Page 5741 – Christianity Today (2025)

Once upon a time in the Kingdom of God there was a Mother. She was an ordinary, middle-aged mother of two children. There was nothing notable about her. She was, in fact, anonymous; she had no name. And she never attempted to erase her anonymity. She was simply a Mother.

On Sunday, the Mother went to church with her family: her son Peter, who was ten years old; her daughter Susan, who was sixteen; and her husband Edgar, who went but thought it all nonsense.

On Sunday, the Sunday-school superintendent approached the Mother.

“Would you please help us in the primary department? We are very short of teachers. You have been with us for six years now, and I’m sure that you could cope nicely with the first graders. Please, for the sake of the Lord’s work?”

But the Mother said, “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I have no talents. I’ve never been to college or had any Bible courses. I am just a poor soul who needs the teaching of the Pastor. I just couldn’t teach anyone else.”

On Sunday also, the Pastor talked with the Mother. “Would you be willing to have your home used for a Bible-study group? We are forming some groups that meet in homes so that neighbors can be invited. There would be a regular teacher, and people would take turns bringing refreshments. All we need is your living room. Would you consider it?”

The Mother said, “I would like to do it. But you see, I do not make decisions about our home. That is my husband’s job. Since he is not very keen on religion, I don’t think that he would like me to do that sort of thing. I’m sorry.”

The sermon that Sunday was about the parable of the talents and the three servants. It was especially about the unprofitable servant who buried the one talent.

On Monday, Peter went to school. When he was ready to leave the house Peter yelled to the Mother, “Hey, where is my lunch money? Can’t you ever get it out ahead of time? I’ll miss the bus.”

The Mother said, “Oh dear. I can never seem to remember. Here it is. Don’t be angry with me, darling.” She kissed Peter good-bye. He said, “Aw, Mom, cut it out.”

When Peter came home from a school he had a great deal of homework to do. But he wanted to go to his friend’s house until dinner time. He ignored his Mother’s lecture about getting his work done. “Mom, quit bothering me. All you do is nag. I’m going over to Harry’s. I’ll be home at six. I can do my homework after supper.”

But after supper he wanted to watch television. He finally went to bed about ten. His homework was not done.

When Peter grew up he could never finish his work on time. He did not know that one did not speak to one’s superiors the way he spoke to the Mother. And so they fired him for being insubordinate and unable to produce.

On Tuesday, Edgar left for the gas station that he owned. He worked hard at the station and usually stayed there till late at night. But he cheated people who had more money than he had because he was jealous of them and thought they deserved to be cheated. He was mean to the young man who worked for him. It made him feel powerful and important to have his employee afraid of him.

The Mother kept the accounts for Edgar because it saved him money.

“Edgar, are you going to tell the tax people that you made only that much profit?”

“Edgar, you charged the Van Heinzes much more than you charged George for the same job.”

“Edgar, you seem to be selling more gas than you are receiving from the company. Where are you getting it from?”

Edgar laughed and told the Mother how clever he was to cheat the government, and the rich, and the corporation. She did not say anything more to him about it. She knew how mean he was to the young man who worked for him, and she was afraid he might be mean to her, too.

One day, some men came to the gas station and gave Edgar a summons to appear in court. He could not understand why he should be caught doing something everybody did. The Mother thought she knew why, but she didn’t want to say anything just now, when Edgar was in such trouble.

On Wednesday, the mail came. There was a magazine for Susan. It was called Proved Tales, and the cover picture was of a man and a woman kissing each other very hard.

On Wednesday, the Mother watched television most of the day, because she felt depressed. But after seeing all those people with the same kind of troubles she had, she felt even more depressed. Sometimes she wondered if she could think as clearly after watching television. All she could remember were the songs about soap and collars and toothpaste. She did laugh at the funny programs. It was clever how they all managed to trick one another and never get caught for lying.

On Wednesday evening, some neighbors dropped in. They talked about the terrible things that were going on in the world. They talked a great deal about a woman down the street and all the men who visited her. They laughed about that. The Mother just sat there. She didn’t want to take part in that kind of talk, but she dared not offend her guests.

On Thursday, Susan came home from school. She looked worried.

“Susan dearest, is anything wrong? Did you get a bad mark in school? Was someone mean to you? I couldn’t stand that, dear. You’re such a sweet girl … and you work so hard …”

Susan looked disgustedly at her mother and said nothing. But she went on looking worried. She talked on the telephone a long time. The Mother didn’t know whom she was talking to, and she didn’t want to disturb Susan’s privacy by asking her later. She felt that a mother shouldn’t meddle.

After supper, Susan said, “I’m going out with Roger. My homework is done.”

The Mother said, “Oh, I wish you would stay home with me just one evening. Roger always seems to come first. Don’t stay out too late.” And the Mother smiled a wistful smile at Susan.

The Mother could never understand why Susan had an abortion.

On Friday, the Mother was taking out the garbage when she saw the woman next door looking out a window. She looked sad, or perhaps sick. The Mother pretended she hadn’t seen her. Then she began to feel a little guilty. The woman had lived next door for a long time. Sometimes she invited the Mother in for coffee. But the Mother had never invited the woman to her house. She liked her very much, but she thought that the woman was too busy. She also knew that this neighbor did not believe in God, or go to church. The Mother was very afraid of offending her. So she never mentioned anything to do with religion.

A few days later an ambulance came to the house next door. The woman was brought out on a stretcher. She was dead. She had been extremely lonely and depressed, and she had taken a bottle of sleeping pills with a large glass of whiskey.

On Saturday, while the Mother was working, she remembered a little about the sermon on the previous Sunday. She didn’t know why the master had been so angry at the servant who buried the money in the ground. It was a natural mistake to make, she thought. God was a God of love. If she was sincere, and she was sure that she was sincere, He would make everything come right in the end.

But she still felt a little guilty about the woman next door. It bothered her that Edgar was doing the things he was doing. It didn’t seem fair that Peter should talk back and be so disobedient, or that Susan should turn sullen. But what could she do? She was a good Mother. She obeyed her husband and did everything for her children. She went to church almost every week. And she never swore.

That night, the Mother stood face to face before the Great Lion of Judah. He was not at all as she had pictured Him to be. For an instant, she thought those sweet Christmas stories must have been mistaken.

“Have you been my faithful servant?” His voice was like the thunder of a great organ, and his blazing eyes … She could not look into them, but she could look nowhere else, either. She thought that she had never been so uncomfortable.

“Why yes, Lord, I think so. I have always done my best …”

She saw His eyes become more and more stern.

“I will have the truth from you.”

“Yes, Lord …” and she tried to start again but couldn’t. There was just nothing to say.

Then His voice began to say what her own lips could not.

“You have let your husband become a petty crook. You never once rebuked him or counseled him. Your submission was perverted. Your son will fail throughout his life because he was taught neither to work nor to obey. Your daughter is disgraced because she was never forbidden to do anything. Your neighbor is lost for all eternity for want of the friend that you could have been to her. You permitted evil in your home through cheap communications, immoral entertainment, and gossip. Your church, which asked for your services, is poorer because you never entered into its life. You took but you would not give.”

The voice rolled over her in heavy, inescapable sound. There was no argument. There could be no argument. His voice spoke only truth.

Then she saw His eyes become warm and loving.

“It’s all right. He will forgive me.” Indeed, those magnificent eyes filled with tears.

“Child, I died on the cross so that you might become great in the Kingdom of God.”

And the Mother seemed to see a Great Woman, beautiful to look upon, surrounded by loving friends. There was a man just behind her, strong and straight and even a bit noble in appearance, though he was dressed in coveralls. There was a young man beside the Great Woman, smiling and speaking gently to her. A young mother stood on the other side of the Great Woman, tenderly whispering to her baby while her husband smiled lovingly at them both.

“That is only the beginning of the good that you could have done, had you come to me for one thing.”

“O Lord, what was that one thing?”

“You feared all things more than me and so you failed in all things. The fear of me has come too late. If you had feared me soon enough, you would not have feared your family and your place in the Kingdom. So you have betrayed me. You were a coward and wanted to stay that way. You would not let me make you strong. I cannot change my Word, and it is now your judge: “Whoever wins the victory will receive this from me: I will be his God, and he will be my son. But the cowards … the place for them is the lake burning with fire … the second death.”

His face was very sad. For the first time she was stricken for another instead of herself. She was just beginning to understand that she was the cause of His sorrow.

“O Lord, Lord …”

The end had come. The end of all things had come. He turned away and it became very dark. It was very, very cold. There was no time. There was nothing.

The Mother was absolutely alone.

Analogous to the question that the Christian American must face of how far scriptural values are to be pushed in a secular America is the general question of how far American values are to be pushed in the world at large. And just as American evangelicals appear passive about expressing their convictions in the domestic marketplace of ideas, so the country in general seems more and more reticent to export its national values beyond its own boundaries.

True, with our Promised Land mythology, we have had a history of “carrying the big stick,” and if we have seldom engaged in political imperialism we have more than once made up for it by extending our economic tentacles around the globe. We have exported Coca Cola, cheap jazz, and jeans until it is small wonder that countries with a modicum of taste and culture have not established aesthetic tariff barriers to keep us out! The universal appreciation for Puccini’s Madame Butterfly quite clearly shows that our worldwide adventures have left a trail of broken hearts, whatever else they may have accomplished.

Moreover, a special danger is now seen in crusades in behalf of “Western values”: the danger of letting the end justify the means. Hochhuth’s drama The Deputy and Carlo Falconi’s Silence of Pius XII tell the sobering story of a pope who, because of his crusade against Russian Communism as the greatest of all evils, compromised his spiritual authority by not speaking forthrightly against the genocidic activities of the Third Reich, in the vain expectation that Hitler would at least save Europe from Marxism. Such a fundamental blunder easily leads to a reconsideration of whether ideological crusades do not often do more harm than good.

But again the drunken man staggers to the opposite wall. Just as we petulantly fell into an irresponsible isolationism after our World War I disenchantment, so today we run every danger of abrogating our responsibilities as bearer of the torch of freedom, now that our enemies have castigated us and our friends misunderstood us for our tragic involvement in Viet Nam. William Lederer, in a book published as long ago as 1961, characterized us as A Nation of Sheep for our irresponsiveness in foreign policy.

OnOn the day before Christmas, 1975, Religious News Service reported that “the number of people in the world living in a democratic society reportedly dropped by 40 per cent in 1975—the sharpest dip recorded by Freedom House since it began assessing the trend 24 years ago.” This is horrifying. What responsibility do we have as a nation to prevent or to reverse such trends?

Our current foreign policy of détente, as expressed most eloquently by Secretary of State Kissinger, would appear to offer little response to this question beyond maintaining defensive strength in our own right and continuing to voice our historic beliefs in the value of free society. This seems hardly enough when, as Kissinger’s even more eloquent adversary Solzhenitsyn has rightly maintained, the free world has a holy responsibility to relieve the miseries of the millions of people suffering under totalitarian governments with neither the possibility of legal redress of grievances in their own homeland nor the possibility of emigrating to a life of dignity elsewhere.

We grant that full-scale offensive war against totalitarian powers could be suicidal in a nuclear age, but was there sufficient excuse for not responding to the Czechoslovakians when, like Paul’s Macedonians, they pleaded, “Come over and help us”? And is there any way to justify our not attaching rigorous conditions (release of those jailed or confined to “psychiatric hospitals” because they exercised freedom of speech, permission for Jews and others desiring to emigrate to do so and so on) when we agree to supply totalitarian countries with the raw materials, products, or food supplies they request of us?

Novelist Jean Dutourd, in his Taxis of the Marne, reminded his own people of the contrast between the France of 1914, which had the dynamism to use taxis to get its reinforcements to the front to save the country, and the France of June, 1940, when “the Generals were stupid, the soldiers did not want to die,” and the country, by trying to save its life with no higher purpose, lost it. Bruckberger, another Frenchman, observes:

What ill luck, how great a misfortune it is for us all, that it should be the ideology of the Communist Manifesto, and not that of your Declaration of Independence, which is now conquering so large a part of the world and firing the imagination of the colored races. Americans, for this you may well be to blame, just as undoubtedly all Christians are to blame for the fact that today the name of Lenin is held in greater veneration in the world than the name of Jesus. We Christians have failed in missionary spirit. And you, Americans, have been too ready to look upon the Declaration of Independence as a document designed for yourselves alone and not for other nations. How fatal an error.

Americans, it is time to admit that you have erred; it is time to recognize that the Declaration of Independence is not yours alone. That solemn Declaration was made not just for you, but for everyone; not just for the men of one time, the eighteenth century, and one place, America—but for the whole world and for all the generations of mankind.

