2/24/52

Scripture: Ephesians 4: 11-24

Text: Ephesians 4: 14-15; “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, now grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”

It is easy to make the error of supposing that a person, or a nation, grows up simply by the passing of time. In this country, we say that one reaches a stage of maturity at the age of 21, which brings with it the right to vote. A man or woman of that age has then reached his or her “majority” regardless of his or her maturity, judgment or experience. The tests given to discover whether the voter, now 21, is mature enough to vote are only sufficient to indicate that he is above the level of idiocy.

But public issues, in a government of, by and for the people, call for the voting of citizens of wisdom, understanding, sound judgment and, at times, of self sacrifice --- all qualities of a mature mind and spirit. The mere passing of 21 years of time -- or 42, or 63 years -- does not automatically create such qualities within any of us.

The peril of immaturity plagues us as individuals. And it threatens our social being. (1) Broken homes and certain expressions of violence are the result of physical maturity which comes automatically with bodily growth, while a controlling maturity of affection and discipline over one’s life and personal relationships is missing. (2) Certain economic and social disturbances arise because position and power have come to men who developed ambition and energy and drive, but who yet lack mature qualities of responsibility and cooperation. They have long since “grown up” in certain kinds of ability, without “growing up” in any sense of responsible direction and control. (3) Wars come because, in part, there are those in political power among the nations, backed by scientific devices for destruction, who are without a mature understanding of man’s common inheritance, common needs and common destiny. (4) Spiritual confusion and tragedy come because men and women have never matured, never “grown up,” in their relationships with each other and with God.

Look at the precarious position into which our lack of political and economic maturity has brought us. The events of this generation call for us to “grow up” overnight. There are too many “adolescents” among our citizenry, in low places and in high position, who have not matured. ---People who have not faced, and understood, the responsibilities that rest upon us as a people, and who have no understanding of the ultimate character of the choices that now lie before us.

How many of us know, or care, who are the four men standing for election as Justice of the Supreme Court in this state? A week from tomorrow all responsible citizens have a duty to vote for one of these four. Can we be well enough informed to select one who is fully matured in experience, judgment and spirit? We haven’t much time to “grow up.” Nor have the candidates any more time. But the selection is important.

Faced with world crises, many of us feel that the answer is a strong arm. “Talk softly and carry a big stick.” Or talk loudly and carry a big stick. But carry, and wield, the stick! We are heedless of the counsel of others, even our friends. We do not look very far ahead to the probable results of our courses of action. We assume that the expenditure of treasure and, if need be, the expenditure of blood, will resolve the world’s problems.

Of course, there do come times when one must defend, with life, what he believes to be right. But it is a mistaken casualness to believe that violent force is the complete answer to the crises of today. We have come to choices in the road where the decisions may make a vital difference for a thousand years.

Asia is in revolution. Part of that revolution is the stepping out from under white nations’ domination and patronage. We Americans are slow to recognize this fact and some of its causes. Communist proposals recognize some of it more shrewdly than do we. Mass poverty in Asia cries aloud for relief. Not “some people” but multitudes of people are hungry all the time. A chronically hungry man will pay more attention, and does, to promises of bread, and the means of getting more bread, than to promises of democracy and free elections. He will even sell himself into bondage, of one sort or another, if he thinks he will have food to sustain his life.

The Communists offer (deceivingly) to help the Asiatic get food and land. The answer sounds relatively simple. Take away the land which raises food from the few who own it and either raise adequate food for themselves upon it, or collect comfortable rentals from it, and give it to the many who have neither food nor any adequate means of producing it. Hungry masses of people hear these deceiving promises and believe them because of their want. They will be saddled with a new kind of slavery, slavery to the state, before they realize that they are not going to have title to the land either; that the taxes of the new communist state which will control the land will outstrip the rentals they used to pay; and that food will still be short, with no right even to complain about the shortages.

We are out-maneuvered when a shrewd enemy wins over great blocks of the world’s population by arousing hope for the essentials of life while we think only in terms of keeping the situation under control. The peoples of the remaining free nations ought to feel our active concern that they have help in the know-how of abundant food production and distribution. If some direct relief is needed, it should be given with generous concern.

We played into the hands of an unscrupulous enemy when our country debated long weeks over sending some grain to starving folk in India last year. The enemy was able to send in a little and shout all over the world about it, before we eventually got there with much more, while much of the world doubted our motives.

We need to grow up fast in the performance of large-scale neighborliness of the most intelligent, sincere, and oft times even sacrificial sort. We need to recognize that the communist will try, repeatedly, to rush in and put his own brand on efforts and accomplishments of good, but to go ahead with the effort at the same time we resist his thievery.

We Caucasians need to call a long overdue halt to strong-arm treatment of colored races. It won’t work forever, perhaps not even for long. We are in a decided minority. It is altogether inadequate to point out to the colored races of the earth the dire results of communism (and they will be dire in the end!) while those people want for bread, and space and neighborly notice.

It is a matter of very grave concern to us that the democratic ideals we hold dear have not succeeded in competition with the communist idea among large blocks of Asiatic people. Part of the fault is our own immaturity, in paying insufficient attention to their basic needs. It is unrelieved tragedy that communists are able to come along, and with professed devotion to those same needs, capture the minds and allegiance of hundreds of millions. And the tragedy is not just for us and our well being. We ought to be “grown up” enough to pity the millions who are falling into that slavery, and to be zealous that others are helped to avoid it.

