Chapter 7

NO PLACE TO FLEE

     I have a friend who realized a long-time ambition a few years ago. He had always wanted to own and personally manage a small motel. When he retired at the age of sixty, after forty years of employment with one company, he and his wife began to travel throughout the United States. One evening they came to his "dream castle," a thirty-six unit motel nestled against the base of a mountain in one of our western states. After staying all night in one of the comfortable rooms he began negotiations early the next morning with a view to purchasing the place. Before the day ended he had bought it and it has proven to be a successful venture.

     This man is a dedicated student of the Bible. He never retires at night without reading the Book. The result is that he tends to think in Bible terms. His comparisons are often Biblically based. Not long ago he told me he thought Bible students could be described in the same three categories in which he mentally thinks of his guests. The latter he thinks of as rock-hounds, vista-viewers, and tourists.

     Rock-hounds stay in his accommodations because they are in search of semi-precious stones which they can polish and sell or add to a private collection. Each morning they head out to a nearby lode and dig out pebbles which they examine meticulously to determine their constituency and value. Vista-viewers are not interested in such a concentrated study. They climb to vantage points from which they can look at faraway peaks or see the beauty of a wide sweep of country.

     Tourists are simply on a trip through the area. Those who are independent quickly survey the terrain and go on their way, satisfied that they have logged another area in their record. Those who are on a group tour are shepherded by a guide who takes them to the right places, gives his formal spiel and gets them all back on the chartered bus to journey on to the next scheduled stop.

     There are Bible "rock-hounds" who search for interesting and unique words in the treasure trove of scripture. They dig deep and uncover some rare gems. Nothing is more fascinating than a study of the derivation and history of words. I am intrigued when I sit down with A Theological Word Book of the Bible by Alan Richardson, or pick up my copy of New Testament Words by William Barclay. These men pry loose from their moorings truths previously hidden from my sight. They provide new insights upon the language of the Holy Spirit. As one eminent writer has put it, words are "fossil poetry."

     Not every person is adapted to the discipline of such investigative exercise. Sometimes their mental muscles are too weak and flabby to permit digging beneath the surface. They like to view the mountain peaks of sacred history as part of a great panorama. The creation of man, the flood of Noah, the call of Abraham, the life of Moses--all of these themes are attractive and they focus their view upon them. Their interest leads them to list persons and events important to God's unfolding purpose, but they are not really researchists.

     The tourists travel through the Book, often at a certain rate per day. Like one who calculates his mileage before he leaves home on vacation they cover so many chapters each week, pausing only briefly to survey the items of interest. Their chief aim is to say they have been there when someone mentions a spot, whether it means anything to them or not. Those who are on a conducted tour simply go where a preacher or teacher takes them with an itinerary furnished in advance. They listen to the description or explanation and move on to the next location.

     I am not sure that those of us who are thinking together in reading this book can conveniently be filed away in one of the three pigeon-holes dreamed up by my friend. There is a temptation to linger with the "Sermon on the Mount" and probe into every aspect of it, but that is not our real purpose. We are rather on a journey to discover the adventure involved in attuning our hearts to a divine dimension which will make it possible to share a transcendent experience above and beyond the fleshly or sensual plane.

     This requires a familiarization with Jesus as a person, living in the same kind of environment with which we must cope, until freed from it by the experience we call death. Jesus did not enter the earthly sphere to live in a kind of splendid isolation or to become a glorified hermit. He built no monastic retreat upon Mount Hermon. He did not dwell in a cave as a bearded recluse. He had no wilderness sanctuary to which He could retire "far from the madding throng's ignoble strife."

     As the village carpenter whose ox-yokes rested easy upon the necks of draft animals and made their burdens lighter, He was subjected to the haggling over prices which is so much a part of trading in the East. He became a part of the pushing, shoving, gesticulating crowd which congregated along the gravel-strewn beaches of the Sea of Galilee. In the temple precincts He was carried along by the ocean of humanity which surged about the outer court on days of special sacrifice. He walked the narrow streets of Jerusalem and the dusty roads leading to villages, stepping out of the way to allow laden asses to pass while their cursing drivers screamed at both their animals and the pedestrians who blocked their way.