At a time when the idea of detente has such a positive connotation and so much stress is placed on not interfering with the internal affairs of other nations, it is worth emphasizing that the National State is not the be-all and end-all of human life. The National State is a relatively modern development, and the notion of its absoluteness comes from such doubtful sources as realpolitiker Machiavelli (Il Principe) and atheist Thomas Hobbes (The Leviathan). Scripture insists that states, no less than individuals, are subordinate to God’s laws. When Christian apologist Hugo Grotius became the “father of international law” by creating that discipline through his great work De jure belli et pacis, his fundamental principle was that nations are subject to higher laws than the ones they themselves deign to create.

If we have any reason for existence as a nation, it is surely our historic stand for freedom—freedom without which living becomes mere existence, that freedom which is a necessary condition for the meaningful proclamation of the eternal riches of Christ. In Lincoln’s most famous evocation of freedom, he did not limit himself to his own country but declared: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” And Julia Ward Howe, a year earlier, made the essential connection between God’s redemptive work in Christ and the national purpose to which we are (or should be) committed: “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” When we no longer are willing to die for the freedom of others, we shall no longer merit freedom for ourselves.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

I had never written a controversial book until I penned The Battle For the Bible. It is now off the press, and it will be an interesting spring and summer.

The book gets to people where they itch, and it will stir up the deepest passions among those who respond with a definite yes or no to the question: Is the Bible wholly trustworthy?

Zondervan’s first print order was for 10,000 copies. Before the book was released they went back to press with an order for 10,000 more. This suggests that people are interested in the subject.

As the world population clock ticked to four billion inhabitants (see editorial, page 36), some eighty evangelical leaders from thirty-four mission organizations and fifteen theological schools gathered last month in suburban Chicago to discuss worldwide Christian witness and biblical guidelines to undergird it. The occasion was a four-day Consultation on Theology and Mission sponsored by the School of World Missions and Evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

Overall, the consultation projected as ideal a church-related evangelism focusing on discipleship and growth. It saw two internal perils for the Church: theology without evangelism, and evangelism without theology. It did not settle for mere criticism of the World Council of Churches (WCC); it pressed for the formulation of constructive alternatives. A new openness toward dialogue with Catholics in the post-Vatican II age was acknowledged, though caution was urged because, as one spokesman put it, “the fact that the nature of the Roman Catholic Church in our time is not wholly clear implies long-term risks in over-identification.”

Caution was also expressed in evaluation of the charismatic movement. While the conferees did not voice doubt of the New Testament validity of tongues, many questioned the permanence of the gift, and most resisted prizing glossolalia above all other gifts. Yet all confessed the need of a deep moving work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church.

There were three major evening addresses, and Trinity faculty members presented twelve papers. The papers dealt with Catholicism, the charismatic movement, contextualization (the relation of church to culture), inter-religious dialogue, and changing political situations. Panels of mission leaders and theologians responded to each topic.

Speaking on issues concerning Israel, President Arnold T. Olson of the Evangelical Free Church of America in the event’s keynote address declared that the only friends Israel has left are evangelicals. He recognized the legitimacy of Jewish evangelism but protested any singling out of Jewry as a special evangelistic target. He said many reports of a moratorium in Israel on Jewish evangelism have been exaggerated.

In an analysis of the WCC’s 1975 assembly in Nairobi, mission professor Arthur P. Johnston of Trinity said that the political impact of the ecumenical movement tends to stigmatize Western missionaries unfairly as aligned with the forces of racism and economic injustice. Panelist Robert Thompson, for twelve years a member of the Canadian parliament and now associated with several Christian organizations, asked how ecumenical churchmen can in good conscience appeal to their own capitalist constituency for funds for revolutionary activities aimed not simply at economic betterment but at the destruction of the capitalistic system, especially when the WCC receives the major portion of its funds from American and West German churches.

The liveliest debate centered on how to preach the Gospel in light of the political changes going on around the world. Papers were presented by theologian Carl F. H. Henry and J. Herbert Kane, chairman of Trinity’s Division of World Mission and Evangelism.

Kane called on American mission leaders to remember that “the American missionary is an ambassador for Jesus Christ, not for Uncle Sam.” He emphasized that the missionary must not equate the kingdom of God with any political, economic, or social system. He contended that a missionary serving where the ruling system is dictatorial has two choices, either to stick to his work or to speak out against the regime and be expelled.

Henry insisted that there are other options. “The missionary is a member of a church on the field he serves, and he or she can encourage the church as the new society to elaborate a conscious social alternative to an objectionable national milieu and thus exemplify to the world what the justice of God requires,” he asserted. “And the missionary can go to jail, which is not the worst of all pulpits in the twentieth-century mass-media world.” He urged Christians to learn to press for truth and right publicly, “rather than let Christian prisoners like Georgi Vins suffer in Russian silence.” (Vins is a Soviet Baptist minister serving time in a Siberian prison for alleged “crimes” related to the practice of his faith.)

Participants had little sympathy for the ecumenical funding of revolutionary movements aimed at the overthrow of unjust regimes by violence. “There’s not a hint in the Gospels that Jesus secretly instructed Judas to use the money-bag to fund the Zealots,” said Henry. The regenerate church, he pointed out, “is herself the new society called to proclaim and exemplify to the world the standards of the coming King.” The missionary, he added, should support not the status quo but “the divine status to come.”

In another evening address. President Ingulf Diesen of the Mission Covenant Church of Norway expressed appreciation on behalf of European Christians for Anglo-Saxon missionary effort, but he also mentioned some problems. In Europe there are currently 2,450 British and North American missionaries, 750 from Britain and 1,700 from North America, from eighty agencies or organizations. He spoke of inter-agency rivalry, of competition with local evangelical agencies, and of some cases of inflated success statistics.

Diesen indicated, however, that 18 per cent of all Norwegians now consider themselves “born-again Christians” (the figure for young people is 27 per cent), and he spoke glowingly of spiritual renewal in his land. On the other hand, he described the dire spiritual need of other European countries, notably Albania in the east and France in the west. He conceded that even in Norway in some sections there is less evangelistic fruit than in some African countries. Europe has been recognized as a bona fide mission field only since World War II, it was noted, and then only hesitantly so by mainline denominations. Conferees were also reminded that despite sixty years of unrelenting persecution, Communist authorities have been unable to stamp out Christianity in the Soviet Union.

The conference papers will be published later this year in book form by Baker Book House, according to Trinity professor David Hesselgrave.

HANDLED WITH CARE

Country Church at George Air Force Base in California “is a unique and satisfying experience for all those who attend,” says a release issued by the base’s office of information. Captain John Ward, the Assemblies of God chaplain who started the church last fall, often preaches in bib-overalls. One Sunday night a month is designated “country night”; everyone comes in his cleanest Levis or bib-overalls and newest shirt. Nearly 150 attend services.

In the church’s short history, says the release, “a number of persons have accepted Christ into their lives and have desired to be baptized in water by immersion.” None of the post chapels, however, is equipped with a baptistry. So the Thirty-Fifth Munitions Maintenance Squadron donated a lightweight bomb shipping-and-storage container known affectionately as “the coffin.” And mem bers of the Field Maintenance Squadron did some cutting and welding. The result: a portable baptistry, complete with handles. Teen-ager Kim Raines, a master sergeant’s daughter, was the first of seven persons baptized in it last month by Chaplain Ward.

The Wcc: Slim Figures

With more than one-third of its income generated in the United States, the World Council of Churches is resisting the temptation to give up that generator. Its New York office, which maintains liaison with North American member denominations and other supporters, was given a new lease on life at the first meeting of the WCC Executive Committee since the Nairobi assembly.

Like most other WCC agencies, the New York office will be working on a reduced budget during 1976. At a Geneva meeting late last month the nineteen members of the Executive Committee learned that the council closed 1975 in the black only by dipping into reserves. While the audited figures are not yet available, insiders estimate that $320,000 came from reserves.

The Executive Committee authorized the secretariat to operate through the rest of this year on a budget of $2.5 million, about $700,000 less than planned at the time of the assembly last year. One of the possibilities that had been considered prior to the Nairobi meeting was reducing the appropriation for the New York office. The action of the Geneva meeting, in effect, ratified a new formula for support of the North American operation. Instead of getting half of its budget from the general funds of the council, it will hereafter get only one-fourth. The remaining three-fourths is expected to be raised from private American sources. The whole question of function and financing of the New York office will be reviewed again in August when the WCC Central Committee meets.

A separate office in New York City, that of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (a United Nations liaison), was also authorized by the hard-pressed executive committee to stay in business but with less financial help. There is no money in the budget for its operation, and the executive who ran it has retired. The commission was authorized to solicit special funds to keep it going, however, and a part-time secretary has continued on the payroll. If a suitable executive can be found, funds to support the U. N. operation are expected to be available.

Member denominations and other World Council friends in Europe have come forward with extra money to keep another agency going during the budget squeeze. The Ecumenical Institute near Geneva, a conference center and a graduate school offering short-term courses, has received enough designated funds from Germany, France, and Switzerland to cover its anticipated 1976 deficit, the Executive Committee heard. Like the New York office, it will be getting less of its budget this year from general funds of the council (its 1976 budget is $390,000).

The new general budget (one of seven in the WCC) was adopted with the understanding that it will mean reductions in travel and meetings for all agencies, as well as forgoing of salary increases by staff members. Several staff positions in Geneva are being left unfilled.

In another action the executive group took a first cautious step toward following up the Nairobi assembly’s directive on the status of Eastern European Christians. A consultation was scheduled for July to consider responses from the member churches to letters sent by the general secretary. The denominations in countries that signed last year’s Helsinki Declaration on European security were asked four questions: How were they studying the declaration? How could they help to implement it? What could international ecumenical organizations do to help the process? What practices in their country contradicted the “spirit or letter” of the statement? A report on the initial fundings is to be presented to the Central Committee in August.

Consulting In Jerusalem

A dialogue has been going on for several years between representatives of the World Council of Churches and of the International Jewish Committee. Their latest consultation was held recently in Jerusalem. Present were six members of the WCC’s Liaison Committee and members representing the World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, the Synagogue Council of America, and the Jewish Council in Israel for Interreligious Consultations.

Part of their discussion focused on two topics for possible future study: “Relations between churches and the Jewish people in the wider context of the human community” and “Christian and Jewish traditions about creation, in relation to science and technology.”

The conferees agreed that encounter should proceed on several levels. These include exchanging information regularly on political and social issues, with special emphasis on human rights (including religious liberty), and interpreting to each other the religious views of each community on fundamental issues, according to a WCC report on the meeting.

The report says the Liaison Committee may set up task forces to deal with specific long-term issues, and it may develop procedures “for common action in times of crisis.” Specific proposals will be presented for approval by the appropriate WCC committees later this year.

Jesus ’76: Love In A Pasture

More than 20,000 persons, many of them in family groups, gathered in a pasture two miles from Disney World near Orlando, Florida, last month for the first of four three-day rallies billed as Jesus ’76. On hand were such top gospel recording artists as Andrae Crouch and The Disciples, the Rambos, Pat Boone, and Phil Keaggy and Ted Sandquist. Food for mind and soul was served up by founder-president Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, prophecy author Hal Lindsey, charismatic teacher Bob Mumford, Arizona congressman John Conlan, and others.

Participants could choose from a variety of seminars, and there were special sessions for children and for pastors (150 met in a nearby hotel). A 200-foot-long striped tent housed display booths for Christian colleges and mission organizations as well as shops selling records, Bibles, books, and other Christian literature.

Bright seemed to sum up the prevailing attitude when he said: “We are all here because we love the most important person in the whole world.” He called for Christians to unite in prayer and fasting and to show love, compassion, and concern.

The event was organized by youth minister Alex Clattenburg, Jr., of Calvary Assembly of God Church in Winter Park, Florida, in conjunction with Jesus Ministries of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Three other Jesus ’76 rallies are scheduled this year: Brantford, Ontario, June 17–19; Carlotte, North Carolina, July 1–3; and Mercer, Pennsylvania, August 19–21.

Jesus Ministries announced last month that it has purchased a large tract of land in central Pennsylvania for a permanent camp site.

Religion In Transit

Plagued by a pending divorce, by desertion from the cause by her son William, and by infiltration of Methodists and Catholics in state chapters, atheism promoter Madalyn Murray O’Hair last month threatened to give up her leadership role in the movement to keep God out of government. But, said she, many atheists “came out of the closet” and rallied to her support, lending a hand with secretarial chores and other work. Thus encouraged, she went off to a convention of atheists in New York this month to seek money to keep going another year.

A number of leaders of the National Council of Churches have registered their opposition to proposed changes that will close loopholes and limit eligibility for food-stamp purchases. They called for an “improved” program that would be even more liberal (elimination of the cash purchase requirement, for example).

