141 Sermon Illustrations on Character

Great evangelists have eight distinctives, which should also shape every

Christian's life:

1. Passion for souls.

2. A Christ-centered commitment to the gospel. Jesus is the theme.

3. Personal holiness.

4. Boldness: holy audacity.

5. Criticism and persecution.

6. Love for the body of Christ.

7. Prayer.

8. Faithfulness to the gospel to their dying hour.

#3246

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Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) faced death with cheerfulness because he knew he was doing the right thing. Rather than endorse Henry the Eighth's divorce, he quit his post and returned to his home penniless. The King threw him in the Tower of London but he stood firm. He smiled on the scaffold, kissed the executioner, gave him a gold coin, and quipped with a grin, "Don't be afraid, my good man. Take care to do it well, for I have a short neck, and you mustn't ruin your reputation."

On December 29, 1987 a Soviet cosmonaut returned to the earth after 326 days in orbit. He was in good health, which hasn't always been the case in those

record-breaking voyages. Five years earlier, touching down after 211 days in space, two cosmonauts suffered from dizziness, high pulse rates, and heart palpitations. They couldn't walk for a week, and after 30 days, they were still undergoing therapy for atrophied muscles and weakened hearts.

At zero gravity, the muscles of the body begin to waste away because there is no resistance. To counteract this, the Soviets prescribed a vigorous exercise

program for the cosmonauts. They invented the "penguin suit," a running suit laced with elastic bands. It resists every move the cosmonauts make, forcing

them to exert their strength. Apparently the regimen is working.

We often long dreamily for days without difficulty, but God knows better. The easier our life, the weaker our spiritual fiber, for strength of any kind

grows only by exertion.

Sermon in James series. Purpose of trials in life. James 1:1-4,12

====================

WHY IS LIFE SO HARD?

====================

I. Life can be tough.

II. Being on trial.

A. Two definitions of trial (NIV) / temptation (KJV):

B. Three varieties of trials that Christians face.

1) Reap-what-you-sow trials. Gal 6:7

2) Spiritual trials. 1 Pet 4:12

3) Mysterious trials. Job

III. The proper attitude toward trials.

A. Many turn to resentment and anger at God.

B. Others become apathetic and withdraw from life.

C. James gives another alternative - joy. 1:2

IV. The purpose of testing. 1:3

A. God is testing us to see if our faith is truly in HIM.

B. God is testing us to produce perseverance.

C. God is testing us to develop our character.

V. God is still working on you.

Dawson Trotman, founder of the NAVIGATORS, did not think he had great faith, but a great God, and a Bible full of promises. He became a Christian at age 20 after contemplating John 1:12 and 5:24. He prayed constantly and asked God to use him to reach people. He was bold in challenging people to answer God's call to missions. Billy Graham said of him, "When our God is big, the world looks small - and Dawson saw the world as conquerable for Christ."

In the Bible, godliness always refers to a person's reverent, devout, pious,

obedient response to God. It is lived out through actions, words, thoughts,

and attitudes which are honoring to him simply because of who he is.

1. Josiah: Igniting a flame for God.

2. Oswald Chambers: Giving his utmost for the Highest.

Friends said he truly lived life. He was often criticized for his

conviction that Jesus' words, "Give to everyone who asks," meant

exactly that. He often gave his last coin to beggars. "My duty is

plain - to obey the command of God and give to everyone that asks.

What the recipient may do with it is not my concern." He never

attached strings to the gospel or tried to trap listeners with free

food, etc. After he died, his wife refused to accept any money for

the book she had written about him.

3. Betsie ten Boom: Peacemaker through prayer. [see #2861]

4. Susannah Wesley: Molder of great men.

She started a Bible study in her home that soon attracted 200 even

though many of her neighbors and friends disapproved. She

singlehandedly homeschooled her 19 children, teaching them reading,

writing, Scripture, and the Christian disciplines. More important

than her instruction was her example. She was continually aware of

God's demand for holiness. "Religion is nothing else than the doing

of the will of God, and not our own.... Since the grand impediment

to our temporal and eternal happiness is self-will, no indulgences

of it can be trivial, no denial of it unprofitable."

She was stern, but her disciplines molded two sons who founded

Methodism. The very name "Methodist" refers to a carefully

methodical approach to the spiritual life that John and Charles had

learned to a great extent from their mother. Because of her model

of consistency in obeying God's will - even in little things - a

revival of personal holiness began with her family and spread

throughout the world.

#2854

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Short biographical sketch of George Washington Carver, world-renowned agricultural chemist and botanist. Judging from his early life, few would have guessed that Carver would achieve such greatness. He was the youngest son of slave parents. His father died in an accident and his mother was lost after the family was kidnapped by slave raiders. But Carver became a Christian as a child, and he never lost faith that God was at his side.

He struggled to gain an education and taught himself by gathering plants in the forest. Eventually he earned enough from odd jobs to graduate from college. At Tuskegee Institute he set up a laboratory he called "God's Little Workshop."

His personal trademark was his humility. He publicly and consistently attributed his ideas and his success to the Lord. God spoke to him clearly, Carver insisted, telling him what to do step by step. Though many considered him naive, he remained adamant that the Creator took pleasure in revealing his glory though the lowly peanut, sweet potato, and cow pea. In keeping with that view, the professor left unpatented all but one of his numerous discoveries, though they could have made him wealthy. Because he saw them as a gift from God, he believed they should be available for the widest possible use.

His wisdom was perhaps best summed up one day when he received an array of new lab instruments for his workshop at Tuskegee. One of his colleagues surveyed the shiny equipment with admiration. "Now," he declared, "you'll perform miracles!" Carver shook his head. "Only God performs miracles. Here, I'll only listen for his voice, and try to carry out his instructions."

#2860

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Inside each of us there is the desire to be a better person. Many of us would love to be more like Dr. Elizabeth Holland, a pediatrician from Memphis, Tennessee, who has served as a volunteer doctor for World Vision.

Once she treated patients in the middle of an African civil war, explains writer Robert Kerr. In 1985 she performed one appendectomy in which the “operating room” was a mud hut deep in the jungle of Zaire. The anesthetic was an animal tranquilizer, which ran out in the middle of the operation. Outside, MiG jets were dropping bombs. Every time a bomb hit, dirt from the mud hut fell down on them. She performed a virtual miracle considering the circumstances, and her patient lived.

During the Angolan civil war, Holland routinely saw 400 to 500 patients a day. “I frequently wrapped broken bones in magazines and used banana leafs for slings,” she said. Since food was in short supply, Holland ate a paste made from ground cassava-plant roots. “It tasted like glue,” said Dr. Holland. “The first few days, I thought I would die. But then I got to where it tasted pretty good. Sometimes when it rained we could get a few leaves from the trees to cook it in for variety.”

Across the Angolan border was a minefield that often killed or injured civilians; Holland would retrieve them. She said, “I learned if I got my nose down at ground level and crawled along on my stomach, I could see the mines. So I would make my way across, then throw the injured person over my shoulder and carry them out the same way I had come over.”

