Irresponsibility - Chambers, Oswald
Every christian worker has to decide this question, viz. , is jesus christs mind infallible, or is the modern western mind infallible? The tendency abroad to-day is to think ourselves infallible, and the bible a jumble up of the most extraordinary stuff, good stuff, but we cannot be expected to accept all its views. That means, we believe ourselves more likely to be infallible than jesus christ. We would repudiate this statement if made baldly, but we all act as if it were true, we all take for granted that jesus christs teachings are nonsense; we treat them with respect and reverence, but we do not do anything else with them, we do not carry them out. For the past three hundred years men have been pointing out how similar jesus christs teachings are to other good teachings. We have to remember that christianity, if it is not a supernatural miracle, is a sham.
1. This lifes use wasted
for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (mark 8:36)
the most literal meaning of losing ones life is, of course, dying by accident; . . . If a man loses his life by accident, what is the whole world to him?
Stalker
Jesus says that life is the opportunity god gives to man to do his life work; that means that god has no respect whatever for our programmes and machinery. Our lord insists on one thing only, gods purpose for him; he pays not the remotest attention to civilised forces, he estimates nothing but one standard. According to our standards he was idle; for three years he walked about saying things. It is only by putting these violent contrasts before our minds that we understand how different our lords standpoint to life is compared with ours. We bend the whole energy of our lives to machinery, and when an accident happens and the machinery breaks up we say, what a disaster. Probably it was the emancipation of the mans life. We make nests here and there, competences here and there, but god has no respect for any of them; at any minute he may send a wind and over goes the whole thing. The one thing god is after is character.
Not only has the creator appointed to every human being, in the constitution of his manhood, a certain stature to which he may and ought to attain; but he has appointed a corresponding task for him to fulfil, determined by the providential circumstances in which he is placed. In fact, this is his life; and not to fulfil this god-appointed pur- pose of his existence is to lose his life.
Stalker
it is along these fundamental lines that we under- stand why the bible says, there is a way which see- meth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death; why Solomon said, god made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions (rv ); and why he further said, trust in the lord with all thine heart, and lean not upon thine own understanding (rv); and why our lord said, let not your heart be troubled. The characteristic of a man who is not based on the issue of his life is an incessant cunning, crafty, commercial worry. Our lord was absolutely devoid of that. What we call responsibility our lord never had, and what he called responsibility men are without. Men do not care a bit for jesus christs notion of their lives, and jesus does not care for our notions. There is the antagonism. If we were to estimate ourselves from our lords standpoint, very few of us would be considered disciples.
This idea lay near to the heart of jesus, first of all, in relation to himself. He thoroughly realised, from first to last, that he had a work to do, so accurately arranged and fitted to the length of his life that every hour had its own part of the whole to clear off, and he was not allowed either to anticipate or lag behind.
Stalker
To-day we hold conferences and conventions and give reports and make our programmes. None of these things were in the life of jesus, and yet every minute of his life he realised that he was fulfilling the purpose of his father (e. G. John 9:4). How did
He do it? By maintaining the one relationship, and it is that one relationship he insists on in his disciples, and it is the one we have lost in the rubbish of modern civilisation. If we try and live the life jesus christ lived, modern civilisation will fling us out like waste material; we are no good, we do not add anything to the hard cash of the times we live in, and the sooner we are flung out the better.
In st. Johns gospel this aspect of our lords life is more elaborately worked out than anywhere else. It is indicated in the other gospels (see luke 2:49; 13:32; 12:50). Jesus knew he was here for his fathers purpose and he never allowed the cares of civilisation to bother him. He did nothing to add to the wealth of the civilisation in which he lived, he earned nothing, modern civilisation would not have tolerated him for two minutes.
It will be remembered how frequently he represented this life as a trust or stewardship (see luke 19:13). On one occasion jesus manifested extra- ordinary irritation . . . At the sight of a tree that was barren (mark 11:1214); but this was a manifestation of an impatience, which beset him always, with objects that were not answering the end of their existence.
Stalker
In our lords mind any created thing which fails in making anything of its purpose is contemptible (see luke 13:69). Jesus attitude to roman and grecian civilisation was one of superb contempt. Our attitude to greece and rome is one of un-bonneted reverence, with not so much as the cast of an eye for jesus christ. Our lord followed life from his fathers standpoint, to-day we are caught up in the shows of things. Take the bible attitude to men on the whole, civilisations are despatched at a minutes notice, armies come together and annihilate one another and god seems to pay no attention. His attitude is one which makes us blaspheme and say that he does not care an atom for human beings. Jesus christ says he does, he says he is a father, and that he, Jesus, is exactly like his father. The point is that jesus saw life from gods standpoint, we don’t. We wont accept the responsibility of life as god gives it to us, we only accept responsibility as we wish to take it, and the responsibility we wish to take is to save our own skins, make comfortable positions for ourselves and those we are related to, exert ourselves a little to keep ourselves clean and vigorous and upright; but when it comes to following out what jesus says, his sayings are nothing but jargon. We name the name of christ but we are not based on his one issue of life, and jesus says, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole worldand he can easily do it and lose his own soul?