Under pressure from residents and government jurisdictions, the Hare (pronounced hah-ree) Krishna movement has moved its school for its members’ children age 8 and older from Dallas, Texas, to Vrindabin, India. Spokesmen said it would be better spiritually for the children to be brought up “in the place where our supreme Lord Krishna walked” than in an environment of supermarkets, pornography, and “other mundane things.” The school, nearly five years old, had about 125 pupils.

Thomas Eugene Creech, 25, was sentenced to be hanged May 21 at the Idaho State Penitentiary. On the witness stand he claimed he took part in slaying forty-two persons in thirteen states. Some were slain as human sacrifices during Satan worship rites, he said. Police discounted most of his claims, but bodies were found in Wyoming and Nevada on the basis of his directions. Ironically, he was convicted for two murders he insisted he did not commit. Some Idaho farmers meanwhile charge that Satan worshipers have been slaying their animals for sacrificial rites.

The family of the late Bertram E. Williams, a retired naval officer, had his cremated remains shipped from Florida to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia for burial. The box arrived damaged and minus the urn containing the ashes. After a fruitless search, the U. S. Postal Service listed the remains as lost in the mails. It will pay $15 to Williams’s family, the minimum amount of insurance placed on the package by the crematorium.

Two southern Maine school boards okayed daily “silent” periods for students in public schools. Their actions followed an opinion from state attorney general Joseph E. Brennan. It stated that a silent period doesn’t violate the U. S. Constitution if it is “not intended and not identified in any way as a religious exercise.” At the same time, he said there is no constitutional objection to prayer before legislative sessions, cabinet meetings, and other government functions. The state of Virginia meanwhile has authorized “one minute of silence” for prayer or meditation in its schools.

Bible Presbyterian leader Carl McIntire has fallen out with many of his separatist-fundamentalist colleagues. Leaders of Bob Jones University and other fundamentalist camps have scheduled a big World Congress of Fundamentalists for Edinburgh later this year. But McIntire feels such a gathering should have been under the sponsorship of his International Council of Christian Churches. He also objects to the participation of certain persons because of their friendliness toward Billy Graham-type evangelicals, and to a lack of militancy in the program. He describes it all as “New Fundamentalism.”

The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs staff will look into Transcendental Meditation and Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. The committee’s members, representatives of nine Baptist bodies cooperating in the agency, want to know whether the TM movement “is a religion within the meaning of the First Amendment.” They also want to know if church-state issues are involved in allegations that parents of some Unification Church members have harassed and kidnapped their children.

Pollster Louis Harris asked a cross-section of adults what institutions they have “a great deal of confidence” in. “Organized religion” ranked fourth (24 per cent) in a list of eleven, behind medicine, higher education, and television news. All lost ground since a similar poll last year (religion fell eight percentage points), and they are much below the 1966 level (when religion ranked eighth with 41 per cent). Medicine, in first place, fell from 73 per cent in 1966 to 42 per cent this year. Congress is in last place with 9 per cent.

Paul L. Logsdon, a student at Evangel College in Springfield, Missouri, was named national president of Intercollegiate Religious Broadcasters. He succeeds the recently elected Bruce Sago of Anderson (Indiana) College, who withdrew for personal reasons. The IRB is the campus division of the National Religious Broadcasters.

Anglican clergyman Donald Anderson, a missionary educator, was named general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches. He replaces T. B. Floyd Honey, a United Church of Canada minister, who quit because he felt that support of the council by member churches was diminishing.

Twenty-seven religious leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds issued an appeal urging Congress to pass a resolution declaring the “right of food” to be a basic element of U. S. policy. The measure was introduced last fall by Republican senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon and Democratic representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota. The signers include evangelist Billy Graham, Catholic archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, President Robert P Dugan, Jr., of the Conservative Baptist Association of America, General Secretary Claire Randall of the National Council of Churches, President Jaroy Weber of the Southern Baptist Convention, Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York, and Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Leaders of the United Presbyterian Church have sounded the alarm: the budget of $31.6 million may be in trouble. Of this amount, $23.3 million was expected from congregations, but current figures indicate that total may reach only $20.8 million unless giving is increased.

Bible colleges have gained an average of 7 per cent in total enrollment during the past year, according to researcher Garland G. Parker of the University of Cincinnati. (The fifty-three schools surveyed averaged about 350 students each; some have more, others less.) Theological schools also showed growth—5.5 per cent, said Parker.

More than 40 per cent of all Catholic children in America—6.6 million of them—are not receiving any formal religious instruction, according to a study released by the nation’s Catholic bishops. The number has more than doubled in the last ten years. Secularization, the breakup of Catholic neighborhoods, and parochial-school closing are among the causes cited.

Baptist evangelist Hans Mullikin, 37, of Marshall, Texas, is en route to Washington, D. C., more than 1,000 miles away—on his knees. The idea, he explains, is to challenge Americans to get on their knees and turn to God. Equipped with knee pads and traveling at about one-half mile per hour, he hopes to reach Lynchburg, Virginia, by July 4. Pastor Jerry Falwell of the Thomas Road Baptist Church and his Liberty Baptist College people are planning a big Bicentennial celebration in Lynchburg on that day. They’re expecting a crowd of 100,000.

DEATHS

JOHN COGLEY, 60, major proponent for reform in the Catholic Church, former editor of the influential independent Catholic weekly Commonweal, and former religion editor of the New York Times; in Santa Barbara, California, of a heart attack.

FERN G. OLSON, 60, Assemblies of God evangelist and pastor known to many thousands as “Sister Fern”; in Minneapolis.

Personalia

William Carey Moore, for more than three years director of Wycliffe Bible Translators’ editorial department, has been appointed managing editor of Logos Journal.

World Scene

Wycliffe Bible translator Eunice Diment, 37, of Dorset, England, was released in good health last month after being held captive for three weeks by Muslim dissidents in the southern Philippines. Conditions of her release were not immediately known. The captors had wanted $26,000 ransom and the release of two Muslim political prisoners.

Catholic archbishop Alexandre Jose Maria dos Santos of Mozambique denied reports that his country’s Marxist-oriented government has prohibited infant baptism or eliminated freedom of worship. Of the country’s 9.2 million population, an estimated 1.5 million are Catholics.

Poland’s premier Piotr Jaroszewicz gave formal assurances in parliament that his government intends to “continue its policy” of supporting “freedom of conscience and religion.” Last December the government proposed constitutional changes curtailing religious practices and making civil rights dependent on compliance with duties to the state. The proposals were scrapped after protests by church leaders and intellectuals.

Project CLAIM (Christian Literature for Asians in Ministry) has been launched in the Philippines. Its goal is to provide suitable theological textbooks and Bible-study aids to pastors and Bible-school and seminary students at prices they can afford. A New Testament survey and a concordance are among the first offerings. The project is a joint venture of the Philippine Association of Bible and Theological Schools and Overseas Missionary Fellowship Publishers.

Under construction in the ancient Islamic city of Kano, Nigeria, is a 2,000-seat church building for Evangelical Churches of West Africa, a denomination related to the Sudan Interior Mission. SIM opened the widely heralded Kano Eye Hospital in the city in 1943. There are now seven ECWA congregations in Kano.

Jehovah’s Witnesses report that 5,000 of their members are still in prison labor camps in the African country of Malawi despite an international campaign aimed at pressuring the government to stop the persecution. The sect was banned in 1967 because of its aloofness toward involvement in affairs of state (politics, patriotic rites, military service, and the like). The Witnesses also claim that thousands who fled Malawi are now being harassed in Mozambique.

The Christian Pentecostal Church of Cuba has asked for establishment of fraternal relationships with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The church split with its parent body, the Assemblies of God, in 1956 over differences of viewpoint concerning ecumenism and other topics. Overseas mission executive William J. Nottingham of the Disciples described the Cuban church as a group of “Christians who are standing by their faith and at the same time are fully committed to the revolution in Cuba.” The Disciples and other church groups are lobbying for an end to the U. S. trade embargo on the Caribbean nation.

Britain’s free churches collectively lost more than 53,000 members last year. The thirteen denominations have a total membership of 1.28 million members, according to the latest statistics. Methodists led the loss list with a decline of 44,000.

Approximately fifty Protestant clergymen moved from East Germany to West Germany last year, and others want to follow. The exodus prompted Lutheran bishop Albrecht Schonherr of East Germany to urge the pastors to stay at their posts despite the painful experiences they sometimes have. The church, he said, lacks trained personnel in many key social ministries, and although there are 860 pastors, seventy parishes are without ministers.

The French Evangelical Alliance and the Evangelical Federation of France have agreed to call for a nationwide evangelistic program in the fall of 1977 (rather than this spring, as reported earlier). Leaders hope to involve most of the estimated 40,000 evangelicals among France’s 52 million population. A theological congress is scheduled earlier in 1977 for French lay leaders, pastors, and teachers. An outgrowth of the 1974 Lausanne congress on evangelization, it will center on the theology of evangelism.

A contemporary Arabic translation of the New Testament will soon be published, according to an American Bible Society announcement. Known as Today’s Arabic Version, it was begun in 1969. Work on the Old Testament is under way. The Arabic translation most widely used today was completed by American missionary Cornelius Van Dyck and published by the ABS in the 1860s. An estimated 100 million people speak Arabic.

There were no jokes on April Fools’ Day at the headquarters of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) in St. Louis. It was a day that amounted to a high-noon showdown between four district presidents of the LCMS and LCMS president Jacob A. O. “Jack” Preus, along with the denomination’s board of directors. Preus and the board wanted the four to state their willingness to comply with synodical regulations governing the ordination and placement of ministerial candidates. The four men refused to budge and instead countered with proposals that in effect called for the undoing of actions taken at last year’s convention of the 2.8 million-member church in Anaheim, California (see August 8, 1975, issue, page 31).

His patience at an end after months of haggling and pleading, Preus the next day announced the removal of the four district presidents from office. They are: Harold Hecht of the 136,000-member English district, Robert Riedel of the 38,500-member New England district, Rudolph Ressmeyer of the 74,000-member Atlantic district, and Herman R. Frincke of the 72,000-member Eastern district.

Preus was acting under the mandate of a resolution known as 5-02A passed at last year’s convention. It stated that if, after pastoral care and admonition, the district presidents persisted in disobeying Synod regulations, Preus should then declare their offices vacant at least sixty days before the next district convention. The measure was aimed at stopping the unauthorized ordination and placement of graduates from Seminex (Seminary in Exile), a rebel school organized by dissidents in 1974 after the suspension of John Tietjen as president of Concordia Seminary. (Tietjen later became president of Seminex.)

The deadline passed without disciplinary action being taken against four other district presidents aligned with the four ousted ones. They are: Paul Jacobs of the 73,000-member California-Nevada district, Herman Neunaber of the 45,000 Southern Illinois district, Waldemar Meyer of the 59,000-member Colorado district, and Emil Jaech of the 90,500-member Northwest district. (The LCMS has a total of nearly forty district presidents.)

All eight repeatedly vowed after the Anaheim convention that they would keep on accepting qualified Seminex graduates as approved candidates for the ministry in their districts. They branded as unconstitutional the Anaheim resolutions aimed at muzzling the so-called moderate movement in the LCMS.

In attempting to avert upheaval, Preus chose to interpret resolution 5-02A rather broadly and not evict a district president from office unless the official personally authorized or ordained an unqualified candidate. A number of Preus’s conservative backers felt this approach was too charitable and they demanded that he take a tougher position. Nevertheless, Preus declined to move against Jacobs, Neunaber, Meyer, and Jaech on grounds they had not personally approved or ordained anyone since Anaheim. Jaech had participated in an ordination service but was not the principal involved in the actual ordination. Only later, after the deadline, did Preus learn that Jacobs had authorized the ordination of a Seminex graduate.

In explaining his lenient action at the time, Preus reasoned: “Even though the district presidents involved have not given the stated compliance requested of them, nevertheless I am willing to accept [their not having] authorized such objectionable ordinations as a willingness to comply in fact with the wishes of the Synod.”

The district presidents retorted that no such willingness was intended by them.

Afterward, the eight voiced their solidarity, declaring, “Attempts to divide us or to disrupt our united response by approving some of us and threatening others will not succeed.” They again stated they would not comply with the Anaheim resolutions, and they rejected efforts to achieve only “a superficial conciliation which turns its back on the real issues that are troubling the Synod.”

In a last-ditch attempt to avoid the showdown, Preus late last month offered a proposal to Hecht, Riedel, Ressmeyer, and Frincke, all of whom had ordained unendorsed Seminex graduates. He said he would not vacate their offices if they would agree to a moratorium on further placement of Seminex graduates until the next convention of the LCMS, at which time changes could be considered in ordination regulations.

The offer was turned down, and the ousters ensued.

