Made For God 5/2/43

Scripture: Luke 17: 12-21

Text: Luke 17: 21b “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

I announced as my sermon subject for this morning these three words: “Made For God.” I wonder if anyone who saw it ahead of the time for our morning worship may have thought: “There it goes again! Another preacher with another unrealistic discussion on something utterly impractical. What does anything like that have to do with the way we’ve got to live in 1943?”

If the subject was generally noticed, it would be surprising if there were not many who had such a reaction. For countless folk pride themselves on being hard-headed, down-to-earth realists, as compared to such up-in-the-air dreamers as Henry Wallace.

{Recently I saw printed a sermon by an exceedingly capable preacher. It was along the line I want to discuss with you for a while today. The sermon was by Dr. Horace H. Leavitt of Honolulu. I acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Leavitt for much of what I shall pass on to you now.}

The so-called realists are constantly saying that human nature has always been selfish and always will be; that people have always been belligerent and always will be; that, human nature being what it is, all talk about post-war peace and brotherhood is just so much froth and foolishness. Since human greed and egoism are permanent facts, there is no cure for them.

Why bother with those religious beliefs that contend human nature can be changed; that man is a spirit made in God’s image; that we are destined to develop qualities and attitudes which Jesus set for us by his example, and died to confirm?

One great test of a Christian’s faith is his conviction that Jesus was right and his determination to prove it so in himself and in human society.

The unbelievers are often charming and able citizens, who trust in the pessimistic facts they see in history, rather than in dreams and hopes which would be nice to realize, but which do no seem to them based in hard facts. They are typified in the words of a newspaper columnist who wrote one day’s strip on the theme that “men are boobs.”

“Men eternally toy,” he says, “with the idea of peace because they are essentially dreamers, show-offs, and not hard realists. They are sentimental softies who everlastingly go about spearing their enemies while dreaming of peace only between their fights. Their beautiful ideas won’t work and they know it.” Then he speaks of the Commission to Investigate Japanese Aggression in China, taking six months to report exactly nothing in regard to what everybody knew was the deliberate act and intention of Japan against a peaceful neighbor. He concludes that only universal marriage could possibly bring peace and friendship, which is the silliest dream of all. “What boobs men are!”

Another writer does the same sort of thing with his column, using Vice President Wallace in his addresses on post-war problems as typical of the dreamers of the present, about the future. He thinks that what Mr. Wallace advocates simply can’t be done, and that the United States will be the dumbbell of the party, if it attempts the application of any such nice theories and dreams of friendship and cooperation. The very presence of Russia in the world, he thinks, makes the idea ridiculous. We are bound to have the same old race populating the earth, the same old hates and envies. The loaded musket, hanging over the fireplace where it belongs, is far more potent than a set of embroidered wall mottoes.

This reading of history represents the pet hate of pessimists, and of those who have reason to fear change. The slow, upward progress of the world’s people has come in spite of them. Whatever mankind has accomplished, and on the whole the record of accomplishment is remarkable and heroic, it owes to the dreamers and believers whom the down-to-earth “realists” call silly and worse.

The Christian religion is altogether optimistic. It holds that man is a child of God, a spirit with divine potentialities; who can and will sublimate his animal instincts, through the pull of faith and the discipline of struggle and suffering, into increasing likeness to his Heavenly Father. This rule of God is planted in our hearts and will surely win the long hard fight over selfishness and sin.

This is tremendous faith. It often seems impossible to attain it. Men and women repeatedly obey their lower urges rather than their higher. But in the light of what mankind has risen from, how can one turn his back of the possibility of a Christian dream? If he does, what can he offer in its place as the driving force for humanity? Anything but unrelieved despair?

A hundred years ago a man seriously advocated closing the U.S. Patent Office since all possible human discoveries and inventions had been accomplished! Twenty years ago, one farmer told me in all seriousness that he knew all there is to know about farming! Are not the pessimists of pseudo-realism in the same frame of mind?

Instead of Christian believers being “boobs” they are far more the true realists. I am not talking about those devotees of “happy ending” fiction, but about men and women of genuine Christian understanding who know that the hope and accomplishment of progress lies in struggle and willingness to suffer, in the tragedy of error and repeated risk. Christianity’s hope and its accomplishment are not baited with a lollipop, but are built around a cross!

