Page 5753 – Christianity Today (2024)

The Continental Congress on the Family will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, October 13–17. The following quotations are from material prepared for that event.

Edith Schaeffer,author.

A family is an interaction of personalities, minds, and emotions. It is a living mobile. It is a museum of memories; it is form and freedom; it is a shelter; it is an economic unit.… Because the human family is a tiny picture of the whole Family of God, putting the Lord first will actually mean putting the family before all else at times.

Lloyd Ogilvie,pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, California.

Oneness in marriage is the result of experiencing the relational implications of the Gospel. It begins with grace. Because of the unmerited love of God, we are made right with him through the cross. This is the focal experience of our salvation. Acceptance of ourselves as loved enables us to love ourselves as loved by God. This self-acceptance frees a person to be delighted in himself, excited by his own uniqueness and potential. Emotional healing of the syndrome of self-negation and disease is made possible by this experience of grace in the depths of personality. This alone can reverse the “not okayness” which is communicated through our growing-up years. Many “Christian” families have failed miserably in being a gracious womb of healthy self-appreciation. Too few children of Christian homes can say, “I’m glad I’m me!”

Britton Wood,minister to single adults, Park Cities Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas.

Many persons who are married feel that the most important way to help the single person is to find a suitable marital partner. They find it inconceivable that some single adults choose to be single.… Some married adults find the single adult life-style threatening to the married adult life-style.… The Church can provide one of the few opportunities for single adults to meet in a non-threatening environment.

Denny Rydberg,editor, “The Wittenburg Door,” San Diego, California.

I wish Paul had added the words “There is neither youth nor adult” [to Galatians 3:28].… We have a tendency in the Church to discriminate on the basis of age. Senior citizens are shuffled off to the Golden Hours club. Youth are confined to the youth group.… Don’t age-group all Sunday-school classes.… Involve adults and youth in retreats and mission projects.… Encourage and train young people to teach younger children in the Sunday school.… God ministered to and used the services of young people. Let us follow the example of our Master. Equality, not discrimination. Incorporation, not alienation.

Larry Christenson,author and pastor, Trinity Church, San Pedro, California.

A husband needs to be sensitive to his wife’s hurts.… The husband demonstrates his love in that he sacrifices for [his wife].… He helps her to become holy.… He is concerned that she become a fully developed person.

Gladys Hunt,author.

When women have won all their rights and honor and equal opportunity, we will still be faced with our emptiness if we have not worked out our human relationships.… Christian wives must heed a new call to an old truth, a call to maintain, to insist upon, and to establish quality relationships in our lonely, alienated world.

Letha Scanzoni,author.

Some roles are achieved, and others ascribed. Gender roles are of the ascribed type. Increasingly, behavioral scientists are showing that the sexes have far more in common than they have differences. Thus, ascribed roles on the basis of gender seem totally out of place today.… According to the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit apportions gifts “to each individually as He wills.” Nothing is said about limitations according to gender, and there is no room for ascribed roles here. The whole idea of labeling characteristics “masculine” or “feminine” is patently unscriptural.

John Scanzoni,professor of sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington.

The application of individual affirmation to women has been and is now the major force changing the family.… Affirmation means that the Church gladly extends this right to women in all areas, including ordination. The issue that the Christian man must face in terms of a Christian woman is not, “How much authority do I have over you?” Instead it is, “What can we do for each other? What can I do for you?” The point is that within the family that is emerging, among a steadily increasing minority the watchwords are freedom for the exercise of gifts and flexibility to allow for changes over time. Some women will always prefer traditional patterns of marriage, and they must be allowed this freedom. Once we catch sight of how exciting and challenging and interesting it would be if women were affirmed, we would begin to do it with considerable enthusiasm.

Now on your newsstand: a Life Special Report on “The 100 Events That Shaped America”! Its editors readily acknowledge that the list is arbitrary. The six historians who advised them agreed unanimously on only five of the events. Nevertheless, in addition to being an emotion-charged reading and viewing experience, the list provides an illuminating perspective on how a major journalistic team perceives the role of religion in America.

How many significant “events” would you expect to be essentially religious? Before guessing, consider that five of the shaping events are musical (Armstrong bringing jazz north, Toscanini bringing the classics to the masses via radio, Oklahoma!, the Beatles’ visit, and Woodstock). So how significant is religion compared to music? According to this list, only one-fifth. Only one “event” is clearly religious: the revivalism, both rural and urban, represented by the publication in 1835 of Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion. (Though not mentioned by name, presumably Moody and Graham are considered later manifestations of this “event.”)

To be fair to the editors, we need to recognize that the list starts in 1776. Had it begun with the first colonists, a couple of other religious events, such as the coming of the Puritans and the Great Awakening, would probably have been included. Also, two attempts at social change, to be mentioned later, were in part the result of religious motivation.

We also should note that other special interests doubtless feel slighted. Sports only has two events: the coming of Babe Ruth and of Jackie Robinson to New York City, launching, respectively, big money and blacks into the big leagues. Journalism has only one entry. Two each are allotted to medicine, psychology, and sexual behavior (the Kinsey report and the Pill).

By contrast, the military managed to fire a big gun: ten of the one hundred events involve battles, the first four at home, the last six abroad. Transportation, undeniably important in linking the sprawling nation, should be satisfied with its score: four entries. Entertainment, too, did well: in addition to the seven entries for music and sports, it has seven other shaping events. Education merits three or four entries. Two interconnected pairs, law and politics, and inventions (or discoveries) and business, account for most of the remaining one hundred.

What other religious events might have been included? (And, to be fair, what could have been displaced so as to keep the list at one hundred?) Surely some recognition of the separation of church and state would have been in order. The resulting vitality and diversity of religion places America in notable contrast with most of the rest of the world, where religion is hampered by its subservience to or opposition from the political rulers.

Should the innumerable voluntary societies independent of both church and state (though often both religious and patriotic in motivation) have been omitted? Consider the American Bible Society, founded in 1816, which this fall will present to President Ford its two billionth copy of Scripture; the many Christian colleges founded as the frontier moved west, colleges that came into being long before the college land-grant bill of 1862; the Sunday school; the YMCA and YWCA; the temperance organizations.

Could not one of music’s five entries have been eliminated to make room for the Azusa Street revival of 1906, which initiated the spread of Penecostalism from blacks to whites and then around the world and across the denominational spectrum from Baptists and Methodists to Lutherans and Catholics?

By what standards has the small, young Peace Corps the right to displace the larger and older missionary corps? The Haystack Prayer Meeting sparked the overseas missionary drive of the churches; today there are more than 35,000 missionaries around the world.

The Christian contribution to the anti-slavery movement is insufficiently noted. Encyclopedia Britannica says that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (and she came from the Christian and very remarkable Beecher dynasty of preachers) Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “probably the greatest contribution in arousing antislavery public opinion.” Yet it is not on the list.

However, two failures at social reform, the penitentiary and Prohibition, though primarily legal, have their religious ties mentioned in passing. One can think of other examples of religiously motivated concern for the poor and handicapped, including the contemporary defense of the rights of fetuses to survive, that were omitted. But perhaps it is more significant that other persons have, in the name of religion, opposed these endeavors, with the effect of canceling the efforts of proponents. The result is that America has not in fact been shaped by the kind of care for those in need that ancient Israel was supposed to practice and that the Church’s Lord and his apostles exemplified and enjoined. It is worth noting that other nations have been eager to imitate the material success of America but without adopting the American systems of politics and economics, which they deem to be too weighted in favor of only a portion—even if a majority—of our citizens at the expense of those on the bottom rungs of the prosperity ladder.

Rather than deplore Life’s insufficient attention to the role of religion in shaping the nation, those of us who do believe in obeying God and his Word should instead increase our efforts to apply Christ’s example and teachings in every area of life. Were we to do that more consistently and pervasively, and couple these efforts with evangelism that wins more people to a genuine rather than nominal acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the compilers of a tricentennial list of one hundred key events could not avoid choosing many more that reflect positively the religious dimension of our heritage.

Should Karen Quinlan Be Allowed To Die?

Karen Ann Quinlan has lain in a coma for almost six months. Her body continues to function only because “extraordinary” medical means have sustained it. Without a respirator she would be dead. The electroencephalograms show little brain activity, and from a human standpoint there appears to be no hope of meaningful life if she were to emerge from the coma. She is apparently a vegetable. Yet neither medical nor theological ethics has come up with any firm conclusions about whether a person in this condition is alive or dead. Her parents have asked a court to rule that they can have the life-sustaining respirator turned off.

