'Open Thou Mine Eyes'
KELD J. REYNOLDS Associate Secretary, General Conference Department of Education
President Dick, members of the faculty of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, members of the graduating class, and friends come to pay respects to the school and its sons:
The title of this discourse has been chosen to give emphasis to the need of in sight, divinely directed value judgment, and disciplined minds in those who bear the vessels of the Lord. The worker who has taken the name of Christ and dedicated his life in service to the church has thereby accepted a holy vocation. With it he takes the responsibility of developing the habit of excellence excellence in consecration, in service, in character, in Christian deportment, and in judgment. Like sanctification, this is the work of a lifetime, and it is not in man alone to achieve it. Therefore, a daily prayer of the Christian worker should be: "O Lord, open Thou mine eyes, not only to the wonders of Thy law, but also to the rich resources of Thy grace, to my own opportunities, to the needs of other men as well as to my own, that I may daily progress toward that goal of Christian character and service that Thou hast set for me."
The Seminary, as a member of the sister hood of Seventh-day Adventist schools and colleges, is a designer and builder of godly men, working to a divinely appointed pat tern. But the Seminary, though it operates on a graduate level, is not a finishing school. The measure of its success lies in the degree to which its alumni continue through life to believe, to comprehend, and to act as Christian men should believe and under stand and serve.
We are living in one of the greatest periods of history, second only to that day when Christ walked among men and called and trained the twelve. The Lord is coming again. More than ever before, the church needs Spirit-filled men and women whose every power is developed and wholly dedicated to service. Never before have there been such opportunities for the proclamation of the gospel. The press carries the Word of God. Radio and television have conquered the fourth dimension, and the message of the preacher is stopped neither by walls nor by locked doors. All the modern techniques for studying and influencing the human mind and emotions await the preacher's fuller development and use. In no other age has there been such critical need for Christian vision and integrity. Ours is a cut-flower civilization, a world whose good habits have been inherited largely from a more Christian age. Now, snipped from the roots by an all-pervading secularism, traditions and standards are withering and disintegrating before our eyes. The impressive mansions of civilization, built through centuries of Christian belief, are being abandoned by men who have turned spiritual nomads. Science has added its influence. It has shown man how he can destroy a civilization, but not how to build one. It is time to turn men's eyes to the indestructible city of God; the church needs men of God to do that.
Changed Concepts, Lost Convictions
The Christian leader needs to have his eyes opened to a true appraisal of the modern world. He needs to dig deeper than the wars and the rumors of wars, the increase of scientific knowledge, and the crime and other evidence of the depravity of modern man. This kind of testimony he can get from his daily newspaper or the magazines he reads. What he needs to know is why men behave as they do, why they use their knowledge as they do, and what heart hungers they feel as a consequence. An under standing of contemporary life can be found in studying the educational system. It is, as it were, a "crystal ball" where the careful observer may see the shape of things present and things to come. Recently many educators have been looking critically at their own schools and have seen a shift in the pattern of values and value judgment.
Through the nineteenth century most people in America believed in God, but today a considerable proportion of the people are prepared to dismiss God as a hypothesis no longer tenable. Through the same period most Americans accepted the Bible as the Word of God and the final authority in matters of religion, Christian ethics, and Christian morality, and there are many Christians who hold the Word of God in the same esteem today. But there is a considerable proportion who regard it as only a historic book, some parts of which have good moral lessons to teach. A still larger proportion are indifferent to the Bible and satisfied to dismiss it from their lives.
The time was when it was considered quite proper for prominent and educated people to hold deep convictions, and to commit their hearts and minds to great causes. Now, except in the fields of politics and sports, it is not considered quite civilized to become deeply committed to any thing, for we may want to repudiate it to morrow. We are inclined to blame Charles Darwin for the shift in values, or to point the finger at the eighteenth-century French or the nineteenth-century German philosophers. Instead we must look to the universities and seminaries and to the teacher training colleges for the seeds that are producing the harvest of the twentieth century. The secularizing of education, in the sense of attacking the foundations of religion itself, did not get well under way before 1900. It resulted from a change in the basic philosophy of education a switch from stabilized values to unstable pragmatic practice, from behavior based upon some ultimate authority to an emphasis upon adaptability and flexible intelligence as primary values.
According to the pragmatists, man can work out his deliverance by wisely using the resources he has in hand without reference to any divine power. A satisfactory human existence is not an affair of God, man, and nature; it is altogether a matter of nature, man, and society. It is a denial of man's need of anything akin to the Christian faith as it is revealed in the Word of God. This moral relativism has in it plenty of mischief for society. In a very sober analysis, titled Crisis in the University, Sir Arthur Moberly, an English educator, writes:
"Our predicament then is this. Most students go through our universities without ever having been forced to exercise their minds on the issues which are really momentous. Under the guise of academic neutrality they are subtly conditioned to unthinking acquiescence in. the social and political status quo and in a secularism on which they have never seriously reflected." Page 57.