In the midst of the disillusionment of our time when so many hopes have been dashed, and so much of the stuff of dreams lies in ruins where it has crashed, it is not easy to keep one’s Christian perspective.

And yet what the cynics are trying to scare from us is being found by the men on the actual battlefronts. We are told that “there are no atheists in fox holes.” And another adds his confirmation with the insistence that “there are no atheists on rubber life rafts.” When they arrive face to face with the starkest kind of realism they see God and themselves with new understanding and clarity. And that, you understand, is where Jesus revealed God most clearly.

The pessimist has no message for our fighting men. His implication that their struggles they go through and the tremendous sacrifices they make are meaningless is close to treason to the soldiers’ and sailors’ cause! These men are fighting and dying for a dream. Their dream is compounded of a strong faith in a better America, a better world, an order where selfishness will be curbed for the common good, a world where men, women, and children can grow in peace and decency. The Christian dream is the only possible solution to the endless misery, woe and death of a careless world.

The church has the answer to the world’s ills. This conviction rises out of burdened and sincere hearts. The New Testament offers a better way than either individualism or totalitarianism ever dreamed of - the way of a Kingdom of God. Again let us take warning against any shallow concept of the meaning of that Kingdom.

Dr. E. Stanley Jones tells of meeting a highly intelligent actress in Russia who said, “I suppose you are a religious man.” Dr. Jones said he was. “Then you are weak,” she said. “You want God to hold your hand. You are an idealist; I am a realist. Au revoir.”

There you have it again - the assumption that if you are Christian you are not strong and that you are not a realist. The assumption might be true of some, but it is not true of the first Christian nor of his true followers. Christianity was founded, not on an idea, but on a life. Jesus’ teaching was done with deeds. He prayed much more than he ever talked about prayer. He was not confined to discussions of duty and right. He went to Jerusalem, where he knew a cross awaited him. His cleansing of the temple and his defiance of entrenched privilege were acts that dared men to do right.

How far can force go in this world? Is God on the side of the biggest battalions? Was he for these terrible years on the side of the mighty German military machine - the greatest of its kind, then, in the world? Is He likely to switch sides once the United Nations military concentration is mightier?

Sheer earthly force can go a long way. It can drench the world in blood today. It can crucify the Son of God. It can devastate the world again tomorrow. But there comes a “third day” in the world’s awful experience when force breaks its very back on the fact of God. For there is a resurrection on that “third day.” And history bears witness to the certainty. The cannon have their mighty hours. But the end belongs to God. Lies can go so far. But the last word is always with truth and reality.

Whenever life turns for the better it is in accordance with the laws of the divine. Why, even in the washrooms of some trains you have seen signs reading, “Please leave the wash basin in the condition in which you would like to find it.” Evidently you and I can’t wash our hands successfully without obedience to the Golden Rule.

When the creator brought us into being, he put his own law in our blood, our nerves and our muscles. It is our very constitution that we obey it. Either we follow it as the only successful way to live, or else ----- . This is why there is so much of the “or else” in our world.

Doctors say that the right way is the only way to health. A group of physicians was asked to compile two lists - a right way of living and a wrong way. When the completed lists were examined carefully, it was discovered that every one of the right ways of health was Christian and every wrong way was un-Christian. Those doctors had never thought of it that way and admitted that they were deeply impressed.

It is as Jesus said: “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

Examples could be piled high. When the President made his first inaugural address, he said that the greatest thing we had to fear was fear. Jesus knew all about that. “Be not afraid” was constantly on his lips. Only believe, and you will find health of mind - and so of body. Fear certainly injures your well-being, whether confessed on concealed. Any number of cases in the physicians’ files will prove it. (Nursing mother - anger - baby that died. Extreme case but illustrates truth.)

When we talk about vengeance and plot it and keep hot about it, we surely undermine our own selves. If we want health and vigor, we will stick to justice, and even love. For Jesus wasn’t fooling when he said “love your enemies.” [Matthew 5: 44]. That kind of love may be stern - it certainly is not sentimental - and it is healthy. If we can only achieve it, we ourselves benefit most thereby.

You and I are made for God. It is his law for us and we can’t beat it in any way. (Girl and slot machine on boat; $9 of 10 went before man told her she couldn’t beat it.)

You and I in our very structure are made for God. That is bed-rock realism. Why fight against it? Only by going along with it can we find happiness and success.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, May 2, 1943