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Week 5 Sunday

Week 5 Sunday

Am I Truthful?

Acts 5:1-11

One of the test questions of character is this: Will I lie? And yet how easy it is to lie—even for religious people—the willingness to twist a meaning to gain a point, to misquote if the misquotation gains an end, to exaggerate to make impressions, to present less than the whole truth in making appeals for funds, or to misrepresent goods for sale! What is at the basis of this looseness with the truth? Is it not often in the fact that we think a lie is sometimes justifiable?

I once asked some students whether a lie is ever justifiable and got these answers: (1) yes, in business, (2) in politics, (3) to save a life, and (4) in war. One argued (5) that it is all right to tell a little lie on behalf of a great cause. She wasn’t sure of a big lie! The students thought that the ability to lie well was an asset. They did not see it as a liability.

Get hold of the two principles that Presbyterian mission leader Robert Elliott Speer lays down: First, God cannot lie. Second, God cannot delegate to you the privilege of lying for God. Truth is inviolable. The early Christians standing before Roman tribunals—their lives in the balance—could tell the slightest lie and be saved. They refused. They could die, but not lie. A Hindu doctor asked the compounder (pharmacist) why he didn’t give the two women before him their prescriptions. He affirmed he had. The women said he hadn’t. The doctor turned and said: “Go get those papers. Don’t you know who these women are? They are Christians, and Christians never lie.”

Christians never lie. When we do lie, we are not Christian. The Scripture is unequivocal at this point. “Don’t lie to each other. Take off the old human nature with its practices” (Col. 3:9 CEB). If lies are still there, no matter how religious we may be, we are still in the old life.

O crystal Christ, make me from this moment transparent with nothing covered, nothing which I must conceal from myself or others. I ask for truth in the inward parts. I will do my share. Amen.

Week 5 Monday

Am I Honest?

1 Corinthians 6:8-11; 2 Corinthians 6:3; 8:20-21

The second question of character is this: Am I honest?

It is not easy to be absolutely honest with ourselves because of what psychology calls the tendency to rationalization. This means that we are seldom objective in our attitudes toward ourselves. We set our minds to work, not upon the facts as they are, but upon the business of inventing reasons for our conduct. The man in the parable who was negligent with his talent laid the blame on the hardness of the master (see Matt. 25:14-30). That was rationalization. A man allows himself to fall in love with another man’s wife, and then proceeds to rationalize by talking to himself about the sacredness of this feeling of love until black looks white. The mind has played a trick on him. He is self-deceived.

We need the objectivity and honesty of the youth who said to me: “I cannot keep my degree. It is the badge of my shame. I got help in my examination. I am going to send it back to the university.” He did so, and the vice-chancellor replied: “The end of education is to produce honest character. You now seem to be an honest man. We hope you will keep the degree.”

But will God forgive the sin of dishonesty without such restitution? How can God do this? God can forgive the sin of the act only as we are willing to restore. We may not be able to restore all at once, but we must be willing; God sometimes has to take us on faith. One of the most honored and loved members of our ashram put in his budget of need an item to pay back by monthly installments a pre-Christian dishonesty. He is forgiven and happy and useful.

Am I willing to cut out—ruthlessly to cut out—of my life every dishonest thing no matter how deep the humiliation may be?

O you relentless Pursuer of our souls, you are not content to leave us half sick, you have your finger on our cancers. Help us not to beg off from the surgeon’s knife. Cut, O Christ, deeply if need be. But make us well. Amen.

Week 5 Tuesday

Am I Pure?

Matthew 5:27-28; 1 Corinthians 6:15-20

Regarding character, the question of purity is fundamental. The battle of life will probably not rise above the sex battle. If life sags at that place, it will probably sag all down the line.

Obviously, the first thing to do in this matter of purity is to acknowledge the fact of sex. To act as though there are no such things as sex-desires in us is to repress them, and a complex is set up in the subconscious. This brings nervous trouble and probable breakdown. Every normal person has sexual desire. There is no shame in this. It is a part of our makeup. The question is not whether we have sexual desire, but whether this desire has us. As a servant of the higher purposes of life it is a wonderful servant, giving drive and beauty to the rest of life. As a master, it is hell.

