Adventures in Religion

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     All who love the Lord Jesus desire above everything else to be loyal to His cause. No one who has "set to his seal that God is true" would deliberately and maliciously offend the Father. But we have become so factional in these days and division is so rife, that we tend to mistake loyalty to the party for allegiance to Christ. We have become the victims of so many pressure groups that we seldom stop to determine how Jesus would react to our complex problems. Many of us do not really know him as a person, although we know a number of things about him. There is a great difference!

     Of course none of us can be sure of just how our Lord would deal with some of the situations which confront us. He has left us no detailed bill of particulars and has given us no legal code with all the contingencies spelled out in fine print. We do not even have a biography providing a complete story of his life. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had no intention of giving us a history of his career. They merely set forth those events that would prove that he was the Son of God. The latter admitted that Jesus did many things which he did not chronicle and said, "If they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

     God does not deal with us in these last days as with children. He has not supplied us a rule book with footnotes in which every phase of spiritual activity is meticulously covered. We must ascertain those principles which governed our Lord and apply them as best we can in the Jet Age which is far removed from the days of Herod and Pontius Pilate. Fortunately those principles have never been abrogated by heaven nor superseded by any superior wisdom of mankind. We can by a proper study of the greatest life ever to bless this earth learn that personal philosophy which will be best for us during our brief life span. I should like to suggest a few things which appear to me to have relevance for our day.

     1. Jesus did not recognize every command of God as of equal weight and significance. He knew there were certain requirements that were central to our relationship while others were peripheral. When a lawyer asked him which was the great commandment in the law Jesus did not say there was no such thing. Instead he recited the command to love God. He said, "This is the first and great commandment." He then gave the second and said, "On these two hang all the law and the prophets."

     This is a forceful statement because it shows that love for God and neighbor is basic. From these two every other thing required is suspended. One might break the formal and ritualistic requirements and while he would be held accountable for these infractions the relationship would remain intact, but if he rejected or violated the foundational requirements the whole structure would tumble in disarray. The lawyer was discerning enough to see this. He replied, "Master, you have spoken the truth...to love God ...and to love your neighbor as yourself- is far more than any burnt offerings or sacrifices." The record says, "When Jesus saw how sensibly he answered, he said to him, 'You are not far from the kingdom of God.'"

     The converse of this must be that when a man regards ritual and ceremonial requirements as being on par with personal relationship to God and his brethren he is a long way from the kingdom. One nears the kingdom, according to Jesus, when he sensibly approaches the problem of our relationship as contrasted with legal demands. Yet most of our divisions have been caused by some aspect of tragic error at this juncture. Jesus knew that the law was given by God but he knew there were "weightier matters" than some of the keen points of distinction which had been arrived at by the scrupulous legalistic minds of the scribes.

     2. Jesus evaluated the relationship with a brother as taking precedence over a formal act of religious service. "If you

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are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." The altar was ordained of God. It was the very center of national worship. The most important religious ritual was to be interrupted to establish proper relationship with a brother. Jesus would never have considered that a thing was settled so long as division existed between brethren. He would never have callously remarked when a brother was driven forth, "It is good riddance of bad rubbish!" He taught that reconciliation with an offended brother was to be the constant endeavor of those who love His instruction. Actually Jesus associated with "the rubbish."

     3. Jesus recognized that man was not made for religion, but religion was made for man, and the ultimate expression of religion was doing good to needy mankind. One sabbath while they were going through the grainfields, the disciples plucked off heads of grain, rubbed off the husks between their palms, and ate the grain. The Pharisees immediately called to the attention of Jesus that his followers were doing what was not lawful on the sabbath. Jesus went to the very heart of the matter. He recalled that when David ''was in need and was hungry'' he entered the very precincts of the house of God and there ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for any but the priests to eat.

     This teaching was revolutionary to the legalists of that day. All legalism sacrifices human need to ceremonial observance. The life, or even the soul, of a man is worthless compared with "obeying the law." Let the law be upheld at all costs, regardless of human suffering or inner turmoil. Men are but machines, mere robots, to perform stated acts. This reasoning was directly contradicted by Jesus when he declared, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." The goal of religion is to develop one in all his faculties and potentials to the highest possible degree. It is to encourage and assist him in the arrival at that place where his personality fulfils the divine responsibility which is his to bear. When religion becomes destructive of the finer virtues, when it engenders hatred, animosity and carping criticism, when it drives apart those who claim to love Jesus instead of drawing them closer together it is prostituted to the baser elements of our earthbound existence.

     It is a sad error to mistake being loyal to the party or to partisan traditions with being loyal to Jesus and the ideals which he espoused and for which he died. It is possible that nothing in our day so militantly stands in the way of real Christian living as party prejudices. We need men who will rise above such narrow concepts of brotherhood and restore to our aching hearts the real Jesus, in all the glory and majesty of that divine love which sent him to an unworthy world filled with sinners. True Christianity has not been tried and found wanting--it has just not been tried in our generation!

     4. Jesus intimated that the ability to love may be in proportion to a recognition of the need for forgiveness. One who feels that he is so good that he requires little mercy from God will have but meager compassion for others. Such a person lavishes all of his love upon himself and has but a small surplus to share with anyone else. This was exemplified when a prostitute came in from the street while Jesus was dining with a rich Pharisee. The woman stood behind Jesus crying, letting her tears fall on his feet and then drying them with her hair. She kissed his feet and anointed them with expensive perfume, an action which made the host indignant. This elicited one of the most pointed parables which Jesus concluded with the remark, "But the man who has little to be forgiven has only a little love to give." If we would develop a love to share we must begin with a sense of our own need. He who comes short of recognizing his shortcomings will come up short in bestowing love.