Can we build a new world? 12/15/40

Scripture: Matthew 7: 7-21

When we speak of building a new world, of course we are talking in big terms. Anyone knows what a job it is to build one house and one household. We think we have a considerable job in building and maintaining a church organization or a local school system - and we have. The effort to put into office and keep efficient the members of a local government seems to be a big enough order on us as citizens. And perhaps that seems all most of us can get done.

And yet we are perfectly well aware that we can not live as we want to in little, isolated, local units, cut off from the countless other little local units that make up our nation and the other nations of the world. The world in which we live grows steadily smaller. Our transportation, communication, and economic interdependence brings us all closer together than the peoples of the world have ever been before, for better or for worse. With the fact of this smaller world come all the problems of learning better how to get along with each other. What do we know about the cultural backgrounds of the other peoples who are our neighbors and how can we learn to appreciate them? What have we to offer others as our contribution to their culture that is of real value, and not just our own private preference? How shall we settle differences of opinion and what shall we do with our differing prejudices and prides? How shall we find a better understanding of the problems that seem to go with the racial, social, economic and political groups to which we all belong?

Of course some intelligent attempt must be made to answer these questions and find solutions to these problems. They can not be left to chance. For that policy would seen to resign the world to confusion and chaos. And a great civilization such as the world has attained through the last few centuries can not continue in chaos. Civilization progresses through orderly attempts at progress.

As religious people, we might say that the world is far too much for man to tackle. That must be left to God. And I think that is a pretty good answer - if some qualifications are added. I can think of two.

1) In the first place, the big wide world is not the only field where man finds himself insufficient to the task. There are fields of local control that get tangled up and go wrong and where corruption fouls the air because man has proved insufficient to run his own affairs. Even so small a social unit as the family gets tangled up, or broken up, unless men and women are able to recognize the necessity for fine spiritual quality in their intimate daily living with each other. We can even simmer the matter down to the lone individual where we still see that man does not seem to be sufficient unto himself. People do not know how to run their own lives so as to avoid trouble. Who can be sure that he will escape disease, that he will permanently have a good job, that his pleasure will benefit, and not harm, himself and others, that he will escape being drawn into the definite evils that surround him, that he will possess keen mental faculties as long as he lives? Man’s insufficiency appears here too, so that if we say, “the world must be left in the care of God,” it would seem that we must add, for that matter, that “all life must be lived with the aid of God.” Man simply is not sufficient in himself to accomplish, unaided, that which his peculiar conscientious sense of right tells him ought to be accomplished in his personal, local and world-wide affairs.

2) In the second place, it appears to me that if and when God does anything about the affairs of this world as they relate to mankind, He usually uses people to help get it done! I feel that there has been a Divine guiding in the development of Hawaii into a place so fair in beauty, in friendliness, and in human cooperation. But it seems clear to me that people have been the agency through which that development has been accomplished. It was people who were degrading Hawaii’s folk, after the discovery of the Sandwich Isles, in drunkenness, unfair commercial exploitation, and general hell-raising by many of the sailors who came ashore from the whalers and other vessels. It was people with a sense of Divine mission who came and set themselves with all their heart and soul and strength against that evil and toward a more spiritualized life for the natives of those Islands. And those people had yielded their very lives into the care, and for the uses, of God.

We are accustomed to the idea that God, in a way peculiar and intense, gave Himself to the people of the world through a man. We affectionately and reverently speak of that man, Jesus of Nazareth, both as the Son of Man (his own name for himself) and as the son of God. Even God uses the human agency in working out whatever he wills to do in this world. So we can not run away from the necessity of doing something about our world by leaving it to God. For whatever God may do about it, (and he certainly does rule the affairs of men), He will need people like you and me who are willing and made able to do His will.

Yes, I think that the world is God’s affair. And I hope you agree with me. But if we are agreed and if we are right that puts all of us who want to be God’s people on an important spot. For we must try to know the will of God, and roll up our sleeves and get busy to help bring it about!