Reaction came immediately. The four who were evicted said they regard the ouster action invalid “because only the congregations of our districts, who have called us, have a right to remove us,” and they said they would remain on the job pending district meetings despite Preus’s appointment of acting presidents. The other four warned that “such removals from office undoubtedly will result in congregations and ministries in our districts and throughout the Synod being separated from the Synod.” They called on the congregations in their districts to prepare for “new parallel associations” that might be needed soon.

Preus’s action, said John Tietjen, “has set in motion an unstoppable, irretrievable series of events that will lead to the eventual breakup of the synod.”

Preus said he was “very anguished” over the situation but added, “I don’t anticipate there will be as much furor over this as some would have expected or hoped.”

The moderates already have a number of “alternate” structures set up. More than 200 participants met in suburban Chicago in February to organize a “Coordinating Council for the Moderate Movement.” They represented Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), the main moderate group whose primary purpose originally was to back Seminex but whose activities now are considerably broader; small “cluster” groups of dissidents throughout the districts; and the fledgling Lutheran Church in Mission (LCM), an “interim” body not yet “activated” for congregations and individuals wishing to leave the Synod.

The group at the Chicago meeting commended the English district for its stated opposition to some of the conservative policies of the Missouri Synod and for opening the way earlier this year to reestablish itself as a separate synod “if this seems necessary” by the time of the district convention in June. (The Detroit-based English district is a non-geographical entity of the LCMS with congregations in many states.)

In their consultation, the moderates encouraged dissident congregations to consider transfer to the English district or to apply for membership in the LCM rather than to break away from the Synod on their own. A spokesman at the meeting said implementation of resolution 5-02A might lead to the activation of the LCM.

That move was under discussion early this month, and battle lines were being drawn in the districts affected by the ousters.

PASTOR WHO?

God is the new pastor of Congaree Baptist Church in Gadsden, South Carolina. James R. God, that is. Another recent arrival in the area is the Reverend John Wesley, who has joined the staff of Trinity Episcopal Church in nearby Columbia (the famous eighteenth-century Methodist for whom he was named served for a time as pastor of an Anglican church 150 miles away in Savannah, Georgia). At about the same time, the Ridge Hill Baptist Church in Ridge Spring, South Carolina, was celebrating its 106th anniversary. In sermons, it’s a winner: its pastor is J. E. Preacher, Jr.

Catholic Decline: Vatican Induced?

Serious erosion in belief and practice is occurring among American Catholics, according to a study released by noted priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley, 48, and his colleagues at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In the study, nearly 1,000 Catholics were surveyed in 1963 and again in 1974. The percentage of those who attend weekly mass declined from 71 to 50; those who go to confession monthly dropped from 38 to 17 per cent; and those who agree that the Pope holds his authority “in direct line from Jesus” fell from 70 to 42 per cent.

On other topics, the percentage of those who approve of artificial birth control rose from 45 to 83, while 43 per cent approve of sexual relations between engaged persons, up from 12 per cent, and 36 per cent feel abortion should be legal (although only 8 per cent say they themselves would abort an unwanted pregnancy). Seventy-three per cent approve of remarriage after divorce.

Greeley attributed the downward shift largely to Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical condemning artificial birth control.

Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati, leader of America’s Catholic bishops, responded cooly to the conclusion, noting that “Catholic truth is not determined by sociological data” and reaffirming the encyclical as “the authentic teaching of the church.”

Sentence Suspended

Wendell Nance, former financial officer of the 2,000-member bankrupt Calvary Temple in Denver, was fined $5,500, given a suspended eighteen-month prison sentence, and placed on probation for five years. He had been convicted last year in a felony case involving illegal sales of securities. Some 3,400 investors purchased $11 million worth of securities; many have not had their money returned. Calvary’s pastor Charles Blair, indicted with Nance in 1974, has had his trial continued five times. He has vowed to repay “every cent,” and observers say they believe the court is giving him time to attempt to fulfill his pledge.

Church Growth In Ethiopia

Church-growth specialists are taking a long look at something that is happening among the Darassa people of southern Ethiopia. In a four-month period beginning last September, the 240 Darassa churches related to the Sudan Interior Mission gained more than 24,000 converts, and the action is continuing, according to a report in the SIM publication Africa Now.

The professions of faith came during a concentrated evangelistic outreach known as New Life for All. Under the program, which SIM has used elsewhere in Africa also, the churches set aside one Sunday a month for evangelism. Members meet for prayer, but instead of having morning worship services on that day they fan out in teams throughout the countryside. The day’s converts are brought back to the church, introduced to other members, and enrolled in a follow-up plan that emphasizes spiritual growth and Christian fellowship.

By the end of the year the churches had an average of nearly 100 converts each, and some congregations had doubled or tripled in size. All are busy with new converts’ classes and home Bible-study groups, says SIM’s Albert Brant, who introduced the New Life idea to the area.

Reversal In Denmark

Last year the Danish Film Institute, an independent but publicly financed organization, voted to authorize a $170,000 “production guarantee” to producer Jen Jorgen Thorsen for a film entitled The Many Faces of Jesus. Thorsen billed it as a porn film that would depict Jesus in nude and love-making scenes. The five board members quit after awarding the grant on a 3-2 vote, two to protest the guarantee, three to protest “political pressures” against it. Thorsen had trouble finding a country that would permit him a location to make the film, and production lagged. Criticism of the project meanwhile poured into Copenhagen from around the world.

The new institute members last month unanimously decided to withdraw the appropriation after government lawyers concluded that the manuscript (on which the film was to be based) violates moral provisions of law. Thorsen will have to get his money elsewhere.

Probate

Evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman has bequeathed $267,500 of her estate to three family members and twenty employees, according to court records. (Miss Kuhlman died February 20 in a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma.)

The largest bequest, $50,000, went to Myrtle Parrott, Miss Kuhlman’s sister. Marguerite “Maggie” Hartner, the evangelist’s longtime secretary and administrative aide, was bequeathed $40,000. Nineteen other employees, another sister, and a sister-in-law received smaller amounts.

The dollar value of Miss Kuhlman’s estate—including stocks, antiques, art objects, her suburban Pittsburgh home, and other property—will not be known until an inventory is completed. Former Kuhlman employees say the total exceeds $1 million, but some of this may represent property actually owned by the Kuhlman Foundation (cars, some clothing, and the like).

Miss Kuhlman named Tulsa auto dealer Dana Barton “Tank” Wilkerson, Jr., and his wife Sue as residuary legatees—the ones who are to receive all property not already bequeathed. Miss Kuhlman and the Wilkersons had been acquaintances for some years, but within the last year their friendship deepened, and the Wilkersons helped out as her health deteriorated.

Sources inside the Kuhlman organization say they were dismayed that Miss Kuhlman did not bequeath more of her estate to the foundation. In the final months of her life, they say, there were bitter feelings toward Wilkerson on the part of Miss Kuhlman’s headquarters staff. “We felt he stole her from us,” says one of those persons. The will, dated last December 17, supersedes one drawn up in 1974 that left the bulk of the estate to the foundation.

Foundation representatives initially filed the 1974 will for probate, and a legal hassle ensued. The foundation decided against contesting the later document. It was drawn up in Los Angeles by Irvine Ungerman, Wilkerson’s Tulsa attorney, who had earlier achieved an out-of-court settlement between Miss Kuhlman and her former business manager Paul Bartholomew and pianist Dino Kartsonakis in a financial dispute.

Wilkerson, 44, denies suggestions by foundation forces that he was out to win Miss Kuhlman’s favor for financial gain. “I have given, not taken,” he asserts. He says he spent more than $20,000 in posting security guards at Miss Kuhlman’s West Coast and Pittsburgh area residences following her death. In the last year, he states, he furnished the evangelist with a Mercedes 450SL for her California use free of charge, and he acquired a $750,000 private jet mainly to transport her to her various engagements. Miss Kuhlman spent $20,000 customizing the interior but put no other money into the plane, he says, adding that the foundation has refused to pay the expenses he billed for her trips. He also says rumors that the evangelist entered into private business dealings with him simply are not true.

Claiming he is already a successful businessman, Wilkerson says he “could have made more out of business in the year we spent helping Miss Kuhlman than we will get out of her estate.” He added a challenge: “If all the beneficiaries except the blood relatives will make a contribution to Oral Roberts University, I will donate the entire residue of the estate to ORU.” Wilkerson is an ORU board member.

As to why Miss Kuhlman decided to change her will, Wilkerson says he is baffled too but explains that it was in accord with the evangelist’s unpredictable nature.

Part of the dismay can be traced to an apparent sense of betrayal. It is an open secret that Miss Kuhlman, who served as president, chairman, and chief executive officer of her organization, paid her longtime key employees relatively low salaries (well under $10,000 a year). Some had to moonlight to make ends meet. The evangelist did present occasional gifts to her people, but many of them stayed on out of sheer dedication.

For the time being, Miss Kuhlman’s voice will continue to be heard on radio programs sponsored by the foundation, but TV programs have been withdrawn. Certain overseas mission programs will still receive support. Sunday morning services will be maintained at the Youngstown, Ohio, municipal auditorium. Attended by more than 2,000 each week, these are conducted by David Verzilli, 44, who has been Miss Kuhlman’s preaching mainstay for twenty-two years. He also presides at weekly prayer meetings and Bible-study sessions in Youngstown, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Miss Kuhlman is gone, says Verzilli, “but the same sense of anointing still exists here among the congregation.”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

The Politics Of Abortion

Anti-abortion lobbyists in Washington, disappointed over the failure of the presidential candidates to come clean on the issue, still are hoping to get it to the floor of the U. S. Senate prior to the political conventions this summer.

There is far less chance of debating abortion in the House, where all seats are up for grabs this year and incumbents are trying to avoid taking a stand on highly divisive questions.

The specific issue is a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision that in the eyes of many anti-abortionists is tantamount to a legalization of abortion on demand. Some are pressing for a constitutional provision granting legal protection for the unborn. Others, following the lead of President Ford, would be satisfied for the time being with an amendment that would leave the matter up to the states.

Alabama governor George Wallace is the only major candidate pressing for an amendment banning abortions. Ellen McCormack, the Long Island housewife whose candidacy was based almost entirely on promoting such an amendment, has faltered in the primaries.

Senator Henry Jackson agrees with Ford’s proposal of a states’ rights amendment. All the other Democratic candidates state some personal moral reservations about abortions but oppose any kind of constitutional amendment. Former California governor Ronald Reagan, who has been moving toward a less permissive view, is reported now to favor an amendment as a last resort.

Earlier this year, the issue was joined in a debate between the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) and a group known as American Citizens Concerned for Life (ACCL). United Methodist bishop James Armstrong, an RCAR spokesman, attacked Roman Catholic bishops for sponsoring a drive to overturn the Supreme Court decision. Armstrong said the efforts “threaten First Amendment guarantees of the freedom of religion” and jeopardize “ecumenical accords that have been achieved after many years.”

ACCL and another anti-abortion group, Baptists for Life, criticized the RCAR for making the issue appear as though it pitted Catholics against Protestants.

An official of the National Conference of Christians and Jews subsequently warned that it would be a major “social tragedy” if the abortion debate is allowed to deteriorate into an “inter-religious conflict.” Donald W. McEvoy, national program director and a vice president of the NCCJ, called for reasoned debate by pro-abortion and anti-abortion advocates. He stressed his conviction that “persons of good will and deep conviction” stand on both sides of the question. He acknowledged that Catholic bishops are working for anti-abortion legislation but said they are joined by “significant numbers” of Protestants and Jews. McEvoy said the NCCJ takes no institutional stand on the matter but simply urged “that the debate be conducted within the confines of civilized dialogue.”

McEvoy’s contention that Catholics are split on the issue was corroborated some days later when thousands of women marched through the streets of Rome denouncing the Pope and calling for an end to legal sanctions against abortion.

Revised Version

Bible paraphraser Kenneth Taylor says a “thorough revision” of The Living Bible will be published next year. At a recent Methodist men’s dinner in Cincinnati he outlined three problem areas that have led to the revision: literary style, possible inaccuracies, and the “frankness [of] the original” Hebrew that he tried to reflect in his work (in First Samuel 20:30 and First Kings 18:27, for example).

In defense, he noted that some of the more traditional Bible translations also used what was considered strong language for their time, and that biblical curses were intended to sound crude.

Taylor for years has had an open-door policy toward Bible scholars and others, inviting them to offer constructive criticism and to suggest changes. The revision will incorporate many of these suggestions.

A lot of the criticism, he said, has come from people who do not understand what a paraphrase is. He explained that it is a translation “thought for thought, not word for word.”

Taylor revealed that The Living Bible has sold some 18 million copies and returned more than $15 million in royalties in the past five years to the Tyndale House Foundation for use in mission work. Part of the money has been used to produce counterparts of The Living Bible in 100 languages.