Maybe we will never be forced to persevere as Elizabeth Holland has, but each of us can grow in character.

Over the past decade, William Bennett has become an increasingly prominent figure on the national scene. As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, secretary of education, and director of drug control policy, Bennett was a forthright and articulate spokesman for conservative values.

Now Bennett has published two books that extend and deepen his engagement with our cultural malaise. The first, “The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children,” diagnoses what has gone wrong and prescribes a reaffirmation of traditional values. It is largely autobiographical, as Bennett draws on his extensive firsthand experience of the culture wars. The second, “The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories,” is an anthology intended primarily to help parents instill traditional values in their children. Both books can be recommended to Christian readers.

In “The De-Valuing of America,” Bennett confronts the assault on moral absolutes. It seems so obvious, but apparently it is not, that without deep-rooted values to guide how we live our lives, how we make our laws, and how we teach our children, eventually everyone will do what is right in his or her own eyes, whatever the cost to others. And that, Bennett suggests, is the difference “between social order and social anarchy.”

America’s civic order, Bennett argues, cannot be understood apart from its religious roots. “No one demands doctrinal adherence to any religious beliefs as a condition of citizenship,” he writes, “or as proof of good citizenship, here. But at the same time, we should not deny what is true; that from the Judeo-Christian tradition come our values, our principles, the animating spirit of our institutions. That tradition and our tradition are entangled. They are wed together. When we have disdain for our religious tradition, we have disdain for ourselves.” While broadly affirming the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” Bennett’s emphasis is on nonsectarian American values (“our tradition,” as he refers to it in the passage just quoted); rarely is he addressing issues from an explicitly Christian perspective.

My wife and I have already begun reading “The Book of Virtues” to our eight-year-old and five-year-old. This massive compendium of stories, poems, speeches, letters, and excerpts from other works is a priceless gift to parents and children alike. Organized under the heading of various virtues - Responsibility, Courage, Compassion, Loyalty, Honesty, Friendship, Persistence, Hard Work, Self-Discipline, and Faith - the selections are refreshingly diverse. Folktales and fables rub elbows with passages from Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Biographical sketches of Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, and many others offer inspirational models of the qualities that all good parents want to see cultivated in their children. The simple stories found in this book give parents a concrete and systematic method to help their children internalize essential values. The book is a wonderful application of the proverb “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

While Christian readers should applaud Bennett’s affirmation of the virtues, they must also ask how these values are to be enacted. Will there be a commitment to the radical challenge of the gospel - a stance that is uncompromisingly prolife, but also, for example, committed to health care for the poor - or will Bennett’s manifestoes translate to support for a limited political agenda?

As a black Christian with a conservative view of Scripture, I have almost given up the hope of finding a politician I could support without compromising my Christian beliefs and abandoning my mostly poor, black, inner-city neighborhood - one who would consistently champion biblical values and not just a few pet righteous causes; one who would confront the Left for its antibiblical positions but also affirm it for the godly, unselfish stances that it does occasionally take, and who would confront the Right for its mean-spiritedness and narrow interpretation of what it means to follow Christ, but also honor its refusal to compromise on what the Bible clearly teaches on tough, unpopular issues; one who would embrace both the virtues of hard work and self-discipline and the virtue of compassionate concern for the poor.

It is very easy to align ourselves too closely with a political perspective and confuse that allegiance with doing our Christian duty. As Christians, our primary responsibility is to follow Christ’s example, which will not always fit neatly into a political camp. When faced with tough issues from abortion to national health care reform, we should always be asking ourselves the simple but demanding question, What would Jesus do? No politician can do that and win.

________

Books reviewed:

“The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children,” by William J. Bennett (Focus on the Family, 267 pp.; $18, hardcover); “The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories,” edited by William J. Bennett (Simon & Schuster, 831 pp.; $27.50, hardcover). Reviewed by Spencer Perkins, editor-in-chief of Urban Family magazine and coauthor of “More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel” (InterVarsity).

Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

[see #3559-3562 for whole article]

We are now seeing the early stages of a scattered attempt to rehabilitate the concept of character. This change reflects a widespread sense that our society is sick and only strong medicine will do. Having lost much of our faith in social innovations (where, for instance, are the advocates of “open marriage” today?), we are turning to some traditional remedies that we tried to live without, and one of those is character.

But why is the attempt only scattered? Why, in fact, is it often controversial, met in some quarters with great suspicion? Who could possibly object to a greater emphasis on character? The fact is that character has returned to the public conversation during wartime — the culture wars — and no discussion of the role of character is neutral. As so often happens in our public conversations, the debate frequently splits along ideological lines. Many take it as given (and even desirable) that no agreement could ever be reached on what constitutes character or how we should encourage it. They are frightened by what they see as the attempt to equate character and family values with one, and only one, political and social agenda. And the suspicion is mutual.

A clear example is the reception of William Bennett’s “The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories.” Since its publication in 1993, this hugely successful book has been widely praised as leading the way in the restoration of civilization and widely vilified as trumpeting a retreat to the bad old days of racism, sexism, and (gulp) spanking. Jesse Jackson has complained, accurately, that conservatives have co-opted character and values as their issue, making liberals look like defenders of irresponsibility and moral decay.

Many rightly ask where all this conservative concern for character — especially the virtue of justice — was in the 1950s and ‘60s, when African Americans were trying to win their most basic freedoms. The oft-lamented golden age when we were supposedly a virtuous (and Christian) people was also a time that was quite comfortable with overt racial segregation and sexism and great numbers of people living in poverty, among other sins.

Nevertheless, too much current liberal reaction is little more than relativistic skepticism about any attempt to establish a widely agreed-on set of values to live by. Barbara Ehrenreich, for instance, in an unusually cynical opinion piece last year for “Time” magazine, scorned the phrase “family values.” While acknowledging that we “may be stuck with the family” until we progress to something more “sensible,” she depicts the family as commonly “a nest of pathology” and cites approvingly a feminist view that compares marriage to prostitution.

While acidic views like Ehrenreich’s contribute nothing to the debate, there is a legitimate concern that a renewed emphasis on character and values not be merely a convenient sound bite for pandering politicians nor provide cover for a retreat from hard-won and still fragile gains for minorities and women. Louis Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services under George Bush, argues often and passionately for the relevance of character to health issues in our society (a great deal of ill health being the result of bad choices) but insists that a renewed emphasis on the need for individual responsibility and community-enforced values should not be used as a smoke screen for an attack on the necessary and legitimate role of government in health and other areas.

In fact, both liberals and conservatives frequently promote an impoverished sense of character that is inadequate to support the kinds of changes we need — in ourselves and in our society. The conservative notion too often encourages mere conformity and defends a nostalgic version of the past. Character is not much more than the Boy Scout pledge sprinkled with civic religion.

Liberals have their own version, and it is equally pallid. “Embrace diversity, be nice to minorities, don’t laugh at jokes that disempower women.” They are unable to articulate a distinction between healthy pluralism and crippling relativism. They rhapsodize about e pluribus but have lost the vision for unum.