The case of this twenty-one-year-old New Jersey resident is almost certain to be a landmark in the growing debate over euthanasia. The focus is the legality of stopping the extraordinary medical means without which death would be certain and irreversible. It should be possible to decide this particular case without its becoming a precedent for expansion into other kinds of medical dilemmas. A decision to unplug the respirator should not be construed as an endorsem*nt of other forms of euthanasia. We hope that as the courts wrestle with the case legal guidelines will be laid down that will not offend God’s revelation and Christian conscience.

We believe in the sanctity of human life. We reject a concept of euthanasia that would permit the termination of life that is not being sustained by respirators and the like. But the Quinlan case fits into another category, that in which the major question is whether all available means must be taken to preserve life as long as possible, even when from a medical point of view there is no hope of anything approaching normal human activities. Under these conditions we think the doctors should be released from any legal liability and the parents allowed to decide whether treatment should be suspended.

The son of one of our former editors has been in a coma for nearly five years; he never regained consciousness after a car accident. We and many others have prayed often for him and for his family. There seems to be no possibility of anything like a normal life for him if he was to come out of the coma. Like Karen Quinlan, he is being kept alive by extraordinary medical means. Yet his parents cling to the hope that God will perform a miracle. This is their right.

These are cases where Scripture, law, and reason do not provide us with ready answers. We will pursue such questions in a more substantive fashion when we devote an issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY to the larger question of death and dying. But for the case at hand, within the limit of our understanding and the belief that God’s grace is greater than all our sins, we think the parents of Karen Quinlan should be permitted to have the respirator turned off.

Wilbur D. Benedict

Wilbur D. Benedict, publisher of CHRISTIANITY TODAY from 1963 to 1969, died last month in San Jose, California, in the fullness of years. He retired from the Curtis Publishing Company after thirty-four years there; he then served as manager of Presbyterian Life’s regional advertising office before coming to CT. Benedict was a lifelong Presbyterian. His solid Christian witness and his deep understanding of the publishing field were a great help to us. We mourn his passing and express our sympathy to his wife and her children and grandchildren.

Gathering Saints Under The Dome

Cathedral construction is not easy. It has taken hundreds of years to complete some of the world’s great church structures.

But with the help of computers and politicians a “cathedral” has been built in a relatively short time in New Orleans. It is called the Louisiana Superdome.

Quite a bit of Sunday “worship” is scheduled in the “world’s largest unobstructed room.” People from miles around will gather under this great dome to watch the rituals of professional athletes. New Orleans, which has a more than an ordinary awareness of the church calendar, calls the Superdome’s playing surface, “Mardi-grass.”

When Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was the guest preacher at a Holy Year mass in the Superdome, he shared with the local faithful the hope that the Detroit Lions would not eat the New Orleans Saints on their turf. Preaching to an estimated 75,000, he also compared the new structure to Rome’s Colosseum. Others are comparing it to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which is taller and larger, but because of the Basilica’s columns does not outrank the Superdome in the “unobstructed room” category.

Although the service at which Bishop Sheen appeared was not the first event for the $165 million enclosed stadium it disappointed former governor John McKeithen who once suggested that the Superdome open with Billy Graham in one end and the Pope in the other.

While neither the pontiff nor the evangelist got to New Orleans for the opening, McKeithen’s idea points back to the derivation of dome. Until about three centuries ago the word meant cathedral or church. Then people began to use it as a synonym for state house or guild house. Now, in New Orleans, dome means a home for Mardi Gras spectaculars, circuses, professional sports events, and trade shows. And, as with the Sheen scene, it may house some religious events.

A community would never invest $165 million in church construction. The investment of Louisiana’s treasure in the Superdome, however, indicates where the modern heart is.

Cards That Count

Like everything else, saying happy birthday costs more now. A greeting card for a birthday or wedding or anniversary is likely to cost fifty cents or more.

One alternative is to do it yourself. Take the time to make a card, or just write a note. Express your greetings in your own way rather than in the words of a commercial verse-writer. The recipient is sure to appreciate the extra effort and personal touch.

Another alternative is to spend a little more (about ninety-five cents) and send one of the greeting booklets that Christian publishing houses are now producing. Check your local Christian bookstore. You’ll probably be surprised at the variety and quality available.

A Birthday Salute

One of the world’s foremost Bible scholars celebrates his sixty-fifth birthday October 12. Professor F. F. Bruce reaches the milestone having provided a model of careful scholarship for a generation of evangelicals, many of whom crossed seas to sit at his feet. These men and women, and a larger group who have been influenced by his writings—more than thirty books and hundreds of articles—are now beginning to occupy strategic positions in secular universities, as well as in seminaries and Christian colleges around the world.

Bruce, born in Scotland, has held the distinguished Rylands professorship in biblical criticism and exegesis at England’s Manchester University since 1955. Among numerous honors that have come his way is his election in 1973 as a fellow of the British Academy, probably the most prestigious learned society in the English-speaking world. CHRISTIANITY TODAY deems it a distinct privilege to have had him as a contributing editor.

How To Wise Up

Even when we have learned something of rejoicing during times of trial because we realize that God is working through them (James 1:2, 3; see September 29 issue, page 39), we still may have the problem of wondering what to do. What James goes on to say, in terms that are both a promise and a command, is therefore welcome: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him” (Jas. 1:5).

Notice that we need to ask. That is simple enough to say and to memorize, but in practice we often neglect it. Or we ask only after we’ve strained and fretted on our own. Notice also that God has promised to answer, and, unlike some human beings whom we ask for wisdom, he will answer “generously” and “without reproaching.”

But we are told to ask “in faith, with no doubting” (v.6). Is this some catch, some almost impossible condition that nullifies the previous promise? Hardly. God does not tease us. Faith is the recognition that God is able to give us the wisdom we need, and that he wants to do so because he loves us. When we ask human beings for wisdom, we must always be aware that they do not know everything and may give unintentionally bad advice. We also have to recognize that, being sinners, they may have mixed motives, often subconscious. The advice they give us might be motivated at least in part by self-interest. We have to test carefully the wisdom of men.

If God let us approach him for wisdom with the same limitations with which we come to our fellow men, he would be confirming in us a false impression of himself and leading us astray. The condition that we “ask in faith” is not a negative device by which God can effectively avoid his promise, but a positive means of instructing us as to who he is and what he is like.

But what if our problem is that we doubt God? Surely this is something for which we need wisdom. Let us therefore come to God With whatever faith we do have, confessing our doubts and asking him for the wisdom that will enable us to believe unwaveringly. God delights to answer such honest requests.

Western civilization is coming unglued. Those who seem least aware of its impending collapse are (1) politicians with vested interests in promising a better tomorrow, (2) philosophers who despite a dismal record keep drawing up blueprints of utopia, and (3) stock brokers whose livelihood depends on marketing a bright future. Scientists seem more realistic about the world’s slide. They speak even of the end of human history—though their alarm centers in matters like atmospheric pollution, the prospect of nuclear destruction, limited natural resources, and possible famine in an overpopulated world.

Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, pinpoints our problem as a lack of conscience and will in the face of totalitarian Communist expansion. Meanwhile Muggeridge stresses the mass media’s promotion of the moral shallowness and spiritual superficiality of our materialistic culture.

What it all adds up to is the gloomy fact that for all its promise of bright tomorrows, scientific technology will itself crumble in the ashes of a society that abandons ethical and religious concerns. As the world in the last quarter of the twentieth century divests itself of belief in God and his revelation and in redemptive renewal, it is left without any clear understanding of the meaning of life. It therefore plummets toward pervasive melancholy and despair. A remnant that believes in God and his purpose in history will be left to carry the moral fortunes of a dispirited race.

It has not dawned on the West that, instead of being a conquered malady, Naziism is but a shadow of things to come, and that Russian Communism, which also arose in the West, is not the worst of all coming judgments. To be sure, the brutalities of twentieth-century Communism are aptly appraised by Solzhenitsyn:

What had been acceptable under Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in the seventeenth century, what had already been regarded as barbarism under Peter the Great, what might have been used against ten or twenty people in all during the time of Biron in the mid-eighteenth century, what had already become totally impossible under Catherine the Great, was all being practiced during the flowering of the glorious twentieth century—in a society based on socialist principles, and at a time when airplanes were flying and the radio and talking films had already appeared—not by one scoundrel alone in one secret place only but tens of thousands of specially trained human beasts standing over millions of defenseless victims [The Gulag Archipelego, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 93].

Solzhenitsyn confesses, “We didn’t love freedom enough” but submitted rather to the Party line and so “we purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward” (p. 13, n. 5). The embarrassing question is whether the so-called Free World (the designation is less and less appropriate) truly loves freedom or whether it is not rather so motivated by a passion for private material gain that secular capitalism cries out for controls upon its avarice.