     His ears were assailed with the crude and obscene jokes of a peasantry which had no other means of expressing its seething hostility against its Roman overlords. His eyes saw the graffiti scrawled upon the walls of the narrow alleys used as public latrines. In the markets he heard the babble of voices, the shrill cries of hawkers directing attention to their wares, the whining call of the beggars and the blind, the varied accents of a polyglot population which turned the city of God into a city of man, invading the holy place with tables of moneychangers and crates of cooing doves and pigeons.

     How did one who knew no sin move into such a world of political intrigue, conspiracy and hostility, and relate to its desperate need? How can I, having known sin and still knowing it, live in such a world and profess to be a follower of Him? He moved among men unscathed and unscarred, but I already bear the scars of my departures from my own ideals, the frightful marks of my indiscretions and wrong decisions.

     The dilemma revealed in such questions has caused many to flee from the marketplace to desert fastnesses to "get away from it all." Like the ancient Essenes, religious "orders" have established communes of "the faithful" upon the summit of high mountains or in remote valleys where the sun never shines. In an attempt to serve Him in the world man seeks to build heavens of his own into which he can go and leave the world, in direct opposition to Him who left the heaven which God constructed to come into the world.

     I am convinced there is no place to flee. If I am to be like Jesus I must stay and face whatever the world and the flesh throw at me. I must mingle with the multitude in all of the raw, bloody godlessness of an earth which walks in darkness and despair. God has created no "green belt," no suburban area around the earth for my comfortable existence while mankind gasps for breath, and struggles for survival. I must be in the world but not of it. The temptation is to be both in it and of it. But that is not the way of adventure! Anyone can do that and most persons do!

     It is evident that Jesus often ignored and frequently upset the sense of values which the world had developed. As we have previously mentioned, He established a whole new set of priorities. He set precedents which those about Him regarded as dangerous. He rocked the boat. He made waves. As a result I am forced to decide whether I will go along with the comfortable position which the world has evolved, or practice the life-style of Jesus as nearly as I can. I cannot do both. "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would." So says Paul in Galatians 5:17. Let me suggest a few things in which Jesus cut across the thinking of men while He was upon the earth. We can consider but a mere sample of His teaching in this area.

THE NEW DYNAMIC

     1. Jesus taught that love must be unrestricted and unconfined. It must be outreaching enough to include enemies as well as friends, a love for mankind, not just a certain kind of man. It is not something which can be held within but must be openly expressed, for love unexpressed is not really love at all. This kind of teaching must have been like a bolt of lightning to the hearers of Jesus. It cut across all they had previously been taught.

     "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy' " This precept enjoins both hate and love, not for things but for persons who are made in the image of God. But hate is a consuming fire. It is destructive. It is like carrying a venomous snake in one's bosom. One of the big problems raised by this adage of the ancients is the problem of deciding whether another is a neighbor or enemy so one will not mistakenly waste love or hate on the wrong one.

     Jesus wiped out the need of making such distinctions. He threw hate on the refuse dump as no longer necessary for His disciples to lug around inside themselves. "But I say to you. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." I think that for years I rather ignored this, hoping it was not real or would go away. When I could no longer avoid it I tried to dilute it, to weaken it so that I could swallow it, like dissolving an aspirin in a glass of water to keep it from lodging in the throat and choking you. Finally, when a growing sense of relationship to Jesus forced me to reckon honestly with everything He said I began to study this remarkable statement. I learned a great deal which has been of inestimable value to me, and if I can do so without seeming pushy, I'd like to share a few of the things I found out, with you.

     The word for love is agape. It is one of four Greek words which have been rendered by our English term love, but it represents a special kind of love. It is not the kind of love one has for his wife, or children, or grandchildren. It is not the kind of love that he feels toward his country, the land of his birth. Involved in love for these is a combination of sentimentality and emotion which seems to be an integral part of our very being as humans. It is built into us. Since it represents a natural relationship we think of those who have no regard for their own parents or children as "acting contrary to nature."

