Preaching the Word in Writing

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Someone has offered the sage observation that by the time a writer discovers he has no talent for literature, he is too successful to give it up. It was Will Rogers, the homely humorist from Claremore, Oklahoma, who said, "In Hollywood the woods are full of people who learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd quit writing."

     In spite of the intellectual garbish which, in our day, is rescued from the trash can, and garnished with the recommendation of the huckster, to be served up as literature on the dining tables of the sophisticated, I still rejoice in the power of the pen. Not every typewriter is employed as a tripewriter!

     It was a memorable day in the history of man when he began to use visible symbols of his ideas to augment those that were merely oral and audible. Eventually it would come to mean three things--that the ideas could be projected, perpetuated and perfected. The spoken word depended for its outreach upon two things, the number of hearers within the auditory range created by the volume of the speaker and the memory of those who heard. Both had their limitations. But the written message could be carried to the remotest part of the universe and affect the lives of those who never saw its creator.

     Moreover, the ideas would survive on earth the intellect which conceived them and gave them birth. Long after the fingers which wrote them down had crumbled to dust in some forgotten sepulcher, the thoughts which fired a now slumbering brain would again burst into flame in the intellect of another reader, and resume their impact in halls of parliament, or perhaps in the homes of the lowly.

     Each succeeding generation could build its aspiring structure upon the foundation of previously discovered truth. The deductions of a century ago, or of ten centuries past, could be scrutinized, analyzed and criticized. Fallacies could be detected, flaws could be eliminated, and facts could be re-asserted. The accumulative wisdom of the ages would not only fill libraries with books but would also fill lives with hope.

     Those of us who are assembled in this great auditorium owe a special debt to the art of writing. We are the heirs in succession of a noble movement motivated by a salient ideal. Sired by a yearning for rest amidst the turmoil of religious confusion, born into a world grown weary with bickering over creeds, and rocked in the cradle of American liberty by the hand of freedom of speech, this movement gave promise of answering at least in the new world the plea of the Saviour for unity in the whole world. And it received its impetus from writing--unsurpassed and unparalleled in its day.

     Alexander Campbell launched the Christian Baptist on August 3, 1823. The first

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paragraph read, "Christianity is the perfection of that divine philanthropy which was gradually developing itself for four thousand years. It is the bright effulgence of every divine attribute, mingling and harmonizing, as the different colors of the rainbow, in the bright shining after rain, into one complete system of perfections--the perfection of glory to God in the highest heaven, the perfection of peace on earth, and the perfection of good will among men."

     Dipping his trenchant quill in the inky fluid, he attacked the abuses of the religious Establishment of his era. He punctured the proud pretensions of a presumptuous priestcraft, indicted the insinuations of insolent institutionalism, and deflated the swollen corpse of creedal confessionalism which had long since deceased but which was still enshrined and thought to be alive because of the whispering and murmuring of those theological divines who sought refuge behind it.

     In a short time this periodical had the greatest circulation of any religious journal on the American frontier. It was read by successive presidents of the United States. It was a part of the literary diet of many of the most eminent congressmen. But, even more important, it was read by shopkeepers and artisans in every village and hamlet and it became the topic of conversation in log cabins erected in remote clearings in the dense forests which covered the land. Soon other papers began to be published by advocates of the restoration principle and the citadel of sectarianism trembled upon its insecure and unscriptural foundation.

     What has happened to this once virile movement to curb its creativity and to make it founder in the literary doldrums? That a transformation has taken place there can be no denial. Not only are we not producing the kind of writing which penetrates the hard crust of contemporary society, but many of those who pay lipservice to the prophets of restoration and garnish their tombs, refuse to be drawn from the crass, cruel and childish portrayals on their television screens to read anything which will make them think. One of the most common apologies we hear is, "Our brethren are just not readers." One of our own psychologists has said, "We have produced very little worth reading for a good many decades and there is no indication we will do so for a long time to come." It is not difficult for the world to keep down those who do not keep up!

     I would like to face up frankly to our current dearth of challenging composition and to the manuscripts of mediocrity which attempt with such little success to fill the vacuum. What forces or factors have combined to stifle suggestions at their source and to inhibit imagination in its inception? Why is the pitcher of thought broken at the fountain, or the wheel of meditation broken at the cistern, so that we have nothing with which to draw from the depths and no container in which to retain even that which is skimmed from the surface?

     My reply is simply that, as a people, we have lost our original reason for existence. We have ceased to be a movement in history and have become a monument to it. We praise pioneers whom we would not allow to preach from our pulpits if they were present. We parrot party slogans which we make little pretense of practicing. We give lip-homage to restoration when we really practice retroaction. Our literary status is a reflection of our spiritual stature. We write little because we think small. Only free men can write freely and we are no longer free. We are victims of a tragedy which struck a hundred years ago, and the fears and frights which it engendered linger to haunt and harass us to this very day!