Does not infatuation with sex in a time of scientifically abetted libertarianism push aside moral principles and thereby cast to the winds the sanctity of marriage and the dignity of human personality? By its preoccupation with change and its enthronement of human creativity, does not modern academic learning become subservient to a renegade call for new norms, norms that simply substitute expediency for enduring truth and principle? We have turned freedom into license. Our professed love of freedom is increasingly shown to be a sophistry that replaces wisdom and righteousness with self-gratification.

It is time we professing evangelicals speak up and move out. Solzhenitsyn says of the Russian believers who waited too long to take a stand that “like the ancient Christians, we sat there in the cage while they poured salt on our raw and bleeding tongues” (p. 498). Martyrdom may indeed become the fate of a faithful remnant, but it should hardly be considered glory for a remnant that was silent in a time of spiritual eclipse.

Evangelical tradition in and of itself is not good enough for an era of civilizational end-time. We need to plumb far deeper than this into the basic biblical heritage. There we find prophets willing to be jeered at, flogged, chained, stoned, tortured, and if need be killed by the sword. Solzhenitsyn writes of victims of Communist terror who “crawled along the path of hope on their knees, as if their legs had been amputated” (p. 449). If in a time of cultural decay evangelicals live as if their tongues were cut, and confine their light inside the churches, do they deserve a better fate than the godless?

However casually we may dismiss Jesus’ warnings about some future judgment, we cannot refute Solzhenitsyn’s awareness that judgment may also strike in the present: “Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position; all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night” (p. 591). Who is to say that “the end of all the ends” may not actually be upon us, that tomorrow may not be the very last day or tonight the last night?

Signs of a bleak near future are unmistakable in the philosophy and practice of our time. Human life is cheap. Moral considerations are considered expendable in the passion for material gain and sexual gratification. Personal preference dictates what is right. Truth is viewed as a changing commodity subject to private redefinition. The inevitable outcome of such deceptions is a barbarism that will dwarf anything known to pagans in pre-Christian times.

We are approaching the deliberate abandonment of distinctions between good and evil espoused by Judeo-Christian revelation and along with this a surrender of the concept of human dignity that revealed religion has sustained. Neither American technology nor American democracy nor American capitalism in and of itself can spare us.

Let us not be taken in by illusions of political salvation. Politics has become the utopian metaphysics of restless twentieth-century visionaries, and the Christian—while he has no license to neglect politics—should never expect too much from it. Without shared national goals, without an enlivened public conscience, without a commitment to transcendent truth and law, without a sure dedication to moral and spiritual priorities, the national spirit on the eve of America’s bicentennial marks us as pied pipers whose call to hollow ideology leads down the short road to disillusionment.

CARL F. H. HENRY

What different emotions the idea of “seek and find” can call forth. There is the eager seeking for one whom we love, the joyous finding with the resultant expressions of love. There is the fearful search by the harsh dictator’s forces, the terror-inspiring knock on the door indicating the finding. The motives for seeking, the carrying out of the purpose to the “found one,” can be as different as the words “evil” and “good.”

Come to the time when the Wise Men were searching for the new-born Jesus in order to worship him. Their search had the right motive: they recognized Jesus as having come from heaven, no ordinary human being but the One to be worshiped. And so when they found him, they fell down on their knees before him.

Then God directed them supernaturally by warning them that someone else who had asked to be shown where this baby was did not have the right motive for his search. God also sent the angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream, telling Joseph directly, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him” (Matt. 2:13). Here God, who knows the motives of men’s hearts, makes plain the purpose of Herod’s search.

But what had Herod said to the Wise Men? “Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also” (Matt. 2:8). Herod’s words sounded honest and beautiful. What he really wanted to do, however, was not to worship but to destroy. He wanted to smash any possibility of Jesus’ becoming a leader, to stamp out other people’s worship of this One, to demolish the true search of other people like the Wise Men by wiping out the Person for whom they would search. He wanted to keep man—i.e., himself—in the place of honor.

Come to another time, another place, when again God lets us see what is behind mere spoken words. “And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people.… And they sent unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words” (Mark 12:12, 13). Place with this Matthew 22:15—“Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.” Add to these two statements Luke 20:20—“And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which would feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.” God lets us see what was going on in men’s minds and private conversations, the wicked intent of a “search for Jesus” whose aim was to twist and turn his words into something that would harm him.

Some questions are not honest. Some seekers are looking only for loopholes, for opportunities to twist words and condemn the speaker. What the Pharisees wanted was an undisturbed continuation of their own leadership—at any cost.

Slip back again into history, the central period of all history, as the Lamb of God approaches the moment when he will be once and for all The Sacrifice, The Substitute. Imagine yourself in the garden of Gethsemane, and listen to Jesus as he asks, “Whom seek ye?” (John 18:7). What is the meaning of their answer, “Jesus of Nazareth”? There is a quietness on a lake before the wild lightning streaks the sky and the thunder crashes down and the waves whip up into whitecaps. One sees, feels, senses the quietness as the water goes into flat patches of grey and darker grey. In this moment of quietness in the garden “Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way” (John 18:8). Ah, yes, they have found him! He has made himself known to them. Can they pursue their purpose without recoiling in fear? They do fall backward to the ground, but it doesn’t last long—they hastily get up, brush themselves off, and go about their appointed task.

If you have a vivid imagination, even now, centuries later, you may feel like putting out a hand, shaking one of them, and urgently whispering in his ear, “Stop! Don’t take part in this! Don’t you know this is the Virgin-born Son of God, the promised Messiah? Don’t take part in finding him with this evil motive. Change now, seek him for your own life, find him as your Messiah. O soldier, whatever your background has been, open your eyes before it is too late!” But we aren’t there. They went on with their seizure of him whom they had found, to deliver him up to be spit upon, scourged, placed on a cross to die.

Our own spot in history is the place where our motives will make a difference, and where our warnings and explanations will help to pull someone who is “seeking with the intent to destroy him” out of the wrong search and into the right one. There are people today who seek Jesus in order to prove that he is not who he claims to be, who spend a lifetime seeking to prove that Jesus was just a good man, not God, not the Second Person of the trinity. There are seminaries that train men and women to deny Jesus’ place in the Trinity, to deny the virgin birth, to reduce his resurrection to an airy spiritual happening with no body involved. There are whole churches or groups within churches that use the words “seek” and “find” in speaking of Jesus but who cast away his Word, reducing the Bible to myths and fables whose applications change with the changing winds.

For those who “seek” and “find” in order to destroy, the final result is that they are destroyed. Jesus came to seek and to save lost human beings, and he clearly reveals himself to the lost who truly want to be found. He came to bring life, eternal life; but those who seek in order to destroy him find only death, if they persist. The sad thing in that like Herod, the Pharisees, and all the other false seekers, they influence others into following them.

For each of us the time is very short during which we can use our words, or our influence, or our prayer, to help others find the right motive for their search. Not long after the soldiers in the garden had found Jesus, only a long weekend later, Mary weepingly searched for him. With desolate loneliness and disappointment and fear she was seeking her Lord’s dead body.

Jesus appeared and asked why she was crying. She supposed he was a gardener, and she wanted to know where the body of Jesus was. Then the resurrected Jesus spoke in an accent and tone that she recognized. She had found him. One day we, if we have found him as our Saviour and Lord, will talk to Mary—alive forevermore, in her resurrected body, as we will be in ours.

There is a seeking and finding that result in everlasting life. And there is a seeking and finding that end in everlasting death. There is no middle way.

EDITH SCHAEFFER

Sing Them Over Again

Riding a subway car back from one of the big-city evangelistic crusades of a few years ago, I overheard a woman comment: “Wasn’t it wonderful to hear them singing the old hymns?” “Which one did you like best?” her companion asked. “I don’t remember the words, but it was number forty-two,” the woman replied.

We all know those who are familiar with only the first verse of a “favorite” hymn, or even with only the chorus. But it is an unusual experience to encounter someone who remembers only the number. It is unlikely that this situation is widespread. The fact that there are so many different hymnbooks in use—sometimes two or three in the same local church—with totally incompatible systems of numbering would make the practice of remembering the numbers unproductive, to say the least. But the very fact that there is, somewhere on a subway route in this great land, at least one person who remembers hymns by the numbers is a clue to a deeper reality: with regard to hymns, many if not most people—even those who like hymns and have favorites—do not notice their content.

Choir directors and songleaders have fought a long and not always successful battle against the habits of treating hymns as just “preliminaries.” How can they be anything more if people remain generally unaware of what they actually say?