Have we victory or defeat at this place? A young man threw himself into a chair in front of me: “Give me a prescription,” he said bluntly. “I’m desperately sick. Everything is wrong with me morally.” This seemed encouraging, for he was apparently ready to face the facts of his life. But when I got down to the facts, he wasn’t honest. He dodged. Apparently honest in general, he was not honest in particulars. When I came to the question of purity, he said, “Well, I do go to women, but I would not consider myself a fallen man. I am not in the gutter.” Not in the gutter though the gutter was in him! And yet, because he was a non-Christian, I could excuse him in a way, but could not excuse myself or you who have come under the influence of a Master who set the place of guilt not merely in the outer act, but in the inward thought. “But I say to you that every man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

Am I committing adultery in act or in thought? If so, will I surrender it? Now? Or will I pray the prayer of the unregenerate Saint Augustine, “Make me pure, but not now.” O You of the pure mind, the pure habit, the pure act, cleanse the festering places of my heart and make me from this hour—a person of purity. I consent to have it done. Amen.

Week 5 Wednesday

Am I Easily Offended or Am I Loving?

Ephesians 4:31-32; Colossians 3:12-14

Yesterday we tested our characters at the place of the sins of the flesh. Today we must test them at the place of the sins of the disposition. Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond calls our attention to the two manifestations of sin in the younger brother and the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). The younger son sins low down in his flesh: in his lusts and appetites. The elder brother sins high up in his disposition: in his bad temper, in his lack of love, in his smallness of soul, in his unwillingness to cooperate and forgive.

Now, we despise the sins of the flesh. They are not respectable. But the sins of the disposition are sometimes highly respected. If a person commits adultery, we condemn the action and perhaps the person. But if someone sins in disposition—is bad-tempered and selfish—we say it is just that person’s personality! And yet it is quite probable that the sins of the disposition do as much harm to the kingdom of God as the sins of the flesh. Perhaps more. Bad-tempered, touchy, and quarrelsome religious people do as much harm to the kingdom of God as drunkards or adulterers. Suppose the younger brother had met the elder brother on the road to their father’s house? One look and he would have turned back to the far country, driven back by a wrong spirit. Psychology says that fear and anger “form the basis for most of our unhappiness. They are impossible to integrate into a healthy personality.”*

Am I prepared to face the fact of my irritability and bad temper and to consent to have the whole thing taken out—even if it involves a major operation?

O Christ of the quiet, disciplined heart, you who did stand poised and unruffled amid the grossest insults and provocations, give to me that loving, disciplined spirit that I may go through life with healing goodwill. In your name. Amen.

* Ernest M. Ligon, The Psychology of Christian Personality (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 16.

Week 5 Thursday

Am I Selfish or Are My Powers Dedicated?

Philippians 2:4-5; 1 Timothy 6:6-10; 2 Timothy 4:9-10

This last test of character comes to the root of the matter. In the final analysis, what controls my actions—self-interest or Christ-interest? In the deepest citadel of my spirit, who gives the final word? Do I or does Christ? The answer to that determines whether I am a Christian or not.

And what is the issue? It is this: If I dominate my life, it will disintegrate—I shall lose it. If Christ dominates my life, I shall find it—it will come back to me integrated, happy, and useful.

Sat Tal, the ashram retreat in India where I am writing, means “Seven Lakes.” The legend says that during a drought a very holy man was dying of thirst by the wayside. A poor village woman, seeing his distress, ran off and at great trouble brought him seven handfuls of water. These seven handfuls became the seven beautiful lakes. On the other side of the ridge is a lake, really a swamp, the place where the dead are burned. This was the seat of a great kingdom, but the rani, the queen, when the drought came, thought only of herself and cried to the gods for water. They gave her so much that she and her palace were drowned and are now beneath the swamp.