     When our fathers were faced with the problem of what they were pleased to call innovations they were forced to make a decision as to how to meet the problem. I need not remind you that they chose division. I shall not here assess the right or wrong of those things which created the problem, nor shall I attempt to fasten the blame for the result upon one side or the other. It is possible, and even probable, that the attitudes of all contributed to the ultimate disaster.

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     I am concerned, however, with the far-reaching effect of the division, and its relation to my subject of the hour. As I view it in retrospect, and in the light of our contemporary corporate life, it seems to me there are three tragic results which have accrued from our initial division.

     1. We rendered our plea for the unity of all believers impotent and ineffective, and laid the foundation by which it would be regarded as a sham and pretence by the remainder of the religious world. If there is not a sufficient dynamic magnetism in a principle to hold together those who exist to promote unity, upon what ground can it be assumed that it contains the power to draw together those of other dissident groups? And to which of our parties will they have to be drawn to be united with Him who declared, "I will draw all men unto me."

     2. We were betrayed into adoption of the fallacious philosophy that purity of doctrine can only be preserved by separation from brethren, and that differences among the children of the divine family can only be solved by breaking up the family relationship. We have proven far more faithful to that philosophy than we have to the prayer of our Saviour and our attempted implementation of it leaves us today one of the most estranged and divided movements in the whole American religious spectrum.

     3. We became inoculated with the deadly virus of the party spirit and often devoted our energies and resources more to the promotion of parochial rivalry than to proclamation of the universal gospel. Our heroes became the forensic champions and debaters. We gloried in gladiators who could justify our position. Our unwritten creeds became the criteria by which faithfulness to God was measured. We set up our Procrustean beds of conformity on every highway and stretched or shrunk men to our own dimensions. And even at this very hour many are more interested in creating and projecting a party image than they are in conforming to the divine image.

     The word "ought" is made up of the last five letters of "thought," and the word "ink" is composed of the last three letters of "think," and what one ought to reproduce in ink he must first produce in thought. No message will ever come from the typewriter which did not first come to the heart. The best writing fluid is not a bottle filled with ink but a heart bathed with tears. It was Longfellow who said in his Voices of the Night, "Look, then, into thy heart and write." The thing that makes so much modern writing hopeless is that it is heartless!

     As the bed of a stream can become choked by the accumulating sediment and debris carried by its own waters so the current of religious thought can be dammed up by the traditions and partisan interpretations borne along from one generation to another. In both cases stagnation is the result and the green scum of neglect and decay gives little evidence of the torpid flow beneath, within the turgid and murky depths. When the lumberjacks of the north send their freight of timber down a swollen, frothing river, it is essential that a clear channel be maintained. If a jam results and the logs pile up like jackstraws so they cannot be unscrambled with pike poles, it is frequently necessary to resort to dynamite to free them for further unhampered journey to their destination. Perhaps all of us within the restoration movement framework need to be jolted from our complacency so we can get on with the task of helping "to unite the Christians in all of the sects."

     When the restoration plea was first enunciated the religious world was hardly ready for it. But a great change has been wrought in a century and a half. Now, faced with fears within and foes without, in a rapidly shrinking universe, the consciousness of all who love Jesus has been impregnated with the conviction that we dare no longer advance partisanship at the expense of peace. The same sectarianism which was defended as harmless, and even helpful, diversity in the nineteenth century is indicted as the scandal of our own generation. The maturing vision of mankind has made possible for us a rendezvous with destiny.

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     If our plea was launched upon the sea of human thought in the days of sailing ships by writing, it can be placed in orbit in the space age by the same medium. But that writing must be relevant. It must command and hold the attention of those who live now. We do not live in the day when Alexander Campbell stood at the type case in the little printing shop on the banks of Buffalo Creek, laboriously setting type by hand. We have at our command great machines which can do in minutes what men once required hours, and even days, to accomplish. But machines cannot think, and what we think will determine what we write, what others read, and what they in turn, are inspired to think.

     Centuries ago, the Roman poet Horace, said, "Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing." Let me suggest what I believe to be some essential component elements in that foundation of knowledge.

     1. We must know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. And we must know how to present them to a society distracted by the discord of alien voices and the clamor of strange tongues in the very temple dedicated to God. Ecclesiasticism and clericalism, like all closed-door professions, have developed their own exclusivistic vocabulary. Cleverly concealed behind innocent-appearing verbiage the hand of the assassin is perpetually poised with pen of poison to stab faith dead at our feet while appearing as a benefactor to an age of intellectualism.

