The Social Principles of Jesus Part 11

Seventh Day: Doing All, and Then Some

But who is there of you, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep, that will say unto him, when he is come in from the field, Come straightway and sit down to meat; and will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank the servant because he did the things that were commanded? Even so ye also, when ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.-Luke 17:7-10.

Jesus often boldly took his ill.u.s.trations from the facts of life even when they were repellent to him. Here he holds up the joyless life of a Syrian agricultural laborer. After plodding all day in the field, this man comes home, tired and hungry. Is he promptly cared for? No, he must first cook and serve his master's meal. Then he can eat what's left. Does he get any thanks for working overtime? Not a thank. Now, says Jesus, what this man does under the hard coercion of his lot, you and I must do of our own free will. After we have done a man's work, let us go and do some more for the sake of the cause, and disclaim praise. That spirit of utter service is, in fact, the spirit in which men work when the Kingdom vision gets hold of them. They become greedy for work and can not satisfy themselves. The strong and inspired men always feel at the end that they have not done half they ought to have done. The last words of Martin Luther, scribbled on a sc.r.a.p of paper, were: "We are beggars. That's true."

What would Jesus say to a college student who is chronically tired and who feels that he is laying his professors and his father under heavy obligation by working at all?

Study for the Week

Is it not a strange fate that down to the most recent times art has pictured Jesus all meek and gentle, and theology has emphasized his pa.s.sive suffering? Yet he was high-power energy. His epigrams and hyperboles crack like a whip-lash. He was up before dawn. He always rose to the sight of human need. To do the will of his Father was meat and drink to him. His life was a combat. He faced opposition without flinching and "stedfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem" when he knew it meant death. Even when he stood silent before the court and when he hung nailed to the gallows, he was a spiritual force in action and men were disturbed and afraid before him.

I

He communicated energy to others. He hated mere talk and discouraged fruitless theorizing. He praised energetic action when he found it, as in the case of Zacchaeus, and of the men who climbed the roof with a paralytic man and dug up the roofing to let him down to Jesus. He called that sort of thing "faith." Faith, in Jesus' use of the word, did not mean shutting your eyes and folding your hands. He said it was an explosive that could remove mountains. He gave three of his disciples nicknames, and they were all given to express forcefulness; Simon he called Peter, the Rock; and James and John he called Boanerges, the sons of thunder. He sent his disciples open-eyed to face trouble; he told them the wolves were waiting for them, but to rejoice and be exceeding glad for the chance of lining up against them. Let us clear our minds forever of the idea that Jesus was a mild and innocuous person who parted his hair and beard in the middle, and turned his disciples into mollycoddles. Away with it!

Though the spirit of Jesus has never had more than half a chance in historic Christianity, yet it is demonstrable that the total efficiency of humanity, the bulk of work done, and the capacity for heroic tension of energies have been greatly increased by it. Taking it on the smallest scale-every real conversion means a break with debasing habits, with alcoholism, with the waste of s.e.xual energies; it means more self-control, more responsiveness to duty, more capacity to take a long outlook, and consequently better work. We can observe this in ourselves and others. We still need the coercion of stern necessity and of public opinion to keep us straight, but an inward compulsion is added. A Christian carries his policeman around inside of him. Where Christianity gets a really firm hold on men or women, especially if there is a basis of natural ability, it pushes them on to lead in moral movements and they break away for human progress.

When Christianity multiplies such cases, and makes soberness, duty, and hard work the habit of entire communities, we have a social fact of first-cla.s.s importance; for the human animal is naturally lazy, sluggish, and inclined to live for today. The capacity to subordinate immediate gratification for a future good is scarce; the capacity to subordinate selfish advantage to a great common and moral good is scarcer still.

We can see this force working on a larger scale on the foreign mission field where Christianity is a new social energy. There it is easier to disentangle it from other social forces. What are the comparative results when it gets a lodgment in a single social cla.s.s or tribal group? This question will bear watching during the next fifty years. The full social results of Christianity will not show till the third generation.

We get another demonstration of increased working efficiency in humanity wherever Christianity has pa.s.sed through an internal purification which has set free more of its spiritual energies. What, for instance, has been the historic connection between the development of capitalistic industry in Holland, England, and France, and the sober and frugal piety and patient laboriousness created in the Calvinists of Holland, the Puritans of England, and the Huguenots of France?

II

The contributions made by Christianity to the working efficiency and the constructive social abilities of humanity in the past have been mainly indirect. The main aim set before Christians was to save their souls from eternal woe, to have communion with G.o.d now and hereafter, and to live G.o.d-fearing lives. It was individualistic religion, concentrated on the life to come. Its social effectiveness was largely a by-product. What, now, would have been the result if Christianity had placed an equally strong emphasis on the Kingdom of G.o.d, the ideal social order? Other things being equal, a Christian father and mother are better parents than others because they have more sense of duty, more love, and a higher valuation of spiritual things. But if, in addition, they have a religious desire for a higher social order and realize that n.o.ble children are a splendid contribution to it, how will that affect their parenthood? A teacher, artist, or scientist who is also a religious man, will do conscientious work if he works under the motives of individualistic religion. But if he has a vision of the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth and sees the contributions he can make to it, will not that raise the character of his output? A business man of strong Christian character will work hard, keep his word in business, and deal fairly with employes and customers.

