Victorious Living. E. Stanley Jones
heightened and life is strengthened and purified at its center. One says prayer is futile, the other says it is fertile.
O God, our Lord, we want life, but not false life. Show us if there is real life, and if there is, help us to choose it. Amen.
Week 1 Thursday
In Which We Continue to Look at the Alternatives
Psalm 42:1-5; 53:1
On the one hand are those who tell us that God is an unnecessary hypothesis, that science can explain all, that the interstices and gaps of the universe into which we used to put the working of God are being slowly but surely filled up by science, so that the universe is self-sufficient, law-abiding, and predictable.
On the other hand are those who tell us that God is not to be found in the gaps and interstices and in an occasional breaking into the process, but that God is in the process itself, the life of its life; that the universe is dependable because God is dependable; that it works according to law because God’s mind is orderly, not whimsical and notional; that since intelligence comes out of the universe and meets my intelligence it must have gone into it, so that according to Sir James Hopwood Jeans, the twentieth-century English physicist: “the universe is more like a thought than a machine”; that since the universe seems to work toward purposive ends, we must either endow matter with intelligent purposes (in which case it would not be mere matter), or we must put a purposive creative Intelligence in and behind the process; that since the universe—from the tiniest atom to the farthest star—is mathematical, we must either believe that matter has sufficient intelligence to be mathematical, or else that “God is a pure mathematician.”
It would seem that the purposive-matter hypothesis takes more sheer credulity than the notion of an Infinite Spirit, called God, who is within the process working toward intelligent moral ends, inviting our limited spirits to work with him toward intelligent, redemptive purposes.
One says the idea of God is a bubble, the other says it is an egg. I must make my choice.
O God, our Lord, shall I rule you out and vote for a dead universe, dead because its final goal is death? Or shall I vote for a living universe with you as its genesis, with you as its perpetual Creator and with you as its goal and end? Clarify my mind, my heart, that I may not lose myself and you in the maze of things. Amen.
Week 1 Friday
In Which We Still Continue to Look at the Alternatives
2 Corinthians 13:3 (Moffatt); 2 Timothy 2:8; Hebrews 1:1-3
On the one hand are those who tell us that Christ is a spent force in humanity; that Thomas Carlyle (nineteenth-century Scottish satirist) was right when he stood before the Italian wayside crucifix, slowly shook his head, and said, “Poor Fellow, you have had your day.” They tell us that his day is over because he spoke to a simple age, but now we face a complicated, scientific age; that he was good, but not good enough for us.
On the other hand are those who feel (with the Carlyle of later years) that his day is just beginning; that what has failed has been a miserable caricature and not the real thing; that even the partial application of his teaching and spirit has been the one thing that has kept the soul of humanity alive; that he has been and is the depository and creator of the finest and best in humanity; that when we have hold of him we have the key to God, to the meaning of the universe, and to our own lives; that when we expose ourselves to him in simplicity and obedience, life is changed, lifted, renewed; that he is the one really unspent force in religion. Jesus faces this age as the Great Contemporary and Judge. One says that dependence upon Jesus is a bubble, an illusion; the other says it is an egg with untold redemptive possibilities.
On the one hand are those who say that conversion is an adolescent phenomenon; coincident with and caused by the awakening of the sex instinct; or that it is the result of mob-suggestion, easily induced and quickly evanescent. On the other hand, many affirm that this change called conversion helps them control and redirect the powers of the sex instinct, and that, far from being mob-suggestion, it helps them to cut across the purposes of both the mob and the self when they are wrong. One says that conversion is a bubble, the other says that it is an egg.
O God, our Lord, hold us steady as we face the issues. May there be no dodging, no turning to irrelevancies, and no excuses. Save us to the real. Amen.
Week 1 Saturday
In Which We Make Our Choice
Joshua 24:15; Matthew 4:17-22
The issues of life are before me, I must vote for or against a view of life that has worth, purpose, and goal. If I vote that the universe has no meaning, then I vote that my own life has none. But if my life has no meaning and hence no purpose, it will go to pieces. Psychology tells us that without a strong controlling purpose, which coordinates life, the personality disintegrates through its own inner clashes—no purpose, no personality.
But my purpose must be high enough to lift me out of myself. If my purposes end with myself, again I disintegrate. They must include God, who gives basis and lasting meaning to my purpose. If I lose God, I lose myself, my universe, everything. I see that the eighteenth-century French critic Voltaire was right when he said, “If there is no God, we will have to invent one to keep sane.”
If I let go of Christ, then God becomes the Distant, the Vague, the Unreal. In Christ, I find “the near side of God.” In him, God speaks to me a language I can understand, a human language. And as I listen to that language, my universe seems to become a Face—tender, strong, forgiving, and redemptive. Law becomes Love.
If I do not sincerely get in touch with him through the written Word, I neglect the greatest and most redemptive fact of history, and I pay the penalty of being unfed at the place of my deepest need. If I do not pray, I shall probably become cynical and shallow. If I do pray, I shall probably get nerve and courage, a sense of adequacy, power over wayward desires and passions. If I undergo a moral and spiritual change called conversion, I shall probably be unified, morally straight, and spiritually adjusted. If I do not, I shall probably become a stunted human soul.
If I must vote, then I do. I vote for Life.
O God, our Lord, I make the choice. I do choose life with all its fullest, deepest implications. Help me to find life and live it victoriously. Amen.
Week 2 Sunday
Week 2 Sunday
Why Are We Religious?
Matthew 5:48; Romans 8:19-23 (Weymouth)
There are a hundred and fifty or more various definitions of religion. One says it is “what we do with our solitariness”; another that it is “how we integrate ourselves socially”; another that “the root of religion is fear,” and so on.
The reason that it is so difficult to define is that life is difficult to define. When we define religion in terms of its various manifestations, we get partial, sometimes contradictory definitions. Religion, having many forms, has one root. That root is in the urge after life, fuller life. In everything, from the lowest cell clear up to the highest man, there is an urge toward completion, toward perfection; “all creation, gazing eagerly as if with outstretched neck”(Rom. 8:19 Weymouth). The religious urge is found in that urge for more complete life. It is that urge tuned toward higher, nobler ends. We feel that we cannot be complete unless this urge for life is fastened upon the highest life, God. Religion is the urge for life turned qualitative. It is not satisfied with life apart from quality. The urge for quantitative life reached its crest in the dinosaurs. That failed; it was a road with a dead end. The huge animals died. In human beings, the life urge turns from being merely big to being better. The qualitative and the moral emerge.
We are religious, then, because we cannot help it. We want to live in the highest, fullest sense, and that qualitative expression of life is called religion. So religion is not a cloak we can put on or off; it is identified with life itself. We are all incurably religious. Even the Communists, though repudiating religion, are deeply religious. They want a better social order. They may be right or wrong in the method of getting it, but the very desire for a better