     But love for one's enemies is not natural. We stay aloof from our enemies. We regard them with suspicion and fear. We cannot apply to them the same sentimental affection which we feel toward our own flesh and blood. However, love for enemies is not unnatural, it is supernatural. When one becomes a partaker of the divine nature it becomes natural in that realm to love his enemies. I seriously doubt that any person who has been merely born of the flesh can ever truly love his enemies. To do this one must be born of the Spirit. Agape is a fruit of the Spirit. It is really a first-fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). It is borne in those who belong to Christ Jesus and have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

     Agape is God's love, the love that God is (1 John 4:8). If we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Romans 5:5). We thus become containers of God's love and conduits through which that love flows to others. God never forces one to act against his will. He supplies for us the necessary ingredient for conquering self and the world but does not compel us to use it. In the final analysis, love for one's enemies is an act of will.

     I do not need to will to love my children or my dear friends. My love for them is spontaneous. I may require instruction as to how better to express my love toward them, or encouragement in the proper response to make to their expression of love for me. But I am commanded to love my enemies even as I am commanded to love my brothers in Christ. This means that I must love some persons whom I cannot like. To say this is to spark an instantaneous question in the minds of many. "How can I love a person whom I cannot like?"

     The answer lies in the nature of agape. We like people who are like us. The reason we do so is because it flatters us. Surely one who has the same tastes, the same hobbies, and the same style as ourselves must be something special. Even though our love for such persons may be shallow, being based upon human traits, it comes easily, being in reality a love for self. Love for our enemies, or even for God's other children who are wholly unlike us is another matter. Often it must be love for the loveless. God did not love us because we were good, but we are good because He loved us. Such love does not seek for value in its object, but creates it.

     The one who is loved may be vile and worthless by every social and moral standard but the fact that he is loved gives him worth. Agape is active and beneficent goodwill which stops at nothing to achieve the good of the beloved object. In the case of Jesus it took Him as far as the cross. In a happy phrase, William Barclay designates it as "unconquerable benevolence." To love one's enemies is to wish only good for them, and actually labor to make that wish become reality.

     Albert Barnes, who completed his commentary on the new testament scriptures at Philadelphia in 1832, wrote of the words of Jesus: "We are bound to love our enemies. This is a law of Christianity, original and peculiar. No system but this has required it, and no act of Christian piety is more difficult." Apparently his contemplation of the profundity of this statement of Jesus caused the commentator to open the floodgate of eloquence. He went on to write' "This is religion, beautiful as its native skies; pure like its Source; kind like its Author; fresh like the dews of the morning; clear and diffusive like the beams of the rising sun; and holy like the feelings and words that come from the bosom of the Son of God. He that can do this need not doubt that he is a Christian. He has caught the very spirit of the Saviour, and he must inherit eternal life."

     This love is not passive, but active. It is not enough to endure persecution or to be patient under it. Jesus actually requires that we pray for those who persecute us. He gave an example of what He meant while suspended upon the cross. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Perhaps there is no more liberating experience in life than to gain the victory over self and to overcome a passion for vengeance and actually place one who deeply offends you in the hands of God. It may be a supreme triumph in some cases, freeing the persecuted from seething resentment which takes a greater toll of the one who suffers injury than of those who inflict it.

     God is indiscriminate in the sharing of nature's blessings. He does not ordinarily send rain only upon those who are just and equitable. It falls upon the unjust as well as the just. The sun rises upon both the evil and the good. One who wishes to be identified with the Father, that is, who wants to be recognized as a partaker of the divine nature, must in this respect be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect. The word perfect here does not relate to knowledge, moral character-or sinlessness. It means mature or complete. It is used here to show that we must not be selective in the bestowal of love or blessings.

     More is expected of one who reveres God than of one who does not. Men who limit their expression of love, compassion and concern only to those who belong to a caste, clique or company, are motivated by selfishness rather than selflessness. There is no regard from God to those who thus act. "For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles the same?" When Jesus uttered these words, tax collectors were regarded as social outcasts, guilty of national betrayal and treason because they hired out to the occupation forces to exact taxation from their own people. Gentiles were generally looked upon as idolaters. Those who professed to be sons of God and acted no better than social outcasts and idolaters had nothing to commend them.

