash Idols

Obviously it was not his language alone that made Mencken readable and also read. He had ideas and he scattered them freely although he said that the average man prefers cliches and resents new thoughts. Mencken knew how to ask questions. Few Christians—even the propagandists—excel in either of these areas. What campus pastor can hold a group of sophomores spellbound for twenty minutes of listening the way Mencken could through a long essay? And then give them enough for a week’s bull sessions in addition? If one can, let him then try a group of Saturday night stein wavers like those Mencken delighted every week!

Admittedly it is easier to be exciting when one’s ideas are iconoclastic like Mencken’s. But there are some things in Christianity that might smash a few idols too if they were preached interestingly. And what Christian would be ready to admit that Christianity is potentially less exciting than Menckenism?

You name it and Mencken had an idea on it—language, politics, food, literature, liquor, religion, music, minorities, liberty, democracy, Puritanism, sex, the theater, etiquette, prohibition, and a hundred others.

And if he didn’t have an idea—or more especially if he did have—he could ask a good question, particularly about Christianity and its application. He asked the tough questions professing Christians often don’t dare ask: Is Christianity a matter of deeds or beliefs? How far can human reason go? Can a man be a hypocrite and a Christian at the same time? Why do mission bums listen to the preaching? Who is qualified to censor the press? How do we know that God hasn’t turned the world over to a lesser deity to operate? What was the origin of the double standard? What is the psychological basis of commercial morality? Why do churchmen believe it unlucky to meet a black cat and lucky to find a pin? What happens at death? Why are artists so often scoundrels? Is the soul merely the product of wishful thinking? How does a man decide to be a martyr for a religious belief?

What could not a Menckenesque Christian—preacher or teacher or parlor conversationalist—do for the Christian cause?

One Day At A Time

Though he may not have realized it—and would surely have been irritated to have it pointed out—Mencken agreed with Jesus that men ought to live one day at a time. He declared that he woke every morning to an interesting life in which there were still men who were “worse asses” than he! His version of the day-by-day walk—to get through life with the least possible pain and the most possible entertainment—is different from Christ’s “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” in its selfishness but not in its emphasis on living one day at a time.

With this idea, it is foregone that Mencken would be hard on the pie-in-the-sky boys who live not for today but only for the rewards of the future. He declared that a mountebank who thought only of “tomorrow’s cakes” would be less dangerous with power than a “prophet and martyr” living for rewards in heaven.

In this he turns the light of truth on the professing Christian who is merely in it for what he can get—who tithes because he believes he will become richer, who serves the church for fifty years so that he may wear a crown for eternity—the irreligious of the class of Peter when he asked, “What then shall we have?” The tragedy of Mencken was of course that he missed entirely the biggest thing in the life lived one day at a time.

The Art Of Puncturing Frauds

For all his exaggeration and posing—he apparently often took the side least likely to succeed simply for kicks—Mencken was refreshingly honest on important issues. He curried favor with no one and punctured frauds wherever he found them. He did not aim for popularity; he aimed for truth and scorned those who, he felt, did not.

He believed that religion hurt clear, honest thinking. He felt that religious people cared nothing for the truth so long as they retained “a hopeful and pleasant frame of mind.” That he was shockingly close to right can be easily demonstrated by the perusal of a dozen stories in so-called “Christian literature”—papers and books produced by religious presses. With sickening monotony they present a world where life is pleasant for the good, where sinners are few and soon fail, die, or get converted, where the Christian—especially the preacher—can do no wrong. Mencken, along with old and new orthodoxy alike, saw men as sinners. “Man is inherently vile,” he said, “but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness.”

Mencken hated hypocrisy and untruth. And he made no bones about it.

Though he had no time for the homo boobus, Mencken loved individual liberty. And he fought hard for it. Whether the ban was Prohibition or a statute preventing the election of Socialists, the prosecution of young people who talked against war, the prevention of the teaching of Evolution, or Boston’s Watch and Ward Society’s Index, he battled. He was willing to suffer personal loss when he felt that the personal liberties of others were at stake.

In our day when religion is popular we too often forget that it was individuals whom Christ came to free—not majorities that He came to enslave. We forget too that it behooves us to defend the freedom of minorities in every age because we are bound to be a minority ourselves, since “few there be who find” the Way.

What Mencken overlooked, of course, is that even the minority sometimes champions a freedom that is only a form of slavery after all, and that Christ alone frees man from moral bondage.