     For example, three times I have read "Honest to God," by John A. T. Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich. Each time I have been more convinced it is incorrectly titled. He should have called it "Honest to John." I have no right to question that it is a fair statement of the opinion of the bishop, but in my opinion there is a real question of whether the statement is fair to God. In his attempt to get rid of God "up there" he has also created a vacuum "down here' and "in here," leaving a burning world and a yearning heart groping for a guide and grasping for a guardian.

     Twice I have read, "The Depth of Existence," by Paul Tillich, in which he suggests you may need to forget "everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself." I have studied his thesis that God is simply "the ground of our being" instead of the Being who brought us from the ground. And I cannot escape the dread feeling that we are being made unwilling spectators as the Son of God is crucified afresh and subjected to open shame. Our method of crucifixion may be more refined than that of crude barbarians but the linguistic thorns are just as sharp as the acanthus thorns, and the literary nails are just as cruel as the literal nails of yesterday. Remember that it is the same Christ who is under attack. And as I see the ragged rents and jagged wounds I want to banish my doubts as did Thomas of old and fall at his feet crying, "My Lord, and my God."

     2. We must know the regal visitor from heaven who dwells with us as a constant source of strength to the inner man. Not a holy ghost, but the holy guest, the Spirit who abides with us during the absence of our King is moving us with relentless certainty toward the fruition of the eternal purpose and the fulfillment of the divine plan. When this royal tenant inhabits our frail tenement of clay we have at our command the rich resources of creative energy which formed the universe.

     It might be startling for us to realize how many periods of dearth in our achievement come from quenching the Spirit. Perhaps we shall never know what a toll has been exacted of the movement of which we are heirs because our evasion of extremism and fear of fanaticism drove us to deny the presence of the Spirit or to

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confuse Him with His message. Legalism supplanted love as the basis of our relationship with the Father. Spirituality gave way to sterility and vitality to the invalidism of division and dissension.

     It is the Holy Spirit who seals us unto the day of redemption. It is the Holy Spirit who is our guarantee of the inheritance at the redemption of the purchased possession. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to call God our Father. It is the Holy Spirit who helps our infirmities. It is the Holy Spirit who crucifies the deeds of the flesh. It is the Holy Spirit who strengthens us with might inwardly. Can we ignore His influence or minimize His motivation and still produce those fruits in life or literature which will endure against the ravages of time? Can we expect help from any other source to be as powerful as that which can come from the Helper whom Jesus sent to abide with us in His stead?

     The kingdom of heaven does not move by machinery and is not propelled by paraphernalia. Its ministers are not expected to be engineers nor its servants mechanics. We are so involved in the intricacies of our inventions, so wrapped up in ways and means, and so consecrated to our contrivances and appliances, that we exhaust our energy keeping all of the gears lubricated. Yet most of our strongest areas owe their existence to a few humble Spirit-filled men who went forth with meager means but with unfailing fidelity to the Cause and conquered because of their trust in God rather than in gimmicks. It is possible that we have been betrayed into deserting the world of the Spirit for the spirit of the world.

     3. We must know the revelation of God for no one can preach the word of God in writing who does not know what is written in the word of God. For one who would disclose the will of God the supreme school for study is the sacred scriptures. He may be versed in all the subtle nuances of theology, be conversant with texts on comparative religions, and have a healthy familiarity with hermeneutics, but if he is ignorant of the Word, he will serve only to confuse and confound, rather than to conduct men in paths of righteousness.

     It is essential that men read the Bible. We are being exposed to a generation of teachers who have read a library of books about the Bible but seldom read the Book of books. One can no more feed his soul by reading about the scriptures than he can feed his body by reading cookbooks. One does not become an expert in the use of weapons merely by reading magazine articles about them but by practice in their use. You cannot fight the devil by swatting him with magazine articles. Only the sword of the Spirit is effective to this end.

     It is important that you receive the right word but it is just as important that you receive it in the right way. There is a statement made by Paul to the Thessalonians which needs to be repeated again and again in our modern society. "We thank God continually, because when we handed on God's message, you received it, not as the word of men, but as what it truly is, the very word of God at work in you who hold the faith."

     There are two grave errors that men can commit. One is to accept the word of men as the word of God. This is the mistake of the followers of Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy and Ellen G. White. The other is to accept the word of God as the word of men. This is the sin of miscalled "liberals" who regard the Bible as a mere product of the times.

