Responsibility!—Ministry in the cause of God entails serious responsibility at any time. It involves definite accountability for word, act, and influence. But ministry in the time of crisis, in the face of subtle attack and sinister subversion, involves most grave obligation for which we are answerable before God. We then have inescapable duties to perform. To be aware of danger and yet fail adequately to warn the flock over which God has made us overseers, is to be guilty of culpable neglect and failure. We cannot go serenely on as in former years with bland messages that do not meet the challenges and issues of the times. Under such conditions, pious platitudes are, worse than useless, for they produce a sense of false security, failing to arouse, protect, and save in the face of danger. There are some things we must meet, as well as some things that are best to ignore. Vitriolic attacks upon trivial matters may well be passed by, for they carry their own condemnation. But specious, subtle assaults upon great fundamentals that beguile the uninformed out of the fold should be adequately met by pen and voice. We need defensive as well as evangelistic literature. We must have corrective, informative, arresting messages, as well as merely uplifting and comforting emphases. We must adequately shepherd the flock.
Disturbers! Some continually imply that it is practically all others who are always out of step, ever and anon disturbing the welfare of the movement. They assert that it is others who are continually holding and teaching positions that cause confusion and variance among brethren. But when there is candid study of all the facts, it often transpires that they are themselves the ones out of step, who are holding tenaciously to certain personal teachings that foment contention and disturb the essential unity of the movement. Let us insist upon the facts, and not be too greatly disturbed by assertions.
Standards!—The collapse of moral standards, resounding on every hand, constitutes one of the most formidable problems confronting us as guardians of the flock. The purveyors of fiction make filth their chief stock in trade. The daily press is saturated with morbid recitals of vice and crime. They Jeer at us from the inescapable billboard and comic strip. They peer at us from every neighborhood newsstand, where sensuality is apotheosized through the suggestive magazine cover as well as the pornographic content. They shriek at us, though in more covert form, from the ever-present radio in taxis, barbershops, hotel lobbies, and sidewalk shops. That this incessant impress upon the mind is radically altering the moral concept of the world is beyond controversy. It is breaking down the accepted standards of the past, and it must be reckoned with in our designated work of reform today. We must erect what, to many, are really new standards, and resurrect what are denominated old-fashioned concepts of virtue and conduct. Without being prudish, we must lift again the standards of righteousness and purity that have broken down under this ceaseless, anti-Christian, immoral barrage. We must build up a counterbalance against this pressure, else we will go down under it. Truth must aggressively combat error, purity must restrain carnality, and uprightness must put license to flight.
Retaliation!—The spirit of retaliation, which we are tempted to invoke when we have been wronged in reality or in fancy, springs only from beneath, never from above. It is the very essence of the spirit of the world. It comes, not from God, but from the bosom of the father of lies and hatred. It is as out of place among Christian workers as was Judas among the disciples, or Satan among the sons of God of old. Its indulgence, we need ever to remember, injures those who project it more than the objects of their attack. Such vindictiveness unveils the sinister spirit that animates the soul, and proves the undoing of all who indulge in it unless it is confessed, repudiated, and forsaken. The spirit of Christ, with its forgiveness and love, must ever be our motivating principle.
Revulsion!—When will we as preachers learn to avoid stressing a sound point or a true principle to the place where it becomes an extremism, and thus creates a revulsion on the part of the most thoughtful, balanced, and loyal hearers in our congregations? We lose immeasurably when we press a position that is wholesome to a point where it loses the respect of the truest and most spiritual of our members. It is better to go a little slower and carry such with us. That is the method which heaven endorses, though it is hard for the impetuous.
L. E. F.