Gibes Of A Tamed Cynic

Mencken is dead. And so are many of his opinions. But his scorn of hypocrisy and dishonesty, his insistence on human liberty, his daring to ask questions, his clear and pungent language, his insistence on straight thinking—these still live. And they lived—perhaps less colorfully—in his day too because they are basically Christian.

From his grave even Mencken can help Christians—and even with his brickbats. He can help insofar as he speaks truth. But the Christian must go beyond Mencken’s negations to the positive message which was Christ’s as well—that the supernatural exists and that in it there are answers.

If we do, Mencken may really (though unwittingly) help undo the work of a life spent, we can’t help believing, on the wrong side.

But as we read him how we wish we had some Christain Menckens!

Virginia Lowell Grabill (wife of Dr. Paul E.), Ph.D. in English from University of Illinois, is Professor of English and Chairman of the Department at Bethel College, St. Paul. Formerly she taught at University of Illinois, and then at Western Illinois State. She is former editor of His magazine, and author of numerous articles.

To A Scientist Friend

Your stories of the shrunken sea’s abandonOf palm trees high within a mountain range,And of the tiger (saber-toothed) whose skeletonSunken in tarry pit, defied time’s change,Were open door to where past ages are:Mountain and lake repeat primordial criesOf life and death that echo in my ear.Today this mystery before me lies:These wild bird feathers fallen by the way—Grey clip of wing, quill torn, swirl auburn flame;“Life values I cannot describe,” you say.O ageless woe, and beauty without name,He lives Who heard the ascending creature fall,And ancient shore and lair, forsaken, call.

RACHEL CROWN

“Then I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf” (Ex. 32:24).

Not often does the preacher find it proper or helpful to quote a poet like Ogden Nash. Nevertheless, I find myself listening in memory to a couplet of his which, like so much that he writes, is accompanied by a mischievous twinkle of the eye:

Why did the Lord give us agilityIf not to escape responsibility

That is one man’s biting satire on a gravely widespread tendency of our time—the tendency to run away from life’s demands instead of meeting them with willing shoulders.

The same thing has been said in chaste but challenging prose by Elton Trueblood in The Life We Prize. After reminding us that the heavy strain under which modern life must be lived is essentially the same for all of us but that the reactions to this strain differ sharply in different persons, he says: “It appears that the most common reaction is that of some form of escape, and especially the effort to escape responsibility.”

Although there is no comfort in it, there is perhaps instruction in the fact that this shabby way of treating life and the Lord of life is not altogether new. To this our text can testify—it goes back three thousand years.

Description Of Failure

Consider, then, the description of Aaron’s failure as we have it in biblical history.

Only three months earlier the people of Israel had left Egypt. God had drawn a curtain over the four dismal centuries they had spent there. Now they were encamped over against Mount Sinai on their way to the Promised Land. Already Moses had made one ascent into the solemn heights of the mountain, returning with the Ten Commandments.

Again he is lost in the unapproachable splendor of Sinai, this time to receive a revelation from God as to the order of worship that the people are to follow. Before his six weeks’ absence had run its course, the people grew restless. Where was he? Why so long withdrawn from them? Was he dead or alive?

In this restlessness they conceived the idea of holding a festival. Since Aaron was second in command, would he make them an image around which they might have a religious dance? We may be sure that he was not for it. The pity is that he wasn’t firmly against it.

Under his supervision golden earrings were collected and melted down. From this molten gold a calf was fashioned. Aaron then built an altar in front of the calf and offered sacrifices.

Whether this was primarily a violation of the first commandment or of the second is a matter I make no attempt to settle. Each view has its advocates. If the sacrifice to the calf meant that the people were giving up Jehovah, then certainly it was flying in the face of the law they had just accepted: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

If, as some believe, it was an effort to hold on to Jehovah and to mingle with spiritual worship the visible image of deity, then it was a transgression against the law that says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” We may not be able to read all of their thought. What we know is where their conduct led them. Their dancing became reveling. Their reveling became their shame. Their shame exposed them to the leering gaze of their pagan enemies.

In the midst of this disgusting spectacle Moses appeared. He “saw that the people had broken loose [for Aaron had let them break loose, to their shame among their enemies” (Ex. 32:25)]. The stern challenge that Moses flung at Aaron is set down in verse 21: “What did this people unto thee, that thou brought so great a sin upon them?”