We’ve got to do better than this. As we grope our way back toward the idea of living by shared values (a working definition of character), we should consider the wellspring of talk about character — story. We live in stories the way fish live in water, breathing them in and out, buoyed up by them, taking from them our sustenance, but rarely conscious of this element in which we exist.

Life as a story is not simply a metaphor, but the way our experience actually presents itself to us. We are characters making choices over time — and living with the consequences — and that is the essence of story both in literature and in life. The more we are conscious of our role as characters making choices that have consequences, and the more we purposefully choose the stories by which we live, the healthier we will be as individuals and as a society.

Stories, as MacIntyre writes in “After Virtue,” teach us how to live:

I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question, “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?” We enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed characters — roles into which we have been drafted — and we have to learn what they are… It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children … youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living … that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.

If many young people seem confused and directionless today, and their elders with them, perhaps it is because they have been deprived of good stories. They “stutter” in their lives because they almost literally do not know their lines; they do not know themselves as characters in a meaningful story.

And of course, Christians believe the seminal story by which all other stories must be judged is the one which commences, “In the beginning God… “ This is the greatest story ever told. The theme of this story is the most hopeful imaginable: God made us, God loves us, and God calls us back to himself. This is the story that gives ultimate meaning to our own stories.

Without meaningful choices there is no story and no character. But how to choose? A traditional answer, approved by both Aristotle and Christ, has been that we pattern our choices and our lives after someone we want to be like. And that someone is often presented to us in story.

Bruno Bettelheim claims that the stories of good and evil in fairy tales — or, we might add, in Bible stories — can play an important role in the moral development of children. And the power of these stories lies not so much in the abstract moral or theme as in the characters. Bettelheim says, “The question for the child is not, ‘Do I want to be good?’ but ‘Who do I want to be like?’”

It is not surprising that the bulk of moral education in human history has been through models, exempla, heroes — that is, through story. Many of the traditional stories of moral education have fallen out of favor because of modern skepticism, the loss of centers of moral authority, fear of hypocrisy, and suspicion that morality might be just another name for authoritarianism, privilege, and misused power.

The stories that provide us the models that help shape our character are all around us. They come first from the family, then from church and school and the popular media. Some are from literature, others from history, politics, family lore, and, alas, television. Among the stories that come to mind from my own childhood are stories of missionaries killed by Auca Indians, of the ground opening up to swallow people who lied to God, of the defeat of Nazism by my uncles, of the first Thanksgiving, of Davy Crockett at the Alamo, of the kids who got paddled for skinny dipping in the creek, and on and on. It is difficult, in fact, to think of anything that significantly influenced me that wasn’t part of a story in one way or another.

The most important stories have the power to change our character. I believe, for instance, that my life took a slight but perceptible change in direction in my late teens from reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Trolls, elves, hobbits, wizards, dark forests, forest havens, caves, mountain strongholds, treachery, cowardice, courage, perseverance — what have these to do with being a teenager in California during the Vietnam War?

Nothing and everything. I found embodied in that fantasy what every teenager needs to find — especially one coming of age in the moral ambiguity of the late 1960s: that there is a difference between good and evil, that the distinction is usually clear enough to act on, that fighting for good is worthwhile even if one loses, that average, even unimpressive, people can accomplish much, and, farfetched as it may seem, that good eventually wins out in the end.

I purposed quite consciously to try to be on the side of good in life, to the extent that I could discern it, and to take chances to see that it prevailed. I genuinely believe this story helped shape who I was and am. Its characters became a part of my character. If the change in direction was small at the time, it may have been one that, like a small, early course correction in a planetary probe, has made a larger difference in where I am, many years later.

After reading “The Lord of the Rings” two or three times in my teens, I have not read it since. I might not be nearly so impressed now, but that doesn’t matter. It did me a service. It helped form my mind as well as my ethics at a time when both were up for grabs. When I later discovered sophistic thinkers who assured me that good and evil were not real categories but only subjective and transient points of view, I knew better. I lacked then the intellectual resources to articulate my disagreement, but I was armed with the holistic experience of a story that kept me from naively embracing what I now think is a widely influential but unlivable view of the world.

Stories not only provide moral education but also shape our sense of identity. In fact, it is impossible to separate our sense of who we are from the stories in which we cast ourselves as characters.

[see #3561 for story of evangelist John Brown and how it relates to author’s life.]

#3560

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(Seminary student gives a Miss America finalist a list of qualities he is looking for in a wife. They later marry.)

Scarlett Morgan had heard all the one-liners.

Years of experience fending off hormone-driven men had taught her to spot a come-on from a mile away.

But this one was different.

"I have a mystery that I need you to help me solve," Scott Smith told Morgan as the two Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary students stood in the lobby of the school's Ledford Center weight room.

"Trust me," Smith said, assuring her their meeting that night (Feb. 14, 1995) would not be considered a date, after several previous attempts by Smith to lure Morgan on a romantic evening with a meal or movie had failed.

This time, however, Morgan agreed to meet Smith for coffee after a missionary commissioning service on campus.

After all, Smith was not a total stranger, Morgan reasoned to herself before accepting his invitation. The two had participated in a couple of revival services together. She sang. He preached.

"Scott had always hit me as a different person," Morgan said.

Morgan first met Smith in September 1994 when he boldly approached her on a sidewalk on the seminary campus and introduced himself.

For Morgan, spontaneous introductions from strangers had become routine following her crowning as Miss North Carolina in 1990. And besides, Morgan said, everyone at seminary was always friendly.

But when Smith bought her a cup of coffee in the seminary cafe and handed her a list of 30 qualities he desired in his future wife, Morgan was speechless.

"When I saw the list, I said to myself, 'I cannot believe this, Lord, what are you doing?'" she said. "I had been praying about the Lord's direction in my life."

Smith told Morgan he also had been praying for nine months that God would send him wife.

Smith's criteria for a mate included characteristics such as ministry-minded, people-oriented, musically talented, adaptable and adventurous.

"I just ask that you prayerfully consider what you've heard," Smith told Morgan.

"At the end she didn't give me a response," Smith said. "I came away that night with a clear realization that she didn't say anything."

Still, he said, he knew he had done the right thing. He said he had prayed fervently for several days before asking Morgan to meet with him. Earlier, he had even sought the advice of one his preaching professors, Wayne McDill, who suggested he make the list of characteristics he desired in a wife.

"I had 30 things on that list and I knew she matched" all of them, Smith said.

Smith said he had felt compelled to share the desires of his heart with Morgan after receiving a sign from God following a revival service in November 1994 that affirmed his continued pursuit of Morgan despite her repeated rejections.

"I put out a fleece," Smith said. "I prayed if there is anything to be expected after that match (with his list of characteristics of a wife) then Billie Kay Tsika will offer me hot tea." Smith said that he had no idea whether Tsika, wife of evangelist Paul Tsika, even drank hot tea. But following a revival service in Elberton, Ga., Smith said, Billie Kay invited him to visit their new bus and promptly asked him would he like some hot tea.

