What do we Do to God?                              5/2/48

 

Scripture:  Psalm 139: 1-12

 

Did you ever notice, while reading the parables of Jesus, that a surprising number of them seem to suggest an “absentee” God?  The kingdom of heaven is like a man who put his goods in the hands of his servants and went to a far country ....... stories that begin like that.

 

The orthodox thing to say about God is that he is eternally, incessantly near - at hand.  And yet it is true that to a multitude of folk God probably does not seem near.  And to most of us, He is not near at times -- or so we think.  At least we act as though He was not near.

 

There may have been hundreds of thousands of people who in recent years have cowered before the awful events of present history and said: “How can there be a God when such dreadful things are happening?”

 

It is not just that we have been at a terrible war.  To tell the naked truth, war has been popular with mankind throughout human history.  It seems a release for the belligerent impulses that boil up in man’s breast; it appeals to his desire for adventure; it is, like some great crazy gamble, accompanied by a grim alternative -- either you win it, or you lose just about everything.

 

About the only hope of getting rid of war is the determination to discover a moral equivalent of war.  As a people, we do not seem bent (judging by most of the discussion that goes on in press and legislative halls) on discovering such a moral equivalent.  But rather, we go on with the grim gamble of all we have and are -- with the very existence of our great civilization.

 

But there has been much more than a war.  There has been a world upheaval that surged up from the depths and overflowed the earth in our time.  It is as though the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, dire messengers of Fate, rode over us.  The sword is now sheathed though not without some fierce rattlings.  But famine and plague and mistrust and hatred are still abroad.  Hell has not yet drawn rein.

 

Can there really be a God while such terrible things happen?

 

We’ve got to find an answer to this question right now, if we can.  Of course the question has always been with us from the beginning.  And man has had several answers that have seemed plausible -- and for some time satisfactory.

 

Perhaps these are three of the best-known answers given:

 

(1)  The first is something like this: “You must not attempt to judge God as you would human beings.  God is infinite; He is unspeakably above and beyond ourselves.  What seems important to us, may not matter so to Him.  In His sight, even whole nations are as one drop in a bucket.  You must not apply your own standards to the Eternal and the Infinite.”

 

That answer, given again and again by believing people sounds very reverent.  Really it is more dogmatic than reverent.  For if people say that the reason we should be good, or do good, is to please the Most High, then something has to be said about the evil that is permitted by the Most High.  And this question has been staved off long enough.

 

(2)  Another answer, which believing men have given through the years runs like this:  “Well, there is a world after this one where every problem will be solved and every evil put right.  Life may be botched here, but in the beyond it will be put right.  Evil will be punished and the wicked will suffer in everlasting torment.  Good will be rewarded and the righteous will sing praises forever before the throne of the Most High.”  That answer fails to satisfy multitudes, who turn from a church and priesthood that has no better reply.

 

(3)  Still another answer sounds like this:  “You must not judge history by historic events.  There are powers beyond those of men -- unearthly and miraculous powers.  How often the good have seen a shining star to guide them where they expected it not; and how often the wicked have been punished as with a tempest.”  Well, that is sometimes striking --- but it is not enough; for we have also seen goodness that seemed to go unrewarded upon earth, and evil that seemed to run rampant and unchecked.

 

Men are turning away from these three answers and other suggested solutions like them.  The problem remains in their hearts:  “How can there be a God when such terrible things happen?”  The church and the Christian heart will need to follow them with answers better than those which satisfied for only a time.

 

And if we are utterly frank, we can get nearer to the heart of religion than we now profess.  For our Christian religion was not created and maintained by some shadowy belief in a remote Deity.  It has not derived its transforming power from a shadowy faith in the world beyond.  Neither has it truly depended on what men call miracles.

 

Some of each of these is encompassed in the faith, but there is much more.  At the heart of it is the great belief that -- as the Ancient Book says -- we are made “In His Image.”  There is something within us that answers to Him, and we must trust that something within us.

 

All great souls have known this -- most of all that greatest soul -- Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

Now look to some of Jesus’ parables for a bit of light on this matter.  “The kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods.”  Did Jesus think of God as having gone away -- perhaps being present and interested somewhere else than on this earth for some time?  Of Jesus’ 30 parables, perhaps 6 or 8 of them suggest this thought -- the suggestion that the Divine Lord is absent, and men are left to do what they see to be fitting.

 

There is the parable of the Unjust Steward.  His master was not present -- there was no one to interfere --- the unjust steward went on robbing his master, feathering his own nest.  And he kept it up for a long time before the master returned and required an accounting of him.  [Luke 16: 1-13].