The chief victim of the cult of uncertainty is, of course, the student, the coming man. A student gives this testimony:
"But what about us, the youth of America? What have we been taught to revere? When our elders refer to eternal verities, absolutist ethics, we are likely to recall the lessons our instructors in sociology have driven home that morals are relative to time and place, that what is good in one society is bad in another. . . . Little of the learning we absorb includes value judgments. ... If man is a. slave to determinism, incapable of free choice, what is the value of the ballot, trial by jury, and civil liberties generally? . . . Personally I fail to under stand how you can expect us to become ardent. Christians and democrats when the vital postulates, on which these faiths are supposed to rest are daily undermined in the classroom. . . . Isn't it palpably obvious that the root of the trouble lies in the apparent contradiction between the implications off our studies and the ideals we are expected to revere?" HENRY P. VAN DUSEN, God in Education pp. 54, 55.
Results of Educational Revolution
The revolution in education has produced results of great significance to those called to the ministry of the pulpit as well as those in the ministry of the classroom. In the first place, modern education tends to instill attitudes and concepts in the student that make it extremely difficult for him to recognize as valid the premises on which the Christian evidences were accepted by his more believing grandfather. In the second place, the alumnus of modern education is not disposed to turn to God when he is in trouble. Education, he has been taught to believe, has presented all the disciplines essential for life. But religion has either been absent or elective in his education. Therefore, when in trouble, he does not look to it; he looks for a new wonder drug, or a new equation, or a new gadget; as a last resort he sees a psychiatrist. Most serious of all, his education has tended to unfit him for distinguishing between sin and intellectual error. In preaching the everlasting gospel we must take all of these things into account. The fathers of the Advent message preached to men who believed the Bible to be the Inspired Word of God. We con front a generation of men to many of whom the Bible is merely another good book, and some of them are not sure there is a God. The fathers preached about the fall of man and his redemption and regeneration through the sinless life of Jesus and His death upon the cross, to men disposed to accept the doctrine as from God; whereas many of our neighbors regard the most sacred truths of Christianity as metaphysics or folklore, to be studied as a branch of anthropology or examined in a philosophy class, if they are studied at all. We must present the eternal absolutes of God's law to men whose education has conditioned them against receiving anything as either absolute or eternal.
We must call men out of sin who have been taught to repudiate the Scriptural concept of sin, and who have lost the sense of the sinfulness of sin. When the Spirit of God awakens dormant spiritual hungers in men and women unaccustomed to giving religion either a thought or a moment, we must be ready to present, interpret, and exemplify eternal truth in terms of the needs of the times, the needs of contemporary man.
Our Challenge and Opportunity
The work calls for men of God who are also men of power. Never was there greater need of the Spirit to give wisdom and strength of soul and mind to the Christian worker. Never was there greater need in the ministry for lifelong self-improvement, under divine direction, in spirit, in mental culture, and in character, for Christian service. Never has it been so important that workers be well educated in the Scriptures and in the techniques of service, honoring 'God and blessing the church through their spiritual and mental maturity, wise in all essentials, yet preaching with simple effectiveness Christ and Him crucified.
The power of the gospel is inherent and everlasting. It worked in pagan Rome. It cast off the irons of medieval formalism, and brought the spiritual rebirth of the Reformation. In the early nineteenth century it revived the church in England and America, when men had almost lost the sense of sin. It is working now. Men dis cover, in time, that science has not all the answers, and that some of life's most precious experiences cannot be measured on the slide rule or tested by the scientific method. It comes, in time, as a shock to realize that without God we have only a hollow man. Men grow tired of being for ever at sea, unstable and blown about by every new social doctrine, and they look for something to tie to, so they can get their feet on solid ground.
It is then that the messenger of hope finds his opportunity. The gospel cannot fail; the truth will triumph. And God depends upon men who accept and develop the power He offers, men who will carry the yoke of responsibility on sturdy shoulders. God's men have served Him faithfully in all ages and under all conditions. Some of you who are graduating have spent many years in the Lord's service. Some of you are perhaps just beginning. All of you are God's men. May God give to the members of this class a heavenly vision forever bright, and wisdom and power, love unfailing and cour age always high, and may you each render distinguished service to the Lord, to the church, and to needy humanity.
How to Prepare for Retirement
C. S. LONGACRE
Everyone who is employed should look for ward with happy anticipation, rather than dread, to the time of retirement. Retirement comes to all persons who are employed, or hold official positions, if death does not overtake their careers prematurely. Therefore it is incumbent upon every per son to be prepared physically, mentally, and spiritually for the time when retirement becomes a necessity. T
here are some who have faithfully served their Master for many years in His cause; but when the time comes for them to retire, they have a great deal of difficulty adjusting themselves to the new situation, which they had hoped would never come to them.