"I just could not run from the thought of her (Morgan)," Smith said.

Smith shared his answered prayer with Morgan as well.

Morgan said, however, not once during their three-hour conversation did she think that Smith was trying to convince her to date him.

"I was just overwhelmed by his faith in God," Morgan said. "After that night, I knew God had something in mind."

Two weeks later Smith and Morgan went out on their first official date. Three months later they were engaged. Smith and Morgan were married in March.

"I know that this is a match made in heaven," Morgan said.

Smith said his marriage with Morgan will serve as a constant reminder that God blesses a fervent prayer life.

For Smith, Feb. 14, 1995 will be a stone for remembrance.

"It was a divine appointment."

The Intellectual event of the year was the publication of James Q. Wilson's "The Moral Sense."

It has become the conventional wisdom that there is no knowledge, only opinion, about morality, and that human beings have no nature other than their capacity to acquire culture. Wilson's warning is: We must be careful of what we think we are, lest we become that. By "scavenging" (his word) in various sciences, particularly evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology, he concludes that cultural diversity although vast, is not the whole story.

Human nature is not infinitely plastic; we cannot be socialized to accept anything. We do not recoil from Auschwitz only because our culture has so disposed us. And the fact that so much about America nowadays, from random savagery to scabrous entertainment, is shocking is evidence for, not against, the moral sense, which is what is shocked.

The development of conscience has been much studied - Jean Piaget's many hours watching Swiss children playing marbles; studies of altruism in the Holocaust; studies of twins, including those separated at infancy. The studies have produced powerful empirical evidence of a moral sense that is component of a universal human nature.

A moral sense is the most plausible explanation of much of our behavior.

Statecraft always is soulcraft, for better or worse, so the political challenge is to encourage the flourishing of a culture that nurtures rather than weakens the promptings of the moral sense.

Inside every person there is (in Konrad Lorenz's phrase) a "parliament of instincts." The moral sense, says Wilson, is among the calmer passions; it needs help against its wilder rivals. We have selfish interests, but also the capacity - and inclination - to judge disinterestedly, even of our own actions.

Wilson asks, Could mankind survive if parents had to have the skill, perseverance and good luck sufficient to teach every rule of right conduct the same way they teach multiplication tables? Right conduct is so important that the tendency to it must be rapidly acquired, which suggests that children are biologically disposed to imitate behavior and learn the underlying rules by observation.

Children are intuitive moralists, equipped by nature for making distinctions and rendering judgments. Instincts founded in nature are developed in the family, strengthened by daily habits - particularly in work-and reinforced by fears of punishment and social ostracism. We acquire virtues as we acquire crafts, by the practice of them. Above all, the family transforms a child's natural sociability into a moral sense.

Most of the things likely to produce enduring happiness - education, employment, stable families - require us to forgo immediate pleasures. What happens when that discipline fails? Look around. Crime used to respond to material circumstances, declining with economic growth. Now it responds to cultural circumstances, to the diminished legitimacy of what are derisively described as "middle class values" - thrift, industriousness, deferral of gratification.

All parents are parenting against today's culture. But for disadvantaged black parents, and particularly of unmarried mothers, the lack of support from the culture is especially damaging. This is so regardless of how many (mostly white) intellectuals blandly embrace single-parent households as "alternative family systems."

Boys are harder to socialize. In modern society, aggressiveness is no longer an adaptive trait. Civilization is partly an attempt to restrain male aggressiveness, or turn it into appropriate channels. The failure of families, and work experiences, to perform that shaping function has many consequences, including Jesse Jackson' words. "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking robbery - than look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

#4114

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I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that he is indeed our Master.

... John Newton (1725-1807)

Leslie B. Flynn tells that after the American Civil War the managers of the infamous Louisiana Lottery approached Robert E. Lee and asked if he'd let them use his name in their scheme. They promised that if he did he would become rich. Astounded, Lee straightened up, buttoned his gray coat, and shouted, "Gentlemen, I lost my home in the war. I lost my fortune in the war. I lost everything except my name. My name is not for sale, and if you fellows don't get out of here, I'll break this crutch over you heads!" - Unknown

Private character and public performance are inextricably linked, according to Professor Marvin Olasky.

"There is a connection between a president being a good husband and being a good president," said Olasky.

Olasky told Land the timing for the release of his new book, "The American Leadership Tradition: Moral Vision from Washington to Clinton," was nothing short of providential, given the events of the last year in Washington. "Actually, when I began the research for the book, I had no idea that the nation would be in the middle of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal," Olasky said. "I desired to look afresh at the lives of the presidents and view their lives from a biblical perspective. I had no idea that we would be in the midst of a controversy of such magnitude that this book might seem to be written to highlight and teach lessons from the Clinton scandal.

"Nevertheless," Olasky continued, "as I was finishing the book, I had to talk more about sex than I would have, had the Clinton scandal not been so paramount. This is such an important area of our lives. If we fail to keep a promise and remain faithful in this relationship, it will become easier for us to break promises to others."

There has been a decided evolution in the nature of the U.S. presidency during the 20th century centering on their affinity for the Scriptures, Olasky said during his March 17-19 interview on the ERLC weekday broadcast.

"The way they [the presidents] read the Bible, if they read it at all, became more selective," he said. "More and more, Scripture became a political tool read more selectively and less literally. When this occurred, other areas of life became questionable and open to man-made excuses for sinful behavior."

As evidence of that premise, Land cited the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. "Here was a man who grew up Presbyterian, in the manse, with a strong biblical and moral upbringing, and yet, failed in strategic areas."

Olasky agreed, adding, "... while [Wilson was] president of Princeton [Univ.], at the age of 50, he had an affair. From that point on, he never admitted he was a sinner. He began to read the Bible more selectively. He no longer took seriously the commandment, 'You shall not commit adultery.'"

Further abetting an already sinful situation, Olasky noted Wilson actually "stated the commandment doesn't mean adultery if the woman is lonely and you could comfort her. His selective reading of that commandment transferred to other commandments so much so that before long he was lying to the country much in the same way he lied to his wife."

"Private conduct does influence public policy," Land echoed. "Yet the practice of trashing presidents with the statement that 'everybody does it' is simply not true."

Olasky noted George Washington insisted on high moral standards at a critical time for the nation, citing his strength at Valley Forge. "If he had not exhibited a strong moral character, the men would not have remained through the tough times," he said.

Commenting on contemporary culture, Olasky lamented, "We, as a nation, do not take sin seriously. We dare not discipline anyone for their conduct."

"For many reasons," Land said, "the coverage of the recent scandal evidenced an apathy by those who were reporting or speaking on behalf of the president, largely in part because if they were not doing the same thing, they wished they were."

President Warren G. Harding is hardly remembered except in the pages of history books, yet he was acclaimed to be outstanding during his day, Land said. "Largely, his conduct was questionable, but he looked presidential, gave convincing speeches and attempted to enact good legislation. Nevertheless, he was known to be a liar and adulterer. It caught up with his presidency. Today, he is virtually unknown," he explained.

