The Hope For World Peace                                                            10/24/48

 

Scripture:  Galatians 6: 1-10

 

Text:  Galatians 6: 7;  “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall be also reap.”

 

“Be  not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”  These words, written by Paul to the churches in Galatia, strike on fundamental moral and spiritual truths.  What you put into a thing -- that same kind of return you will get out of it.  What we do today -- and how we do it -- will condition our tomorrow.

 

The great Apostle used strong language here.  It is not given as a threat, though I have heard fiery pulpit exhortations based on this writing which seemed calculated by the preacher above all else to bring the fear of damnation.  I think Paul is simply stating a truth in language that is strong because it is direct and plain.  Prophets and seers for generations past had talked like that.  And as there be prophets in the future, they will continue so to speak.  Job had said, “They that sow in wickedness shall reap the same.”  Hosea had said, “They that sow in righteousness shall reap in mercy.”  James, writing as a contemporary of Paul, said, “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace.”

 

Paul was clear in his definitions.  He said that if you sow to the flesh, you will reap the corruption of the flesh.  The kind of deeds you do, and the way you do them, will be accurately reflected in your personality or in the personality of your posterity.  And in listing the kinds of harmful and good seed to sow, Paul leaves little to the imagination.  He calls each by name and in detail, declaring: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.  But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

 

Parenthetically, it seems to me that Paul is not right in attributing the sins of man to the “flesh” and man’s virtues to the “spirit.”  Actually the flesh is but means of expression for the spirit.  And flesh is exceedingly good if it is the agent of a splendid spirit.  It is the spirit, the life of man, whether evil or good, that determines whether the works of man are evil or good.  However, this criticism of Paul’s figure of speech is quite beside his main point which is profoundly true: what we sow, we reap.

 

Charles Beard of Columbia University said that it is the thinkers of society, and the philosophy about which they are thinking, that paves the way for the type of government which appears in a society.  In national and in international life, it is true as in individual life.  Whatever a man, or a nation, or a whole world sows, that will it reap.

 

I believe it was Harold Laski who said some time ago that the British social revolution of the past few years did not come about overnight.  It had been brewing for over 60 years in academic circles.  Government ownership had been taught in British universities and colleges since the days of Ramsay MacDonald.  It was the philosophers and theorists that finally saw their abstract theories brought to actuality in the labor victory in Parliament three years ago.  What Britain had sowed in its thinking, it is reaping in its present era of public ownership.  (I didn’t say whether what Great Britain now has is good or bad, did I?  I have only said that the harvest is just what logically grows from the seed that was planted!)

 

This causal relationship is nothing new in history.  We citizens of the United States of America speak of the great courage, sacrifice, and persistence displayed by Colonial soldiers in the war of the revolution.  And it is well that we do not forget the heroic proportion of those qualities.  But is it not generally agreed among historians, both British and American, that if the British ministry of arms had thrown the full weight of Britain’s might into that conflict, she would have completely crushed the Colonial resistance?  Britain didn’t do so.  Liberals like William Pitt in the English Parliament were in sympathy with  the American Colonial cause.  They understood that the mother country had no moral right to exploit this daughter country through taxes on tea or stamps or by preferential trade in rum or molasses.  They could understand why a nation which wanted freedom to govern itself should have that right.  And so there was a verbal battle going on in Parliament against sending troops and equipment against the colonies.  It has even been remarked that the greatest battle of the American Revolutionary War was waged in the British Parliament!  The philosophy of liberty which echoed in the House of Commons had its reverberation at Lexington and Concord, and in the foundation of our own democracy.  The philosophy even became the culture.  What they sowed, both in London and on the Revolutionary battlefield, we eventually reaped.

 

It is interesting and sometimes tragic to note the effect of this principle elsewhere.  The French were for many generations a very religious people.  Today, in a nation of some 40 million souls, there are scarcely 6 million Roman Catholics and only a few thousand Protestants.  Does not one reason for this lie in the fact that, for the past century or two, the French people have been subjected to a barrage of intellectual and philosophical atheism, agnosticism, secularism, materialism and communism?  Voltaire taught there is no God; Rousseau that morality is as you like it.  Marx, driven from Berlin, found refuge in Paris where he wrote “Das Capital” and the “Communist Manifesto” calling all workers of the world to revolution.

 

What is the harvest?  One third of the French electorate had consistently voted Communist since the end of the war, as reported by Edward R. Murrow.  And France specializes in pleasure and entertainment to a degree that has seriously weakened her moral fiber and spiritual strength.

