"The Deeper Issues Of Our Struggle"
Brother N. B. Hardeman told about a man who received a telegram which read as follows: "Your uncle James, being advanced in years and being debilitated both physically and intellectually by reason of the frailties that attach to the encroachment of senility, and having suffered severe financial reverses, in a moment of temporary dementia precipitated his own demise." Not being familiar with the terminology he took the telegram to a neighbor and asked him to explain the meaning. "Well," said the neighbor, after reading it over, "It just means that your uncle Jim got old, lost his wad, went nuts and bumped his self off."
Some time ago I read in a bulletin the following,: "Nurtured on a piety in which God is lavished with our saccharine love and a theology in which membership in the right religious institution becomes the key to salvation, our morality, gutted by a process of spiritualization which psychologizes and disembodies all our social responsibilities, and the legal systematization which catalogues an impersonal list of touch-me-nots, we modern christians are unable to recognize the towering presence of unbelief, especially in ourselves."
When you strip the excess fat from this logomachies it sounds like the brother is trying to tell us that our religion is anemic and our love for God hypocritical; that our faith has been stunted by such scriptural handicaps as that salvation is only in Christ, hence in his body, the one body, the church. 2 Tim. 2:10; Eph. 1:3; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 1:22-23; Col.1;18,24; Eph. 4:4; that the work of the church is primarily spiritual and not social; that its mission is to prepare people for a better world rather than trying to solve the social ills of this one---and by placing upon us certain restrictions.
In the same article this writer says that the people who insist that only immersion will meet the demands of scriptural baptism are fools. Also, those who oppose instrumental music in worship. I didn't get excited every time I am called a fool. I found out that there are several kinds of fools and some of them are not so bad. I don't even mind very much making a few enemies if I make them by contending for what I believe to be the truth. When Senator Vilas nominated Grover Cleveland for a second term he said, among other things, "We love him for the enemies he has made." Neither am I greatly disturbed if my love is not of the quality and measure that this "Church of Christ" preacher thinks it ought to be. I have noticed that my preaching brethren hardly ever reach the intellectual pinnacle and develop the capacity for love indicated by this brother until they have received a degree from a "divinity school" and have outgrown the Bible. John said, "This is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous." I Jn. 5:3. I'll settle for this if I can make it.
This next statement by our brother brought some questions to my mind: "The deeper issues of our struggle are... clarifying the alternatives between faith and unfaith... and developing an honest and articulate faith which is willing to risk itself in combat with worldly-wise and intelligent exponents of unfaith.
I don't think I know this fellow personally, but anyone who has kept up with the trends in this brotherhood will, like Isaac of old, recognize his voice. I could not help wondering just what kind of weapons this preacher would use in combat with the "worldly-wise and intelligent exponents of unfaith." Surely he would not try to use the Bible. That would invite certain defeat, because he either does not know enough about that book or he doesn't believe enough of it to meet anybody. An intelligent and well informed unbeliever would make him look like Lil' Abner at a scientists' convention.
In any contest there must be some standard. Otherwise there could be neither winner nor loser. H there are such things as right and wrong, truth and error, then there is a standard by which these things are determined. Otherwise we have only a war of words. What is our standard of authority in religion? With what shall we engage in combat "the exponents of unfaith"? Is revelation subjective? Then there are as many standards as there are individuals. Is the Bible the standard? Whose Bible? Karl Barth's ? Reinhold Niebuhr's? With a Bible that has been "gutted" by the compromise of timid souls and men who have been captivated by the wisdom of the world?
I must confess that all I know about my duty to my Creator I learned from the Bible. All I know of the Bible is found in the words of the Bible. Words in the Bible mean what they mean anywhere else. A combination of words makes a sentence. Sentences convey thoughts. A sentence in the Bible conveys the same thought now that it conveyed 1900 years ago. If God had anything to do with writing the Bible, he had everything to do with it. If God meant to convey any message through the words of the Bible then that message is still there and means now what it meant when it was put there. Twentieth century science, vanity and the deification of human wisdom have not changed that. The word baptize meant immerse when the new testament was written and it still means that. If believing that makes me a fool, then I shall glory in the distinction. (I Cor. 4:10.) If I believe that it still means that and do not believe that I am obligated to obey it, then I shall not believe that I am obligated to do anything else the Bible teaches us to do. Why should I?
Isa. 7:14; Mt. 1:18-20; Lk. 1:34-35 teach that Jesus was miraculously conceived and born of a virgin. I Cor. 15 teaches that he was bodily raised from the dead. Heb. 9 teaches that his blood made atonement for sins. Men with confidence in these things will not cringe in the presence of "towering unbelief". If the Bible is not the word of God then God has not spoken unto man. If it is a message from God then the message is in the words of the book. Those who do not believe this must share in the dismal philosophy of Ingersoll who said: "Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond their heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry."