IN
MEMORIUM
W.
L. THOMPSON
It
was the fall of 1968 when I first met Jim Swinney. He visited the
First Christian Church of Reno to see what this group of Christians
meant by Christian faith and commitment. This was not an easy step
for Jim to take; all his Christian heritage discouraged such seeking.
However, Jim was searching.
His
religious heritage included carefully worked out answers to all
life’s problems, neatly packaged. The wrappings covered answers
that increasingly seemed inadequate to him. His education had
included the A.B. degree as well as the Ph.D. (the latter was in
Speech from the University of Southern California). His experience
was broadened by an unhappy early marriage and his constant
subjection to the probing questions of young university minds. He
wanted answers that were rooted more firmly in reality. Doctrinal
systems had been his bread and butter from youth; he had them
memorized and could debate them, taking either side, at will. He had
found doctrinal systems powerless to answer life’ s deepest
questions. “Who am I” “What is my purpose?”
What does God want of my life?”
From
the fall of 1968 until his untimely death, in an air crash, we were
very close friends. He shared with me the trauma of his transition
from binding dogma to liberating faith. He always hoped someone would
understand the earnestness and genuineness of his search. I sought to
offer that understanding. At the First Christian Church of Reno he
had an opportunity to rethink the basis and nature of his faith. As a
gospel preacher I sought to point him to the living Christ through
whom new life can come, while not finding fault with any of the
doctrinal systems he had learned by rote.
Jim
was a great debater. Along about the spring of 1969 he made this
comment to me: “Bill, I am convinced that if a religious truth
is so obscure that it has to be debated, it cannot be important to
God.” No statement was of more liberating influence for a young
man whose grandfather was one of America’s most powerful men of
words. I could not agree with him more.
The
First Christian Church of Reno provided a home for Jim, as he
searched the Scriptures afresh for their hidden meaning. Few people
who heard his lessons or his sermons knew that he was dealing with
his own soul as he taught and preached. Few knew that his loyalty to
his past, a past that related him to those he loved dearest, his
parents, was in constant conflict with his loyalty to Jesus Christ.
Some in the church, thinking their denominational loyalty was
essential to their own salvation, offered inadequate support to one
whose search might have helped even them to come into the full light
of Christian freedom. Most in the church joined with Jim in a new and
exciting effort to find the essential core of faith.
I
flew up over the ridge, over south Lake Tahoe, with Jim when he took
me to a meeting at Stockton in the spring of 1969. We met with
preachers who were planning for a summer youth camp. It was a
beautiful flight, there and back. Jim loved to soar into the sky—he
could see widely and think clearly. We talked of many things that
day. Now that same ridge, just east of the lake, has claimed his
life.
The
day the news came to me I had just written Jim to tell him he was
second on the list of choices to address the preachers who might
attend the 8th Assembly of the World Convention of Churches of Christ
to meet in Adelaide, Australia, in 1970. We wanted him to deal with
the communication of the faith in an age of pulpit doubt! What a
magnificent address he would he able to deliver.
Farewell to you, Jim! May the living God, who is so much larger than doctrinal systems theologies and organizations, receive you unto Himself, as His child of faith. May your golden voice fill heaven itself as you praise our common Lord Jesus Christ.
_______________
W. L. Thompson is executive director, European Evangelistic Society, Box 268, Aurora, Illinois 60507.