"That is how I think Bill Clinton will be remembered, for many of the same reasons," Olasky said.

"We do live in a time when certain actions could result in great gain for the nation morally," Land said, with Olasky agreeing, "Scripture's command is to be salt and light. There is great promise that God might relent from judgment and help us."

"In order to be faithful to the commands of Scripture," Land said, "we must be active in the culture, always engaging in humble service to God. Our conduct and actions can make a difference to stem the tide of evil and restore moral vision to the nation."

#4636

*

Bertrand Russell's critique of Christianity has been one of this century's most conspicuous. It carried credibility because Russell was generally acknowledged to be a genius of the first rank, and because he attacked with such an intriguing mixture of passion and wit. Now that we have an excellent account of the first half of his life by Ray Monk (whose previous book was a widely acclaimed biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein), I want to raise what has always seemed to me an interesting question: Why did Bertrand Russell hate Christianity so much?

I will be speculating on the basis of Monk's account about the psychological causes of Russell's antipathy. This is risky for a mere philosopher, and I do not claim any psychological expertise. Monk doesn't either. But Russell is so articulate about his own mental states that a substantial account can be constructed without trying to go beyond what he says himself. A trained psychologist will undoubtedly see more, and see more clearly; but there is more than enough material in Russell's own words to license a layman's interest.

There is also something distasteful about an opponent mucking around in the history of somebody's personal life after his death. Should philosophers expect to have their views evaluated in the light of how they lived their lives? This is controversial. Kierkegaard, for example, condemned any attempt to separate the two, especially where the question is a philosopher's relation to God. Ethical and religious knowledge, he said, "has an essential relationship to the existence of the knower." In Russell's case there is an additional reason for overcoming the distaste. He seems to have relished inspection. He expected others to find his life fascinating and was not at all constrained by the usual sense of shame.

Monk's account is, as far as I can tell, factually accurate, and it has the great merit of being written by a philosopher. As Russell says when talking about the biographers of Socrates, he would himself rather have his biography written by an enemy who is a philosopher than by a friend who is not. It is possible to quibble with some of Monk's treatments of surrounding philosophers such as Bradley and McTaggart. Also troubling from the standpoint of objectivity is Monk's clear lack of sympathy for the piety of Russell's grandmother, who had charge of his upbringing after his parents' deaths. Monk quotes Russell's brother Frank at length to show the awfulness of the atmosphere at their grandmother's house. But the two brothers had very different relations with their grandmother, and Bertrand's feelings were always, I think, more ambivalent. By and large, however, the biography is convincing as a philosophical account as well as a personal history.

It is also well written and is, in fact, a page-turner. Monk does not spare us the gory details of Russell's betrayals and lies, his murderous rages and his devastating coldness, his arrogance and his self-pity. And yet, despite all of this, Monk clearly admires his subject and expresses both his admiration and his dislike with a dry and detached wit, which reminds one of Russell himself. Thus Monk records Russell's reaction to D. H. Lawrence's visit to Cambridge, "[He was] disgusted with Camb., but not with me." Monk adds, "[This] seemed to be just what Russell would expect from someone blessed with an infallible perceptiveness."

What keeps the reader fascinated is the unfolding of this double truth; that one of the century's brightest, most influential thinkers seems to have been at the same time capable of appalling cruelty and moral blindness.

One of Monk's major themes is that Russell was throughout his life terrified of the possibility that he might be, or might be going, mad. The cover picture of the book is a reworking of a drawing by Augustus John, which the book also contains. It is interesting to compare the cover with the drawing, because John's portrait of an eccentric has been turned into the portrait of a madman. There was indeed madness in the family, or at least so Russell was himself convinced. His grandmother used this argument in seeking to dissuade him from marrying Alys Pearsall Smith (the daughter of Hanna Whitall Smith, who wrote The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life). She found evidence of inherited instability in Alys's family as well and said it would be wrong for two people with such heredity to have children. When Russell decided to marry Alys anyway, he promised his grandmother that there would be no sleeping together. "Now that I know she is going to die soon," he wrote to Alys in justification, "I mind less giving her hopes not likely to be fulfilled."

Russell's sense of the hereditary danger was confirmed by his own experience. An informal account of what we would now call a psychopathic personality is the disorder of someone who is amoral, who harbors great rage that he usually hides, who considers almost all others inferior, and who is a pathological liar. Monk gives us evidence of all of these traits in these first 49 years of Russell's life. I am not trying to say here that Russell was a psychopath, but that he had evidence in his own life to make it reasonable for him to fear that he was predisposed to some such disorder.

There is first Russell's extraordinary lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others, except on rare and exalted occasions. Beatrice Webb, after a visit, put it this way, "[Russell] looks at the world from a pinnacle of detachment. What he lacks is sympathy and tolerance for other people's emotions." One of the most chilling examples of this trait is the story of Russell's relationship with Helen Dudley, whom he met in America and persuaded to come to England to live with him. When she arrived, he discovered he was no longer in love with her and got rid of her, as a result of which she suffered a complete and permanent mental breakdown. In his Autobiography, Russell puts it this way: "I had relations with her from time to time ... and I broke her heart."

It is not just what Russell did that is chilling, but the fact that he talks about this and other such episodes as though they had happened to somebody else. It is as though, in Kierkegaard's terms, he was merely the lookout on the mast, and not the captain of his own ship; indeed, his life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Kierkegaard's aesthete in Either/Or. It is Kierkegaard's point that the aesthete has not managed the transition into the ethical life. In this, as in so much else, Russell knew himself. He was aware of his unusual capacity for "cold-blooded immorality."

Beatrice Webb continued, "He is a good hater." Russell's desire to kill people was sometimes quite literal. Indeed, this was one of his fears about his heredity, because of the fate of his Uncle Willy, who had lost his memory and ended up in a workhouse infirmary. As in Plato's example in the Republic, the police gave Uncle Willy back a knife he owned and with it he went on a murderous rampage. When institutionalized, he continued to be prone to apparently random attacks of rage and violence. Russell had moods in which he hated the whole human race. But he also had to fight against the desire to kill quite specific people, such as his friend Fitzgerald: "On one occasion, in an access of fury, I got my hands on his throat and started to strangle him. I intended to kill him, but when he began to grow livid, I relented. I do not think he knew that I intended murder."

Russell's sense of superiority and therefore isolation is what gives Monk his subtitle, "The Spirit of Solitude." "When I am talking to an ordinary person," Russell says, "I feel I am talking baby language, and it makes me lonely." In prison because of his antiwar activities, he reports that "Life here is just like life on an Ocean Liner. One is cooped up with a number of average human beings, unable to escape except into one's own state-room." Even when the announcement came that the war was over, Russell found that "the crowd was frivolous still, and had learned nothing during the period of horror, except to snatch at pleasure more recklessly than before. I felt strangely solitary amid the rejoicings, like a ghost dropped by accident from some other planet." The biography is one long story of Russell's attempts to break out of his sense of isolation, even from his family and friends. He never succeeds, except for brief and ecstatic moments.

