15- Faltering in our Task of Happiness
XV. In a World at War WAR! WAR CHALLENGES EVERYONE TO NEW DUTIES.
It brings the minister face to face with the question as to what constitutes his task in regard to war. Some of us who were ministers in the other World “War are helped by the humbling memories of the part we then played. The church is playing a far nobler role in the war life of our day than it ever did in the past. It has a clearer vision of its task in wartime as the bulwark of a spiritual morale and stamina for trying times. When a group of ministers asked President Wilson in 1917 what they could do to help the war, he replied: “You go back and preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are going to need that.” Not many of us did it then. We hope that we are going to do much better now.
War disrupts everything in our life, and the church no less than everything else. As ministers we must do our best to think things through, that our energies may not be misdirected. It seems to me that, first of all, we must face the fact that war is never our main business. The question before us, whether it is of war or peace, is not narrowed down to either pacifism or militarism.
There is a prominent minister who believes utterly in nonresistance, but who refuses to be labeled merely a pacifist. The position he takes on war is one that, he says, comes from his interpretation of the total message of Christianity. As a minister he considers himself an advocate of the whole gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Kingdom of God as a realistic thing in our world. He is certainly correct in his belief that no minister can be only a pacifist. The same thing is true of the minister who conscientiously believes in the use of force. He must be much more than a supporter of military action. Neither pacifism or militarism is enough for us.
There is, of course, tremendous pressure inevitably brought to bear upon the church and its ministry in time of war. It is unthinkable that we should in any way fail to do our part. We have a part and it is an essential one. “We must not be diverted from it either by our emotions, by any loose thinking in ourselves, or by pressure of enthusiasm from without. We must never let go the truth that Christianity is the basis of our civilization, but that it is not the basis and the bulwark of the existing social order. Our Christianity is never to be identified with the maintenance of the status quo. Christianity fails if it ever limits itself to things as they are instead of being a ringing challenge for things as they ought to be. The four freedoms are worth saving at all costs; but the four freedoms have not been enough in the past, and will not be enough in the future, for the kind of world God means this world to be. The economic pattern of the democracies is better than that of the totalitarian states; but if we are to fight only for the economic life as it is, even in the democracies, victory will not mean much. We are not even serving our country to the fullest if we put any part of the truth of God in cold storage for the duration, under the pressure of the plea, from whatever source, that the only thing necessary now is to win the war. The one thing we are not to do is to limit our message and our work to being drum majors for the State. We could never hurt the cause of real democracy more than by laying aside our mantle of prophets of righteousness;
Waving the flag is always an easy form of patriotism. It means very little; and when done by those whose part should be so much more, it is even perilous to a country’s cause. It is appallingly easy for a minister in wartime to succumb to playing to the gallery. It is a temptation always present, but never so subtle as in the atmosphere and tempo of war. Sensational subjects for sermons, denunciation of the enemy, anything savoring of hatred, and all the claptrap of a cheap patriotism may win the applause of some unthinking people, but it is a poor business for a minister of Christ. And this need not be crudely done or consciously done. But whether with finesse or superficiality, we need to watch ourselves lest we be only a part of a mob spirit while telling ourselves that we are leading a crusade.
It is always a desperately serious thing to be a minister. “We deal with the most abiding things in life. Eternal truth is in our keeping. We can “nobly serve or meanly destroy” the things without which no people can truly live either in time of peace or in war. And whether we build or tear down will depend much on our own inner spirit. For one thing, no true minister can himself possess a belligerent spirit. Even the Old Testament prophets, fiery and tempestuous as they seem to be, and who denounced with scathing words of flame, invariably end with a wooing invitation to accept the tender mercy of a forgiving God. The cleansing of the Temple by Jesus is often used as a justification for a righteous anger and a belligerent spirit. But this single show of force on the part of Jesus was against a misuse of the house of God. The spirit of the world had entered it. Casting it all out, Jesus said, “My house shall be called the house of prayer.” The business of the world’s strife has no more place in the house of God than does the business of trade. If the church is to be the church, its ministers must seek to possess the spirit of Christ, however difficult that may be to achieve. Our preaching will be, and must be, affected by the fact of war. It will determine our themes and our treatment of them. But it is a time to go down deep into the things of God rather than to do any surface mining. The best example of significant wartime preaching I know is in Leslie D. Weatherhead’s book This Is the Victory. In his chapter on “Faith Must Keep Her Eyes on G-od,” he speaks of two passages in the Scriptures, written down by prophets whose people were under the fear of the threat of armed force. In the messages of both these men there is no reference whatever to the armed force!
... The first is in Isaiah 40:1-31, and runs like this: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem..., and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”
Turn to the second passage. Five hundred years afterwards we find John the Baptist, living at a time when the men he loved most were ground down under the heel of the Roman tyranny, bringing the message of the good news about Jesus in these words: “As it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” 1 From the midst of a situation of warfare in which the homes of his people have been bombed and their church edifice destroyed, Dr. Weather 1 Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1941, pp. 72-73. head says, “What we need to say to one another is a word about God.” 2 As ministers we have a task that belongs to no one else. The words of President Wilson to ministers about preaching the gospel are pertinent still. The word gospel, of course, has a wide eontent. Some preach it within a limit of otherworldliness alone; for some it is confined to a highly emotional response. It is not only our colored brethren who are too often content with shouting “ Hallelujah” or “Amen.” For many the gospel is limited to an acceptance of a form of words, and one has the “true gospel” only within the pattern of literalness. The word gospel may mean little or it may mean much. And it does not mean much unless it includes a world-saving as well as a soul-saving pattern of life. The one thing everyone most needs in wartime, as they need it in peacetime too, is food for the soul. There are other organizations and agencies whose task it is to promote patriotism and foster a military spirit.
There are only the church and the minister to preach the gospel as the sustaining, undergirding power for all of life. What do most men need now except faith, courage, moral stamina, a sense of eternal values, patience, hope, trust, and every spiritual asset either in war or pieace? And in war the drain upon life without the presence of these spiritual things is indeed prodigious.
2 Ibid, p. 74..
We are not statesmen; we are not soldiers. As private citizens we have individual responsibilities, but as ministers we are shepherds of the souls of men. When Jesus gave his final commission to Peter Peter, emotionally unstable often, impetuous, blowing hot and cold with the currents of opinion round about him, rash and fearful by turns Jesus thrice said to him, “Feed my sheep.” His was to be a shepherd’s task. There could be no mistake about that. The shepherds of Jesus’ day were brave and fearless men. They would fight to protect their sheep. But they were not in themselves fighting men. They carried a crook and a staff, not a sword. And a sword, neither literally nor figuratively, is a part of the equipment of any ministering shepherd. “Let the church be the church,” and let the minister be a minister, and not anything else. He is not an isolationist or an interventionist; he is not a pacifist or a militarist. He is not “either or” anything.
He is an ambassador of the Kingdom of God. He is a prophet of righteousness. He is a preacher of eternal truth. He is a minister, and a minister is a pastor, and a pastor is a shepherd. He, as a successor of the apostles, must have the apostolic spirit and do an apostle’s work. Isn’t that enough?
Why not try to do our job, and let other leaders do theirs? That is the one thing for us all in wartime that we do our own job, and do it well. “This one thing I do!” That is a statement both of determination and of choice. To say that our one thing is to preach the gospel may seem to some to be utterly meaningless, so many are the ways it may be interpreted. But I dare say any one of us knows definitely enough what it means for himself. “This one thing I do!” Why don’t we do it then?