To which the red-faced Aaron offered the feeble, flustered reply: “Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief” (Ex. 32:22).

Then comes a further build-up of self-defense, after which Aaron says, in the words of our text: “I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.”

Aaron was a good man, whose name was to become famous as the founder of the priestly line in Israel, but in that hour Aaron was a weakling. It was cowardly of him to refuse responsibility for his part in Israel’s sin.

Cowardly or not, he did it; and, cowardly or not, you and I in one way or another are sorely tempted to soften down or sneak around this tall, titanic fact of responsible living. Under God we are accountable not only for the evil we may do or condone but for the good we might achieve or encourage. Let cabbages be vegetables, let animals be bundles of instincts, but let men know, creatures of God as they are, that the Lord of life will one day reckon with them for the way they have handled themselves and others. Let them know, too, that over the Day of Judgment is written: “No Excuses Accepted.”

Directions Of Responsibility

In view of this, it would be helpful to look around at the directions in which the lines of responsibility run.

To start with, there is our responsibility for ourselves. However we got here, whatever we find here, one thing is certain: we have ourselves on our hands. That’s something that won’t be changed by motoring to Miami or flying to Rio or taking a drawing room to Southern California. “For every man shall bear his own burden” (Gal. 6:15). Just that bluntly did St. Paul express it long ago, meaning centrally, I take it, the burden of responsibility. Professor Hocking expresses the same idea when he says: “Other creatures nature could largely finish: the human creature must finish himself.” “Therefore,” to quote St. Paul again, “thou are inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest” (Rom. 2:1).

Or, take the family, the first and closest social organism in which our relationships spell responsibility. Between husband and wife, mutually, there’s a love to be given, a care to be exercised, a loyalty to be guarded. Between parents and children there’s a table to be spread, a wardrobe to be furnished, a set of physical, emotional and spiritual habits to be fashioned, a system of responsible sharing to be worked out. It was a thoughtful father who said that he purposely delayed, by a year or two, the installation of an automatic heating plant because he wanted his teen-age son to gain experience by getting up at an early hour and firing the coal-burning furnace. Today’s irresponsible homes are the spawning grounds for tomorrow’s juvenile deliquents and day-after-tomorrow’s shiftless citizens or chronic criminals.

Still another line of responsibility runs into the schoolroom. It is easy enough for us to say that the school is responsible for the child. What we need to see more clearly is that part of that responsibility consists of making the child feel responsible for the school—responsible, in a measure, for its cleanliness, its physical care and upkeep and, in larger part, for the classroom atmosphere, for the grades he will receive and for the progress he will make.

Again, there is responsibility as it relates to one’s work. Usually, to start with, it takes the form of what one owes to his employer. Later the tables may be turned and the duty is that of an employer toward his employees. In either case, of course, there must be recognition that these responsibilities are mutual. When employers frequently fall back on injunctions and employees frequently fall back on strikes, it takes no expert economist to tell that somewhere the sense of responsibility has broken down. Nor will the trouble be cured merely by laws and penalties. There must be a new spirit, a different disposition.

Or, once more, there is community responsibility. Whose concern is it that we shall have decent housing, proper sanitation, good schools, respectable government, a healthy moral climate? There is only one intelligent answer: it is everyone’s concern. It is when this simple, basic fact is forgotten, when, in short, responsibility is shirked, that government rots, gangsters have a field day, vice flourishes and community standards deteriorate.

Let me name only one more direction in this survey of our responsibilities. It is the church. I’m not quite satisfied with this way of expressing my thought. Actually, what we owe the church is not just one of many responsibilities. What we owe the church and her Divine Head, Jesus Christ, should be the center of all our concern.

This gripped me powerfully the other morning as I was reading the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Christ’s gifts and appointments to the church, says Paul, were for “the equipment of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (vv. 12–15, RSV).

Not one of us has reached this goal. Until we have, we had better put the church first on our list of loyalties and responsibilities.

Go back to that phrase “responsible living.” It is inescapable. Ourselves, our families, our schools, our jobs, our communities, the church of Jesus Christ our Lord—these circle us with claims we dare not deny. They lay upon us obligations we shun only at our peril.

Yet, shun them we do. Aaron did, long, long ago. Some of you have done it within the week. How?

Devices For Evasion

Let’s think next of the devices that we commonly use as we follow feeble Aaron down the road of refusing responsibility.