More than once I have heard a clergyman call for one verse of Luther’s “Ein’ feste Burg,” a practice resulting in the following formulation: “For still our ancient foe/ Doth seek to work us woe;/ His craft and power are great,/ And, armed with cruel hate,/ On earth is not his equal. Amen!”

If that apparent tribute to the Evil One seems a bit discouraging, its impact is not overlooked by the songleader who applies the “first-and-last verse” technique to “Art thou weary?”: “Art thou weary?/ Art thou languid?/ Art thou sore distress’d?/ Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs answer: Yes!”

It may be some distance from the languid saints, apostles, prophets and martyrs to those who have walked in the garden alone. “Art thou weary?,” like “Ein, feste Burg,” loses its coherence when it suffers too much amputation, but there are hymns that hardly make good theological sense no matter how many verses you sing. Is “Every Day With Jesus” really “sweeter than the day before”? Certainly most saints, apostles, prophets and martyrs would have to answer, “no,” or at least, “not always, except in the high theological sense that each day brings one closer to glory, when ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’” Theologically, some of the material habitually sung as “old favorites” is as unreliable as “Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!” is politically.

Of course, hymns are meant to be sung by a congregation, not in general by individuals. And it is appropriate to sing them if they express the spiritual experience of the church as God’s people, even though as individuals we may not at that precise moment each have the “joy, joy, joy” all the way down to stay.

Pay attention to what you sing—or impose on your congregation. If it doesn’t make sense, leave it alone. And don’t put the Amen after a comma or a question mark: otherwise you may wind up singing a tribute to your ancient foe.

EUTYCHUS VI

Each Benefits

May I take this opportunity to commend you for the good work you are doing with CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I go through every issue and am always benefited.

ORLEY M. BERG

Executive Editor

The Ministry

Washington, D. C.

Those Who Provide

I feel compelled to write and commend you for your recent articles dealing with the humanities. Such articles as Pat Ward’s on Francois Mauriac (The Refiner’s Fire, Aug. 8) and Cheryl Forbes’s on “Charles Williams: Substituted Love” (Aug. 29) fulfill a sorely-needed task in evangelical circles: introducing the lay Christian to authors who provide significant insights into Christian (and non-Christian) experiences.

I am especially delighted, personally, to see your magazine giving Charles Williams something of his long-neglected due. Reading Williams has drastically influenced my perspectives on prayer and on bearing burdens. Williams’s works have been labeled “difficult,” but for those who persevere, the rewards are great. For those who have hesitated about delving into Williams, I can think of no better way to be introduced to his theological ideas and to his unique vision of Actuality than to read Ms. Forbes’s outstanding article.

SUSAN F. JONAS

Messiah College

Grantham, Pa.

Much—And More—Needed

I write to thank you, and Dr. Collins, for his article “The Pulpit and the Couch” (Aug. 29). There is much misunderstanding within evangelical circles concerning the science of psychology in general, and Christian psychological counseling in particular. Dr. Collin’s article is a stimulating and much needed analysis of the current movement.

As an undergraduate student in Psychology at South Dakota State University, and as a student of the Scriptures, I am constantly faced with integrating psychological facts, theological truths, and existential reality for myself and others. I hope in the future you will include more articles on this subject.

THOMAS J. KUSHMAN

Brookings, S. D.

I was surprised to see Dr. John W. Drakeford, Professor of Psychology and Counseling, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, referred to as “probably not” an evangelical. He unashamedly considers himself to be one, as do those of us who know him and are most familiar with his classroom, counseling, pulpit, and writing ministries.… In the preface to his book Experiential Bible Study Dr. Drakeford alludes to his twenty years of teaching psychology and the books that have grown out of those experiences, and then goes on to say, “In this volume I return to my first love—the Bible.” These are hardly the words one would hear from one who is not an evangelical. You may confidently eliminate the word “probably not” when you refer to John Drakeford’s evangelical conviction.

T. H. DOWELL

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Ft. Worth, Tex.

So Corrected

While reading the news item, “Adventists in Vienna: God’s Package Deal” (Aug. 29), I noted a rather glaring error that our Adventist friends would certainly like to have corrected: in the fourth paragraph reference is made to statistics; then this quotation … “with more than three million in Sunday School.” I am sure they would much prefer the term, “Sabbath School.” In the light of Romans 14:5, 6, I think we should extend this kindness to them.

WILLARD WILLIAMS

Grace Missionary Church

Mooresville, Ind.

Hitting Home

“In the baldest terms,” it is plain that John Warwick Montgomery’s Christianity (Current Religious Thought, Aug. 8) is not adaptable enough to cope with a God who is able to work outside the box the author has built for him.…

It is appalling to find that Montgomery discounts those Christians who show “charity and patience” as misdirected because they do not concern themselves with what he believes to be the measure of Christian growth and spirituality, penetrating Bible analysis at prayer breakfasts. In his frustration to find a scapegoat for his incapacity to understand, Montgomery has ranged much too far in a search which should begin, and I suspect end, closer to home.

LYNN L. SIMS

Leavenworth, Kans.

I was born and raised in Washington (on Capitol Hill) and find Montgomery’s impressions of Washington Christianity completely different than my own. It was as a teenager that I became a Christian (having been raised in a Jewish home), and it was largely due to the teachings of an area church. As a matter of fact, I can think of a number of churches within walking distance of the capitol which gave “sound doctrinal teaching.” In addition, there were other institutions committed to solid biblical teaching such as the Christian Youth Crusade, Washington Bible College, and others. As a young adult working in the government, I was aware of a number of organized Bible study groups—ones that didn’t get the publicity of the prayer breakfasts.… Perhaps Montgomery reveals that there are two Washingtons: the Washington of the transient politicians and military personnel and another … one of local people, people like myself who grew up there and attended local schools and churches—but who weren’t as flashy and newsworthy as the politicians or the Christian “heroes.” Perhaps it is not that Washington Christianity is superficial, but that Montgomery’s experiences with Washington Christianity are superficial.

SHIRLEY BRINTON

Boise, Idaho

p*rnography: Purulent Infection

Millions of Americans today are peeling off five dollars for the dubious privilege of being voyeurs of kinky sex acts. p*rno film-makers are reaping great profits because many people in our permissive social milieu want their cinema sinful.

To state that this pursuit of vicarious sexual titillation via skin flicks shows juvenile curiosity or degraded appetites and the increasing vacuity of our skidding society is to assert the obvious. Surely no one who appreciates the joy of sex as God intended it—within the context of married love—can find current sex films anything but immoral and empty exhibitionism.

Moreover, most of them are crashing bores. During my research for this article I viewed a variety of p*rno flicks with story lines as bare as the performers’ bodies, and I actually fell fast asleep in the midst of a smoldering lust scene. My eyelids hadn’t closed in a movie since I watched Rock Hudson pilot a submarine under a polar ice cap in Ice Station Zebra. Love is exciting, but sex without it becomes a drag that degrades and stultifies. When will people realize that sexploitation is to abundant living what raw sewage is to Lake Erie?

p*rno films are as old as the earliest motion pictures and have long been a staple at stag parties. The past decade, however, has seen the onset of obscene films that even now, I suspect, have not plunged to their lowest depths. Many Christians don’t realize how widespread p*rnography has become.

In the mid-sixties theaters showed sun-loving bathers displaying their nudity with no overt sexual activity. Then came soft-core p*rnos, like Russ Meyer’s Vixen, that had bare breasts and suggestive sex scenes. Such soft-core is now standard fare at most drive-in passion pits. “Art theaters” soon after sprang up with “beaver films,” such as those by Alex de Renzy, in which bountifully endowed women tantalizingly took it all off.

In the late sixties, shoddy hard-core “loops” of heterosexual copulation emerged. These amateurish flicks combined the world’s worst acting in the sleaziest hotel rooms with gymnastic love-making accompanied by sound tracks of pop records and lovers’ feigned squeals and moans. In many cities theaters now offer half a dozen of these fifteen-minute loops at a special price of ninety-nine cents.

In 1972, Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat, the first boffo box-office p*rno hit, exploded all over America, bringing innumerable arrests of exhibitors on obscenity charges. Deep Throat became the first hard-core film to gross six million dollars. Blase, sexually liberated movie-goers clamoured for $5 tickets to witness Linda Lovelace’s proclivity for fellati* after she is told by her psychiatrist that her cl*tor*s is mislocated in her throat.