Tyndale House, a firm founded in 1963 primarily to publish The Living Bible, now has 150 employees, 250 titles in its catalogue, and a production schedule of fifty books a year, says Taylor.

Tax Reform

Many churches, long spared the headache of preparing income-tax returns, had better become acquaintec with Internal Revenue Service Form 990-T. The IRS issued a reminder that the five-year grace period provided by Congress under the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which greatly broadened the scope of the unrelated-business income tax to be paid by the churches, has now expired. Beginning this year churches must keep records and pay taxes on income from any enterprise not directly related to their religious or educational mission.

The IRS doesn’t feel that sponsorship of bingo games is part of the religious mission of a church, so proceeds from weekly bingo games and other such programs will be taxable. Likewise, taxes must be paid on income from the operation of bakeries, restaurants, wineries, gift and craft shops, and the like, and from such sources as the sale of herbs from cathedral gardens. Sales of religious books and pictures, however, will be exempt. Single events like annual church bazaars will not be taxed, but any such fund-raising ventures conducted on a regular or frequent basis will come under the law.

Income from rental of church-owned property (houses, space in office buildings, parking areas) will be considered “unrelated income.”

The IRS says it will be happy to provide the necessary forms and instructions.

GLENN EVERETT

Presbyterians: A Call To Persevere

Advocates of union of the nation’s two largest Presbyterian bodies are asking for another vote of confidence from the denominations’ general assemblies. When the top governing body of the 890,000-member Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) meets in June, it will be urged to approve an invitation to the assembly of the 2.7 million-member United Presbyterian Church “to enter into a covenant of union.” A joint committee representing both bodies has been at work since 1969 to forge a merger, but it is not expected to present its formal proposals before next year.

Meanwhile, the PCUS General Executive Board wants the general assembly of the church to reaffirm its desire for union and to throw its resources behind the union drive. The proposed covenant would commit both assemblies to “persevere in devising acceptable means” to achieve union. Numerous assemblies have gone on record in favor of merger, but no plan has yet been submitted to the PCUS presbyteries (regional units) for the required approval.

Last Words

Pity poor Sally Lord. She had the misfortune to have her early American tombstone carved by a hard-put poet:

Underneath this pile of stones,

Lies all that’s left of Sally Jones.

Her name was Lord, it was not Jones.

But Jones was used to rhyme with stones.

The stone is located in Skaneateles, New York. The poem is one of the whimsical epitaphs in a photographic exhibit of “American Grave Stone Art, 1647–1903” put together by Francis Duval and Ivan Rigby of Brooklyn. An Associated Press story took note of the Sally Lord epitaph along with others. It quoted from a stone in Kittery, Maine, that offered a glimpse of family relationships:

We can but mourn his loss,

Though wretched was his life.

Death took him from the cross

Erected by his wife.

Social comment appeared on a New Haven, Connecticut, stone:

God works a wonder

Now and then.

He, though a lawyer,

Was an honest man.

A certain assurance was reflected on an Ithaca, New York, marker:

While on earth, my knee was lame,

I had to nurse and heed it.

But now I’m at a better place

Where I don’t even need it.

And a philosophical question was posed on another Connecticut gravestone:

Since I so very soon

Was done for,

I wonder why

I was begun for.

By the turn of the century the light, folksy touch on American tombstones had all but disappeared in favor of sobriety and simplicity.

Death For Youth

Mr. Death: Four Stories, by Anne Moody (Harper & Row, 1975, 102 pp., $5.95), May I Cross Your Golden River?, by Paige Dixon (Atheneum, 1975, 262 pp., $7.95), and The Garden Is Doing Fine, by Carol Farley (Atheneum, 1975, 185 pp., $6.95), are reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

There are various ways to treat death in books for children. In the well-known Anne Shirley series by L. M. Montgomery, death and birth and sickness occur because they occur in real life. As I mentioned in my article on C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series (see page 6), Lewis included the possibility of death in his stories to show courage in action. But the subject of death is not the pivot on which the plot turns in those two examples as it is in these three new books for children. Stylistically and philosophically each book has its strengths and weaknesses. But Moody’s is the best example of how not to write a children’s book about death.

The foreword by John Donovan presumably tries to convince the prospective young reader—though I think it was really written for nervous parents—that these stories aren’t as bad as they seem, that the book is really about love, not death. I agree with his comments about catharsis, which is a valid term for how certain stories strike certain readers. But Donovan’s defense of Moody is unconvincing. If these stories “will make your life richer than it was” we don’t need an outsider to tell us so; we will know it by the reading.

I would never give this book to any sensitive person under sixteen (the dust jacket claims the stories are written for those ten and up). In the first tale the child, disturbed by the death of his mother, shoots himself in the head. When his father finds him, he kills himself the same way. In another story a small girl’s German shepherd dog eats her when he smells blood from a scratch on her arm. There is nothing bright or heroic or joyful about Moody’s vision of life; she sees sorrow without hope. The last tale is the one exception, but it alone is not worth the price of the book. Moody is a talented writer; the tales are skillfully told. But her skill is no compensation for the content.

The other two books are written for teen-agers. Dixon’s is better written than Farley’s, and is the best of the three. Eighteen-year-old Jordan discovers he is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (“Lou Gehrig’s disease”). Dixon narrates how the boy and his family handle the news realistically and sympathetically, without any cloying sentimentality. The story is not as one-diminsional as such books often are; there is more to the plot than Jordan’s plight.

Although the tale is not told from a Christian perspective, there are good passages discussing heaven, faith, prayer, and the existence of pain in relation to the existence of God. Certainly a thoughtful, mature Christian teen-ager would find the book interesting.

Jordan changes in Dixon’s tale, as does the main character in Farley’s novel. Although Farley’s plot is less diversified, her theme is more complex. Corrie, a high school freshman, faces her father’s death at the end of the book. Along the way she learns much about prayer and faith and love. Several chapters concentrate on the problem of unanswered prayer. The story raises questions that each Christian faces at some point.

The title—The Garden Is Doing Fine—symbolizes both the real garden her father plants each spring and the garden that is living in her.

These are not great books, but the last two are better than the average fare found on junior library shelves.

Doctrines Of The Apostles

A Theology of the New Testament, by George Eldon Ladd (Eerdmans, 1974, 661 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Robert Guelich, associate professor of New Testament, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

After many years of creative scholarship and numerous articles and books in the area of New Testament theology, Professor George Ladd of Fuller Theological Seminary has put it all together in what might be called his magnum opus, A Theology of the New Testament. Beginning with the introduction, which briefly sketches the history of the discipline and introduces some of the major issues involved in the discipline, Ladd develops his theology of the New Testament according to the following divisions: the Synoptic Gospels, the Fourth Gospel, the Primitive Church, Paul, the General Epistles and the Apocalypse. His stated intent is “to introduce seminary students to the discipline of New Testament theology … to give a survey of the discipline, to state its problems and to offer positive solutions as the author sees them.”

The section on the Synoptic Gospels offers a valuable, concise summary of Ladd’s previous work on Jesus and the Kingdom of God. His work on Pauline theology, while not as familiar to his readers, is equally as rewarding. It comes as a fresh statement of Paul’s thought based on the author’s interaction with the vast contemporary literature on this subject. By setting off the Fourth Gospel as a section in itself, Ladd does justice to the frequently overlooked uniqueness of that work’s contribution to New Testament theology. The highlight of the section on the primitive church is his discussion of the Resurrection, and he concludes with a relatively brief statement on the theology of each of the General Epistles and the Apocalypse.

The one weakness I found in this work is its failure to take into account the theology of each Synoptic evangelist. Whereas it is important to have a composite portrait of Jesus and his ministry from the Synoptics in contrast to John, we must be careful not to overlook the theological distinctives of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Granted that one might be frustrated by the rather speculative and sometimes fanciful work that has been done in Synoptic studies, the work of evangelicals such as Marshall, Martin, and Meye encourages us to treat each of the Gospels with individual care.

Ladd’s Theology makes one very significant contribution to New Testament theology that comes almost as a byproduct. Ladd consciously develops the theological distinctives of the authors and traditions of the New Testament without denying any of its unity. This is welcome at a time when many critical studies are focusing on the diversity of the New Testament theologies and are thus skeptical about the possibility of a given New Testament theology. The theology of the New Testament is polychromatic, not monochromatic. Yet the full spectrum of colors is a compatible blend and not a clash.

The strengths of Ladd’s writings have been their comprehensive scope, fair interaction with others, and very readable style. This book is no exception. The literature is vast, the viewpoints innumerable, the issues complex. Yet Ladd singles out the significant literature, presenting both his and others’ views with objectivity and fairness. He confronts the issues directly, posing the crucial questions. And he has a gift of saying something profound in an interesting and clear way.

Although Ladd explicitly writes for the seminarian, any serious student of the Scriptures will find this to be profitable, intelligibly laid out and clearly written. I unreservedly recommend it for a reading audience larger than the “textbook” audience.

Paul’S Magnum Opus

The Epistle to the Romans, Volume I, by C. E. B. Cranfield (T. & T. Clark, 1975, 462 pp., £7.00), is reviewed by W. Ward Gasque, associate professor of New Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The world renowned International Critical Commentary on the Bible was initiated more than eighty years ago by the well known theological publishing firm T. & T. Clark of Edinburgh, Scotland. The goal was a very ambitious one: to produce a major scholarly commentary series after the pattern of the great German multi-volume commentaries edited by H. A. W. Meyer, C. F. Keil and F Delitzsch, J. P. Lange, and H. J. Holzmann—a task never before attempted in English. According to the preface to the first volume to appear, Deuteronomy (1895) by S. R. Driver (who also served as general editor for the Old Testament), the series was to be primarily critical (i.e., scholarly) and exegetical, rather than homiletical. It was also to be international and inter-confessional in character, as well as (it was hoped) “free from polemical and ecclesiastical bias.” Emphasis would be laid on “Historical and Archaeological questions, as well as questions of Biblical [though presumably not systematic] Theology.”

As it actually turned out, the Old Testament volumes leaned very heavily upon philology and literary criticism and scarcely entered the field of biblical theology, while the New commentaries (with one exception) tended to have a more theological emphasis and were also generally more conservative in their critical conclusions, perhaps reflecting the differing outlooks of Driver and Alfred Plummer, who was the New Testament editor. Although the names of intended authors were listed in the first volume to appear, the names changed considerably over the years and many commentaries failed to appear. When the latest volume of the old series (James A. Montgomery, 1 and 2 Kings) appeared in 1951, only about two-thirds of the Bible had been covered. But by then the three original editors (C. A. Briggs was the third) were long since dead, and it seemed that the publishers and potential authors either were exhausted or had lost interest in the project.

The ICC, though very dated and in places uneven in quality, still remains an indispensable tool for the contemporary theological student or pastor, since it is the only commentary series of this style in English. (By contrast, German scholars and publishers have never tired of producing and revising numerous scholarly commentary series and other technical works of biblical study!) The new Hermeneia series, which is being published by Fortress Press, is similar to the ICC though not quite so technical and thus far is limited to translations from German. There are also commentaries on individual books, not a part of any series, that fill a gap for the serious student and surpass or update numerous ICC volumes.

However, many volumes of the old ICC remain of special value. Here one thinks of Skinner on Genesis (1925), Driver on Deuteronomy (1895), Montgomery on Daniel (1927), the multi-author volumes on the Minor Prophets (1905, 1911, 1912), Plummer on Luke (1896) and 2 Corinthians (1915), Burton on Galatians (1921), Charles’s two volumes on Revelation (1920), and, until the appearance last year of the replacement by Cranfield, Sanday and Headlam on Romans (1895).

The scholarly world pricked up its ears when it began to be rumored that the ICC was being revised under the editorship of J. A. Emerton of Cambridge and C. E. B. Cranfield of Durham. As it turns out, there are plans not for a complete revision of the series but rather for the replacement of some volumes and the filling in of significant gaps (for example, no commentary on Acts was ever published in the old series: the responsibility for this is now in the capable hands of C. K. Barrett). And now we have the first volume of what is certainly the most significant commentary on Romans written in English in more than three-quarters of a century.

Cranfield’s work is in every way a worthy successor to its well-known predecessor. If the authors who follow him in the next few years keep to the same high standard, students and teachers of the New Testament will owe them a very great debt indeed. As I read page after page of Cranfield on Romans 1–8, I could not but think of Lightfoot and Westcott, for the author seems to have that same blend of careful scholarship and sympathy for the thought of the biblical writers that one finds in these two greatest of English commentators but in few other modern (or ancient, for that matter) commentators. Volume one begins with a forty-four-page introduction, dealing with questions of authenticity and integrity, date and place of writing, the church in Rome, occasion and purpose, language and style, structure, and the history of the exegesis of the epistle. This section is a model of lucid brevity. The author deals with the major alternatives suggested in regard to each problem of introduction without overwhelming the reader with detail or turning his comments into bibliographical essays (as is the tendency of recent German commentators). His conclusions are uniformly conservative and traditional, though they are by no means merely assumed:

1. Paul is the true author of the whole epistle, including chapters 15 and 16; Tertius (Rom. 16:22) served only as secretary, taking down in longhand and shorthand the actual words of Paul.