 

In the parable of the Unjust Judge, a poor woman came before him with her heart breaking, and all her pleadings seemed in vain.  [Luke 18: 2-8].

 

Of course the slant is a little different in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  Here, it is the son who goes away, and the father stays at home, waiting and longing in love until the son chooses to come back.  And he doesn’t act at all until the son reappears.  [Luke 15: 11-32].

 

In the parable of the Ten Virgins waiting for the coming of the bridegroom, they don’t know when it is going to happen.  Some take an extra supply of oil for their lamps.  Some haven’t enough.  And so some appear wise and others foolish.  It is prudent to be ready for either eventuality for in this world nobody knows everything.  [Matthew 25: 1-13].

 

In the parable of the Great Judgment, wherein the good and the evil are separated like sheep and goats from the same flock, nobody knows what is good or bad until it is made clear to them.  “When were we good?  What did we do?”  “You did it to the least of these and therefore to me.”  “When did we fail to do right?”  “You did it not to the least of these, and therefore you did it not to me.”  [Matthew 25: 31-46].

 

Jesus talked about the sower who went out to his work not knowing which of his seeds -- or how many -- were to grow in good soil.  There is the ordinary chance that birds will eat some of it, that some will fall on rocky ground or midst thorns that will prevent its growth.  Only some of it will fall on good ground.  But this last chance justifies the risk!  [Matthew 13: 3-9].

 

Fishermen cast their nets into the sea not knowing whether they will catch good fish or bad or none.  A man bought a block of land, merely as land, and stumbled upon a treasure he had not expected.  A merchant goes out to buy pearls, not knowing that he will find the pearl of great price.

 

Why did Jesus talk like that?  You would have thought that if anybody were sure about God it would be Jesus.

 

I verily believe that Jesus was sure about God.  He seems the most certain, God-conscious person who ever walked the earth.  God was real to him; unspeakably real beyond our power to describe.

 

But Jesus obviously took life just as it is ---- as you and I must do.

 

God was so real to Jesus that our Lord made men think more of God, and change their ideas about God, and even love God.  But Jesus seems to have no sense that a legion of angels is going to come and give him special help.  No miracle was to deliver him.  He had to do it himself.  He had to go through it alone.

 

People often act as though Christ’s cross were some sort of mystery -- something Jesus was able to do but no one else can do.  That is spiritual blindness!  There is nothing more mysterious about it than the hard realities of misfortune that come to any other human being.  The illuminating thing about it is that what was necessary for moral salvation, Jesus accepted and bore, just as any other person who is spiritual man enough may do by the grace of the spirit that is Christ’s.

 

When we Christians can show, by the way we bear hardship, reverses and death, that we do justly more than others because of our faith; that we love mercy more than others because of our faith; that we walk humbly because of our faith --- then shall we be living evangelists, the sort of souls by which men shall be turned to God!

 

So long as a church is a fellowship wherein the timid and fearful seek safety and a special immunity from trouble -- seek self-assurance of salvation from hell, look for miracles to protect the elect, value the respectability and general approval of church membership above Christ’s demands -- so long will searching people stay out of it.  When Christian churchmen can out-live, out-love, out-help, out-die all others, people will flock to the church to offer there their souls to the God in whose faith people can meet life just as it is, and in facing it, conquer their fears.

 

After all, glorious Christian living is not a neurotic  wail, “Does God love me?” so much as it is the glorious assertion, “O how I love Thee!”

 

Do you suppose that part of Jesus’ attitude may have been the feeling that God depended on him so that he would be true to God even though it might be as if God were far away?  All true lovers feel that way, do they not?  Even when the beloved is away for a time -- physically absent -- everything present speaks of the beloved - reminds the lover.

 

Lovers of God know that feeling.  They do not doubt the presence and power of God; neither do they believe that his power presence are reserved for some other world; neither do they require that they know it only in miraculous manifestations.  They are eager to render unto God that which is God’s; to discover him in the world as it is; to know God’s grace in sorrow and struggle as well as in triumph; to know God’s peace even in the midst of upheaval.

 

There is something that we do to God.  He has put in our hands a talent and given us being in his own image.  Our talent is of equal significance before Him with all others.  It is the life that goes into its use that determines the measure of the man; not the quantitative produce which issues from it.

 

We are here to do something to God and we find Him when we do the thing that is close at hand.  We need no miracles -- only the grace to meet what life brings.  For all of us, the highest and the lowliest duty is to let the divine Being be revealed in our flesh.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 2, 1948