One of the causes is that his friends always end up ceasing to trust him because he cannot resist constantly lying to them. He seems to have been a pathological liar. This started very early, with his grandmother. He maintained the outward show of piety, while departing further and further from the Christian faith. It became, however, a recognizable pattern in all his relationships, even those he cared most about. "You simply don't speak the truth," said D. H. Lawrence to him. "You simply are not sincere." Russell himself describes the crucial row with Wittgenstein this way: "Then he said he never knew whether I was speaking the truth or being polite, so I got vexed and refused to say another word."

Finally, there are some troubling suggestions that Russell increasingly got into the habit of lying to himself. One of the almost disarming features of Russell's character is that he was clearly aware of this tendency (as he was of all the others I have mentioned).

As one might expect, both the deception and the self-deception are painfully clear in Russell's descriptions of his endlessly complicated love affairs, but self-deception is also present in his philosophical work. There was in this an intellectual dishonesty that "spread like poison" and caused him to think (as he did repeatedly) of suicide. Thus he went on lecturing and writing as though he could ignore what (in some sense) he knew, that Wittgenstein's work in the Tractatus destroyed the connection Russell was trying to make between logic and psychology. From early on he was aware of his tendency to self-deception and therefore also aware of the danger of losing touch with his "inmost self," because the "crust" he was building up around it had become so thick.

I want to make three suggestions about why Russell hated Christianity so much. Suppose we grant, first, that Russell was afraid that he might be, or might be going, mad. How did he respond to this fear? With two incompatible strategies, both present in Kierkegaard's description of the aesthete.

The first was, in Russell's own words, to "retreat to the surface." This is a metaphor that relies on a strong dichotomy between reason and emotion. Russell means that he wanted to leave all of the murky passions down below and come up for air to the clear light of the sun. This is a strategy that he implemented by "intellect tempered by flippancy." I want to suggest as a hypothesis that he thought of rejecting God and rejecting his sense of his own sin as parts of this necessary retreat to the surface.

This strategy seems to alternate, however, with another one, which is to find a healthy outlet for his impulses in his sexual relations. Thus he comments about Dostoevsky's murderous protagonist in Crime and Punishment that "where the impulse is not trivial, it produces pronounced mania ... unless some strong and healthy passion is found to replace the one resisted." He also, I think, hated Christianity because it stood against the "healthy" expression of his desires, and thus required a dangerous repression. The Christian God is the enemy, whichever of the two strategies is adopted. God is either hounding him in his internal life or trying to block him by "senseless prohibitions" from the only kind of external release that would do any good.

Second, there is strong evidence earlier in Russell's life of his making a dichotomy between reason and passion, and his locating the appeal of Christianity with the latter. There is an initial premise here about what reason requires, which (given the dichotomy) ensures that Christianity will be classed with passion. For Christianity to be credible, Russell thinks, it has to be proved. He sounds very like W. K. Clifford, whose book influenced him deeply just at the point he was rejecting Christianity as an adolescent. He reflects Clifford not only in his views but in the "robustious pathos" (as William James puts it) with which Clifford expressed them.

Clifford's principle was that Christian belief, just like any belief, needs evidence; and in the case of Christianity there was just not enough evidence for a responsible thinker to accept it. Russell imagines saying to God when he arrives at the pearly gates, "Not enough evidence." As an adolescent, he vowed to accept "only scientific arguments" for belief in God and "to reject all sentiment." But if belief in the Christian God is what some philosophers now call "properly basic," it is a mistake to think that it has to be proved at all.

This review is not the place to pursue that argument. The point here is that once Russell had convinced himself that the evidence was deficient, and that all the standard arguments for the existence of God failed, he was then free to conclude that it is only emotion that holds Christians in thrall. "I do not think," he says in Why I Am Not a Christian, "that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds."

Third, there were gods still in principle available for his intellect, namely, the god of the Platonists or, alternatively, the god of Spinoza. But because of the empiricist turn of his thought, Russell gradually ceased to believe in these gods as well. There was, first, what he calls "a retreat from Pythagoras." This was painful for Russell because he could not bear to think of rationality in other than transcendent terms, as an access to a kind of being beyond the realm of nature. But he came to think that this kind of Platonism could not be justified. And in his Autobiography he records how he lost belief even in the somewhat abstract god that Spinoza allowed himself. "I have loved a ghost," he says, "and in loving a ghost my inmost self has itself become spectral."

Russell still felt, throughout the period covered by Monk, an acute sense of the absence of God and a longing for his presence. "The longing for religion is at times almost unbearably strong," he writes to Lady Ottoline Morrell. It may be that he tended toward religiosity in his writing to her just because he perceived she liked it. But the sentiment can be found repeated in several contexts. This sense of loss is what makes me think his early response to his grandmother's piety is more complex than Monk allows. Every now and again, this longing for God breaks through, sometimes as a sense of the gap between what God wants him to be and what he is, and sometimes as a sense of the possibility that he might become better.

An example of the first kind of experience is the intense prayer for forgiveness he records in his diary as an undergraduate, after he has supposedly lost his faith, "O God forgive me; I have sinned grievously." Later, the sense of sin keeps recurring, as a kind of self-hatred. "The disgust of human life that I have been feeling lately is generally a sign of unrecognized sin." An example of the second kind of experience is what he calls his "conversion." It came after reading Gilbert Murray's translation of the Hippolytus, when Russell was with Evelyn Whitehead (Alfred North Whitehead's wife) during one of her bouts of pain. In his Autobiography he writes,

Within five minutes I went through some such reflections as the

following: the loneliness of the human soul is unendurable; nothing can

penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that

religious teachers have preached.... For a time, a sort of mystic

illumination possessed me. Having for years cared only for exactness and

analysis, I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty.

On another occasion Russell found himself on his knees in a church in Verona, praying for strength to subdue his instincts. He does not associate either experience explicitly with God, but what strikes this reader is the echoes of Russell's grandmother's piety, which was also a religion of love, duty, and suffering.

A Christian can see these experiences as God trying to break through, as the untiring chase by the hound of heaven. But Russell himself could not interpret them that way, or at least he could not do so for long. My hypothesis about why he could not do so is the one I gave earlier. The experience of God's presence and his own failure was just too painful for him, and the pain was too close to his fear of madness.

One response was the retreat to the surface and to disengagement. But like Kierkegaard's aesthete he was, paradoxically, aware of himself. He was aware that he was not only losing a substantial God but also himself turning into a ghost. Another response was to re-engage in his sexual liaisons, which in turn generated a vicious cycle of self-disgust.

It may be that this hypothesis is hopelessly amateur. But we need some explanation for Russell's hatred of Christianity. It is not merely that he thinks Christianity mistaken; he writes about it with a passion that springs from some deep personal source. This leads him to some surprising errors of judgment and overstatement, such as his claim that Christianity has been the enemy of modern science from its beginning, or his claim that religious persecution starts and ends with Judaism and Christianity.

