Victorious Living. E. Stanley Jones
we made our way through step by step, and now it goes to the larger circle, and it goes out with prayer, that among them too may be many who will find through these pages a clear path from confused and baffled and defeated human living to living that is certain, adequate, and victorious.
E. Stanley Jones
Week 1 Sunday
Week 1 Sunday
The Question That Halts Our Quest
Job 11:7-9; 21:15; 23:3-9; John 14:8
“In the beginning” God (Gen. 1:1).
It would be well if, in our quest for “Victorious Living,” we could all begin with God. It would put a solid fact beneath our questing feet. It would give meaning and purpose to the whole of life. But, alas, many of us cannot begin there. For God is the vague, the unreal. We wish we could believe in God, and get hold of God so that we could live by God; for life without the Great Companion has a certain emptiness and meaninglessness about it. For many skepticism is not voluntary, but apparently unavoidable. The facts of life are too much for us—the unemployment, the hunger of little children, the underlying strife in modern life, the exploitation of the weak and incapacitated by the strong, the apparently unmerited suffering around us, the heartlessness of nature, the discoveries of science that seem to render the hypothesis of God unnecessary—all these things and more seem to shatter our belief in God. We do not reject that belief; it simply fades away and becomes unreal. And we cannot assert what, to us, is not real. For amid all the losses and wreckage of our modern day, we are trying to save one thing: the desire for reality. We wish to keep an inner integrity. We loathe all unreality. That leads us to face the fact that our skepticism has gone deeper than the matter of belief in God; we find ourselves questioning life itself. Has life any meaning? Any goal? Is the flame of life within us different from the flame that leaps from the logs in the fireplace—both of them the result of material forces and both destined to die down into a final ash? If it has no ultimate meaning, has it any meaning now as we live it?
O God, our Lord (if we may call you thus), as we begin this quest we are haunted with many a biting fear and with hesitation and doubt. Help us to face them all and come out, if possible, on the further side of them into victorious living. Amen.
Week 1 Monday
Follow a Life of No or a Life of Yes?
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2; 9:2-3; John 10:10
There are just two elemental philosophies of life: that of Buddha and that of Christ. The rest are compromises between. (When writer H. G. Wells chose the three greatest men of history he selected Christ, then Buddha, then Aristotle: life affirmation, life denial, and the scientific method.) The two greatest characters of history head up two diametrically different outlooks on life. Both of them looked at the same facts of life and came to opposite conclusions—one to a final yes, and the other to a final no.
Buddha, pondering under the bo tree, came to the conclusion that existence and evil are one. The only way to get out of evil is to get out of existence itself. Nirvana is so close to annihilation that scholars still doubt whether it means annihilation or not. “Is there any existence in Nirvana?” I asked a Buddhist monk in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). “How could there be?” he replied, “for if there were existence, there would be suffering.” “Is it an emptiness, a cipher?” “It is an emptiness, a cipher,” he replied with a final and decisive gesture. It is true that this is called bliss, but it is the bliss of the world-weary. In its revolt against life, the soul performs its final “hara-kiri,” clothed, it is true, with an air of sanctity and nobility. Buddha would cheat the sufferings and evils of life by getting rid of life itself. He would have us perform a sanctified suicide, not only of the physical, but of personality itself. It is a final no to life.
There is much to be said for Buddha’s position. Everything seems to be under the process of decay. The blushing bride—then the withered old woman shriveling to fit her narrow final shroud. We grasp the lurid colors of the sunset and find that we have grasped the dark—first the beauty, then the blackness.
O God, our Lord, we stand confused and dismayed, not knowing if we shall be compelled to adopt the noble pessimism of souls like Buddha. Perhaps there is another way. We hardly dare to believe it. But show us the way—the way to life, if there is such a way. Amen.
Week 1 Tuesday
Is Life a Bubble or an Egg?
Ecclesiastes 1:1-9; 2 Corinthians 5:1-4
A noble missionary drew near in spirit to Buddha when he said with a sigh, “Every new affection brings a new affliction.” Philosopher Bertrand Russell also took his stand with Buddha when he said, “All the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul which must struggle alone, with what courage it can command, against the whole weight of the universe that cares nothing for his hopes or fears.” There are many modern followers of Buddha, unconscious of course, but driven there by the hard facts of life. They worship with a sigh at the shrine of the stupa.
Standing in the midst of a Buddhist ruin, I asked the learned Indian curator why the stupa was always oval shaped. “Because Buddhism believes that life is a bubble, therefore the stupa is shaped like one,” he replied. Life is a bubble—sunnayavada (“nothingness” in Sanskrit)—at its heart! At the very thought I felt the darkness close in upon me, and my universe reeled. But as I looked at it again light seemed to dawn: “Why, it isn’t shaped like a bubble, it is shaped like an egg,” I remarked, as I felt the rock beneath my feet.
Is life a bubble, or is it an egg? Is it a bubble with nothing in it, or is it an egg filled with infinite possibilities—possibilities of growth and development and perfection? I vote for the egg view of life. I grant that even an egg, if badly handled, can turn rotten, so life can turn rotten if we handle it badly. Nevertheless, I shall have to vote on one side or the other of that question, and I shall tell you why I vote for the egg view of life.
I follow the One who saw just as deeply as and more deeply than Buddha into the sorrow, the sheer misery of life and yet came out at the other end of it all and affirmed his faith in life. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” He affirmed that life was not a bubble, but an egg. Was he right?
O God, our Lord, light gilds our darkened horizon as we listen to this Man. But will it be an ignis fatuus* that leaves us floundering in the swamp of final despair? Help us, we pray. Amen.
*Ignis fatuus, literally “foolish fire” or the light from swamp gas.
Week 1 Wednesday
In Which We Look at the Alternatives
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Is life a bubble or is it an egg? I must make my choice. On the one hand, experts tell us that the universe is slowly running down and that one day it will end in ash, carrying with it all things and all life to its final doom. Death shall reign. On the other hand, they tell us that the universe is being renewed by a silent and saving bombardment of life-giving rays, so that the last word is not being spoken by death but by life. Life shall reign. One says the universe is a bubble, the other says it is an egg.
On the one hand, they tell us that man is made up of elements that can be purchased for a few cents, so that life is only mucus and misery. On the other hand, they tell us that humanity is made in the image of the Divine, that we have infinite possibilities of growth and development before us. One says humanity is a bundle of futilities, the other says we are a bundle of possibilities.
On the one hand, they say that humans are just a composite of responses to stimuli from environment, mechanically determined and with no real power of choice. On the other hand, they say that we have sufficient freedom to determine our destiny and that the soul shapes its environment as well as being shaped by it. One says that human freedom is a bubble, the other says it is an egg.
Some say that prayer is an auto-suggesting of oneself into illusory states of mind, that nothing comes back save the echo of one’s own voice. Others say that in prayer actual communication takes place, that I link myself with the resources