CAUGHT IN THE SMOKE OF OUR OWN CHIMNEY

When I was a boy living in Mineral Wells, Texas, my birthplace, we had a stubborn old fireplace that would sometime, when the wind was contrary, fill our livingroom with as much smoke as went up the chimney. We were often caught in the smoke of our own chimney, and there wasn’t much we could do about it

This metaphor, which I borrow from Alexander Campbell, may be applied to things religious, such as the way we think about those we believe to be wrong—“brothers in error” we call them, if they are brothers at all. We are slow to see that we are all in error about some things, for none of us has perfect knowledge. Campbell spoke of those who through no fault of their own seem never able to escape the smoke of their own chimney. We all are sometimes victimized by the chimney’s down draft and get caught in the smoke of sectarian strife. Even with help it is sometimes next to impossible to escape the smoke.

Error is of two sorts, intentional and unintentional. When error is intentional it is reflective of a bad heart and is subject to censure from both man and God; when it is unintentional it tends to be forgivable. To put it another way, errors of the heart (conscience) are more serious than errors of the mind (understanding). Many a good man has been mistaken, but if he is truly a good man with an honest heart his mistakes will be unwillful. One with an honest and good heart is never willfully wrong. It is the person with a bad heart and evil intentions that is culpable, deserving; censure from God and society alike.

There are those who cannot escape from the pain of ignorance, poverty, illiteracy, and sectarianism. They would like to escape but the smoke of their privations is too thick.

This episode from George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” later presented on stage and screen as “My Fair Lady,” illustrates what I am saying: Pickering: I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins’ intentions are entirely honorable.

Doolittle: Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn’t I’d ask fifty pounds.

Higgins (revolted): Do you mean to say that you would sell your daughter for fifty pounds?

Doolittle: Not in a general way I wouldn’t; but to oblige a gentleman like you I’d do a good deal, I do assure you.

Pickering: Have you no morals, man?

Doolittle: Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Lisa is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?

Higgins (troubled): I don’t know what to do, Pickering. There can be no question that as a matter of morals it’s a positive crime to give this chap a farthing. And yet I feel a rough sort of justice in his claim.

Doolittle: That’s it, Governor. That’s all I say. A father’s heart, as it were.

While we can’t see in Doolittle a paragon of virtue, we may be inclined to agree with Higgins that there is “a rough sort of justice in his claim.” Being poor had haunted him all his life, too poor to afford the rich man’s morals. He has been caught in the smoke of his own chimney. He will not do anything for money, such as sell his daughter into prostitution, but he’s willing to profit from her good fortune. He is disarmingly honest and free of hypocrisy. The playwright is showing us that poverty and riches give people different perspectives. Might we also conclude that God will judge each of us in reference to the degree that we are caught in the smoke of our own chimney? It is tempting for us to judge others in the light of our own situation in life.

I recall an illustration that my dear friend Carl Ketcherside gave in an address shortly before his death. In his inner-city ministry in St. Louis he had befriended this wino named Gus, who had been a “loser” all his life, a drifter who was never able to put it together. When Carl talked with him about spiritual values, he could only respond that he had tried everything, including religion, but nothing worked. Carl told how they found him in the alley one night not only drunk but frozen to death. He went to the morgue to see his friend for the last time, cold and still in death. I was touched when Carl said, as if he were talking to himself, “I wonder what God will do with old Gus.”

It reminded me of how much Carl had changed since we first met nearly 40 years earlier. Back then he would have had no doubt about what God does with drunkards, and he would have had proof-texts. But once he lived among drunks, derelicts, and prostitutes like Jesus did, he was much less judgmental. He learned what Campbell was saying, that some people never escape from the smoke of their own chimney. When we become more like our Lord, we too will not see the world out there in terms of condemning it but of saving it.

Campbell had his own illustration for this which he couched in an imaginary conversation between Martin Luther and a monk named Erastian. The monk asked Luther what he thought had become of his pious parents who had died in the Catholic Church. Luther was confident that not only they but his grandparents as well were all in heaven, for they were all devout Catholics. “In the name of St. Peter and St. Paul,” Erastian retorted, “why have you raised all this fuss in Germany and throughout the world? Do you expect anything better than to go to heaven when you die?”