Many employment agencies, whether in Government or in private business, have fixed certain age limits arbitrarily for the retirement of their employees, whether or not the employee is disqualified for further service. God, however, does not employ such arbitrary restrictions, which disregard a person's ability, among the servants He chooses. The apostle John is a striking example of the way God can use aged workers, long after others have fallen out by the way. When John's enemies "thought him to be past service, an old and broken reed, ready to fall at any time," they exiled him to the Isle of Patmos in retirement. But the Lord did not retire him. Even on Patmos where he was retired, he still made friends and gained converts to Christianity by witnessing for the truth. It was after his retirement that he wrote his epistles and received more communications from heaven and through the Holy Spirit than he had received during the rest of his lifetime.
Likewise the aged Paul, when his enemies retired him to Roman prisons, wrote most of his epistles, and made converts while in prison, even among the members of Caesar's household. "If God be for us," says Paul, "who can be against us?"
Trades and Hobbies
Whatever our profession or field of service may be during our lifetime, we should prepare for eventual retirement. Some workers become discouraged and find it difficult to adjust themselves after they have retired because they have failed to prepare themselves for retirement. They had no hobbies, no interests, no other fields of service aside from their regular work. Though the apostle Paul said, "This one thing I do," nevertheless he learned the trade of making tents in order to support himself while preaching the gospel.
Every person should learn a trade aside from the regular employment he is engaged in, or have some special type of work to occupy the time in case employment ceases. A minister should seek to become proficient in more than one branch of the Lord's work. A pastor of a church should qualify himself to promote all phases of work connected with the Lord's cause, and not just content himself with preaching the gospel. A successful farmer does not depend upon raising only one product upon his farm, but cultivates different kinds of crops, so in case one crop fails, he has others upon which he can depend. A successful architect does not content himself with studying only one kind of construction, but studies the construction of various kinds of edifices, even though he may specialize on a certain type, in order that if his specialty should become slack, he can fall back on his reserve knowledge along other lines, and still do a prosperous business. So every worker in the service of God should prepare himself to meet future emergencies, in case he reaches the end of the trail in his special type of work, or in case he is retired on account of age, though still capable of working and witnessing for God. He needs to be occupied doing something to improve himself and his time after retirement, instead of sitting in an easy chair, folding his arms, and rusting out. If opportunity does not knock at his door, let him make a way to the door of opportunity. God did not intend that any normal person, much less .a Christian worker, should be a creature of circumstances. A prudent worker gives some thought to the future and prepares himself to meet emergencies. The pilot of an air plane who puts just enough fuel in the tank to reach a certain destination is likely to come to serious grief if he should happen to encounter adverse winds.
If a person wishes to spend a happy and useful life after he is retired from his regular work, he must build up a reserve fund of practical knowledge, of physical energy, and of robust health. He should cultivate a cheerful disposition and a willingness to do anything he is requested to do, without feeling it to be beneath his dignity or station in life.
If a retired worker has been a profitable producer instead of a consumer, he will find ample opportunity to serve God and needy humanity. He will find his brethren ready and willing to make use of his gifts and talents in part-time work in the cause he loves to serve.
If the worker is left on his own meager resources to support himself, he should endeavor to augment his income by working at some trade he learned or by cultivating a small plot of ground; and then do missionary work on the side by visiting the sick and shut-ins of the church, by assisting the pastor, and by taking an active part in all church activities.
There are retired workers who have moved into dark counties where no Adventists lived and where no evangelistic effort was ever held, and who have done a noble work in witnessing for God, scattering our message-filled literature, and giving Bible studies to those who have be come interested in the truth. There are hundreds of avenues open for service after retirement to wide-awake and enterprising workers. Such a worker should look forward with glad anticipation to the time when he is released from the steady routine of organized and ordered service, to a time when he is free to enjoy the fruits of his labor in the past and is able to do some things he longed and hoped to do, but had no opportunity to do in the steady and continuous program of necessary duties in his employment.
Our period of retirement should be the happiest in ,our life's career. Life is largely what we make it. It is the time when we reap what we have sown, and are paid back with the same kind of coin we dealt out to others. It is the time when we reap the friendships of all the friends we made in the past. It is the time when we grow mel low in our experience and attitudes toward others, and the rough edges and corners in our characters are polished off. It is the time when old workers should cheerfully give place to young and vigorous workers, and when young workers should seek counsel from old and experienced workers.
Dear fellow workers, as some of us ap proach the sunset of life, may our western horizon be tinted with the glories of the golden age in our career. Whether that pe riod of retirement be the dark age or the .golden age depends largely on our attitude.