But I am not going to try to treat these claims further here. I am looking forward to Monk's second volume, which will cover the period from 1921 to Russell's death in 1970. It will be interesting to see how the hypothesis fares about his life as the progress of a Kierkegaardian aesthete toward the various forms of despair and its denial. Will we, for example, find Russell increasingly seeking distraction in various public contexts from his internal and private failures, and increasingly distanced from any core philosophical commitments of his own? In the first volume we have, in any case, a fascinating study of Russell's rejection of God, fascinating because he and his biographer have given us such an acute and unvarnished description of this extraordinary life's trajectory.

________________________________________________________

Book reviewed --

Bertrand Russell:

The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921

By Ray Monk

Free Press

695 pp.; $35

________________________________________________________

John Hare is professor of philosophy at Calvin College and author most recently of The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God's Assistance (Oxford University Press).

Copyright(c) 1997 by Christianity Today, Inc/Books and Culture Magazine. May/June, Vol. 3, No. 3, Page 26

7B3lm7B326b7430

*

THREEFOLD DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN

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

In the New Testament completely adequate teaching is provided as to the principles of conduct the Christian will follow if he truly presents his body “a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1) and walks “in the Spirit” (Eph 5:9). In Titus 2:11-14 is to be found a convenient outline around which to group these principles. First in this passage it is majestically stated that God’s grace brings us salvation. But His grace then teaches us to live soberly, righteously and godly. These are three important lines of responsibility: the believer is to live soberly with regard to himself (Rom 12:3); righteously with regard to his fellow men; and godly with regard to the Lord. The same truth can be more or less expressed in a somewhat different way: We should seek to live in accordance with the precepts of grace because (1) this will please God (Heb 13:16) and will demonstrate our love for Christ (John 14:15); (2) it will help others (Matt 5:16; Titus 3:8,14); (3) it will bring true joy and blessing to our own hearts (John 15:10-11).

The following compilation, though not exhaustive, contains some of the most important of these precepts.

DUTIES TOWARD GOD

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

I. Positive

1. Trust Him. (Mark 11:22; John 14:1, ASV; Heb 11:6)

2. Love Him and seek to know Him better. (1 John 5:2; Phil 3:10, 15;

Jam 4:8)

3. Be thankful to Him; worship and praise Him. (John 4:23; Col 3:15;

Heb 13:15.)

4. Serve Him. (Rom 12:6-8, 11; 1 Cor 15:58)

5. Pray to Him. (Luke 18:1; Rom 12:12; Eph 6:18; Phil 4:6; Col 4:2; 1

Tim 2:2)

6. Live in accordance with His will. (Rom 12:1; Heb 13:21; Jam 4:7)

7. Walk in the Spirit. (Gal 5:16, 25; Eph 5:18)

8. Hold fast to sound doctrine and contend for the faith. (2 Tim 1:13;

Heb 13:9; Jude 3)

9. Witness for Christ. (John 15:27; Acts 1:8; 1 Pet 3:15)

10. Do everything as unto Him. (1 Cor 10:31; Eph 6:7-8; Col 3:17,23-24)

11. Be diligent in devotion and study of His Word. (John 5:39; Col 3:16;

2 Tim 2:15; Jam 4:8; 1 Pet 2:2)

II. Negative

1. Do not have idols. (1 Cor 10:7, 14; Eph 5:3; Phil 3:19; Col 3:5;

1 Tim 6:17; Heb 13:15; 1 John 5:21)

2. Do not receive false teachers. (2 John 10)

3. Do not mock or speak against God. (Gal 6:7; Col 3:8)

DUTIES TOWARD OTHER HUMAN BEINGS

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

I. Positive

1. Love all, especially our brethren. (John 15:17; Rom 12:10;

1 Cor 16:14; 1 Pet 1:22; 1 John 3:23; 4:7)

2. Be sympathetic and compassionate. (Eph 4:32; Phil 2:4; Col 3:12)

3. Forgive and forbear. (Rom 12:19; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13)

4. Deal honestly and fairly. (Rom 12:17b; 13:7; 13:13; 1 Thess 4:12;

Jam 2:1)

5. Do good to all and help all. (Rom 12:13; Gal 6:2, 10;

1 Thess 5:15; Titus 3:1; Heb 13:16; Jam 4:17; 3 John 11)

6. Tell the truth. (Eph 4:25)

7. Be courteous and live peaceably with all. (Rom 12:18;

1 Pet 2:17; 3:8)

8. Treat others as we would like for them to treat us. (Luke 6:31;

Rom 12:17a)

9. Provide a good example for others. (1 Cor 8:9, 13; Phil 2:15)

10. Urge brethren to good works and seek to restore backsliders.

(Gal 6:1; Heb 10:24)

II. Negative

1. Do not lie or bear false witness. (Eph 4:25; Col 3:9; Titus 2:3)

2. Do not steal. (Eph 4:28; 1 Pet 4:15)

3. Do not murder. (1 Pet 4:15)

4. Do not commit adultery or fornication. (1 Cor 6:18;

1 Thess 4:13)

5. Do not judge others or speak evil of them. (Rom 14:13; Titus 3:2;

Jam 4:11; cf. John 7:24)

6. Do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. (2 Cor 6:14)

7. Do not have fellowship with professing Christians who live in

scandalous sin. (1 Cor 5:11; 2 Thess 3:14)

8. Do not go to law with other believers. (1 Cor 6:lff)

9. Do not glory in men. (1 Cor 3:21)

10. Avoid troublemakers and useless disputes. (Rom 16:17; 2 Tim 2:23;

Titus 3:12)

11. Do not have unpaid debts. (Rom 13:8)

DUTIES TOWARD SELF

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

I. Positive

1. Be holy. (1 Pet 1:15; 2:11; 2 Pet 3:1)

2. Cleave to the good and do good to all. (Rom 12:9; 1 Thess 5:15)

3. Study the Word of God and meditate on sacred things.

(1 Thess 4:11; 2 Tim 2:15)

4. Grow spiritually. (2 Pet 3:18)

5. Think on good things. (Phil 4:8)

6. Think soberly of yourself. (Rom 12:3)

7. Be ambitious in the right way. (1 Cor 12:31; 14:1; 2 Cor 5:4)

8. Be content with what God gives you. (Heb 13:5)

9. Rejoice in the Lord. (Rom 12:12; Phil 3:1; 4:4; 1 Thess 5:16)

10. Live in the light of the judgment seat of Christ. (1 Cor 9:24)

11. Judge yourself and confess sins to God. (1 Cor 11:31; 2 Cor 13:5;

1 John 1:9)

12. Conserve time for good purposes. (Eph 5:11; Col 4:5)

13. Cultivate your mind. (1 Pet 1:13)

14. Do useful work. (Eph 4:28; 2 Thess 3:12)

15. Keep your body clean and in good health. (1 Cor 6:15; 6:19,20;

10:31; Rom 12:1)

II. Negative

1. Abhor evil. (Rom 12:9; 1 Thess 5:22)

2. Avoid pride. (Rom 12:3; Jam 4:10; 1 Pet 5:6)

3. Do not conform to or love the world. (Rom 12:2; 1 John 2:15)

4. Do not fellowship with evil. (Eph 5:11)

5. Do not sin through anger. (Eph 4:26)

6. Do not worry. (Phil 4:6; 1 Pet 5:7; 1 John 14:1,27)

7. Do not be lazy. (Rom 12:1)

8. Do not use filthy speech. (Eph 4:29; 5:4)

9. Do not become drunk. (Eph 5:18)

10. Do not complain. (1 Cor 10:10; Phil 2:14)

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT UNDER GRACE

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

The above list certainly shows that there are many specific commands

given to the Christian in the New Testament with regard to his conduct.