     The first of these open a gate to false roads, the others close the gate to the right road. The first enthrone human wisdom, the second dethrone divine wisdom. We do not object to unbelievers examining the Bible. We do object to them posing as believers when they write about it. We would not curtail the right of free speech for any unbeliever. We do affirm that all such are dishonest when they parade in the pulpits as gospel proclaimers. It is a poor surgeon whose only remedy for an ailing body is to cut the heart out of it. One should not be received as a good citizen who brands the ruling monarch as a deceiver and usurper. There is room for those who do not believe in the divinity of Christ to be tolerated in the world, but

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there is no place for them to be received or retained in a society that is founded upon faith in the confession that he is the Christ, the Son of God. Potatoes may be all right in the dirt but I shall object strenuously if anyone insists upon putting dirt in my potatoes.

     We need men with the pen of a ready scribe to present the message of salvation to a neo-pagan world. There is need for historians who can record the unfolding drama of world events with due regard for the fact that our God is a history-making God. This means that there is no such thing as an unrelated event. The same power which spoke the universe into existence sustains and perpetuates it with providential guidance. The attempt to rule God out of the world He has made is a conspiracy of literary blackmail and blasphemy which should be revealed in its true light.

     We need writers of prose with the dramatic touch, men and women who can make use of all of the facets of human emotionalism, and employ the fascination of suspense and mystery without degrading their characters or maligning religion. The best-sellers have wallowed in filth and slime and muck long enough. The nauseating portrayals of perversion and deviation need to be countered with the ennobling view of sex as an expression of love and not a gratification of lust. There is a crying need for those who can tell a story without crawling and groveling in the gutter, and who can do it without using language borrowed or stolen from dope dives or jive joints.

     We need playwrights who can construct scenes of normal behavior which will touch the emotions. The strings of the heart need to vibrate once again with honest humor and sincere sorrow. We need to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. There is drama in the simple virtues of faith, hope and love. We need an antidote for the malignancies which eat at the heart of our civilization today. The soul must be turned back toward its Creator.

     We need poets who can pluck a melody out of the air and set our inner beings to pulsating and throbbing with the pure rhythm that is unforgettable and which helps us by day and haunts our dreams by night. We live in a sordid world. Our spirits are constantly exposed to the friction with an alien clime. We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. We need to feel that we are heaven bound even while we are "earthbound."

     We need commentators who can make the word come alive for our day. We need expositors and expounders who do not supplant the Spirit but supply an understanding of His language. When men can delve into the background, dig into forgotten treasure-troves, dip into the depths of history, and share with us those insights which make our own outlook brighter, they serve a great purpose in our generation. God's word is perfect; there is nothing more to be said. Our knowledge of revelation is imperfect; there is much more to be learned by all of us. We should welcome any assistance that we can get.

     We need men of courage and ability to storm and recapture the surrendered bastions of literature. We have abandoned as lost provinces such fields as science, higher education, and literature. We need to regain them all with well-planned strategy. Almost every major journal in our country was once slanted in the direction of faith and morality. Those which have abandoned their previous commitment to pander to the perverted tastes of a secularistic society are testimonies of the weakness of adulterated Christianity. It is good to write to our safe and sound "brotherhood periodicals" and exchange thoughts with each other, but these do not reach the masses and we keep pouring in prescriptions to the well, while the sick get sicker. Let us take advantage of forums, letter columns and every other means available to us, to bear witness of our faith that right makes might, and not the reverse.

     In books and brochures, in tracts and treatises, in papers and pamphlets, in articles and apologues, let us send forth the Message. It has been said that the printing press is the modern gift of tongues.

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Through this medium we can cover the world of printed language with the word of life. We can sow the seed over the face of the whole earth and place in the hands of men that which will give them a new lease upon life today and a new hope for life tomorrow.

     Let us employ the finest techniques available through scientific research to impress upon the minds of men the provisions of a gracious God for their salvation. Let us bring into useful subjection to our Lord every legitimate skill of those who love him, every discovery of our age which is also the age of the Spirit. We do not exhibit our faith by allowing Satan to capture the media of communication by our default, nor by concluding that the servants of God must ride in carriages while the emissaries of Satan travel by Jet-powered planes. We are not called to fight television, but sin! Our task is not to ignore the press, nor to destroy radio and television from the earth, but to make them tributaries of the King, so that "the whole earth shall be full of the glory of God."

     In these days of crises we need that prophetic vision which looks beyond the present with its strife and turmoil and sees the future with its eternal peace and tranquility. And, if it becomes our lot to share some lonely Patmos, free from the clamor of those who would stifle our message of hope to frustrated humanity, may we refuse to be silenced, but in the words of the banished seer of yesteryear, say, "And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write!"