2. The letter was written either during the period of the final days of A D. 55 and the early weeks of A.D. 56 or during the corresponding period A.D. 56–57.

3. The Roman church contained both Jewish and Gentile members, neither group, probably, having an overwhelming predominance.

4. Although the general occasion of the epistle is clear—Paul proposes to stop by Rome on his way to further missionary labors in Spain (1:8–15 and 15:14–33)—it is not altogether clear, at least at first, why he took the occasion to write a detailed exposition of the Gospel as he preached it. Cranfield promises to return to this subject at the end of his commentary.

5. Paul’s use of language shows a certain degree of culture and general refinement: his style is fluent and accurate Greek without any hint that (as is sometimes suggested) he is thinking in Aramaic.

6. A point worth noting is the use of connectives (i.e., conjunctions and other linking words), which indicates the logical development of Paul’s thought; Cranfield takes pains to point out the significance of these and the orderly mind of the author of Romans.

7. The theme of the epistle as a whole (and not just chapters 1–8 or 1–11) is found in 1:16b, 17: God’s righteousness which is by faith.

A valuable feature of Cranfield’s commentary is his warm appreciation of the work of all biblical commentators, especially the early Fathers, and not just modern scholars. Far from being largely irrelevant for the contemporary understanding of Paul’s magnum opus, the Fathers are seen to have often come to grips with the heart of an exegetical problem; and even the Middle Ages are not without light (particularly the work of Aquinas). However, it is John Calvin (rather than Luther!) with whom the author finds greatest sympathy, a fact that should warm all good Presbyterian and Reformed hearts!

Although many North American evangelicals may not be familiar with the author and his earlier work, they will doubtless embrace him as a brother, since his commentary is consistently evangelical and reformed (without being doctrinaire). Here are a few samples of his thought on key theological issues. On the concept of God’s wrath, which is so troublesome to the mind of modern man, he writes (against Dodd):

That Paul would attribute to God a capricious, irrational rage is more than improbable. But a consideration of what Dodd calls “the highest human ideas of personality” might well lead us to question whether God could be the good and loving God, if He did not react to our evil with wrath. For indignation against wickedness is surely an essential element of human goodness in a world in which moral evil is always present.…

In view of the parallelism between [chapter 1] vv. 17 and 18, the most natural way of taking v. 18 is to understand Paul to mean that orge theou [God’s wrath] also is being revealed in the gospel, that is, in the on-going proclamation of the gospel, and to recognize that behind, and basic to, this revelation of the wrath of God in the preaching, is the prior revelation of the wrath of God in the gospel events.…

The reality of the wrath of God is only truly known when it is seen in its revelation in Gethsemane and on Golgotha [pp. 109, 110].

After arguing for the translation of hilasterion in 3:25 by “a propitiatory sacrifice,” he comments:

We take it that what Paul’s statement that God purposed Christ as a propitiatory victim means is that God, because in His mercy He willed to forgive sinful men and, being truly merciful, willed to forgive them righteously, that is, without in any way condoning their sin, purposed to direct against His own very Self in the person of His Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved [p. 217],

And on Romans 5:1:

What did Paul understand to be the relation between reconciliation and justification? The correct answer would seem to be … that God’s justification involves reconciliation because God is what He is. Where it is God’s justification that is concerned, justification and reconciliation, though distinguishable, are inseparable. Whereas between a human judge and the person who appears before him there may be no personal meeting at all, no personal hostility if the accused is found guilty, no establishment of friendship if the accused is acquitted, between God and the sinner there is a personal relationship, and God’s justification involves a real self-engagement to the sinner on His part. He does not confer the status of righteousness upon us without at the same time giving Himself to us in friendship and establishing peace between Himself and us … [p. 258].

These three quotations give a sample of the theological flavor of Cranfield’s commentary, but they give no indication of the exegetical and philological detail with which the work abounds, nor of the author’s mastery of literature ranging from biblical and extra-biblical Greek and Hebrew texts through the rabbis and the early Fathers to modem commentators in a multitude of languages. Each page is packed with helpful information that will be appreciated by all serious students of the New Testament. The work will be of value primarily to those who have studied Greek, but I am sure that many who have no knowledge of this language but who have the patience to work their way through the material will also find their reward.

The only two, rather minor, negative comments I would offer are these. First, the printing job could have been more carefully done. In view of the technicality of the text, which contains reams of Greek and some Hebrew (untransliterated!), and also other foreign-language material, it is surprising that there are so few typographical errors. But in such an expensive volume one would think that the printers would be careful to make the margins uniform and to see that the type always prints evenly. However, this in no way spoils the content.

My second criticism concerns the too-frequent use of Latin and Greek (not only in the case of the New Testament and Septuagint) and, to a lesser degree, German and French. In my experience, it would be asking too much to expect all contemporary professors of New Testament to have the language mastery required to make full use of these references, and certainly few if any British or North American theological students or pastors possess the necessary linguistic skills. Although some of the author’s university colleagues might look askance at the idea of translating quotes into English, that practice would surely have enhanced the usefulness of the commentary for many.

There is no list of scholars who are working on subsequent volumes contained in this first volume of the new ICC series, but I happen to know that a distinguished group is hard at work, including E. Earle Ellis (First Corinthians), Margaret Thrall (Second Corinthians), W. D. Davies (Matthew), Bruce M. Metzger (Galatians), and Ernest Best (Ephesians). Any one of these could be published within the next two to four years, but I predict that the next to appear will be Cranfield’s second volume on Romans. Whether my prediction is right or not, I am certain that we will all be the debtors of whoever is the next to reach the press. May the Lord strengthen their hands.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Studies in Words, by C. S. Lewis (Cambridge, 343 pp., $15.50, $5.95 pb). The second edition was first issued in 1967 and is now available in paperback. Lewis discusses the meanings of various words such as nature, wit, and sense, words that students and other readers of older literature often misunderstand, sometimes with comical results. Lewis says the book is an “aide to more accurate reading,” and it is just that. Although not specifically religious, it makes us sensitive to the exact meanings of words and how they change, important in studying Scripture or theology. Those who write can benefit not only from Lewis’s ideas but also from the example of his graceful prose.

Objections to Astrology, by Bart Bok and Lawrence Jerome (Prometheus, 62 pp., $2.95 pb). Though largely from a humanist perspective, nevertheless this is a useful rebuttal to what is perhaps the most widespread non-Christian religious practice.

Evangelical feminists claim to be faithful to God as revealed in Christ and the Scriptures. Many Bible-believers have changed their minds over the years about church and state, slavery, and racial discrimination; a better understanding of the Bible can similarly lead to a change in views about men and women. Others dispute, sometimes strongly, the evangelical feminist claim. One of the best ways is to see for oneself what is—and is not—said in the Christian feminists’ leading periodical, Daughters of Sarah, a bi-monthly. A year’s subscription is $2.50 (5104 N. Christiana, Chicago, Ill. 60625).

Libraries serving theological students who read French should welcome the appearance of Hokhma (a Hebrew word for “wisdom”), a theological journal to be published three times per year. For subscription information write Case postale 242, 1000 Lausanne 22, Switzerland. Meanwhile, the somewhat less academic Ichthus is now in its sixth year of monthly publication. For information write Librairie Robert-Estienne, 5 route des Acacias, 1227 Carouge-Geneve, Switzerland.

Compulsory Education and the Amish: The Right Not to Be Modern, edited by Albert N. Keim (Beacon, 211 pp., $8.95). Even as Jehovah’s Witnesses have won for all kinds of believers rights to proselytize, so the Amish may be leading the way to winning rights to educate one’s children as one pleases. Thorough documentation, focusing on a Wisconsin supreme court decision.

Get Me a Tambourine!, by Mary Jane Chambers (Hawthorn, 164 pp., $3.95 pb). A young teenager is converted and joins the “Jesus movement.” His mother, active in a “mainstream” church, records the resulting family conflict over the next few years, which bring some modifications on both sides. Interspersed are brief but illuminating comments by the boy on what his mother has written.

Christians who like poetry will welcome the appearance in October, 1975, of Gates, a quarterly of “poetry and art that exalts Jesus Christ and strengthens the Body of Christ” ($4 for 4 issues/year; Box 67, Grand Rapids, Mich 55744).

Sojourners made its appearance in January as a new, more constructive name for The Post American. The sponsoring Peoples Christian Coalition has moved from the Chicago area to the nation’s capital. It stresses both individual conversion and living in community not as a means of withdrawal from the world but to promote social reform in keeping with what are believed to be divinely revealed biblical precepts ($5 for 10 issues/year; 1029 Vermont Avenue N.W., Washington, D. C. 20005). Somewhat different perspectives on what the Bible teaches are presented by some younger evangelicals in the Boston area in The Cambridge Fish ($2 for 4 issues/year; Box 607, Cambridge, Mass. 02139). Consideration of differing viewpoints is helpful, if not essential, for mature disciples of Christ.

Basic Principles of Biblical Counseling, by Lawrence Crabb, Jr. (Zondervan, 111 pp., $4.95). Crabb is a clinical psychologist engaged in private practice who feels that the local congregation needs to be much more involved in counseling than is customary. He feels that many evangelical psychologists are too congenial to humanistic theories, but he obviously avoids the extreme of denying any validity to psychology.

The Church Cyclopedia: A Dictionary of Church Doctrine, History, Organization and Ritual, edited by Angelo Benton (Gale Research Co., 810 pp., $28) Reprint of an 1883 reference work especially prepared by American Episcopalians and therefore of special interest to libraries serving them and to major seminary libraries generally.

Evangelization And Morality

Evangelization Today, by Bernard Häring (Fides, 1975, 182 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by Dale Sanders, pastor, Evangelical Covenant Church, Essex, Iowa.

Häring, a noted Catholic moral theologian, helps us appreciate that there is still a deposit of sound teaching on grace that can be found in the Roman communion. In Thomistic outline style, with footnotes, he probes the significance of Pope Paul’s designation of 1975 as a Holy Year with two great themes, world evangelization and reconciliation.

Häring is a leading member of the progressive faction in Catholicism and was an early proponent of enlightened interpretations on indulgences and marriage. But he has been reacting lately to the excesses of Marxism, humanism, and the various liberation theologies. While defending his beloved church, he also criticizes her.

His book provides fascinating reading. He expounds on the “solidarity of the race” in a manner reminiscent of vintage Rauschenbusch. In a reflective section in which he claims “I do not intend to suggest to priests and faithful immediate applications …” (p. 144), he takes a position on polygamous African converts and their baptism virtually identical with the church-growth philosophy of Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission. He rails against one of the least-known madnesses of recent years, the massacre of some 250,000 inhabitants of Burundi, Africa, a country with little more than three million population. He is an admirer of conservative United Methodist ethicist, Paul Ramsey.

Critics of Catholicism fault it for a “theology of glory” as opposed to a “theology of grace.” H’aring appears to be adequately aware of this classic Protestant criticism and comes off an earnest explicator of grace:

Christ is not the servant of the Mosaic law, but Liberator and Saviour of all men. He came to destroy all man-made barriers, those also between Jews and Gentiles. What redeems us is grace and not morals, especially if our morals is not evangelical morals (p. 49).

He restates the “theology of glory and creates a thoughtful tension (p. 104). Nevertheless evangelicals will heavily discount large sections of Häring’s thought that are distinctively Roman Catholic: sacramental, hierarchical, and fanciful.

Those who are also concerned about the transformation of morals as part of an overall evangelical witness would do well to consider Häring’s quest for “evangelical morals” (p. 142) and “evangelical beatitudes” (p. 181). He affirms that:

Morality should never proceed according to schemes of law and grace or of law and gospel, but rather always in a vision of responsibility to the gospel and gratitude for grace, which process alone becomes a total and grateful response (p. 106).

Jesuses All Around Us

The Alleluia Affair, by Malcolm Boyd (Word, 1975, 130 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Edward Higgins, professor of English, George Fox College, Newberg, Oregon.

Malcolm Boyd has given us a moving and much needed parable for our own time. One day all the Jesuses on the crosses and in stained glass windows throughout the world suddenly come to life. They descend from their crosses and leap out of their windows. Jesuses all over the world rent rooms at YMCA’s and work as laborers, migrant farm workers, and in other lowly jobs. People confront Jesus in the streets and on the job, and at the lunch counter talk to him face to face. Naturally this is a widely discussed phenomenon all over the world. Religious leaders, in particular, are puzzled and show consternation. As one old priest observes, “The church preached resurrection; now it is confronted by it.”