For one thing, it is frequently a trick of ours, as it was Aaron’s, to blame natural forces for our failures. Mark Aaron’s words: “I cast it (the gold) into the fire and there came out this calf.” Don’t blame me, the accused man seems to say; blame the fire. When the heat had done its work, this idol happened to be the result.

Moses’ comrade never looked so little as in the moment when that piece of sophistry escaped his lips. What of the pattern he had cut out for the idol? What about the graving tool he had used? No mention of these! Instead, the complaint is that by the play of natural forces, by the prankish effect of the fire, this image was produced over which Israel had corrupted itself.

You know the modern equivalent of such weakling talk, don’t you? You get it in crude form in the popular song of some months ago—“Doing What Comes Naturally.” You get it in somewhat more refined form in many current novels. You get it in a still more sophisticated version in some—by no means all—half-baked courses in psychology. In gist it says: Nature made me this way; I have these urges and drives; it’s really not my fault if I run counter to old-fashioned morals, which after all were foisted on the people by frustrated priests and old maids.

So a man who has been untrue to his wife, while admitting mildly that he has caused a tangle, says to a minister, self-defendingly, “I did exactly what other men in my position would have done.” The urge was there; I simply satisfied it.

Actually such nonsense is not modern. It is as old as Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. It makes man an animal reacting to stimuli instead of a person responding to challenge. It takes no notice of what Jesus Christ said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

What is more, it takes no notice of the sanest and soundest findings of psychiatry. Listen to Dr. Starke Hathaway in his Physiological Psychology: “After going through the experimental and clinical literature, the thoughtful reader will conclude that the effects of personality upon glands are more impressive and easier to illustrate than the effects of the glands upon personality.”

No, when we are confronted with personal responsibility, we can’t slither down the rabbit hole of nature and so escape blame.

But there’s another device, also tried by Aaron, which commonly serves as a means of shirking responsibility. It is putting the blame or the load on

other people. Look at verse 22: “Thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.” In verse 23: “They said unto me.” In verse 24: “They gave it me.”

Some scholars say that in verse 1, where the Authorized Version reads “The people gathered themselves together unto Aaron,” it would not be incorrect to render it, “The people gathered themselves together against Aaron.” To use contemporary slang, “they ganged up on him,” jostled him, challenged him, threatened him.

Everybody likes to be talked up; most people like to be talked about; but nobody likes to be talked against. So we buckle at the knees and bow down to the great god called the crowd. “They … they … they!” They decide what clothes I shall wear, what books I shall read, what music I shall play or hear, what TV programs I shall view. They determine whether I shall drink or go sober, whether I shall smoke or go free, whether I shall support Hollywood or the Kingdom of God, whether I shall rate success in terms of money made or in terms of manhood dedicated, whether I shall behold the fair face of Jesus Christ and cry “Away with him” or whisper worshipfully, “My Lord, and my God!”

A member of this church, invited to a gathering in honor of a distinguished university professor, found herself surrounded by members of the intelligentsia who engaged in round after round of cocktail drinking and became the giddier for doing so. When her courteous insistence brought her ginger ale in place of alcohol, she was gently chided as one who was still held in the grip of a “cultural taboo.” With that light phrase they would dismiss a deliberate conviction held fast in conscience. It is that kind of smiling paganism that you and I must meet as Christians.

We must meet it, let me add, not with sour visage, not with a martyr’s halo self-fixed, not with a whipped and whining resignation to duty but with a passionate and unashamed devotion to Jesus Christ and all the high things for which He stands.

It is year’s end. Some of us have stood up to our responsibilities creditably well, all thanks to the grace of God on which we have leaned. Others have sagged miserably, like Aaron. We haven’t been as true to ourselves as we might have been, nor to our families, nor to our work nor to our church.

Let’s confess it. Let’s come out of hiding. Let’s stop making excuses. Let’s throw back our shoulders to bear the full weight of whatever responsibilities God presses down upon them. And then, taking gratefully His forgiveness for every one of yesterday’s failures, let’s head straight into the new year, trusting, dauntless, unafraid.

Paul S. Rees is an alumnus of University of Southern California, which conferred the honorary doctor of divinity degree upon him in recognition of his gifts. Since 1938 he has been Pastor of First Covenant Church of Minneapolis, which has about 1500 members. He has 18 years of continuous broadcasting experience and is author of seven books.