The profits generated and the market uncovered by Deep Throat stimulated more technically improved skin flicks. The most successful at the box office have been The Devil in Miss Jones, The Stewardesses, The Resurrection of Eve, and Behind the Green Door. The latter film, produced by San Francisco’s Mitchell Brothers, featured Marilyn Chambers, whose p*rno sexual antics hardly jibed with her image as the ideal mother pictured then on a box of Ivory Snow. The resultant publicity, said Jim Mitchell, helped the movie gross five million dollars, excluding profits from prints pirated and shown by the Mafia.

The current crop of p*rno films has moved beyond the usual heterosexual sex scenes to include sodomy, bisexuality, ménages à trois, group orgies, bestial*ty, lesbian lust, and all types of male hom*osexual action. The latest debauchery is the B and D film—bondage and discipline—where sado-masoch*stic beatings are simulated or actually performed to provide sexual arousem*nt. In B and D p*rnography human degradation finally moves to physical violence and the portrayal of human beings as either worthless or worthy of only hate and punishment. The biblical picture of rebellious man described by Paul in Romans chapter one is all too apparent in today’s sexual cinema.

Although the grossly obscene films of the hard-core entrepreneurs are not regularly seen in most neighborhood theaters, such X-rated “serious pictures” as Midnight Cowboy, Last Tango in Paris, and the 1975 box-office success Emmanuelle have reached wide audiences and garnered critical acclaim despite their aberrant sex acts. Now however, nearly every R-rated film includes a partially nude copulation scene, blasphemy and obscenities, and realistic violence.

The trend toward more filth in films is likely to increase despite the self-regulating rating code of the Motion Picture Association of America. (Its standards call for decency and the upholding of human dignity, and for restraint in presenting: indecent or undue exposure of the human body; illicit sex relations and sexual aberrations; obscene speech and gestures; profanity; brutality, cruelty, and physical violence; and the demeaning of religion.) Movies will be made as obscene and violent as the public desires. p*rnographers are motivated primarily by money and will violate any code that limits them.

p*rnographer Jim Mitchell, thirty-one, who has been arrested thirty-five times for exhibiting obscene films and is now appealing his one conviction, admits his chief motivation is money. He hopes to make it big with his upcoming epic Sodom and Gomorrah, which mixes the story of Abraham and Lot with astronauts and atomic destruction. Together with his brother Art and his associate Bill Boyer, he hopes to make The Great p*rnographic Film. He claims that his sex films meet the legal standard of showing serious scientific, literary, or political value. Boyer justifies p*rnos on the grounds that they relieve anxieties and allow potential rapists to fantasize their aggression, thus preventing violent sex acts.

p*rnography prospers because sinners want it. But it is also true that its ready availability may induce sinful sexual indulgence not otherwise stimulated. Christians need to understand the nature of this socially degrading entertainment and use legal means to close it down.

The sins of the flesh, the mind, and the spirit are becoming more open in American society. Only Jesus Christ can change a person’s life so that love and not lust controls his life.

ROBERT L. CLEATH

Robert L. Cleath is professor of speech communication at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California.

Newly Pressed

Evie Again (Word, WST-8642). Since her first album her voice has matured and her low notes are fuller. On her upbeat numbers such as “Sunday Mornin’” and “Stop, Look and Listen” words and music meld effectively.

Burt Kettinger (Tempo, R-7083) and Bond of Love, Phil and Jill Freeman (Sound III, a division of Tempo; ST-3006). Both albums have a similar sound—as the jacket of Kettinger’s record puts it, “sincere, basic, and simple.”

CHERYL FORBES

‘Witness Art’S: A Contemporary Expression

The Church commissioned some of the earliest religious painting to help its uneducated communicants understand Scripture. Frescoes and altar-piece screens portrayed simplified Bible stories and characters to teach Christianity to those who could not read. Often these teaching art works were breathtaking in their execution: the mosaics shimmering with inlaid precious stones, the paintings and frescoes enriched with gold leaf.

Christian themes were also represented in other forms. Integration of the written word and the visual representation of that word occurred quite early in the form of manuscript illumination. But such manuscripts benefited only the educated.

Despite the predominance of Christian subjects the visual arts tended to be impersonal. Art was never specifically designed to give the owner—and at the time there were few individual collectors—an opportunity to share his knowledge of Christ.

A new concept in religious art, available to people who want to share their faith in Christ, has been created, and is called “Witness Art.” The designers believe it is an expression unique among forms of art illustrating Christian themes.

Witness Art, which will soon be available in Christian bookstores throughout the country, consists of lithograph reproductions of paintings designed as an evangelistic tool. An information card describing the artist’s vision based on certain Scripture passages accompanies each print.

The three preview paintings are all impressionistic, ethereal, and elusive in style. And that is Witness Art’s primary weakness. Use of color, mostly muted tones, gives a washed-out appearance, though it is in keeping with the impressionistic style. I would like to see a stronger use of color and a broader use of styles, including surrealistic, abstract, and even realistic modes of expression.

The lithographs will be in both limited and unlimited editions, framed and unframed. For further information, contact Standard Publishing, 8121 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45231. However, the plan to limit sales to the Christian market is a mistake. We need to witness to unbelievers, not to believers. Christ did not limit the sale of his “product” to Christian emporiums. Neither should we.

MARTHA POLLIE

Martha Pollie is a free-lance writer and photographer, Alexandria, Virginia.

This questionnaire is intended to be like a mirror. It is an experiment in self-knowledge. If you wish to undertake the experiment, please answer each question as honestly, simply, and briefly as you can. Write your answers down, so that you remember them and cannot later fool yourself into thinking you answered in another way. Do not read anything that comes after these questions until you have written your answers.

1. Who are you? What is your true self, your real identity?

2. Why do you exist? What is the purpose of your life?

3. Define your way of life.

4. What is truth?

5. What is life?

6. In the light of #5, what is death?

7. List the three greatest living persons, in your opinion.

8. What living person do you think is now exercising the most important and effective influence on the world, making the greatest difference, for good or evil?

9. Who is the first person you naturally tend to turn to for help when a problem arises in each of the following areas of your life? (a) business (b) friends (c) family (d) finances (e) health (f) mental health

10. What living person has had the greatest influence on your life?

11. What is the most successful cure for each of the following problems? (a) drug addiction (b) alcoholism (c) hypochondria (d) psychosomatic diseases (e) boredom (f) fear (g) loneliness (h) feeling unloved (i) despair (j) feeling worthless and unproductive

12. What would you tell a friend who had an incurable disease?

13. How can someone who lacks wisdom acquire it?

14. How can a person who is evil become good?

15. Why did God make the world?

16. How can a person know God?

17. How much can a person know of God? What is God like?

18. What is the Christian Church?

19. Christianity seems to be just one religion among many in the world: something particular, partial. How universal is it, really?

20. What is Christianity? What is the kerygma, the Christian proclamation? What does a Christian preach?

Now compare your answers with those of the New Testament by looking up the following passages. Before proceeding to the next question, think about the significance of each New Testament answer, and about how your answer compares with it.

Take the questions in reverse order, as follows: (20) Colossians 1:27, 28; 1 Corinthians 2:2. (19) Colossians 3:11. (18) Ephesians 1:23. (17, 16) Colossians 1:15, 19; 2:3. (15) Colossians 1:17. (14, 13) 1 Corinthians 1:30. (12) John 11:1–44, especially 24 and 25. (11, 10) Philippians 4:19. (9, 8, 7) Luke 24:5; Matthew 28:20. (6) Philippians 1:21. (5, 4, 3) John 14:6. (2) Ephesians 4:13. (1) 1 John 3:1; John 15:3; Colossians 3:3; Galatians 2:20.

CONCLUSION: 1 John 5:21.

(11.10.11.10.D)

O GOD, OUR FATHER, RULER OF ALL NATIONS

O God, our Father, Ruler of the Nations,

The Leader of our country from its start:

How richly you have blessed us, beyond measure!

We come to you with full and grateful hearts:

O help us now to wisely use our plenty.

Forgive us for our greed and for our waste,

And teach us how to share what you have given,

Till poverty and hatred be erased.

Around us are the forces of corruption,

Our vision fails, direct us by your hand.

Inspire in us the faith that led our fathers,

And guided them to found this mighty land.

Our leaders need your courage and your wisdom,

O speak again through men whose lives are just,

Until your will is done across this nation,

And we can truly say, “In God we trust!”

We thank you that our land is blest with freedom,

This testing ground for true democracy.

And pray that in the course of human struggle,

We’ll always stand for truth and liberty.

For here the cries of dissidence and protest

Can mingle with the rousing shouts of praise.

But in this very freedom, grant us wisdom

To keep your laws and serve you all our days.

America, the beautiful, the mighty,

America, the land of liberty!