2. This souls way missed
or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (mark 8:37)
The attitude of our lords mind is this, that the eternal condition of a mans spirit is determined by his soul life in this order of things.
The loss of oneself in missing ones opportunities of moral and spiritual development . . . May end in the loss of the soul in the awful sense of being cast away for ever. On this solemn subject the teaching of our lord is extraordinarily copious; indeed, it is to him that the popular conceptions about a day of judgement and the retributions of a future existence are due.
Stalker
The modern christian laughs at the idea of a final judgement. That shows how far we can stray away if we imbibe the idea that the modern mind is infallible and not our lord. To his mind at least the finality of moral decision is reached in this life. There is no aspect of our lords mind that the modern mind detests so fundamentally as this one. It does not suit us in any shape or form. The average modern mind reads such passages as luke 16:2324 and says our lord was only using figurative language. If the pic- ture is so dreadful figuratively, what must the reality be like? The things our lord talks about are either arrant nonsense or they are a revelation of things that the common sense of man can never guess. The atti- tude of jesus is outside our standards in every way. We must face the music nowadays as we have never faced it. Christianity is a complete sham or a super- natural miracle from beginning to end; immediately we admit it is a miracle we are responsible for walk- ing in the light of what we know Jesus christ to be.
To our lords mind the definiteness of the finality of punishment was as clear as could be, and noth- ing but lack of intelligence ever makes us say he did not put it in that way, and if those of us who take him to be lord and master, take him to mean what he says, where ought we to be in regard to these questions? The majority of us are apologetic about the teachings of jesus, we are much too easily cowed by modern good taste. The modern mind is the infallible god to the majority of us. A man like blatchford, who simply puts Jesus christ on one side, is in a much more wholesome state. It is far better to do that than accept jesus and leave out what we dont like. That is to be a traitor and a deserter.
The parables in the 25th chapter of st. Matthew are three aspects of the divine estimate of life. Beware Of being an ingenious interpreter. You will always find at the basis of our lords parables and illustrations a fundamental consistency to his revelation. The parable of the ten virgins reveals that it is fatal from our lords standpoint to live this life with- out preparation for the life to come. That is not the exegesis, it is the obvious underlying principle. The parable of the talents is our lords statement with regard to the danger of leaving undone the work of a lifetime. And the description of the last judgement is the picture of genuine astonishment on the part of both the losers and the gainers of what they had never once thought about. To be accustomed to our lords teaching is not to ask, what must i do to be good? But, what must i do to be saved? How long does it take us to know what the true meaning of our life is? One half second.
Oh, we’re sunk enough here, God knows!
But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure tho’ seldom, are denied us
When the spirit’s true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And apprise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.
There are flashes struck from midnights,
There are fire-flames noondays kindle,
Whereby piled-up honours perish
Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle,
While just this or that poor impulse,
Which for once had play unstifled,
Seems the sole work of a life-time
That away the rest have trifled.
Robert Browning
There never was anyone who did not have one moment when all the machinery tumbled away and he saw the meaning of his life. God pays not the remotest attention to our civilised cultures and our attitude to things, because that is not what we are here for. We Are here for one thing to glorify god. That is where we join issue with the lord jesus christ to-day, and we look at every other thing as life what shall we eat? Or, what shall we drink? Or, wherewithal shall we be clothed? Our lord came for one purpose only, to reveal god, and to get men to be spiritually real. If we would have the blunt courage of ordinary human beings and face the teachings of jesus, we would have to come to one of two conclusions either the conclusion his contemporaries came to, that he was devil-possessed, or else to the conclusion the disciples came to, that he is god incarnate. Jesus christ will not water down his teaching to suit our weakness in any shape or form; he will not allow us to cringe in the tiniest degree. Whenever there is a trace of cringing or whining, or wanting some- thing different from what he wants, it is the stern front of the son of god uncloaking sin every time we look at him; but if we come as paupers, what happens? Exactly the opposite.
He will lift us up and wash us whiter than snow, and put the holy ghost in us and place us before the throne of god, undeserving of censure, by the sheer omnipotence of his atonement. What we have to get hold of in our moral lives is that jesus christ demands that we live his holy life out naturally. Despair is always the gateway of faith. If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth (rv ). So many of us get depressed about ourselves, but when we get to the point where we are not only sick of ourselves, but sick to death, then we shall understand what the atonement of the lord jesus christ means. It will mean that we come to him without the slightest pretence, without any hypocrisy, and say, lord, if you can make anything of me, do it, and he will do it. The lord can never make a saint out of a good man, he can only make a saint out of three classes of people the godless man, the weak man, and the sinful man, and no one else, and the marvel of the gospel of gods grace is that Jesus christ can make us naturally what he wants us to be.