Nevertheless life under grace is not defined down to the very last detail

as was life under law. Instead grand principles are provided whereby we

may test all things if occasion should ever arise where we were in doubt

as to what we should do. For such principles the following verses should

be carefully studied:

Romans 6:4; 2 Corinthians 6:17; Ephesians 4:1; 5:1,8,15;

Colossians 1:10; 4:5; 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 4:1; 1 John 2:6.

*

"Following the path of least resistance is what makes rivers and men crooked."

Colleen Spencer

Assistant to the Executive Director of Administrative Services

University of Maine at Augusta

Former Presidents

=================

"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for tis better to be alone than in bad company."

-- George Washington

"Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you and act accordingly."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."

-- Calvin Coolidge

"If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself."

-- Woodrow Wilson

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it."

-- Harry S Truman

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation."

-- George Washington

"The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Being president is like running a cemetery; you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening."

-- President Clinton, in a speech at Galesburg, Illinois

On the Western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, a giant Sequoia lies rotting. It was a growing sapling when Christ walked the shores of Galilee. When Columbus discovered America, it was reaching maturity and it looked down from lofty heights during the American Civil War. It seemed destined to live many more centuries.

Then, a few years ago, a tiny beetle started to burrow into its bark and lay eggs that would produce other beetles. It seemed like an unequal battle at first, but the few beetles multiplied into hundreds, then into thousands, and finally into millions. First they attacked the bark, then they worked deeper into the trunk, and finally, they were eating the very heart and strength of that magnificent forest giant. Then one day, after withstanding the elements for centuries, the rain came, the winds blew, the lightning flashed, and the giant tree fell. Not because of the elements, but because of the weakening effects of those tiny beetles.

Bad habits do the same thing to people. They slowly take a toll until the day comes when the man or woman fall like that giant tree.

________

Zig Ziglar

*

The Eagle And The Wolf

There's a battle between the eagle and the wolf.

The eagle inside of me represents everything that is

good and pure.

And even though it soars through the valleys,

it still lays its eggs on the mountain tops.

There's a wolf inside of me.

And the wolf preys upon my weaknesses

and justifies itself in the presence of the pack.

Who will win the war between the eagle and the wolf?

There was a big space and then these words: "The one that you feed." I'll never forget the power of thse words scrawled on that wall. Who wins the battle for your mind? The one you choose to feed. Who wins the battle for your life? The one you choose to build on. Who wins the battle between right and wrong? The one you choose to feed.

What thoughts are you feeding? Are you filling your life with God's truth, or are you feeding it a steady diet of TV, materialism, and out-of-control habits. It's easy to become desenitized and conformed to this world. But God calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to take every thought captive, and to be doers of the Word.

By David Edwards

From the book "One Step Closer"

Famous Sayings of Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.

"Every successful man I have ever met had come at some time under the

dominating power of a great truth."

"Finish the job."

"You can do anything you ought to do."

"Don't sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate."

"You can't do wrong and get away with it."

"It is a sin to do less than your best."

"The greatest ability is dependability."

"The test of your character is what it takes to stop you."

"It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right."

"It is no disgrace to fail; it is a disgrace to do less than your best

to keep from failing."

*

HOPING SOMEONE ELSE WILL DO IT

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were slaveholders who did not believe slaveholding was right. However, being children of the Enlightenment, they believed that slavery would somehow come to an end naturally.

On Sept. 9, 1786 -- a year before the drafting of the Constitution -- George Washington wrote in a letter to John Francis Mercer, a fellow Virginian: “I never mean (unless some particular circumstance compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure, and imperceptible degrees.”

The letter is displayed with 70 other similar documents in “Seeds of Discord: The Politics of Slavery,” an exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, running through April 24. Considering these documents and their aftermath suggests what can happen if a generation sees what is right to do but leaves it for others to do. Nearly all the documents deplore slavery for humane, libertarian or religious purposes, but they leave it to succeeding generations to do something about it.

On July 18, 1824, an 81-year-old Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Lydia Howard Sigourney, a poet and advocate of women's education and Indian rights, called slavery a “blot in our moral history” and concluded: “I shall not live to see it but those who come after us will be wiser than we are, for light is spreading and man improving. To that advancement I look, and to the dispensations of an all-wise and all-powerful providence to devise the means of effecting what is right.”

These vague hopes were not fulfilled until the 13th Amendment was ratified at the end of a long and bloody Civil War. Our Founders were undeniably good men and, on most matters, farsighted. Perhaps in their time they were doing all they could. Or perhaps life was just too comfortable as it was at Mount Vernon and Monticello. Washington's slaves were freed upon his death.

The documents in this exhibition reveal how dangerous can be the consequences of leaving to our children and grandchildren the problems we should have cared enough to solve ourselves. It's not good enough to suppose that those who come after us will be wiser than we are. And it's not good enough to suppose that an all-wise and all-powerful providence will devise the means of effecting what is right, if He has already devised the means, and we are that means. -- Dale Pauls (Stamford, CT) February 1994

Daniel Hess, who wrote a book on the subject (Integrity: Let Your Yea Be Yea; Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1978), says: "Integrity is many things. It is honest weights and full bushels, accurate labels and authentic ingredients, fair prices and correct change, the trustworthy news report, the accurate tax record, a natural smile, a warm handshake, a good day's work."

Kermit Eby defined integrity when he described his Mennonite ancestors. When farmers sold their produce--a basket of apples or potatoes--they never put the biggest apples or smoothest potatoes on top because "doing so would destroy the discovery of the goodness underneath. Their produce, like their lives, were better the deeper they were penetrated."

Bobby Jones, the great golfer, illustrates integrity. He was competing in an important tournament. His ball was in the rough. As he addressed it his club hit a twig, slightly moving the ball. "The ball moved," he said turning to his caddy. "Count that a penalty stroke." "But Mr. Jones," the caddy said, "I didn't see it; nobody else did either." "I saw it," Jones said. "That's enough."

There is a famous story about a woman who was asked if she would sleep with a man for one million dollars. She replied "sure I would!" Then she was asked if she would sleep with the questioner for ten dollars, to which she replied, "Of course not, what kind of girl do you think I am?" The famous reply was, "That, my dear, has already been determined... what we are doing now is haggling over price."