O, Father, keep us mindful of our blessings,

And never let us turn away from you.

Surround us with your cleansing, healing Spirit.

Forgive our sin and purge our apathy.

Now use us as an instrument of blessing

To all the Earth—America, the Free!

MRS. MONCRIEF JORDAN

Copyright 1975 by the Hymn Society of America

Used By Permission

What’s ahead for the African church? Here is the concluding portion of the Editors’ interview with the general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (see September 26 issue for Part I):

Question. Dr. Kato, a number of evangelical missionaries have complained about the use of American scholarship money to “buy the minds” of foreign Christian nationals. Is it true that in Africa young evangelical men and women are taken out of Bible schools and financed through schools with a theologically liberal bent, and that some lose their faith?

Answer. That is very much a problem. It is going to be so increasingly, until evangelicals wake up and see what’s to be done and get involved in doing it. I highly commend the administrators of the Theological Education Fund for their initiative and for emphasizing national training. They have helped many Africans get trained for positions of leadership. It is unfortunate that the training has been made mostly in liberal schools in Norh America and in Europe.

For some reason we evangelicals sometimes seem to see ignorance and naïveté as virtues. If a person is not very bright and does not ask questions, we say he is very spiritual. Maybe that’s why you find independent missions operating largely in the rural areas.

Q. What do you mean? What’s the connection?

A. Most of the work of independent missions over the years has been in rural areas. They have neglected the city centers and the intellectuals. Up to now it has only been the conciliar groups that have chosen these strategic areas, and therefore you find leaders of government and leaders of thought in the academic world coming from the liberal camp.

Thank God the picture is changing. We are moving to the intellectual circles now. We hope that evangelicals will wake up to the need for leadership training. While we still appreciate the coming of missionaries, let us not take that as an excuse to keep on exporting young people from America instead of training Africans.

Q. What is your organization doing to encourage the new trend?

A. Because we consider the coming of missionaries second to the need for developing leadership in Africa itself, we want to establish a graduate school of theology at Bangui in the Central African Republic (Bange) so that young people in Africa can be trained at this level.

Q. What is the evangelical strategy for witness at the Second World Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture [to be held in November in Lagos, Nigeria]?

A. The Nigerian Evangelical Fellowship has put in a request to have a booth there, and I have written a booklet for the occasion. The NEF will have displays and will show Christianity’s history on our continent. It will show that far from being a Western religion, Christianity has more connections with Africa than with Europe, let alone the young continent of America.

Q. You have said that Gatu is pushing the idea of a moratorium on missionaries. Do you feel that this view is broadly accepted among the African laity?

A. It is far from being the major thinking of the lay people in Africa. In my travels recently I came across a church group whose missionary was just transferred from one town to another, and the group was very angry with the mission. “Why do you take away our missionary?” they asked. This is typical of the thinking in Africa.

One Presbyterian couple from North America saw the need for working among the Masaai people in Kenya, and so they went there and built a hut and worked with them. The Masaai people have come to love them very much. They are developing better living conditions, building dams for better agriculture, and so on. A church leader in Africa then went to this particular couple and said their presence in Kenya is a hindrance. The couple said they would go home if that were the thinking of the people they were trying to work with. A government official was called in to talk to the Masaai people. They became quite indignant and warned that if the couple were forced out there would be strong reaction. The government gave the couple a ten-year permit instead of the usual two-year permit.

Q. So you are convinced that Africa still needs foreign missionaries.

A. Yes, I am. And even the advocates of moratorium are not consistent. After the conference in Lusaka, where there was such a cry raised for a moratorium on missionaries, many of the vocal ones headed for North America and Europe. Maybe they do not want the foreign people, but they surely want the money. About 97 per cent of the resources of the All African Conference of Churches comes from abroad. It would probably fold up without foreign support. Admittedly this is also the case with the Association of Evangelicals in Africa and Madagascar. But we recognize the need for support from overseas while we are working to raise some in Africa also. It is not a question of either/or but of both/and.

Q. How were you converted?

A. It was through the ministry of a missionary of the Sudan Interior Mission and a Nigerian school teacher. The missionary worked in my town and got me interested in Sunday school. Later, when I was twelve, I started going to school, and it was in the classroom through the ministry of a Nigerian school teacher that I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour. My pagan parents later gave their hearts to Christ as well.

Q. Dr. Kato, you have suggested that Christians in Africa may be in for some hard times. In a number of countries there has been increasing political pressure of various sorts upon the churches. What is going on?

A. I think Bible-believing Christians in Africa should be prepared for some persecution perhaps before too long. Certainly there are things that would call the Bible-believing Christian to examine his position. We are deeply grateful that a number of high government officials in Africa are professing Christians. But as I have said before, the African is searching for an identity and asserting that identity. And in every country the authorities are rightfully anxious to bring about national unity. Some of our heads of state do not see any differences between liberals, evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and so on. They see only “Christianity,” and the emphasis is just to have unity. Any dissenting voice is suspected of being an enemy of unity.

Q. So this creates pressures.

A. It does. Another thing has to do with culture. There is a strong movement that Africans should be authentic and go back into the root of our existence and find our connections with our ancestors. This readily raises religious tensions. I am not condemning culture as such. I think I am thankful for being an African, and there are certain cultural elements that are compatible with a biblical outlook and can and should be retained. But some are not. Some of these so-called cultural things amount to denying the faith we hold so dear. Some leaders, for example, are calling for secret oaths similar to those of the Mau Mau, and other pagan practices. Thank God some influential Christians have taken a stand against such things as pouring libations to the ancestors.

Q. What is that all about?

A. Well, I heard an interesting story recently of a Christian leader in Zaire at a formal occasion where drinks were being poured on the ground out of respect for ancestors. But this Christian leader, instead of pouring his drink on the ground, lifted it up and thanked God in prayer. They told him he was not being an authentic Zairean. He told them he was a Zairean but not an ancestor worshiper. Rather, he said, he was a Christian whose practice was to give thanks. I thought that was beautiful. Unfortunately, many in Zaire are saying that they are Zairean first and Christian second. That’s why I said that Bible-believing Christians may be heading for persecution.

Q. How are the people in Zaire reacting to their political leadership, considering that they have long been under Christian missionary influence?

A. President Mobutu Sese Seko has done a lot for Zaire. Anarchy had been threatened, and he has brought order out of chaos. The people of Zaire are certainly happy with what he has done, and so they respect him. The Bible tells us to respect the powers that be. When it comes to the point where our religious convictions are involved, I think Christians should speak up to authority. This is not easy in Africa because the consequences can be far reaching. Some people who want to object may be afraid to do so.

Q. Zaire seems to be particularly interested in dealing with Christianity as a whole, a unified group as you mentioned earlier.

A. Yes, the Christians there have been forced into one big consortium of sorts. Of course, one has to understand the background situation in Zaire: the kind of dominance the Catholic Church had during the days under Belgium, and the multiplicity of splinter groups clamoring for recognition. The new arrangement could be a blessing in disguise. The Church of Christ in Zaire has an imposed unity and is headed by a clergyman who is a member of the WCC Central Committee. But the constitution of the CCZ allows a good deal of liberty for the individual denominations, now referred to as “communities.” It is up to Zairean Christians to make good use of the constitution.

Q. Are the Arabs having any success in spreading Islam in Africa? How strong are the Communists?

A. There is definitely a strong Islamic influence in Africa. But in countries other than Muslim states the Muslims are limited in policy-making positions. This issue of Communism is a touchy one. There is much emphasis today in Africa on African socialism. In all fairness we must appreciate the call for a kind of socialism because capitalism has become a real curse in Africa and the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen. In Africa today you will find many millionaires but also many people who go to bed hungry.

Many Africans are enthusiastic about Mao and admire some of the ideologies of Communist countries. Many young Africans go to Communist countries for an education. It is worth pointing out that when you study in a given situation it is difficult not to absorb the ideas, too. Some of the Communist ideas are not necessarily bad, but their atheism is what we totally reject as Christians. So Communist countries are having their influence in Africa just as Western countries had it for years.

Q. What do you think that Christians in Western capitalistic countries could be doing to help the material development of the people? Are things not getting done that Christian businessmen in the West could be doing?

A. Yes, I think that if Christian businessmen and other leaders in the Western world would take into serious consideration the voluntary agencies that are operating in Africa and would lend assistance in agriculture and preventive medicine, it would help a great deal. But sometimes the problem is not at that end. Sometimes the governments are not keen to see voluntary agencies operate. The governments want to give the impression that they are already doing what is needed. They feel that exposing their countries’ poverty abroad affects prestige.