In our political immaturity we have been losing the friendship of these people while communists gain it with deceivingly offered plain and practical-sounding proposals for redress of real and fancied wrongs. The question for us becomes: What plan, what purpose, what way of life have we actually placed before the peoples of the world? What experience and what way of life are we trying to substitute in the experience of these people who have either turned to totalitarian tyranny or can be so easily turned from us?

The time has passed when egoistic pride in physical prowess, in economic strength, in military potential, in being the “greatest and the strongest nation on earth” is enough. This could be the “pride that goeth before a fall.” Indeed it must be in the moral order of things unless we are also mature enough in spirit and mind. There lies our native genius! -- in free religious devotion; in integrity of mind and spirit. That is the greatest of our resources. That kind of resource is such that the more we expend of it the more we have of it!

We get far too interested in our machines and gadgets, our multiplicity of organizations, and our own standard of living. It may be desirable to export television and important that it pays dividends on the stock market. But it is far more important to export a vision, and an experience, of justice, with a dividend for all in peace, in living space and bread enough for each and all. The need is for an export of a human-divine vision, such as is a basic part of our mature democratic experience. For only such a vision, fostered in maturity at whatever cost, can save us all from the threatening danger.

We must have the courage, and put forth the sacrifice, to rearrange and reorient our thought and life. If John Foster Dulles is right in his analysis that we represent a static point of view, losing out to a dynamic view, we had better become Christian revolutionaries, and quickly -- the kind who brought a decadent world to rebirth; the kind that launched and pushed the missionary movement; the kind that gives of vision and self quite aside from what one gets.

In weeks or months, America must learn what Britain learned in a generation while she was a world leader. In a year we must learn what the British took four centuries to find out about diplomacy --- and then some.

Children today are trained in rapid reading. Events of the day are forcing us into the most rapids course of study and the most rapids “growing up” that has been required of any generation.

Our whole concern for maturity comes to focus in our Christian faith. See what Christian maturity can mean: Christian people, living in the face of the worst evils of our time, with forces intent on destroying democracy and Christianity, can and must live without panic. Only the spiritually mature achieve an understanding of freedom from fear of the dangers of our day. We recognize the danger; but let us refuse to be intimidated by it. We know that, in God’s world, evil contains the seeds of its own destruction and defeat. No matter what victories evil achieves at the moment, ours is a world in which, over the long run, it is well with good and it is destructive with evil. This is no facile optimism, but the faith to which the deepest testings of the New Testament testifies.

“Grown up” Christians live by the fact that life and existence are never out of the hands of God. In the immediate present, God is at work on his purpose for us and with us. We are to be agents of His will. When mankind does wrong, it temporarily thwarts His purpose, because He has chosen to limit Himself, in part, to working through us. But, in the end, the ultimate word and deed are with God.

Beyond this, we Christians believe that this present life does not sum up all of existence, but that there is more to it than just this mortal span. We believe that the better part of life is in the eternal good. Therefore we sit rather more lightly upon this life than if we believed, as the materialist seems to do, that all of life must be crammed into this brief time from birth to death. Those are the limits of mortal existence, but not of life!

This does not lead us to do less in the present because of this belief, but rather more, with confidence, to do more. If we be mature Christian folk, we will not confuse temporary setbacks and single defeats with victories that evil may have won, nor do we despair of the victories that will be won under God for his good.

Again, Christian maturity senses that in this world of a perfect God and imperfect men, there is no earthly perfection --- we are always striving for the better in the light and ideal of God’s perfection but in the midst of our own imperfection. To be “grown up” as a Christian is to know that the only true revolution is the spiritual revolution of our Master and his following disciples -- not the communist or any other oppressor or self-proclaimed liberator.

We know that man has a worth in God’s eye that he never has in the state’s eye. He has an infinite worth, for man is God’s son. And this makes a difference as to how a man is treated. One cannot use a son of God as just “something” to be fed and housed and kept in a condition useable to the state and its officials. The man so kept is in bondage! The Christian message is of freedom that no other way of life offers --- freedom under God. That is our democratic inheritance -- freedom under God -- firmly rooted in Christian faith and practice.

As “grown up” Christians, we have a responsible obligation to keep the people of our nation alive to the truth of the nation’s inheritance. In the strength of that inheritance, we can bring encouragement and help (bread and productive land as well as a vote) to needy, oppressed men and women. And we can bring them the good word that they are God’s, not the state’s. The Christianized view of government has been, and is, that the state belongs to the people, not the people to the state.

As “grown up” Christians we will speak creatively, and confidently in Christ’s name. We will take our stand for Christ’s good as we know it, unbound by old patterns. And we will take that stand before all sorts of folk, the powerful and the humble, the satisfied and the yearning of the earth. We will decline to be satisfied with today’s easy secular judgments upon war, upon economic and social injustice. For we live in the company of a Christ whose love embraces all. ---- his enemies just as surely as his friends. You remember it was the same Jesus who attacked, so scathingly, the hypocrisy of many in power, and who, dying by torture, prayed aloud, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” [Luke 23: 34].

Then it may be said of us that we are “henceforth no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning and craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”

--------------

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 24, 1952.