 

Preachers warn against the evils of excessive pleasure, not because they want to keep people from having a good time, but because pleasure is secondary to and dependent upon right living, good living -- “Godly” living, if you please.  Individuals and groups with a pleasure-oriented life, the only end and goal being the gratification of self, inevitably develop paralyzed social consciences.  Human misery, suffering, need and sympathy no longer affect them.  Cain can kill Abel right behind them, as depicted in an artist’s painting.  Or a great modern Simon Legree can go right on whipping his slaves --- and these go right on seeking satisfaction for the desire to “have fun.”

 

Do you see why it is so important what we preach and teach in the church here in America today?  Do you see why it is important that we support the church of Christ today with our attendance and attention, our substance and our personal service?  Tomorrow is just around the corner and the structure of tomorrow’s culture and institutions is being built on the foundation of today’s philosophy.  We must take a firm stand on the time-and-experience-tested truth of the Gospels.  For every time we show love, every time we experience joy, gain peace of mind, exhibit patience, show kindness, practice goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, we will be helping in our own way.

 

Now today is World Order Sunday.  A year ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution naming October 24th as United Nations Day.  This date is the anniversary of the day the Charter of the United Nations came into effect.  All member governments are invited to cooperate in observing it.  Prior to this action, the Federal Council of Churches recommended “that the Sunday nearest October 24th, the day when the United Nations’ charter became the law of nations, be named World Order Day.”

 

It is a day on which to point out a number of significant things.  International tension is acute and an adequate system for peaceful change is lacking.  Human rights are being trampled under foot in numerous countries.  Exhaustion, disillusionment, physical weakness and spiritual apathy have produced a dangerous moral vacuum which conflicting cultures are racing to fill.  Totalitarian communism and western “free enterprise” democracy would like to fill this vacuum.

 

But, as John Foster Dulles has pointed out in an address to the National Council of Presbyterian Men, both must appeal to the moral judgments of all men.  Everyone realizes, in political life, that a candidate who hopes to win election must try to get on the right side of moral issues or he will be defeated.  The electorate has to decide whether the candidate is sincerely and effectively on the right side of the issues or whether his opponent is.  But there is no doubt that the moral factor is decisive in the minds of the people.  Moral judgments are avidly sought in time of war.  Napoleon remarked that, in war, the moral factor is to materiel as 3 is to 1.

 

Now what about the hope for World Order?  In no small measure, it is staked, organizationally, on the United Nations.  And what of the United Nations?  Is it a world government?  Can it be a world government?  Dulles says, “No, not now.”  Nor does he believe that it is at all practical to turn it into a world government at the present time.

 

The United Nations is a place where the moral judgments of the world can be recorded.  Before there can be accepted government, the peoples to be governed must have some common understanding as to what they want that law to be, and believe it should be.  Law is an expression of the moral judgments of the community that is to be governed.

 

At the present time, there is no adequate common denominator of moral judgments that can serve as a foundation for world government.  So we must live in the dangerous, exciting, challenging atmosphere of a world that still has to discover, define, and implement what is right before it can be policed.

 

Political communism professes the same beliefs for which we have stood as a Christian nation and as a Christian church -- the end of exploitation of men by men; the end of imperialist colonization; distribution according to need; dignity of the individual without regard to class, creed or color.  The Soviet communists have a strong appeal to all down-and-outers with this moral appeal.  Most of us in this country believe militantly that the Soviet program belies the fulfillment of those needs.

 

But the reason communism is a serious threat today is that we Western Christians have also failed to demonstrate effectively and convincingly enough our concern for the same moral principles.  These principles are taken over by the communists because there is extensive doubt that we mean our own adherence to them and will demonstrate that adherence with our effort and lives.

 

It is tremendously important that we do jump into the moral vacuum with an effective quickening of Christian conscience and action.  For we believe that Christianity reflects the moral law with greatest clarity.  Christian-trained men and women should enunciate it most clearly and live it most effectively. 

 

What is the hope for World Order?  That hope is being made or broken today, right now -- by people like you and me and folk over in the Methodist and Baptist and other churches -- by folk who stay away from the churches, too.

 

Will our humanity be saved and order, rather than obliterating destruction, come about in this world?  It will if individual people and churches and communities and countries will know and stand on what is right.  Are you afraid there may not be enough such people so that the world, like ancient Sodom, will be destroyed because God didn’t have 10 righteous men to stand in that city?  Do you say either in despair or in cynicism, “Well, my vote or influence doesn’t amount to much alone.”

 

Ten men could have saved Sodom.  One man with God is a majority.  One honest, able, man elected to the mayor’s office in Chicago or anywhere else can do wonders for a multitude.  The people of the Christian churches -- even a fraction of them -- can put tremendous hope into the world for general order.  Because in the realm of moral judgments every voice counts and a few righteous, God-led souls can count tremendously.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 24, 1948.