Q. What do you think can be done in the southern part of Africa to give representation to non-Europeans?

A. We are now in the process of organizing a national evangelical fellowship for the whole Republic of South Africa that would be multi-racial and interdenominational. We may come up against a wall, but I have been working in correspondence with both blacks and whites. If Bible-believing Christians pray and keep talking, we probably will achieve more success than a radical approach would. We can have the radical approach to government and non-church organizations. We see the work of the Church as conciliatory.

A centenary look at ‘Science and Health’

Almost on an impulse, yet on the strength of a long-held curiosity, I went into a Christian Science Reading Room. It was in a neat looking brick building whose main door opened to a bookstore. Behind the counter was an attractive middle-aged woman with a warm smile and a friendly manner. A Christian Scientist for only a few years, she was beaming from the peace of mind she had found.

She offered to show me through the other rooms of the building. Next to the store was a comfortably furnished library. On one wall hung a large picture of Mary Baker Eddy, crowned with white hair that was set off by the dark coat and large fur collar she was wearing. The hostess paused at the picture and remarked on its beauty. A light came into her eyes, and it was apparent that she felt an intense gratitude to this leader of her faith.

In the one hundred years since Mrs. Eddy wrote her famous Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures, her teachings have permanently affected the lives of possibly millions of people. In thousands of homes the book lies next to the Bible as a spiritual aid that comforts and inspires. The dangerous doctrine that results makes a Scientist afraid to interpret the Bible without consulting the Eddy explanation. Science and Health is currently available in thirteen languages.

Mrs. Eddy insisted that her book was of divine origin, and it included the special “keys” that would unlock the inspired Scriptures. The volume includes a twenty-page glossary to explain what Bible words actually mean. For instance: angels are really God’s thoughts passing to man (p. 581). Death is an illusion, the lie of life (p. 584). The name Adam is two words, “a” and “dam,” and refers to obstruction or error. This type of logic results from her premise that we must substitute the spiritual for the material definition in order to elucidate the meaning of the inspired writers (p. 579).

The result of these mental gymnastics is a strange collection of highly unconventional doctrines. Man does not die and man was not born (p. 206). Man did not fall; it is only the Adam-dream (p. 282). Mind is God (p. 310). Christ died not to provide pardon for sinners but to demonstrate that the Master could overcome death (p. 24). The Comforter that John promised is Divine Science (p. 55).

Some of the tenets of Christian Science appear almost orthodox at first glance—e.g., man, made in God’s image, is “saved through Christ …”; but many of the words do not carry their usual meanings.

While it was not my guide’s experience, she confirmed the fact that most converts to Christian Science come for health reasons. They have tried conventional physicians and for one reason or another have not been helped. Then, turning to Christian Science, they believe they have been healed and consequently embrace it as a religion.

This is the way Mrs. Eddy herself came to her beliefs. After experiencing numerous disappointments and illnesses, she claimed to experiment with the power of God in her life. In 1866, when she was forty-five, she supposedly was healed from a serious accident after reading Matthew 9:2 and was given a special revelation. Her studies of the healings of Jesus helped lead her to this “spiritual influx” and are said to have raised her above the average Bible interpreter. Mrs. Eddy taught that the beginning of Christian Science was “unquestionably” the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

My guide admitted that her own struggle over pain was not always easy, but she was firmly convinced that mind over matter was a spiritual reality. It seemed logical to her that since God, the creator of everything, is good, he could not create anything evil, and consequently there is no evil in the world.

I asked her if there would be pain if she hit her finger with a hammer. Not if she thought about good and noble things, she replied; but if she thought there was pain the finger would hurt.

Christian Science “practitioners” help heal the sick. Their names and addresses are listed in the telephone directories and in the Christian Science Journal. They charge a fee comparable to a physician’s fee. Practitioners attempt to help patients without resorting to material aids or medicine. Their main tools are praying, counseling, and recommending good literature designed to free the mind. From this approach they report all types of healings including the arrest of bone decay and the cure of grippe, hernia, varicose veins, and valvular heart disorders, to mention a few. (Later in her life—she died in 1910—Mrs. Eddy’s own control over pain evidently lessened; according to Sydney Ahlstrom, “as her health declined and attacks of renal calculi grew more frequent, morphine had to be administered at regular intervals” [A Religious History of the American People, p. 1,024].)

Qualified practitioners have presented testimony to the Mother Church in Boston as to their abilities. “C.S.” after a practitioner’s name means he has been instructed by an authorized teacher; “C.S.B.” means he has been taught in a normal class of the Christian Science Board of Education. Their field of purported expertise is broad and takes in the settling of strife, including racial conflict. Omaha, Nebraska, has twelve practitioners; Chicago, 102.

The library plays a large part in the healing ministry; reading the Bible, Mrs. Eddy’s writings and other metaphysical literature is thought to contribute greatly to the development of a sound mind and body.

My guide led me from the library into a small but appealing church auditorium. It had comfortable looking theater seats and a small platform with a pulpit. The room appeared to hold 125 people, and my hostess said that the normal congregation was probably 50. I was impressed at the financial sacrifice this structure would mean for so few people.

Many people hold a dual membership, belonging also to the Mother Church in Boston, the hostess explained. After one has been part of a local group for one year, one can apply for membership in the Boston church as a means of showing love and gratitude for Christian Science.

The Sunday-morning service in the local branch is simple and usually lasts less than an hour. There are no paid clergy; lay leaders read to the congregation. The first reader explains passages from Science and Health while the second reads from the Bible. The congregation may listen to a paid soloist, sing hymns, and pray silently. At the close of the service the congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer, stopping after each phrase for a reader to inject an interpretation by Mrs. Eddy.

On Wednesday nights there is a testimony service. Here people recount some of the things that Science has done for them. This important service is not to be neglected even for Christmas. Testimonies are used a great deal in Christian Science because they both encourage believers and attract new converts. The Scientists’ weekly radio program, “The Truth That Heals,” uses this format and includes accounts of healed marriages and personal tranquillity. Weekly the Scientists publish the Christian Science Sentinel, packed with testimonies of miraculous healings.

As I stood in the auditorium, I noticed an impressive quotation by Jesus in large black letters hanging on the right wall. But then I saw that hanging opposite it on the left was a similar quotation by Mary Baker Eddy. It would be difficult to overstate the authority that Mrs. Eddy holds in the Church of Christ, Scientist. While adherents are sure to point out that she is not considered to be equal to Jesus Christ, she is believed to be “infallible” (Braden, Christian Science Today, p. 240) concerning both religion and organization. Her Manualinsists on complete obedience and forbids any amendments without her written consent. Since she has been dead for sixty-five years the church is practically immovable. A Board of Directors is selected from the Mother Church in Boston, and these five are the sole interpreters of Mrs. Eddy’s writings. Although this rigidity has caused some friction in the church, the practice remains fixed.

The last room in the small complex to which my guide took me was the Sunday-school department, consisting of a number of tables for children and youths. Education is a major part of the Scientists’ program.

Another part of their teaching program is the large series of lectures—some 4,000 lectures per year throughout the world, given by members of the Board of Lectureship. The lecturer due to come the following weekend to this local group was from Minneapolis. The lecture is free and gives an excellent opportunity to invite friends and interested persons. The lecture titles include “Prayer-Power,” “What It Takes to Heal,” and “Become What You Are.”

My guide and I returned to the bookstore section, and I was impressed again by the large number of attractive publications available at reasonable prices. Even Mrs. Eddy’s venerable volume Science and Health is printed in an appealing paperback for $2.50.

On the floor stood a newspaper rack containing the Christian Science Monitor. Inaugurated in 1908 by Mrs. Eddy, the newspaper has won great respect from many quarters and may be the Scientists’ best form of publicity. It is published Monday through Friday and attempts to give as positive a slant as possible to the news. It was Mrs. Eddy’s intention that the paper would injure no one but would bless all mankind. It has correspondents all over the country. Each edition contains one column reflecting Christian Science doctrine, but otherwise the paper is comparable to the national news and features sections of secular dailies.

Further conversation with my patient hostess pointed up the fact that Christian Science is more than a healing ministry. Its theology is basically universalistic. There is no hell because hell is evil; God is good and God would not create evil. There is no heaven in the traditional sense but only the spirit world, which one enters when he is separated from his body. Consequently there is no death, though some transference may be necessary. Sin is unreal. Spiritual understanding will cast out evil, but we are punished by sin as long as the belief in it lasts.

After paying for a few pamphlets, I expressed my appreciation to my courteous guide and went on my way. She seemed so friendly and so content. I wondered how many people would walk into that same reading room and accept the teachings of Christian Science as God’s truth.