But would not a new direction be given to his moral energies if his religion taught him that he must help to shape the workings of industry and trade so that hereafter there will be no fundamental clash between business and the morals of Christianity?

What the world of Christian men and women needs is to have a great social objective set before them and laid on their conscience with the authority of religion. Then religion would get behind social evolution in earnest.

This would be no new and foreign element imported into our religion. It would be a modern revival of the doctrine of Jesus himself, which has been too long submerged and neglected. One chief reason why it was side-tracked is that no despotic State and no society dominated by a predatory cla.s.s ever wanted religion applied to a reconstruction of the social order. The idea of the Kingdom of G.o.d reawoke with the rise of modern democracy. Now is the time for it.

III

The idea of the Kingdom of G.o.d is not identified with any special social theory. It means justice, freedom, fraternity, labor, joy. Let each social system and movement show us what it can contribute and we will weigh its claims. We want the old ideal defined in modern terms, in the terms of modern democracy, of the power machine, of international peace, and of evolutionary science. But we want to embrace it with the old religious faith and ardor, so that we can pray over it.

This great task of establis.h.i.+ng a righteous social life on earth embraces all minor tasks in so far as they are good. The mother who tries to make a good home, the farmer who feeds the people, the teacher who trains them, the scientist who gets the facts for all, the merchant, the workingman, the artist, the leader in play-they are all contributing to the Kingdom, provided they view their work so, and are trying to put an evolutionary _plus_ into it which will lift the total nearer to the divine will. The Kingdom is the supreme task, and all small tasks are part of it. That gives every man a place in it who works-where is the idler's place in it?-and it hallows all good work with religious glory.

It may seem as if this social aim of religion may depreciate the aim of developing our own personality and of saving our souls. It ought not.

Sometimes it does for a time. But we are each so enormously important to ourselves that we are not likely to forget ourselves, and the practical struggle with temptation and sorrow will teach us to seek strength for our personal needs from Christ. In time we shall learn to say with Jesus, "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified." In time surrender to the Kingdom ideal, toil for it, self-denial for it, cooperation with others for it, will have the strongest kind of reactions on ourselves and our moral fiber. Gymnasium work is all right, but real work in the open is better. We are most durably saved by putting in hard work for the Kingdom of G.o.d.

In every great task a religious man is consciously thrown back on the aid of G.o.d-most of all in the greatest task of all. Eternal powers are cooperating with our puny efforts. That alone guarantees that our work is not wasted. We plant and water, but unless G.o.d's sun s.h.i.+nes upon it, our work is nothing. He is a fool that is not reverent and humble. We sorely need this faith in the collaboration and patience of G.o.d today when so much of the best spiritual achievement of mankind is swept away, and we seem far away from a kingdom of love. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

IV

Here, then, we have another social principle of Jesus. A collective moral ideal is a necessity for the individual and the race. Every man must have a conscious determination to help in his own place to work out a righteous social order for and with G.o.d. The race must increasingly turn its own evolution into a conscious process. It owes that duty to itself and to G.o.d who seeks an habitation in it. It must seek to realize its divine destiny.

"Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!"

This is the conscious evolutionary program of Jesus. It combines religion, social science, and ethical action in a perfect synthesis.

What has this to say to students? Everything, it seems.

First, whatever is to be our particular job, we must relate it to the supreme common task at which G.o.d and all good men are working. Unless we see and a.s.sert that relation, we are mere day-laborers or slaves, with neither intelligence nor enthusiasm.

Second, anyone who, instead of loyally relating his life-work to G.o.d's work, pursues his own ambition at the expense of the Kingdom and damages it to make profit for himself, is like a man who takes pay to damage his country. He makes the work harder for all who are more faithful than he, and their blood will be upon him.

Third, "_n.o.blesse oblige_." If we belong to the republic of learning and education, something extra is justly due from us. Here, for instance, is the evangelization of the world in this generation. An organization has been created to accomplish it. Heroic pioneers have died, preparing the way for larger forces. Is our life fit and good enough to put into that?

Here is the Christianization of the social order in the next two generations. What have all our social studies been for in the design of G.o.d? To fit ourselves for exploiting our fellows or to show them the way to the Kingdom of G.o.d?

Suggestions for Thought and Discussion

I. _Our Untapped Reserves_

1. How far is a person who produces nothing, of use to the community? Is increase of productive efficiency the test of progress?

2. Does religion help to call out reserves of energy in human nature?

II. _The Energy of Jesus_

1. How far did Jesus give evidence of audacity and high power energy? Has the Christian Church realized this? How about the portrayals of him in art?

2. Furnish evidence that Jesus demanded sincere work. How was this connected with the Kingdom of G.o.d in his mind?

3. Give proof that he demanded heroism of his followers as a commonplace thing.

4. How did this temper affect his view of prayer?

III. _Christianity and Work_

1. Has Christianity ever promoted idleness? If so, what type of Christianity was it?

2. Taken as a whole has Christianity increased the amount of work done, or lessened it? Give historical proof.