     The words of Jesus about love provide for us a genuine yardstick for measuring the reality of our experience with Him. Each of us must be tested to determine the worthiness of our claim to be His disciple. I offer this suggestion. Select a person toward whom you have felt hostility and bitterness. Pray earnestly for the power to love that person regardless of any deep hurt he has inflicted upon you. Direct your will toward loving that one. Repeat to yourself over and over that you will conquer your hate. Insist to your own heart that you will love that person regardless of cost and continue to make yourself vulnerable until the burden of bitterness has been lifted from your heart.

     You will find that your whole life has been changed for the better. There will come a sense of lightness and freedom you have never known before. You will be singing in your soul. The feeling of perpetual weariness will pass away. Your nervous tension will pass away also. You will become conscious of being more than a conqueror through His love. What will really take place, of course, is that you will have a consciousness of being a child of God in a real identifiable sense. There is really no way for this to happen as long as you hate those who speak evil of you and persecute you. The striving for revenge will consume you.

THE EXCLUSIVE LOYALTY

     2. Jesus taught that loyalty must be undivided and sincere. The real secret of eternal life in our present state is absolute commitment without any reservation. The ultimate freedom on earth is attained by surrendering to the lordship of Jesus. One who does not become a slave of His will becomes a slave to self. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" ( Matthew 6:24).

     This ultimatum says much and implies even more. Implied is the thought that every rational person on earth will be under a master. As a created being man can never go it alone. He can be only as free as the Creator made him to be. By nature man will always be dependent. Implied also is man's right to will and the power to do so. Although sin marred the original dignity of man it did not destroy his potential to choose. "He will hate the one and love the other." As a being man can will his own destiny. Thus he is capable of the Great Adventure.

     Because of our English rendering of the two words "serve" and "master" we tend to lose some of the depth of what Jesus was saying. For example, we often speak of an apprentice serving under a master mechanic, but this does not convey the meaning of Jesus. Words are a medium of exchange in the realm of thought as coins are in the realm of trade. As coins often lose some of their value when converted into the currency of other countries, so words sometimes suffer when translated into another language.

     Difficult as it is, we must try to hear what Jesus said through the ears of those who sat before Him on the slopes of the Horns of Hattin. If we do we may get a different impression than that received by a group of well-dressed attendants sitting on cushioned pews in an air-conditioned religious structure in the twentieth century. The word which we have translated serve is from a Greek term for the lot of a slave. The word we have rendered master is a term for lord, and was the one used to designate a slave-owner. As it came through to His original listeners Jesus was saying that no one can belong to two owners.

     Human slavery was an institution well understood in the days of Jesus. In our culture we have rejected and renounced it. It even seems incredible to us when we see it depicted upon the television screen or read a book like Roots, by Alex Haley. But there were two features about slavery which must have flashed into the minds of the people who heard Jesus say what He did. First, the slave had no rights of his own. He did not belong to himself but to another. He could not be what he wished to be because he was wholly subject to the will of someone else.

     It is at this juncture we must be very careful. It is easy to allow prejudice to take over and prompt us to think of God as a self-seeking tyrant while regarding ourselves as degraded. Our mental conditioning regarding slavery can easily betray us into false conclusions. It is not uncommon to hear a university student, caught up in the false glamor of humanism, reject God with the words, "I do not want someone else running my life, whether I can see him or not." Such thinking shows a real ignorance of the nature of the overpowering love which attracts one to surrender himself in realization that by so doing he finds his true self.

     The identification of the human will in its weakness and limitations, with the sovereign creative will of the universe, is not degradation but exaltation. The mass of clay filled with impurities loses nothing but its own foreign matter when placed in the hands of a skilled potter to be made into a vessel "fit for the master's use." One cannot be under the power of two divergent wills at the same time and retain his sanity. He cannot serve two masters. To be wrenched and torn between conflicting desires and emotions can only result in a wreckage of personality. We either go with God or go to pieces!