And confronting the day-to-day moral, social, and political meaning of the Resurrection in a modern, secular world is precisely what Boyd wants us to do. What does the Resurrection mean to me as I confront a world of hunger, pain, injustice, rejection, meaningless lives, and all the other hurts, spiritual and physical, that human flesh is heir to?

With all the Jesuses off their crosses, another strange thing happens. All the empty crosses that once bore Christ’s likeness now bear likenesses of suffering human beings: a young black man who is a convict, a brown woman who is an untouchable, a white youth beaten by drunken parents, a tortured political prisoner, a woman who has lost the meaning of life, and many others. So people begin to see that they crucify one another just as they placed Jesus on the cross originally.

Through these and other devices of the parable-sermon, Boyd dramatizes anew Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, showing them as functioning and potent symbols for our own crucified and suffering world. The Alleluia Affair is compelling in the urgency of its message and beautiful in the simple truth of its vision. It deserves to be read widely. Photographs throughout the text are mostly crucifixes or empty crosses; several are of people going about their daily business. Juxtaposed with the text, all are moving.

Is pastoral visitation obsolete? Is it a relic of a day when people were at home more and our grandmothers were pleased to serve the minister a cup of tea in the parlor? Today’s pastors may be unsure of the purpose of the pastoral call, and those they call upon may be even more unsure.

Yet there is still a widespread feeling that calling is important. The Bible is a reaching-out book, and calling is consistent with this emphasis. Jesus sent out the twelve disciples, he sent out the seventy-two, and he called upon his followers to go and to make disciples. He himself visited in the homes of Martha, Zacchaeus, Peter, and others. Paul traveled for the Gospel, characteristically writing the Romans, “I have been longing for many years to visit you.”

The main difficulty with calling today is not with the theoretical side (should it be done?) but with the practical side (how should it be done?).

The physician once spent most of his time making house calls; now he rarely makes house calls but sees patients in his office. The pastor’s work has similarly changed. Often he counsels people in his study. Many conversations that might previously have taken place during a pastoral call now occur in the study. And no longer is the pastor the only counselor available; the troubled person can now choose from a wide array of counseling services. Also, visits to the sick and dying are now much more likely to take place in hospitals than in homes.

There has also been a change in visiting the needy. A new professional is at work here: the social worker. The neighbors who once called the pastor to report someone in need may now call the welfare office. The burden of the poor has shifted from the church to the state.

Once the pastor was a kind of supervising teacher or educational inspector, seeing that religion was taught in the home. This role too has been abandoned. The hope of direct teaching of religion in the home has disappeared; now this teaching is left to the Sunday school.

The pastoral call has, then, been narrowed in scope by the removal of many of its concerns to other places or other persons. This narrowing diminishes the support structure that helped the minister and those he visited know what he was doing and why.

Further difficulty is caused by changes in home life. The urge for privacy is strong these days, and this makes entry into the home more difficult. The inviting front porch of yesteryear has been replaced by the walled-in backyard patio. The apartment house often looks like a fortress, complete with guards. The parlor, which for all of its stiffness did suggest that callers were expected and that this was the place to receive them, is now gone. The “family room” might seem to be a room reserved for the family, not a place for outsiders. The movement to the suburbs, then to the outer suburbs, and then into the country is for many people a move toward a way of life that is private and isolated.

All of this makes a telephone call in advance almost a necessity, and this means that the pastoral call loses some of its spontaneity—or perhaps doesn’t occur at all. The house is often empty. Women have jobs outside the home. Jobs for both men and women may be a considerable distance away and require more time away from home. Much entertainment takes place outside the home, and more and more meals are eaten outside the home. When family members are at home, TV sets and stereos are likely to occupy their attention in different parts of the house and may also be left on when a visitor arrives, providing a noisy background not conducive to conversation.

The house itself may seem rather impersonal. It may have been selected more for its resale potential than as an expression of the taste of its owners. The furniture may have been chosen because it can easily be moved to the next home.

While there is an aloof and impersonal air in many homes, there is also a poignant cry that many people are really lonely. They will join sensitivity groups and seek to communicate with others in a selected group outside the home, but sometimes they do not transfer these newfound skills of communication to their home setting. Just when the home seems to be at its most inhospitable, it is most in need of the call from the church.

I’d like to suggest that a model for the call might be based upon the statement of Jesus that he regarded his disciples not as servants but as friends (John 15:14–17). Here is a relationship not of master-servant but of equals.

This model of friendship from the teaching of Jesus can be matched with his teaching of love. Something of this is caught in the action of Jesus when Peter came to him impulsively and then began to sink in the water, crying out for help. “Jesus at once reached out and caught hold of him” (Matt. 13:30). Friends reach out, and calling is reaching out.

This model relates to the needs of today in at least two ways. Many people will admit to being lonely; there is a need for friendship. And friendship stimulates conversation. So much is communicated into the home through newspapers and magazines, radio, and TV, but in many homes little communication goes on between wife and husband, between parent and child, and between children.

The call is really an exercise in conversation. This is the framework for the pastor here, just as the epistle was the framework for Paul in the New Testament. The conversation of a pastoral call is, in this conception, the conversation of friends. It can be light and casual, or absorbing and serious. If we say that the stuff of a call is conversation and that the purpose of the call is simply friendship, then we need not worry about the level of the conversation. It may be short and full of laughter and light, or long and full of soul-searching complexities.

This model relieves us of much of the now irrelevant baggage we have carried into our thinking about the call. It still fulfills the biblical demands. The pressure upon us to call is given an outlet, and frustration can be turned into energy that helps and inspires this work.

The image of friendship and consequent conversation may even carry over into the area of prayer as part of the call. Prayer is appropriate when God is included in the conversation. Just as conversation should flow easily and naturally, so prayer can quite naturally be a part of this model.

This model can serve for the lay caller as well as for the pastor. Friendship is not something that is for professionals only. Both as caller and as callee, the lay person can feel comfortable with the model of friendship.

When a minister can go up the walk and press the door bell without the baggage of the ages pressing down upon him, he can look forward to his visit. Friends are always welcome.—RODGER SILLARS, pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Clarence, New York.

Michael Novakis a Roman Catholic theologian whose books include “Choosing Our King.”

The day I heard Michael Harrington say that most liberals are “closet socialists,” I knew by my revulsion that I had to face an ugly truth about myself. For years, I had tried to hide, even from myself, my unconscious convictions. In the intellectual circles I frequent, persons with inclinations like my own are mocked, considered to be compromised, held at arm’s length as security risks. We are easily intimidated.

The truth is there are probably millions of us. Who knows? Your brother or sister may be one of us. The fellow teaching in the class next to yours; the columnist for the rival paper; even the famous liberated poetess—our kind, hiding their convictions out of fear of retribution, lurk everywhere. Even now we may be corrupting your children.

We are the closet capitalists. Now, at last, our time has come. The whole world is going socialist. Nearly 118 out of 142 nations of the world are tyrannies. A bare 24 are free-economy democracies. We are the world’s newest, least understood, and little loved minority. It is time for us to begin, everywhere, organizing cells of the Capitalist Liberation Front.

I first realized I was a capitalist when all my friends began publicly declaring that they were socialists, Harrington and John Kenneth Galbraith having called the signal. How I wished I could be as left as they. Night after night I tried to persuade myself of the coherence of their logic; I did my best to go straight. I held up in the privacy of my room pictures of every socialist land known to me: North Korea, Albania, Czechoslovakia (land of my grandparents), and even Sweden. Nothing worked.

When I quizzed my socialist intellectual friends, I found they didn’t like socialist countries, either. They all said to me: “We want socialism, but not like Eastern Europe.” I said: “Cuba?” No suggestion won their assent. They didn’t want to be identified with China (except that the streets seemed clean). Nor with Tanzania. They loved the idea of socialism.

“But what is it about this particular idea you like?” I asked. “Government control? Will we have a Pentagon of heavy industry?” Not exactly. Nor did they think my suggestion witty, that under socialism everything would function like the Post Office. When they began to speak of “planning,” I asked, who would police the planners? They had enormous faith in politicians, bureaucrats, and experts. Especially in experts.

“Will Mayor Daley have ‘clout’ over the planners?” I asked, seeking a little comfort. “Or congressmen from Mississippi?” My friends thought liberal-minded persons would make the key decisions. Knowing the nation, I can’t feel so sure. Knowing the liberal-minded, I’m not so comforted.

Since they have argued that oil companies are now too large, I couldn’t see how an HEW that included Oil would be smaller. My modest proposal was that they encourage monopoly in every industry and then make each surviving corporation head a cabinet officer.

Practical discussions seemed beside the point. Finally, I realized that socialism is not a political proposal, not an economic plan. Socialism is the residue of Judaeo-Christian faith, without religion. It is a belief in community, the goodness of the human race, and paradise on earth.

That’s when I discovered I was an incurable and inveterate, as well as secret, sinner. I believe in sin. I’m for capitalism, modified and made intelligent and public-spirited, because it makes the world free for sinners. It allows human beings to do pretty much what they will. Socialism is a system built on belief in human goodness; so it never works. Capitalism is a system built on belief in human selfishness; given checks and balances, it is nearly always a smashing, scandalous success. Check Taiwan, Japan, West Germany, Hong Kong, and (one of the newest nations in one of the recently most underdeveloped sectors of the world) these United States. Two hundred years ago, there was a China, and also a Russia. The United States was only a gleam in Patrick Henry’s eye.

Wherever you go in the world, sin thrives better under capitalism. It’s presumptuous to believe that God is on any human’s side. (Actually, if capitalism were godless and socialism were deeply religious, the roles of many spokesmen in America would be reversed in fascinating ways.) But God did make human beings free. Free to sin. God’s heart may have been socialist; his design was capitalist as hell. There is an innate tendency in socialism toward authoritarianism. Left to themselves, all human beings won’t be good; most must be converted. Capitalism, accepting human sinfulness, rubs sinner against sinner, making even dry wood yield a spark of grace.

Capitalism has given the planet its present impetus for liberation. Everywhere else they are hawking capitalist ideas: growth, liberation, democracy, investments, banking, industry, technology. Millions are alive, and living longer, because of medicine developed under capitalism. Without our enormous psychic energy, productivity, and inventions, oil would still be lying under Saudi Arabia, undiscovered, unpumped, and useless. Coffee, bananas, tin, sugar, and other items of trade would have no markets. Capitalism has made the world rich, inventing riches other populations didn’t know they had. And yielding sinful pleasures for the millions.

Six per cent of the world’s population consumes, they say, 40 per cent of the world’s goods. The same 6 per cent produces more than 50 per cent; far more than it can consume. No other system can make such a statement, even in lands more populous, older, and richer than our own. As everybody knows, hedonism requires excess.

Look out, world! The closet capitalists are coming out. You don’t have to love us. We don’t need your love. If we can help you out, we’ll be glad to. A system built on sin is built on very solid ground indeed. The saintliness of socialism will not feed the poor. The United States may be, as many of you say, the worthless and despicable prodigal son among the nations. Just wait and see who gets the fatted calf.

—Copyright 1976 The Washington Post; reprinted with permission.

Lying has been brought to public attention in various and compelling ways in recent years, in the United States and around the world. Events have caused both Christians and unbelievers to take another look at the priority of truth.

The Communists have a kind of schizophrenia about lying. They subordinate ethics and morality to the interests of the class struggle. They repudiate all morality that is taken outside of human, class concepts. Therefore they consider it right to lie whenever a lie will serve to advance the Communist cause. However, the Communists find it necessary to insist that the teachings of Marx and Lenin are normative. All ideas must be judged in the light of their teaching. Thus total falsehood would bring even a Communist society to its knees.

Some Christians suppose that the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is something special that belongs to revelation and not to nature. This is erroneous. The Ten Commandments are based upon what is naturally in man’s best interest. Even if there were no commandment from God to tell the truth, lying would be seen to run counter to human well-being. In the long run lying is always destructive.

The Apostle Paul deals with lying in Colossians three. He does so within the larger context of the transformed walk of believers. They are to put away anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk. Then he says categorically, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices” (Col. 3:9). The meaning is plain: lying belongs to the old order of life, truth-telling to the new. Christians are not to lie to one another.

But is a lie ever justifiable? Must we insist that lying is always wrong and should never, under any circumstances, be engaged in? What about times when telling the truth would cause a Christian to break some other commandment of God? Corrie ten Boom faced this years ago. If she revealed the fact that Jews were hidden in her father’s house, she would then be a contributor to their later death in gas chambers. If she lied, she would sin but perhaps save them from death. What should she have done?

