A Scriptural Call for Renewal . . .

FREEDOM TO RESPOND

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure which lay hidden in a field. A man found it, and hid it; and, as a result of his joy, away he goes, and sells everything that he has, and buys the field.—Matthew 13:44

Paul Tillich once referred to religion in our time as “the lost dimension of life,” and observed that most people appear to be incapable of giving any serious thought to religion. Some are about to relegate religion to the antiquated past, insisting that it no longer has anything to say to modern man. For all practical purposes God is dead for contemporary man. Even the churches are so caught up in the sweep of secularism that the man who is serious about his religion is something of an oddball. Not only has our culture taught men how to be bishops without being religious, but it has taught men how to belong to the church without being spiritual.

A recent visitor to Russia observed that he found less interest in the sensate than in his native United States. We have to confess to our preoccupation with things and to our neglect of the higher disciplines. In terms of prayer, meditation, study, and the application of the mind to ideas we have to confess that even the church is undisciplined. In terms of social concern, whether the plight of the black man or the dope addict, we have to admit that even the church is indifferent.

This is to say that we do not behave like the man in the parable who rejoiced at what he had found, then made whatever sacrifice necessary to make it his own. It becomes a serious question as to whether most of us have really found anything. Whatever may be said of the Kingdom of God, it involves finding. And finding implies searching. Are we truly a seeking people? The greatest message of the ages has that vital word seek as part of it: Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness . . . ”

Elton Trueblood some years ago attempted to describe our problem of secularism in terms of “a cut-flower civilization”, meaning that so-called Christian America is trying to preserve its morals and values after having Cut away the roots that produced them, the Jewish-Christian tradition. It is an apt illustration for the church as well. We are too much like the cut-flower, divorced from its sources of strength and trying to stay alive in the artificial setting of a vase of water. We crowd ourselves into large hunks of real estate, busy ourselves with all sorts of services and programs, do a lot of going and spending. But we are cut away from the roots that produced us. The Christ is seldom a living reality amongst us. The Spirit of God is crowded from our hearts by our concern for things. Cut away from the roots as we are, we are no longer seekers with broken spirits. We are rather satisfied to solidify our artificialities. The vases become more elaborate, the water deeper. But still we are cut away.

One of the truly great facts of life is that man can respond to the forces brought to bear upon him. Not only can he get in our of the rain, but he can build a dam in order to harness the power of the water that falls to earth. No man has to remain the way he is. He can change if he wants to. Will or will power is nothing more than desire. We say that one can lose weight if he has the will power. We are saying that he can lose weight if he desires to be slim more than he desires to overeat.

Man is free to respond. When he finds a treasure in a field, he can ignore it or do something about it. In Jesus’ parable the man who found the treasure was overjoyed, and so there was an immediate response. He sells all he has in order to purchase the field. Jesus is telling us that it’s worth any sacrifice in order to enjoy the peace and joy of the Kingdom.

Because man is free his response to God can be negative rather than positive. The birds that sing outside my window are responding to God, so to speak, but it is not a free response since they cannot do otherwise. Being free, man must respond to his Creator in one way or another, for he is faced with an option that is alive, forced, and momentous, to use William James’ terms. It is alive because it relates personally to him as part of God’s creation; it is forced in that he must decide one way or another; it is momentous because it concerns his eternal destiny. He cannot go on and on, postponing his decision, for this is a negative response.

The man in the parable made a positive response, but such a response always calls for something of one’s self. In his case he had to sell all that he had. Any person is pleased to lay claim to a treasure he finds, but few are willing to make a sacrifice for it. In the case of the Kingdom it may be a surrender of one’s pride, or his money, or his women. He doesn’t want to give up what he loves for the sake of the treasure. The man in the parable loved the treasure in the field more than all his possessions. So his was a positive response.

He who responds negatively (which includes not responding at all) must take his flight from God. Since the price tag on the field is too high for him, he flees from it and is afar off. He may even become critical and attack the whole idea.

History is replete with such responses to God. Newton banished God from nature in his ventures into science, while Darwin banished Him from life in his evolutionary theory. Freud banished God from the human soul and Descartes banished Him from human thought. Karl Marx in his dialectical materialism banished God from society, while Nietzsche banished Him from existence, thus bequeathing to us the “God is dead” viewpoint.

God confronted each of these men as He confronts us all. Each one passed through the field, in his own peculiar circumstance, and saw the treasure, but did not experience sufficient joy to pay the price for the field. Not wanting God enough they chose instead to banish Him.

James Russell Lowell spoke this way of man’s confrontation with God:

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide;

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.

—the Editor