     The servant of Jesus is not brainwashed but heart-washed. His inner being is cleansed. He is purified. He is forgiven and made whole. One who is brainwashed cannot think straight. One who is heart-washed thinks straight for the first time. The brainwashed individual is programmed from without; the heart-washed individual is purged from within. He is led by the Spirit and cannot do the things that he would, the things to which he is prompted by the flesh. The mind that is in him is the mind of Christ.

     Secondly, the slave has no time of his own. There is not a moment in which he is free from his owner. His plans are subject to the will of the master. He cannot take time off. He does not go in and out of his state. He has no time to devote to another. It is impossible for him to serve another master since all he is and has belongs to another.

     The whole purpose of Jesus in emphasizing the exclusiveness of commitment to a master is to enforce the important dictum that one cannot serve both God and mammon. But what is "mammon"? The New International Version uses the word "Money" with a capital initial letter, that is, as a personal noun. The New English Version follows suit. That is plain enough. One cannot be a slave of God if he is a slave of gold.

     I think we may accept this with one word of caution. In our day the word "money" may be a little too limited. The word "Mammon" related to a kindred word in Hebrew which signified something firm or solid, and thus, something which could be trusted as a foundation. The word trust seems to be woven into it. In its root significance it referred to material possessions which were entrusted to another to look after or care for. Eventually it underwent a change of emphasis and came to apply to the trust one placed in his material things.

     Thus, the word once meant that which was placed in security or trust, and then came to mean that in which one placed his trust for security. Man comes to worship that to which he submits his life. If he trusts things or possessions as his shield against calamity and destruction these things will become his god. His life and time will be devoted to the accumulation of things, and such things will become his master. They will take precedence over every other value. He will sacrifice health, family and friends upon the altar of Mammon.

     It is here that many tear their hearts to shreds. They try to trust in God and trust in material things at the same time. They are of all men most miserable, afraid on the one hand to turn loose of God, and fearful on the other hand of turning loose of things. When that which is created replaces and displaces the Creator in the shrine of the heart, only disappointment can result.

     No doubt it was this which the ancient Greek myth about Midas, king of Phrygia, was intended to portray. As Thomas Bulfinch tells it in his Age of Fable, Bacchus, the god of wine, imbibed a little too freely and became lost. He was found by some peasants who brought him to the king. Midas entertained him royally for ten days and nights with all kinds of games and gaiety. On the eleventh day, when he was preparing to leave, Bacchus offered to implement any wish that Midas would make. The king immediately asked that whatever he touched be turned to gold. The wish was granted. Midas was thrilled when he reached up to pluck an oak leaf and it turned to pure gold.

     He stooped down and picked up a pebble. It became gold in his hand. He hastened to pick an apple from a fruit tree. It became like the fabled apples of Hesperides which Juno had received as a wedding present from the Earth-goddess. Midas hurried to his palace and ordered a sumptuous banquet prepared in celebration of his good fortune. But the bread hardened in his hand, the meat turned to metal between his teeth, and the wine flowed down his throat as liquid gold.

     In the days that followed the wealthy monarch became desperate. The mattress at night became unyielding gold. He cringed from touching anything when he arose. Starving and desperate, he lifted up his hands to Bacchus and pleaded that the curse he had besought as a gift be removed. Mercifully, Bacchus told him to follow the Pactolus River to its headwaters and plunge his body into its cold depths and wash away his guilt. Midas came from the stream hating what he formerly loved. Divesting himself of his royal splendor he lived in the fields, basking in the natural beauty he had once defiled by converting it into gold.

     You cannot serve both God and Mammon! Those who seek to do so make existence miserable for themselves and others. When life is regulated by the stock market and happiness and misery pursue each other as the quotations rise and fall, the relationships which count will be neglected or flung aside. When one can be "wiped out" by the frenzied manipulations of those he may never see, he dies a thousand deaths and never really lives at all. Rousseau said, "When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he gives away in his lifetime." D. H. Lawrence wrote, "When I wish I was rich, then I know I am ill."

Contents

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