A Lenten Journey; Equipment We Need 3/22/42
Scripture: Galations 5: 16-25
Text: Galations 5: 22-3 “The Fruit of the Spirit is ...self-control.”
Along this line of thought which we have called “A Lenten Journey” after the suggestion of Dr. Merrill, we have considered various spiritual aspects of the trip. First: “Where we start” - with repentance for wrong and sincere desire for the right. Second: “The direction we take” - toward God and His way for mankind - “Haallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come.” Third: “The goal we seek” - to be taught, and to teach our children “of the Lord.”
Today we consider “Equipment We Need” on the journey. The Authorized version of the Bible (or “King James” translation as it is often called after the name of the monarch who authorized the work) translates the 22nd, and the first part of the 23rd, verses of Paul’s letter to the Galatians in these words: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, ....”
The American Standard revision of the Bible translates those verses in slightly different words, thus: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, faithfulness, meekness, self-control, ....”
Paul was keenly aware of the evils and temptations which beset mortal folk. He lists many of them in this letter to the Galations, and warns his readers that they do not lead to the Kingdom of God. It is because of our evils that we have to devise law to control ourselves. But if we were to be led by the Spirit, the law would be unnecessary for man. And, in any case, there is no law against the practice of spiritual virtues.
A chief item in our equipment for our spiritual journey is self-control. We are hearing, and saying, much in these days, and in the days preceding the crisis, about the necessity for defending our free institutions. This is a counsel we must take seriously. Our democratic American way is a priceless heritage; our Bill of Rights is one of our finest treasures. They were achieved at a tremendous cost and have been maintained by constant effort. At further great cost, we must preserve them and defend them.
But that means far more than the usual defense measures - armies, navies, guns, tanks, planes. These must be adequate for their purpose. But there is something more, without which we shall not get the defenses our institutions must have; without which we should fail, even if we have the material for defense.
We are opposing a policy of complete control by a few, who in turn acknowledge no control above themselves and no responsibility to any one else. Over against this policy of dictatorial control, we must have a policy of self-control.
It will be one or the other. Edmund Burke said: “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.”
The best army must have adequate equipment and thorough discipline. The strongest people must have, not only adequate resources, but great self control - the discipline of effective cooperation in working together for a good cause.
I think history will prove those people decadent who have had to resort to dictatorial control in order to get along with each other. We still have the opportunity to prove that a nation made up of people with individual initiative, self-control, and the will to work together is a people with a superior order of government.
Freedom without self-control vanishes. For there is no true freedom without intelligent, determined, self-direction. And “freedom” bought at the price of dictatorial control is not freedom but slavery.
Benjamin Franklin, shrewd man that he usually was, voiced a warning, about the time that our Constitution was adopted. To those critics and skeptics who maintained that this new government would give way after a while to some more despotic control, as other governments have done, he maintained that this could happen only if we proved incapable of anything better. For more than a century and a half we have been capable of something better! I am certain that we still have the capacity. But it must be hardened by constant self-discipline.
Out in Hawaii, among the other stiff regulations imposed by the military government (now in control at the request of the civil governor), is one regulation forbidding the sale of liquor. Apparently the military command there feels that, in a time of danger, when every person must be alert for trouble and aggressively ready to meet it, no one must be allowed even the possibility of periods of escape from reality, which is the refuge of those who do not know how to be temperate in the matter of drink.
We are in great danger from an enemy without. That is not our chief danger. Our chief danger is from disease within. We can not allow any private selfishness to divide us. We must not let carelessness nor propaganda divide us. Our country can be safe only if our citizenry will voluntarily set the common good above all private, personal, or group advantage. We have a real and powerful alternative to both Fascism and Communism. It is the maintenance of a real commonwealth, a commonwealth motivated and maintained by our religious knowledge and experience of what is right in the interrelationships of people.
If we glory in our rights of free religion, free thought, free speech, free initiative, let us also be truly grateful for these rights. They are all the more precious since they are so cruelly withheld from other millions. And they are precious because we can choose them. If we choose to neglect them, they become not blessings, but a serious danger. Each of these is extremely dangerous if misused or disused.
If free religion means no religion or even neglect of religion; if free thought means careless thinking or mere impulse; if free speech means harmful gossip or false propaganda or reckless talk; if free initiative means looking out for one’s self and letting the devil take the rest - then woe to us!
Too often it all means just that. How frequently one hears the plea, “This is a free country” uttered in defense of one’s action in doing something no right-minded citizen would do. At the height of his underworld power “Scarface” Al Capone could blandly defend his nefarious dealings, and the violence of his henchmen, with the statement that he was merely giving the buying public what it wanted. He attempted to use the freedom of this country in a kind of living that wrecks a free order.
Operating under freedom, alien influences have attempted to organize among our people with a purpose that would ruin the freedom under which they began to operate. You and I have adequate freedom personally to “go to the devil” if we care to, in any way we chose. But if we do, one of the “Old Boys” heaviest punishments is the destruction of our freedom to do anything else.
If we have the moral and religious fiber to deserve our freedom, we need to add to our great national Bill of Rights a stiff personal Bill of Duties.
If you will forgive a personal illustration, I will say that I was conscious of my right to choose my own career all the way through school - even in theological seminary. I grew up in this country where a man doesn’t have to be a carpenter just because his father might be one, nor a miner, nor a Brahmin, nor a lord. I had a very fair idea of what I expected to be right up to the time of my graduation. Then, quite suddenly, I had it borne in upon me that I had a duty to the church, that I ought to consider. The more I thought of it, the more inescapable it seemed. The result is that within a matter of a week or so I had decided to serve the church, and in about three months I was called to the Hawaiian Islands. I have never been sorry that I was able to listen to the voice of duty. It has seemed increasingly clear to me, as the years have passed, that I am where I belong, as a free man bound only by the chains of God.
A truly great man, Albert Schweitzer, after a brilliant career as a student, musician, and doctor, became established on the medical faculty of a great European university. But presently his own Bill of Duties took him to the tropical discomfort of Africa where he could be of service to thousands of needy, helpless folk. So far as I know, he is still there and never seems to have thought of quitting.
Our duties, if heeded, will make stern demands on us in the days to come. Let them be met in the spirit of one who freely, voluntarily “set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem” into great danger because there was a divine duty for him.
Paul put well the thing we must have if democracy is to live and thrive: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; the fruit of the Spirit is self-control.”
Teach us self-control and self-discipline, O Lord. Amen.
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dates and places delivered:
Wisconsin Rapids, March 22, 1942
W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, March 25, 1942