Luther conceded that there is nothing better than going to heaven, but that he could not have gone to heaven had he remained in the Roman church. Then how could his parents?, asked the monk. “I have been favored with more knowledge than they,” said Luther. “They lived in conformity to all they knew, and died in the church,” he went on to say, “I live in conformity to what I know, and have left the church.”

Campbell goes on to have Luther say that each person must obey the light that God has given him, and that no one can be justified today by the knowledge that he had yesterday. The greater the light the greater the responsibility. One cannot be saved by living according to the knowledge of his ancestors but by his own knowledge.

Campbell is saying that while Luther’s parents did not escape the smoke of their own chimney, Luther did. Since Luther saw the light more clearly than they he had to do what they did not know to do. He has Luther stating a crucial truth: As the brain grows the heart should grow. Here Campbell, under the rubric of an imaginary conversation between Luther and a monk, sets forth a vital Biblical truth, the principle of available light. It is a truism that no one can be held responsible for what he does not know and cannot know. He cannot obey what he does not know to obey. The Bible states it well: “It is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have” (2 Cor. 8:12). That not only applies to money, which is the subject in context, but to knowledge and understanding as well.

The crucial issue in all this is whether one is willfully or unwillfully ignorant, and we may have to conclude that many are ignorant by choice. This is evident when they disregard what light they have, whether little or much. Paul placed himself in the class of those who were unwillfully ignorant. Even though he had been a persecutor, a blasphemer, and an insolent man, “I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief’ (I Tim. 1:13). Paul was once an unbeliever but not a disbeliever. The distinction is vital. The unbeliever is what he is because he’s caught in the smoke of his own chimney; he doesn’t believe because he’s never heard, never had the opportunity. The disbeliever has received the light and rejected it, which makes him self-condemned. You will find in Scripture that it is always the disbeliever that is condemned, never the unbeliever, even though some translations do not make this distinction as clearly as others.

It was this kind of thinking that led Campbell to his incisive definition of a Christian, which he gave in the now famous Lunenburg Letter: “A Christian is one who believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will.” But this does not satisfy the essentialist who thinks in terms of exact conformity to the ordinance of baptism (immersion). The essentialist tends to neglect the heart and honest intent, while the non-essentialist may minimize the significance of the ordinance. Campbell sought to strike a balance. The penitent believer is of course to submit to every ordinance of God, Campbell is saying, but only according to his understanding of God’s will. It is the principle of available light applied.

If Campbell is right, then we can be a Movement with such a slogan as “We are Christians only, but not the only Christians.” Since only one percent of the professed Christians of the world have been immersed as adult believers, the slogan has no meaning if 99% are rejected as Christians. While Campbell championed the cause of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, he believed that there were Christians who had not yet arrived at this “measure of understanding.” He himself was an example of this. He was immersed as an adult after being sprinkled as an infant, but he believed he was a Christian before he was immersed in that he had always followed Christ according to the light he had.

Such ones are caught in the smoke of traditional infant sprinkling and mistakenly suppose they have correctly conformed to the ordinance of baptism. They may be mistaken, but it is a mistake of the head, not of the heart. They often have more piety and better morals than the essentialist for immersion, Campbell observed, and all through history such ones have often been persecuted for their faith and laid down their lives for the cause of Christ. To say that such ones are not Christians because they may have an imperfect baptism is to imply that the immersionist is perfect simply because he has been correctly immersed. We are all imperfect Christians, Campbell is saying, only in different respects.

And where is the grace of God in all this? If it is a matter of being exactly right, where is the grace? We are not saved because we are in the right church or because we were baptized exactly the right way or take the Lord’s supper at exactly the right time or go to church the right number of times. It is by God’s grace. When we come to see baptism, not as our exact compliance but as God’s act of grace, then we can meaningfully refer to ourselves as Christians only but not the only Christians. It is only God’s grace that makes that motto true.

And we will then understand that God’s grace takes account of those who are caught in the smoke of their own chimneys. And we will see that that includes us and that we too must rely on that grace that is greater than all our sins.—the Editor