Men and women in this Western world are intrigued, stimulated, enchanted, bemused, and certainly preoccupied by sex. They are also confused, perplexed, hurt, alienated, and depressed by it.

Daily in our consultation rooms we physicians see patients with sexual or sex-related problems. The frigid woman, the impotent man. The adolescent girl plagued with doubts about her feminity because “she doesn’t”; the adolescent boy unsure of his masculinity either because “he hasn’t” or because “he has” in a setting where sexual enjoyment was practically impossible. We see wives who feel unloved because of their husbands’ lack of tenderness and sexual expression, spending their nights in lonely agony huddled on their side of the bed. Even more often in this society where the strange tradition still flourishes that women don’t have sexual needs, we see husbands who feel they are unloved (and indeed are sexually unloved) by their wives.

In one study, Burnap and Golden report that the average physician sees 230 cases of sexual problems per year, and that a full 70 percent of these are husbands and wives needing help in their marital sexual adjustment.

In this culture seemingly gone mad with sex and also torn with sexual perplexities and problems, what does the Church have to say about sex? The only thing I hear from the Church at large is negative. “No contraception” from the Roman Catholic side. “No premarital or extramarital sex” from various church circles, including the evangelical.

Where do we hear the Church saying to modern men and women, “This is where your personal and sexual needs will be met and fulfilled”? “This is God’s answer to your sexual preoccupation”? Where do we see the Church giving a positive answer to modern man’s endless questioning in the arts, in the media, and in his own mind about the full realization of sexuality and sensuality?

The Church has failed to give God’s answers to this intense questioning, apparently in a misguided attempt to avoid appearing prurient. This is a serious charge to make, but from my personal experience as a church member, from my clinical experience as a psychiatrist, and from my study of God’s word, it seems to be valid.

God does not leave us alone to work through the conflicting attitudes toward our sensuality that we find within our society and within ourselves. He has very much indeed to say to us on this important subject.

Search the Scriptures through and through and you find in them no hint that sex within marriage is to be suppressed, repressed, or even sublimated. Nowhere are human sexuality and the full enjoyment of it denied or derided. Rather, in the Word of God we find sex openly discussed without a hint of shame or reproach, fully taken for granted as an important part of existence, and this for man and for woman equally. In fact, human sexuality and its outworkings are repeatedly used to illustrate God’s own dealings with man.

Scriptural attitudes toward sex are well summarized in Paul’s statement to Timothy that “God gave these things to well taught Christians to enjoy and be thankful for” (The Living Bible) and in the teaching in Hebrews that “marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.”

Three passages from the New Testament confront us with the mind of God on this subject. First, in Matthew 19:4–6 Jesus says this:

And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

In this key New Testament passage on sex and marriage, Jesus substantially repeats Genesis 2:23 and 24. There is no mention here of the notion of romantic love held so dear by Western man, though a lovely and helpful notion it is. Neither is there mention of that concept so prominent in churchly literature, of commitment to the spouse in the marriage contract prior to sexual intercourse, though a noble and helpful concept this is. Jesus simply states the essence of our motivation to marry—our maleness and our femaleness: “He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother.…”

But he doesn’t stop there: “For this cause shall a man … cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. So that they are no more two, but one flesh.”

Now, surely Christ is not saying that simply in the sexual act a man and a woman become one flesh? Yes, that is precisely what he is saying. And so that we will not miss the full force of this point, Paul restates it even more vividly in First Corinthians 6:16–18:

Know ye not that he that is joined [cleaves] to a harlot is one body? For, The twain, saith he, shall become one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

What could be more totally physical than sexual relations with a prostitute? Yet, says the apostle, these two also become “one flesh.”

Then, as if to seal this teaching on the centrality of the physical union in the man-woman relationship, Jesus adds in the Matthew passage, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” One can only believe, in the face of all this, that the physical sexual act creates a spiritual bond, recognized and sanctioned by God.

This is a high view of intercourse. But when we stop and think about it, it is right; it is true to our deepest natures. Sexual intercourse involves many aspects and attributes of man and woman other than the physical (the need for intimate companionship is a prominent example). But the sexual act is first of all a supremely and gloriously physical act, one filled with seemingly limitless sensuality, one that draws forth our most intense animal vitality. It is an act abounding in wonderful physical excitement and satiety for both partners. And it is in this physical act that a man and woman become “one flesh.”

Masters and Johnson, who do not write from a Christian orientation, catch the essence of this “one flesh” concept in their chapter on the treatment of female frigidity:

Frequently, it is of help to assure the wife that once the marital unit is sexually joined, the penis belongs to her just as the vagin* belongs to her husband. When vagin*l penetration occurs, both partners have literally given of themselves as physical beings, in order to derive pleasure from each other [Human Sexual Inadequacy, Little, Brown, 1970].

C. S. Lewis in his usual lucid way puts the matter like this in The Screwtape Letters:

Now comes the joke. The enemy described a married couple as “one flesh.” He did not say a “happily married couple” or a “couple who married because they were in love,” but you can make humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes “one flesh.” You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of “being in love” what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that where ever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured [Macmillan, 1941, p. 93].

This reality of man and woman being “one flesh” is used by Paul as the basis for his comments on the conduct of the husband toward the wife in Ephesians 5. And it is clear from the context that this also underlies his thinking when in First Corinthians 7:3–5 he says this about the sexual relationship between the marital pair:

Let the husband render unto the wife her due: and likewise also the wife unto her husband. The wife hath not power over her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power over his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be by consent for a season, that ye may give yourselves unto prayer, and may be together again, that Satan tempt you not because of your incontinency.

The idea explicit here of the woman demanding “her due” sounds strange to one brought up in our Western traditions, and especially in our Western church traditions. And it is interesting to note that the Apostle Paul, often portrayed as a woman-hating bachelor, places the right of the woman to make the sexual demand on her husband first in the order of things sexual. What the wife asks in sex, says Paul, the husband delivers, and the same for the wife to the husband. His body is hers to command in sex, and he has total power over her body.

What a thunderously radical idea: he is to be totally subject to her every sexual whim and fancy, and she to his!

“You mean, O God, that the sexual part of me is now to be placed totally at the command of another? You mean, O God, that I am to be fully responsive to her craving for the touch, the taste, and the feel of me? You mean this, even if I am unconsciously terrified of what she might do to me? You mean, O God, that if she asks I am to give, I am to respond without reservation? You mean, too, that if I ask she is to respond in like fashion to the urgent sensuality within me?”

To all these questions, and more such, God answers in Holy Writ with a clear voice: “Yes, my boy, you do not have power over your own body; your wife does. And likewise, your wife does not have power over her own body; you do.”

If we are honest, we must conclude, “Yes, He is right again. If I had lived that attitude in regard to my sexuality my wife would be a happier person today. If my wife had lived that attitude regarding her sexuality, I would be a more fulfilled person today.”

And I know that if the husbands and wives I see in my offices day by day would adopt this attitude toward their sexuality, they too would be happier people.

But it is not only in regard to the sexual side of our natures that we as Christians have come to understand that to subject ourselves to another is to find ourselves. We have come to recognize the profound truth set forth by Jesus when he said, “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” We are not at all upset when Peter refers to us as “free” and as “bond-servants of God” in the very same breath.

What Paul has to say here, in First Corinthians 7, in regard to sex is fully consistent with that paradoxical teaching that it is only in subjection to Another that we humans find freedom. Only in complete subjection of our bodies—and hence of ourselves—to our wives can we as men find freedom for fully experiencing our sexuality and our masculinity. Only in the full and free subjection of our wives to us will they fully experience their sexuality and their femininity. Only in this bondage are we able to fully love and be loved. Only in this bondage will we find freedom to know ourselves as sexual sensate beings, free to depend on another for the satisfaction of this most intimate need of our natural being.

And only in this total submission of self to the other can the partners find relief from the sexual abuse that we doctors so frequently hear about in our offices: the bartering of sexual favors for some wished for behavior on the part of the spouse; rejection; sexual one-upmanship and gamesmanship; sexual withdrawal as punishment. Only in this acceptance of our total responsiveness to the other, even in the absence of a mutual sense of romantic love—in fact, even in the presence of mutual hostility—can we as husbands and wives bring into our marriages the therapeutic effectiveness of sexual intimacy, the healing balm for those rifts that so often arise and grow between us.

Indeed, it is only in each other that husbands and wives can fully know themselves as God created them: in the full sensate nature of their beings. In the sexual act the two become “one flesh”; each without the other is incomplete, forever unfulfilled and less than whole.