This question as we have framed it is far removed from the approach of the situational ethicist. We are speaking of evils, and asking whether the Christian is right in choosing the lesser of them. The situationist would reject this idea of greater and lesser evil. For him, a deed is either right or wrong depending on whether or not it fulfills the law of love. For the situationist, to tell the Nazi soldiers there were no Jews in the house would not be to choose the lesser evil; it would be to do what is good under the law of love.

There are few times in life when anyone is faced with two evils, one of which he must choose. Often telling the truth may result in embarrassment, financial loss, or a score of other undesirable personal consequences. But these do not involve breaking another law of God. In such cases the truth must be told however expensive it is to us. In Acts 4:19 Peter and John gave their response to the Sanhedrin, which had commanded them never to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. They could have promised the Sanhedrin to do what was demanded of them, tongue in cheek, and then gone out to speak and teach in Jesus’ name anyway. And perhaps they could have argued that this lie was the lesser of two evils—for to obey the Sanhedrin would be to disobey Jesus’ command and to disobey the Sanhedrin might mean death. Surely to lie would be better than to die. But however embarrassing or costly the consequences, they told the truth: “we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

If and when a Christian does have to choose one evil over another, he is not free from the guilt of the evil he chooses. If he lies, he is guility of having told a lie, no matter what his motives. In calling for truth the Bible mentions no exceptions. The commandment of Sabbath-keeping had exceptions; works of mercy and necessity were permitted. The law against killing allowed for exceptions; at certain points in the Old Testament, war and capital punishment were commanded by God. But the commandment of truth-telling had no exceptions.

If the Christian is convinced that he must choose to do a particular evil because the only alternative would be to do a greater evil, then he must do so with the knowledge that he has broken the law of God and must seek forgiveness through repentance and confession. Fortunately for us sinners, God’s grace is greater than all our sins—the many we commit selfishly, and the few we commit unselfishly.

Marxism, Religion: Impossible Bedfellows

One of the strangest alliances of our times is that which certain professing Christians claim to seek between religion and Marxism. Undeniably there are specific evils that Communists and all sorts of other observers can denounce and try to correct. (There are, to be sure, other specific evils that Communism and other totalitarian systems foster.) But Marxism is much more than just a catalogue of complaints against the way things are. It is a total world and life view that is utterly opposed to anything resembling historic Christian teaching—indeed, to the teachings of religions generally.

Cuba, the Western hemisphere’s only Communist country, provides the best recent illustration of this. Cubans voted this year for the first time since Fidel Castro came to power seventeen years ago. The 5.5 million voters who went to the polls gave almost unanimous approval to the new constitution. That basic document had been drafted by the nation’s Communist party congress a few weeks earlier, but the congress also wrote a working platform. A comparison of the two is revealing.

Article 54 of the new constitution “recognizes and guarantees … the right of each person to profess whatever religion he pleases and to practice, within the legal limits, the worship of his choice.” The phrase “within the legal limits” could of course mean only that polygamy or the use of narcotics or loud noises would be prohibited. That it has meant and will mean much more is evidenced by the working platform’s explicit naming of one of the tasks of the ideological struggle as “the gradual conquest of religious beliefs.” This conquest is not to be by taking “coercive … measures against religion,” but “by adjusting scientific materialistic propaganda to the cultural level of workers.”

The Marxist view is clearly enunciated in the working platform: “… religion is a twisted and fantastic reflection of outer reality.” People who truly believe in a personal God to whom we are all accountable for time and eternity are not Marxists even if they are properly outraged by some of the same things that Communists attack. And by the same token, people who are Marxists have absolutely no business pretending to be Christians. They should have the courage of their convictions and profess openly their disdain of a supernatural view of the world in favor of what is proudly called “scientific materialism.”

To complement the tremendous latitude that the phrase “legal limits” allows for Cuban government opposition to religion there will doubtless be a very narrow interpretation of “the worship of [one’s] choice.”

Worship is indeed a very important part of the Christian’s responsibility, but so is evangelism, so is the teaching of converts, so is the performance of works of mercy in the name of Christ, so is the criticism of government or any other institution that sets itself up as the ultimate authority, claiming in effect to displace God. These Christian activities are not protected, even nominally, by the Cuban constitution.

Some Communist protests and programs may seem right and attractive when lifted out of their ideological context. For differing reasons, both Christians and Communists might protest abortion, for example. But we have to go beyond rhetoric to an analysis of working Marxist systems, of which Cuba is the best example in this hemisphere. The testimony of its constitution should be clear to all: Marxism is one thing, Christianity is quite another. Let there be no confusion whatsoever between them.

Four Billion And Climbing

According to reasonably good estimates, the population of the world reached four billion persons earlier this month. Population is apparently growing at a rate of 1.8 per cent a year. If that rate continues, the population will pass the five billion mark before 1990.

As far as experts can tell, the population of the planet did not reach one billion until about 1850. Eighty years were required to achieve the second billion. Despite the ravages of World War II only thirty years were needed to reach three billion, which happened by 1961. Now it has taken only half as long to add the fourth billion.

The rate of growth is not so great as it once was; reaching the fifth billion is expected to take as long as reaching the fourth did. But that is little comfort to those nations that will see their already low living standards slip even more as human procreation continues to outpace economic production.

For Christians, the evangelistic challenge is clear. There are now one-third more people than there were fifteen years ago. But have evangelistic personnel (both missionaries and national workers) and fruitful efforts increased by that much also? Even if they had, which is doubtful, Christians would just be keeping up; they would not be advancing. Are there one-third more people attending Bible-teaching congregations now than there were in 1961?

As inhabitants of a planet whose population is increasing so rapidly Christians must face many other dimensions of responsibility. The complexity of the new problems is not cause for the Church to panic, however. God was well aware of this population explosion long before it happened. His commission to go into all the world carries with it the promise that he will be with us always. He has also promised the power necessary to follow his command.

It is certainly no time for the Church to be complacent, completely reliant upon methods that worked in bygone days. Today’s Christians have a commission to evangelize today’s people—all four billion of them—with the energy and methods that God provides today.

A Setback For ‘Gay Liberation’

In a recent refusal to hear a case, the Supreme Court has rendered what might in time be considered a landmark decision on homosexuality.

At issue was a Virginia law that makes homosexual acts (sodomy) between consenting adults in public or in private a crime punishable by imprisonment. When this statute was tested by two homosexuals, a lower federal court ruled that the Virginia law was constitutional. It said (among other things) that forbidding sodomy is not an upstart notion, and mentioned its prohibition in the Book of Leviticus.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, but only three of the nine justices voted for a full court hearing, one fewer than the required number. The three did not necessarily think the Virginia law was unconstitutional; their vote meant that they thought the court should hear the evidence. Their colleagues did not agree, and so the decision of the lower court stands. Any state may therefore legislate that sodomy is a crime and is punishable by imprisonment.

The decision is in accord with the Judeo-Christian tradition based on the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Some homosexuals who claim to be Christians have rejected, on cultural or hermeneutical grounds, the scriptural prohibition against homosexual acts. But in neither of these ways have they been able to make a case that does not invalidate Scripture on this issue and does not open the door wide to the denial of more central biblical teachings—those having to do with salvation—as well.

Even if Christian homosexuals remain convinced that Scripture does not condemn homosexual activity, they can no longer say that laws against this are unconstitutional. The constitutionality of these laws has now been affirmed by the highest court in the land. Homosexuals should obey the law.

In welcoming the Supreme Court’s confirmation of what many Christians think is a scriptural teaching, let us not forget that homosexuals are persons for whom Christ died. Christian homosexuals need our prayers and support as they seek God’s help to overcome their handicap.

When The Covers Close

When Howard Hughes died several weeks ago, his life and death were featured on the front pages of the New York Times and other major newspapers and in the national news weeklies. Little or nothing was said about his religious convictions. Whether he had any religious faith only God knows. But his death does underline a couple of timeless religious truths.

Hughes reportedly amassed more than two billion dollars’ worth of assets, including a large gambling empire in Las Vegas. But death is the great leveler. Howard Hughes went out of this life just as he came into it: empty-handed.

And when death overtook him, the books both of men and of God were closed. Nothing can now be added to or subtracted from the record of his life.

For us, the books are still open, for a while. We still have time to be better—better parents, spouses, children, employees, neighbors, Christians; to be more generous or loving or thoughtful, less self-centered, less short-tempered, less materialistic. But our books, too, can close at any time.

Have you ever watched a child stand gazing at a box of chocolates, a frown of concentration wrinkling that space between the eyebrows? “Only one, Jessica. Take any one you want, but you may have only one. Choose.” Shall it be the biggest one, or might that small round one be the favorite peppermint cream? Then again the long one could contain nougat, and with tiny bites that would last longer. The agony of choice.

Have you pored over pictures and maps, imagined weather conditions, and thought about the alternatives for your precious “only one” vacation? Shall it be mountains or seaside? Will you choose fresh air and exercise or travel and sightseeing? The agony of choice.

Then there are the crisis decisions—choosing between two job offers, saying yes or no to a marriage proposal, choosing to live in the country or in the city. Hours, days, weeks, months, years, or a lifetime can be affected by a single choice. This is one of the earliest lessons a child needs to learn: if you choose to go swimming, then you can’t go to the circus; if you choose to go to the playground, then you won’t be here when daddy gets home; if you choose to take that puppy home, then you’ll have to take care of it.

What the Word of God conveys about the far-reaching results of choice should have been ingrained in people from the teaching of Adam and Eve to their children on down through the grandchildren and subsequent generations. That it was not is clear from history. Isaiah speaks God’s warning to people in chapter 31:

Woe unto them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many: and in horsemen because they are very strong: but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!… Now the Egyptians are men, and not God: and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the LORD shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is helpen shall fall down, and they shall all fall down together [vv. 1, 3].

Here is a promise of God: those who choose to seek help by turning away from him will fall down in a heap along with the people they have turned to. A twisted heap of arms and legs, fallen horses and men, is the picture we are given. Turn the page back to chapter 30, verses 1–3:

Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.

If a jumble of human beings and horses all in a heap is too far removed from our experiences, “confusion” is not—confusion of ideas, emotions, solutions, identity, purpose, ambitions, motives. The very solutions themselves that are being given by the twentieth-century “counsel”—the solutions, for example, of abortion, of denying the framework given for the home, of putting self-fulfillment first, of seeking happiness in divorce for unbiblical reasons and a new marriage—will end in shame and confusion.

Joshua makes it very clear in chapter 24, verses 14–20, that it is not possible to serve God and false gods at the same time: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (v. 15). The Creator of the orderly universe is the Author of a plan for each of our lives that “fits” psychologically, emotionally, materially, physically, spiritually. To seek true solutions from the author of chaos—that is, Satan and all his false prophets and philosophies—is to bring on a set of results that will be chaos.

“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word” (1 Kings 18:21).

Oh, you say, I do choose the living God; I did long ago. My cry comes with David’s in Psalm 18:31, “For who is God save the Lord? or who is a rock save our God?” I made a big choice, and now I am a child of this Creator God, the God of perfect wisdom and order.

But it is still true for each of us that there is moment-by-moment choice affecting our lives, bringing results in us and because of us in other people. We bring on a chaos of confused ideas and misunderstandings if our choices are not moment by moment to serve this Lord whom we have chosen as Saviour. Review Isaiah 50:7, 10, 11 once again:

For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.… Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of my hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.

When we do not know where to turn and someone offers us a solution that is contrary to the written Word of God, do we wait and cling to the Word, asking God to direct us? Setting the face “like a flint” is not done in a moment when everything is clear and easy in the path ahead. When one declares, “I will not be confounded,” it is at a time when one faces danger. To “walk in the light of your [own] fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled” is similar to going to Egypt for help, and the promised result is also similar: “ye shall lie down in sorrow.”

There are a lot of voices today promising happier, richer, more fulfilled, quieter, more peaceful, stressless lives. There are lots of voices promising equality, identity, freedom, liberation. These voices tempt Christians to edit the Word of God to make it fit something else, rather than to set their faces like a flint and judge and edit from the base of God’s Word. “Choose,” we are told. “Choose ye this day,” day after day, over and over again. Choose to sit in the dark and wait for His guidance.

Choose, as Mary did in Luke 10, to sit at Jesus’ feet and concentrate on what he is teaching. In that incident Jesus was not saying that Martha’s work was unnecessary; he himself cooked fish for the disciples. But there was at that time a choice to be made. The rushing around the kitchen could be done later; right then the conversation came first. Mary recognized this priority. “But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

Mary hadn’t long to sit in her home at Jesus’ feet: he would soon be dying, and then rising and ascending to his Father. She sat and listened during the time that was so quickly passing. We too have a limited time in which to listen and to do what he has for us to do before we go to be with him. Day by day, moment by moment, choose carefully whom you will listen to, whom you will serve.

EDITH SCHAEFFER