The legend teaches what life teaches: If my desires dominate me, I shall be drowned in my own desires. I shall have my way, and then I shall loathe my way. When self is on the throne, its inner subjects are unhappy, discordant. That self may be a very refined self, it may be a very religious self—it may even be an apparently serving self—but if it is on the throne and makes the final decisions, then, as sure as fate, I shall lose my life. My life needs a master, but self is not the master that it needs.

Hush your heart and ask yourself this question: Who has the ultimate say in my life—self or Christ? Am I self-directed or Christ-directed?

O Christ, I know in my heart of hearts that when my hand is on the helm my life drifts toward the rocks. I cannot manage my boat. Take the helm, Lord. Amen.

Week 5 Friday

Is Confession Necessary?

Luke 12:2-9; James 5:13-16

As you face your life in the light of these five questions of character, where do you come out? Repeat them to yourself, slowly one by one, and give an honest answer. Your self will want to excuse, to rationalize, to go off to the irrelevant. Don’t let it. Hold it to the issues.

If you fall down at any or at all of these five places, confess it honestly and straightforwardly. Confess it? Yes. Both modern psychology and the teaching of Jesus agree at this point.

When the conscience, acting in the capacity of an observer, condemns the ego for wrong actions, and the feeling of guilt results, there are three possible modes of conduct open to the conscious mind. The consciousness may do nothing whatever about it, allowing the emotion full play; it may repress the feeling; or it may rid itself of the depressing sensation by means of spiritual catharsis, through confession.*

The first two methods are obviously unsatisfactory, and more, they are disastrous. To find oneself wrong and to do nothing about it is to condemn oneself to live with a self that we cannot respect. That is incipient hell. To repress is worse. The schools of psychology—Freud, Adler, Jung, and MacDougall—unite on this: To drive such a thing as fear and guilt into the subconscious and to shut the door is not to be rid of it. There it festers and sets up an irritation. The life is unhappy, ill at ease, nervous, it scarcely knows why. That is the result of repression.

And all the schools of psychology and all the teachings of Jesus unite on this: That repression must be found, brought up, exposed to the light, and resolved through confession. There is no other way out.

O Christ, we here take a deep breath, for this confession means humiliation to our inmost selves. We would fain hide our wounds. But we dare not. We open them to you—we dare do it to you—now. Amen.

* Clifford E. Barbour, Sin and the New Psychology (New York: Abingdon Press, 1930), 215.

Week 5 Saturday

To Whom Must I Confess?

Psalm 32:6; Luke 18:9-14; Acts 19:18-19 (Weymouth); 1 John 1:9-10

We left off yesterday with the conviction that if we are to get rid of the guilt that has gathered about and within our lives, we must confess it, open it up, expose it. But the question arises—to whom?

Obviously, it must include the one or ones we have wronged. That makes three because when we do wrong, we sin against ourselves, against God, and against society, or, to be more personal, against our brother or sister.

First, we sin against ourselves. We have been false to our highest interest, we have betrayed our ideals, we have sinned against our higher nature. We must then acknowledge it to ourselves. Unless you first acknowledge it to yourself you cannot acknowledge it to God or man. Do you really confess it to yourself? Without equivocation and fully? The last is important, for you will try to compromise with half-confessions and half-repentances.

Second, we must confess it to God. We have not merely broken a law, we have broken a Heart. You must tell God so. The approach to God has now been made easy through Jesus. His awful purity condemned sinners, yet invited them. For they saw that his purity was not forbidding, but forgiving. You dare expose your heart to that Heart. You must, to get relief. But again, it must be wholehearted and without anything held back, for one thing held back spoils it all and cancels the rest.

Third, we must confess it to those whom we have wronged. We do not need to broadcast our sins to everybody. Promiscuous confession to promiscuous gatherings is not healthy. There are some things that God deals with in private. But when we have wronged others or others have wronged us, we must both ask forgiveness and offer it.

O Christ, your knife is going deep. We wince, and yet we consent that the whole thing be taken out by the roots. Leave no lingering roots behind. For we do not want to be better only; we want to be well. Amen.