A Lenten Journey; The Goal We Seek 3/15/42
Scripture: Isaiah 54: 11-17
Text: Isaiah 54: 13 “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord.”
Prophecy is usually understood to be a mysterious ability to foretell future events. When we think of a prophet, perhaps we see a magician bending over a crystal globe as if to see the future pictured there; or an astrologer poring over his books on the stars and describing events to come from what he finds there.
The Old Testament prophets had a much better and more dependable basis for their predictions. Their prophecies were based on great ethical insights. Avoiding the common preoccupations of men, they paid much attention to the ways of the Power that is greater than men. Often they were called “Men of God.” Out of their acquaintance with the ways of God, they developed a highly sharpened sense of right and wrong. Not content with the scholarly attitude of the academic mind, they sought to do something about ethical questions. They cried out against the evils of their day - woe on the evils of their enemies; a more terrible woe on the wrong doings of their own people. They spoke firm assurance over the things that are right.
Their prophecies of peace, of prosperous living, grew out of their observation of the degree to which their people observed the spirit and heeded the commandments of God. Their prophecies of destruction, oppression and terror grew out of their knowledge that their people had grown selfish; careless; neglectful and heedless of God’s commandments; idolatrous; conniving with what was wrong for momentary gains.
It doesn’t take a crystal-gazer to know that a people grown morally rotten is headed for terrible trouble. The thing that marks the prophet is his ability to recognize evil for exactly what it is. Most of us have a tendency, which is deadly, to deceive ourselves about our own evils; perhaps to “justify” our wrongs; or to soothe the prickings of conscience with the assumption that, after all, we aren’t so bad - there are others much worse - and anyway we are only doing what most others want to do.
We have heard that communists say that “religion is the opiate of the people.” No, it isn’t religion, but self-complacency, that is the deadly opiate. True religion is most uncomfortable in the ethical field. The finer a man’s religion makes his conscience, the more keenly aware does he become of the evils that go unrecognized by the callous or the careless.
It doesn’t take an astrologer to know that people whose efforts are consecrated to righteousness are going to triumph over trouble; because they are willing to struggle for victory over their own evils. It takes prophetic insight to understand and proclaim that “Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.” But anybody who takes his religion seriously can be that sort of prophet.
Anyone can predict dire trouble for those who are callous in their evil; because trouble seems to be the only discipline that will bring to their senses those who will not heed the spirit of God, and have gone off after false idols. Anyone can predict the success of a people controlled, restrained, disciplined and directed by keen ethical understanding of what is divinely right.
A portion of the 54th chapter of the book of Isaiah, read as our Scripture lesson this morning, deals with a prophet’s assurance to those who are tempest-tossed, but righteous. “In righteousness shalt thou be established.”
In the same passage, there is a great goal set for a nation, or a world, in these words: “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord.” It would be hard to find a better statement of ideal for any nation than this passage. It fits the need of our time.
What are the dangers which we dread? “Oppression” and the “terror” of those whose sole standard of right is might; of those who teach, and practice that it is right for the strong to crush and annihilate the weak. Oppression, despotism, and the rule of a tyrant; or anarchy and the terror of the mob grow out of modern idolatry for false values.
How can we be secure against them? Only by finding a peace based on righteousness. The peace which we must seek must be not that of a return to the old order with its advantages to some of us and its unhappiness for millions. If any peace is to be a real peace, it must be based on Christian righteousness. “In righteousness shalt thou be established, and great shall be the peace of thy children.”
Only when hatred and greed give way to what conscience enlightened of the one true God knows to be right, can we be free from the dread of oppression or of terror.
But how can we ever have an order of living based on righteousness, and so, secure in peace? There is no easy way; righteousness comes into its own only by constant effort and single devotion. The price of mistakes and sins is often long years of atoning effort, proving a change of heart.
Probably we may have a righteous order only as all our children are “taught of the Lord.” I am not repeating some mysterious, pious phrase here. I mean it literally. The ideal of a righteous order is impossible of achievement without the true religious education which is essential to a democratic society. When effective religion dies out of a democratic society its democracy slips away; perhaps anarchy prevails for a while; then tyranny seizes control and retains it until righteous individuals become strong enough in character to overthrow tyranny again. Living in a democracy is not a careless existence but an earnest, responsible business, at times even a stern business. There must be training in the ideals that make democracy live. And the only true foundation for a successful democracy of free people is in devotion to the will of the one true God.
What is it that has given the Nazi order its tremendous, savage strength? A policy of absolute, unceasing education of the children and youth in Nazi idealism - the idolizing of the state and its leader; the scorn of all other objects of loyalty.
There is one ideal that is higher and stronger, which will one day, sooner or later, if acted upon, overthrow such a pagan ideal. It is the strong belief that there is an absolute God who is above every state and people and person - a God to whom every man’s first allegiance belongs.
We must be as untiring, as eager, as appealing in teaching our children of such a God as the Nazis are in drilling the minds and bodies of youth in adoration of the Reich. We must be as faithful in teaching, and learning, the great ideals and principles of Jesus, of the prophets and the heroes of the Christian faith as Nazis are in cultivating loyalty to their leader, or as Japanese militarists are in exalting their emperor. We must allow nothing to supersede our teaching of the glory of honor, of truth, of love, of sympathy, of goodwill, of personal integrity.
Only as all our children are thus taught of the Lord can the peace of our children be great, and our nation be established in righteousness. Then, and only then, shall we be far from the things we dread - far from oppression and terror, secure in the family and Kingdom of God.
We are a people who believe in education. The ideal of free, and even compulsory, education has been nurtured more effectively in our nation than anywhere else. The colonists of New England went to most extraordinary lengths to provide schools and colleges for their children and young folk. Education was the heaviest item of expense in their government in some years. The proportion of our taxes which are now spent in constructive education, as compared to all the other demands on our tax money, would be a trifle in comparison with a similar proportion in those early American colonies.
We are shocked when we hear, as I did recently from the lips of a man who had lived for years in India, that only 10 men in 100 in that great country can read; that only 2 women in 100 can read. How tremendously difficult it is to teach the great masses there without the tool of reading?
But of course reading is no blessing in itself. The devil can use that tool, too. A perverse soul can be educated into a dangerous criminal as fast as a consecrated soul can be educated into a saint. A spy can read the same newspaper column as a patriot. Reading is not enough.
The only thing that can make education a blessing is the right use of it. “The children,” and their elders, “must be taught of the Lord,” if there is to be any constructive, workable and working peace for anybody. “In righteousness,” only, “shalt thou be established.”
The motto of Hawaii, adopted in the old days of the monarchy and preserved during the fifty years of its history as an American Territory, was chosen by a ruler who had heard and responded to the Gospel of Christ. In Hawaiian it is, “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono.” Translated into English it is: “The life of the land is preserved in righteousness.” That may become the ideal of the entire nation when our “children shall be taught of the Lord.”
Teach us O Lord the way of thy statutes and we will keep it unto the end. Amen.
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dates and places delivered:
Wisconsin Rapids, March 15, 1942
W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, March 24, 1942
Wisconsin Rapids (a portion of this) September 24, 1950