Do we feel that war is God’s way of settling the disputes which arise between nations and even within nations? Has God ordained war as the agency through which, by killing off a lot of the fittest young men and a miscellaneous lot of inhabitants every so often that population of the world is kept from overrunning the world like an unchecked colony of ants?

Some of us feel that God wills no such thing, and that he rather permits war to scourge a world that will not learn the right way. Many of us are convinced that generous and sympathetic understanding goes further than any amount of threatening, hatred, and killing. Then let us say so on every occasion. And let us act like we believe it! The best way for most of us to tackle this world problem is to get after it right where we are.

Do we feel that things are essentially all right in this competitive business of making a living when some of us are living in decency and comfort, and many in poverty, debt and distress? Is it God’s will that some shall be jobless, hungry, some even homeless, while others have enough of that which it takes all of us to produce? Perhaps God has something to say to our nation about how we might help to bring about a truly fair distribution of the results of work to all of those who engage in work, whether by manual labor, accounting, management, personal or group welfare, or other effort.

Do we have any particular conviction about the forms of government under which mankind can best live? Is the democratic process of expecting every competent individual to have a voice in his government the best way to conduct the affairs of the state or nation? Or would it be better to centralize all authority and discretion in one leader and thereafter do as he tells us without bothering our minds about what we ought to do? Are we willing to trust that one man will get right all the signals from God, or do the rest of us expect that we shall be guided, too?

It seems to me that some things are becoming clear to us. We are going to have a new world. We must have a new world whether we like it or no. It is like the handwriting on the wall. We can bluster about inevitable progress. Or we can cower in our corner and hope it won’t be too bad. Or we can look and listen for the signals, the leading of the Divine spirit. We can put all our trust in the immediate strength of our armed forces, in the economic leverage of our position, in the strength of the associations, unions, parties, which we can form. Or we can proceed on the assumption that God will take a hand with this old world whenever mankind is ready to listen and to act. We can leave all of these “last resorts” to the hell of hatred, suspicion, greed, blindness and failure while we try to help build an order of understanding, of justice, of genuine human respect and love in this world. Unless we can keep some such ideal real in our lives, no peace treaty will be lasting no matter how deep in blood the world may have waded to reach it.

Jesus apparently had the ideal of a perfect society which he called the Kingdom of God. It may be that we have not studied carefully enough what he meant. Dr. Stanley Jones pointed out a short while ago that our major Church creeds say practically nothing about it. But Jesus himself used the expression “Kingdom of God” so frequently that it appears in the New Testament a hundred times or so. (I have not counted them but apparently Dr. Jones has.) Now anything that seemed important enough to our Lord to be talked about that much is worthy of our attention.

Apparently Jesus made no attempt to revolutionize the world about him through armed force, by organization, by resistance to the established order. He formed no social or political organization and made no attempt to gather an army or even to seek the help of these agencies. But he did criticize keenly the things he found in men’s lives and in their order. He was clearly revolutionary at this point. How then is he to bring about any change in the world? Perhaps when he speaks of the Kingdom of God he means a kingdom entirely spiritual, a realm of values, whence man having gained a better perspective, can bring new life to his own world. Perhaps we have missed the point in talking about making the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of our Lord. Perhaps the Kingdom of God is so thoroughly spiritual that we can not see the world transformed into it. If so, then we try to enter the spiritual Kingdom of God in order to find a different standard of values than any which this old world of itself offers. From this new point of vantage we go forth and back, bringing to bear the spiritual values of the Kingdom upon this torn and troubled world, hoping that under God’s leading we may be used in making a better world.

And we begin right were we are - in our homes - in our Church - in the work of teaching and learning in the Church school - at our offices, in our classrooms, at our desks and work benches - wherever we meet other people the task of making the new world is God’s - and ours who are in His service.

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dates and places delivered:

Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, September 18, 1938 AM

Wisconsin Rapids, December 15, 1940